The money has all been used up on the much more important (sarcasm) war on Iraq....Because of Republican ideologies, important environmental and human health needs are ignored while we spend billions on a war in Iraq. I call it the result of a mental disorder.
Social spending was not decreased to fund the war in Iraq. Social spending ballooned during the Bush administration. Also? Democrats voted for the war in Iraq as well. The vast majority of them. And they keep voting to fund it. And they have continued to not vote to fund the satellites since taking control of Congress.
With the health care bill for instance, it is disgusting that we would have Republicans basically murder thousands of more people each year by blocking the health care reform, which will safe millions of lives, while their is always enough money for their stupid wars.
What part of the health care reform bill will save thousands of lives? Do you even know what the bill does? Have you read any of it? Even a summary? All the bill does is give more money to insurance corporations, force people to buy health insurance who didn't before, and tax the middle class. That's it. There's no magic spells in it to save lives. You've swallowed the partisan bullcrap hook, line, and sinker.
The US needs to be investing in renewable energy like wind and solar and nuclear fusion development, and on energy efficient improvements to cities to base them on public transit, bike and pedestrian use,
Wait, what do you want us to spend money on? Earlier you made it sound like you wanted the money spent on health care, now you want it on energy development? Wasn't this article about the lack of funding for earth sensing satellites? You're rambling just a bit...
and we need to put in tariffs to keep the jobs in the US to fix our economy which has been damaged by offshoring which Republicans love as it increases corporate profit at the expense of working americans.
You really are completely blinded by partisan rhetoric, aren't you? First off, Democrats are just as pro-corporate (if not even more pro-corporate) than Republicans. There's no difference in the parties there. Second off, how would tariffs help our economy? If we raise tariffs, then everyone we trade with raises tariffs, and then suddenly OUR products are too expensive to be sold in other countries. So you'd raise tariffs to save some worthless manufacturing jobs at the expense of our high-tech industries? That's a policy of insanity.
You should have seen the show. It regularly featured fabrication of evidence, deal-making, bribe taking, protection rackets, prisoner abuse, etc. Essentially the point of the show was to watch a police unit slowly self destruct from a "just this once" evidence fabrication incident until they become more monstrous than those they are supposed to be protecting us from.
However, I think we can all agree now that GPL V3 was a good idea because it would prevent our current situation of half-open devices.
I disagree. I much prefer our current situation of "half-open" devices that actually exist and that I can use over the mythical fully open devices that apparently are used by the tooth fairy and santa claus.
rewrite ONLY if it means it yields less lines of code to maintain with the same functionality. Use whatever language necessary to keep the length of code to a minimum.
Rewriting my well-documented if-then-else tree as a series of nested ternary operators would reduce the number of lines of code, but I don't think that makes it more understandable/maintainable.
Or I could write it in brainfuck, the entire program would fit on one line then.
No, I don't hate people who actually take personal responsibility, I hate hypocrites. But it seems perhaps I misjudged you. Sorry.
No sweat. I've already come to terms with the fact that I have a "difficult personality" at times.
As for getting stuck with the bill, you echo my sentiments exactly. I don't use that much oil, I won't pay that much of the cost. I may wish that any of this will come out of someone's bonus, but of course, it won't.
You're nicer than me. Screw bonuses, if something criminal has happened here I want the people responsible in jail. People are dead and permanent damage has probably been done to the fishing industry in my home state. And everyone uses oil. If nothing else I'm sure you use plastics, and unless you walk to local farmer's market to get your food, oil gets burned getting it to you...
The biggest priority is stopping the leak, and containing the spill. BP, Transocean, whoever, is dropping the ball on this too. The containment is haphazard and insufficient. Double booms are not being used, and there don't seem to be any catch basins in use, let alone machinery to drain the catch basins. This means they might as well not be laying booms at all.
Is that equipment actually available? I wouldn't be surprised to find it in Valdez, but it may not be available in the gulf coast (again, I know significantly more about land-based drilling than offshore, so I'm not familiar with all the resources staged there). Now if that's the case, there's no excuse for the equipment not being in place beforehand in case this kind of event occurred... But as a Louisiana expat that wouldn't surprise me in the least. Down there, preparation is what we do AFTER shit gets bad, not before...
I have no more slack to cut the president I voted for, sorry. I'm a socialist.
Well I have utmost respect for you being honest about that fact, as the vast majority of people who share your beliefs will do everything they can to avoid that label. Unfortunately my own beliefs happen to be diametrically opposed to yours, but that doesn't mean we couldn't share a beer someday.
Why did he let the assholes who did this do damage control?
Well probably because BP gave him a lot of money... Which is pretty funny considering after a recent Supreme Court Decision regarding campaign finance laws and corporations he had the gall to say the Court was allowing foreign companies to invest money in American politics... When he was a beneficiary of money from a foreign company.:)
He was so into Gulf drilling, why didn't he have a disaster plan in place?
Again, he probably listened to his advisors who told him that there was a disaster plan, who listened to BP who told them there was a disaster plan...
Why didn't we go in with Navy subs to look at the site?
It's pretty deep. You'd need a DSV, which (to my knowledge) aren't staged in the Gulf of Mexico. A normal Navy sub might get that deep, but they don't have windows. The Feds were also probably trying to stay out of the way since they tend to just fuck things up when they get involved, so they were leaving the job to people who supposedly know what they're doing. In this case it seems maybe those people DON'T know what they're doing, though, so oh well...
We sent Navy ships to Haiti. Why didn't we do the containment ourselves, or pay for someone else more competent and less interested in cover ups to do it, and stick BP or whoever with the bill?
Because Congress requires the company with the oil lease to have a disaster recovery plan, last I checked. So this is what Congress wanted. Maybe a better idea would be to take the money from the oil leases and invest them in a neutral company based somewhere like Intercoastal C
Actually I funnily enough just helped a coworker deal with a real estate transaction that involved a not-up-to-code septic system in a house he was buying (but decided not to). The homeowners weren't in trouble at all, as the contractor claimed the system met codes and it was on him to get it certified. But that's just how it works in this state...
The only way your analogy works is if the homeowner KNOWINGLY has a bad septic system installed.
Never liked BFG cards very much, they were the worst at maintaining nVidia reference spec
What? Every BFG board I've ever bought my wife (which has been about three so far since her previous, non-BFG card burned out a month after its warranty period) has been practically a reference board with upgraded RAM and cooling. They ship the damned reference drivers on their CDs.
As far as not water-cooling friendly... They've got a lifetime warranty if you don't screw with them. So, yeah, most people aren't buying them to screw with them.
I don't believe you. If they had burned out, I don't believe you'd of just happily replaced them with some other card, as all BFG cards have a lifetime warranty.
The only way I might believe you is if you bought three 9600s, as every manufacturer had problem with that chip (Black Screen of Death), including the BFG GeForce FX 9600 I bought for my wife. BFG happily replaced it for me free of charge, however.
So yeah, if you honestly just did go buy three new cards, can I buy the broken ones off you for $5 apiece? I'll even foot the shipping.
First, WHY did the supervisor make the call he did? Could it have been because the company awards timely performance without regard to safety? This is like having somebody chop off their hands in a machine, and the company saying that it was their fault for not wearing the provided and required gloves (of course, the company doesn't mention that nobody wears gloves because every week the three slowest workers are fired and gloves slow you down considerably, and nobody is punished for not wearing the gloves).
Or maybe because he really didn't think it was a problem and the tests on the blowout preventer checked out? Now even if that's true, that doesn't absolve him from criminal negligence. Being an idiot in a position of command is negligence, in my opinion...
Second, I'm not a big fan of outsourcing being a way to escape liability.
I didn't mean to say BP should be absolved of all liability. My point was that people keep pointing at BP like they're the sole and primary culprit, and that's simply not the case. They were a customer.
Suppose I buy a set of brakes for my car from flybynite.com for $1.99 (when they normally sell for $50), and then I crash into another car due to brake failure and kill somebody - should I escape liability?
I'm sorry, but even for a car analogy that's terrible. You're mixing your actors and actions here--having the customer also be the primary actor.
A more correct analogy would be that you hired a delivery driver who's rates are below the market average to haul your hazardous waste and the driver crashed the truck into an orphanage or something. Yeah you bear some of the responsibility here, but if the driver presented you with a proper CDL with hazardous materials endorsements and proof of insurance, are you really the one who's primarily responsible?
Now if you knowingly allowed (or even pressured) a driver who didn't have the proper training or coverage into carrying your waste... That's a whole different story.
Oh. My. God. You just can't stop, can you? Now it's Transocean's fault, not BPs. Transocean said to check the concrete, BP said "No way, that'll take too long!"
And yet BP is the customer, it's not their rig. They can demand all they want, Transocean gets the final say in what's done. If BP demanded something criminally negligent be done then by all means nail the people who demanded it to the wall, but Transocean is still the one primarily responsible for the safe operation of the rig.
BP executives were on the rig and countermanding Transocean's directives. Not that Transocean is off the hook, they cut corners too. There is MORE than enough blame to go around, but that is NOT what you were doing. It looks to me like you were trying to absolve BP of all responsibility.
Where? WHERE? Show me the line! I'll happily correct your misunderstanding. I didn't say BP was innocent, I said people were taking actions of Transocean personnel and using them as evidence as to why BP needs to be punished. You did it yourself when you attributed the 'tested the preventer' claim to BP. Like I said, if the BP execs involved with this did something negligent nail the fuckers to the wall. But at the end of the day BP was the *customer*. A customer can request whatever they want from a contractor, it's still the contractor's final decision as to what they do or don't do. If a US Army General had asked Blackwater to go into Fallujah and massacre a bunch of civilians yeah that General should be court-martialed but Blackwater shouldn't be able to use the excuse "But we were ordered to!".
Stakeholder much?
I love this uniquely Internet phenomenon. Can't find a logically consistent way to disagree with someone? Claim they're a sleeper agent! This crap would never fly in a face-to-face discussion...
No, I have no vested interest in the success of BP, other than a significant dislike of anything motivated by blind anti-corporate hatred or stupid class warfare (which I think your comments vis a vis corporate executives and being allowed to join their "psycopaths club" are a perfect example of). Nor am I a paid anti-Free Software astroturfer (as I was told on Groklaw), nor a trust fund baby or a CIA plant working some new COINTELPRO operation (as some entirely too full of themselves members of some liberal political board once told me). I wish one of those things was true, I'd hope they all paid better than my day job. The honest truth is I gain nothing from all these fights... I just enjoy a good argument and can't stand to see people talking about things they know nothing about like they are authorities. (There was, I believe, an XKCD comic about a geek screaming "I'll come to bed in a minute, someone said something stupid on the internet!" that's unfortunately me to a T)
Anyway, enough of a digression... I really think it might be a healthy exercise for you to try considering that maybe someone who disagrees with you just honestly disagrees with you, not that they have some sinister reason for it.
All the public wants is some accountability.
And I'm all for that. The problem is people who are trying to go off half-cocked or assuming that the solution to the spill is easy and the people involved just aren't doing it.
BP is going to pay, Transocean is going to pay, Halliburton is going to pay (didn't know they were in on this little fiasco?)
Yeah actually I did know Halliburton was involved. They're involved in pretty much any drilling operation both on land or at sea, as they're the only company that really does what they do (hence why they just got another "no bid" deal out of the Obama administration). Looks like they probably didn't have much to do with the accident, though, since they were just their for cementing operations. Maybe they put a bad plug in? We'll find out, eventually.
I think we know a lot about why it happened. They were running with a damaged BOP, they replaced the mud with seawater and the cement job failed. Had the BOP worked, this would've likely would've been prevented, 11 people would still be alive.
Except that's just the latest theory based on anecdotal evidence. It may very well be that it's the truth, but we won't know if it is until a proper investigation is done.
I don't think it's outrageous for someone to suspect they might have tried to save the well for economic purposes.
Except that the entire recovery process has been out in the open and such a claim makes absolutely no sense.
We need to fix the regulatory environment, becuase companies will always race to the bottom to maximize the ROI, even if they're wildly popular.
If they actually proceeded knowingly with a broken BOP I don't think additional regulation would have prevented this. That's already criminal.
People have a right to be angry about this, even if they don't understand it at a technical level. I don't think angry people are why we don't have better parties regulating, it's becuase of a classic ethical failure in government, (beer and hooker --scratch that-- coke and hooker parties with industry) and people like us for some reason have had our heads in the sand about the risks inherrent here.
My point wasn't that angry people are preventing better regulation, my point was that the average layman/politician doesn't understand the industry well enough to regulate it. For instance I've seen a lot of 20/20 hindsight about certain groups that have been pushing to have relief wells pre-drilled for every well that gets drilled... On the surface, that seems like a great idea... Until you think about how many wells are already out there and what the additional cost of requiring every well to be drilled twice would be. (The CBS news article quotes a cost of 25 million for the re-drill they ALREADY had to do for Deepwater Horizon) These extra costs would be reflected in the prices we pay at the pump... All to prevent a type of accident that's only really occurred twice that I know of.
Yeah we can improve safety/regulation, but some sanity and cost/benefit analysis has to be part of the problem.
The lengths you go to, to defend BP, are astounding.
When have I defended BP? When everything comes out in the end we'll (hopefully) know WHY this happened and then we can find out who (if anyone) was responsible for the bad decisions being made. The point I was making is that people are taking evidence of misbehavior by Transocean and using it as an argument that BP should be punished. We don't even know for sure how this accident happened. Now is not the time for figuring out how exactly we want to crucify those involved, now is the time to concentrate on fixing the damn leak and then once everything is calmed down we can figure out what went wrong and who gets the bill.
Yeah I wouldn't be surprised to find out BP execs put pressure on Transocean, but at the end of the day it wasn't BP's rig. Even as a government contractor, I have a responsibility to not do something dangerous/illegal if my customer (the Federal Freaking Government) tells me to do it. Even blaming BP for pushing the limits does not absolve Transocean of primary responsibility.
Are you a stakeholder in the corporation?
Thankfully, no. I have family in the old field, but last I checked they worked for BP's competitors.
The article does not say they successfully tested the preventer, it says they claimed to have tested it. Funny you question the worker's word, but not BPs.
It's not BP's word they tested the preventer, it's Transocean's! THIS IS WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT! People can't even keep the companies involved in this disaster straight and yet they think they're qualified to decide what needs to be done to whom!
When did I say I didn't believe the employee's story as to what happened? I *DO* believe him, but that doesn't mean what happened had any bearing on the accident because WE STILL DON'T KNOW WHY THE ACCIDENT HAPPENED!
I'm not willing to believe EITHER a BP exec's word (who is looking out for his bottom line) or the word of a Transocean employee as to what happened at this point in time. I will believe the word of some independent, third party investigative body as to why the accident happened when a thorough and open examination of the evidence has been conducted. Until such a time finger pointing and witch hunts are POINTLESS.
But what really gets my goat is all the people who bitch and moan about 'personal responsibility' when it comes to things like health care and social programs, but excuse the most egregious lack of personal responsibility by corporate executives. Why do the rich and powerful get a different set of standards? Its not as though they are going to thank you for defending them by letting you into their little sociopath's club.
And yet people like you are trying to heap blame on BP and ignore the fact that Transocean was in charge of the drilling! Who exactly is trying to excuse corporations of responsibility here?
Yeah, based on that article, if the Blowout Preventer WAS damaged, then it wasn't BP that decided to ignore it. Transocean made that call. The article also goes on to say they successfully tested the preventer, so it may be that it really didn't matter.
The government thought BP would fix it eventually and didn't want to get involved in the fix in case they screwed it up. I don't think they realized just how badly BP could screw it up.
What exactly has BP done wrong since the spill? I'm curious.
"He discovered chunks of rubber in the drilling fluid. He thought it was important enough to gather this double handful of chunks of rubber and bring them into the driller shack. I recall asking the supervisor if this was out of the ordinary. And he says, 'Oh, it's no big deal.' And I thought, 'How can it be not a big deal? There's chunks of our seal is now missing,'"
Can I get the source for that? It's not that I don't believe you, it's just that based on your quote BP isn't at fault, as the supervisor on the rig made the call... And people keep conveniently forgetting that this wasn't BP's rig.
Second, no attempt was made to "save the well". If you knew anything about drilling (or even if you'd even of bothered to read the freaking summary) you'd know that the reason drastic measures like injecting a plug into the well have not been tried is that there's a very real possibility this might do further damage to the well and make the spill significantly worse, possibly to the point of not being able to stop the leak at all. Every step of this process (from remotely activating the blowout preventer, placing the "dome" on top of the break, and syphoning off the oil as it comes up) has been done with meticulous care specifically to prevent making the situation worse, as we still don't even know why it happened!
Do you know why we don't have "disinterested" parties regulating this industry or overseeing the cleanup? Because they're people like you, who don't know what the hell they're talking about but are perfectly happy to act like the solutions are obvious and simple.
The fact that you got a single mod point for searching for a mispelling of my slashdot user name and then making a snide remark about the fact that the person you found lives in 'the southern US' makes me feel justified in my plans for the extermination of the human race. It'll be a mercy killing.
This is an utter lie. 95% of Canadians will tell you that the system works well enough. We'd all like a bit better access, but we're willing to work with what we have.
To be fair, I wasn't being fair, I was trolling because the blatant stupidity and bigotry of the person I responded to didn't deserve a well-reasoned response. I have no doubt that most Canadians prefer the system to the alternative (ie: nothing), but it's also true that most Americans are happy with the health care they receive. I also can reasonably assume that the majority of Canadians would happily avail themselves to American health care given the option, as those with money regularly do.
Canadian health care even pays for procedures not available here (if they're medically necessary, and not available here). That's pretty friggin' good.
Well I can't really offer a comparison to that since there's no treatment I can think of that I'd have to leave the US for, but I will say even elective surgeries are covered under my current health plan. Then again, the phrase "medically necessary" can have very different meanings.
The stories you hear about long waiting lists is only partly true. The people that you saw in those propaganda videos that claimed the Canadian system failed them were hypochondriacs that couldn't get immediate service for non-life-threatening conditions.
Not familiar with any propaganda videos. I got my stories directly from Canadian friends. See my response to the person above this one for one such anecdote. Based on what I've seen, it's not just hypochondriacs. People regularly waiting six months to a year for routine diagnostics like MRIs, mammograms, etc. borders on criminal. When I came down with sudden debilitating pain in my lower back, I was in for an MRI within two hours to verify that it was a kidney stone. And that's when I was without health coverage.
The Premier of Newfoundland is independently wealthy and decided to get service in the states because it's just as good, a bit faster, and vastly more luxurious, if you can pay.
And it seems the majority of those who can pay take that option? So it's not a case of people liking the health system, per se, but of being left with a choice between 'government health care' and 'nothing'?
I wouldn't qualify for any insurance covered treatment in the USA because my allergies are a pre-existing condition, dontcha know.
That's actually incorrect, assuming your parents had insurance. Even if they didn't have insurance, it would only be a pre-existing condition if you'd received medical treatment for it within three months before purchasing your insurance policy. Not saying that's right or good (as that's a whole other argument), just saying you have your facts wrong regarding pre-existing conditions.
As it turns out, I was born in Canada. When my allergies suddenly struck me at age 6, I was put on a strict immunotherapy regimen and stayed on it for 7 years.
As did my brother. Though luckily it didn't take him seven years of treatment, thankfully.
In my case my allergies appeared in my teen years but I haven't bothered treating them, as I don't have the time and my previous doctor didn't treat food allergies and my environmental allergies weren't severe enough to warrant it. I could have treated them, but I didn't want to go to another Doctor. Oh well, my loss.
How much did this cost me? $0.
That's untrue. Assuming your parents were employed, they paid a not-insignificant amount of taxes to pay for your health coverage. Assuming you've gone on to be a contributing member of society, you've probably paid for your treatment several times over via taxes. Assuming neither of these things were true, then someone else paid your bill. Regardless, the cost was significantly higher than zero. Meanwhile a person unlike you or me who was not cursed with bad genes (or poisoning, a whole other story...) and therefore did not require your treatment is paying just as much for a service they have no need for.
The one thing most people complain about is wait times. They think that their broken finger deserves faster attention than someone who was impaled on a spike. I'll gladly wait, rather than have a system where the amount of money you have dictates the quality, speed, or presence of care.
What about a broken back? I have a miner friend up in Saskatchewan that waited ~9 months to see a specialist about his broken back. In the mean time all they could do was provide him with painkillers (which he eventually became addicted to). When he finally saw someone, his vertebrate had fused and his back had to be re-broken and he now required significantly more physical therapy and even more painkillers. You're saying he didn't deserve faster attention? Yeah it's just an anecdote, but so is your story.
The amount of money you have does dictate the quality and speed of your care in Canada. If you have the money, you just to to the US. Otherwise, you wait...:)
if texas is going to unleash a bunch of propagandized holy warrior children into the usa, i want to clear my throat and say "no, texas, you don't get to whitewash history and zombify your children, because the influx of propagandized morons affects my life: these people vote, they make decisions, large and small, in loca, state and federal government, that affect my quality of life, and you will not drag me and my country down to third world status"
Then can we also start saying something about the abysmal failures in education found in other states? You don't think there are students already being brainwashed or turned into mindless zombies by government schools elsewhere in the nation? Is it only a crime when they're brainwashed to disagree with you?
Also, I'm confused by your rant about states rights vs individual rights. I fail to see how forcing Texans to set their school curriculum to your standard does anything but violate their individual rights. What am I missing?
Slashdot Mirror
Why do the Irish wear kilts?
Scots can hear better than sheep!
Social spending was not decreased to fund the war in Iraq. Social spending ballooned during the Bush administration. Also? Democrats voted for the war in Iraq as well. The vast majority of them. And they keep voting to fund it. And they have continued to not vote to fund the satellites since taking control of Congress.
What part of the health care reform bill will save thousands of lives? Do you even know what the bill does? Have you read any of it? Even a summary? All the bill does is give more money to insurance corporations, force people to buy health insurance who didn't before, and tax the middle class. That's it. There's no magic spells in it to save lives. You've swallowed the partisan bullcrap hook, line, and sinker.
Wait, what do you want us to spend money on? Earlier you made it sound like you wanted the money spent on health care, now you want it on energy development? Wasn't this article about the lack of funding for earth sensing satellites? You're rambling just a bit...
You really are completely blinded by partisan rhetoric, aren't you? First off, Democrats are just as pro-corporate (if not even more pro-corporate) than Republicans. There's no difference in the parties there. Second off, how would tariffs help our economy? If we raise tariffs, then everyone we trade with raises tariffs, and then suddenly OUR products are too expensive to be sold in other countries. So you'd raise tariffs to save some worthless manufacturing jobs at the expense of our high-tech industries? That's a policy of insanity.
You should have seen the show. It regularly featured fabrication of evidence, deal-making, bribe taking, protection rackets, prisoner abuse, etc. Essentially the point of the show was to watch a police unit slowly self destruct from a "just this once" evidence fabrication incident until they become more monstrous than those they are supposed to be protecting us from.
No, thankfully we're better than that. :)
I disagree. I much prefer our current situation of "half-open" devices that actually exist and that I can use over the mythical fully open devices that apparently are used by the tooth fairy and santa claus.
Rewriting my well-documented if-then-else tree as a series of nested ternary operators would reduce the number of lines of code, but I don't think that makes it more understandable/maintainable.
Or I could write it in brainfuck, the entire program would fit on one line then.
No sweat. I've already come to terms with the fact that I have a "difficult personality" at times.
You're nicer than me. Screw bonuses, if something criminal has happened here I want the people responsible in jail. People are dead and permanent damage has probably been done to the fishing industry in my home state. And everyone uses oil. If nothing else I'm sure you use plastics, and unless you walk to local farmer's market to get your food, oil gets burned getting it to you...
Is that equipment actually available? I wouldn't be surprised to find it in Valdez, but it may not be available in the gulf coast (again, I know significantly more about land-based drilling than offshore, so I'm not familiar with all the resources staged there). Now if that's the case, there's no excuse for the equipment not being in place beforehand in case this kind of event occurred... But as a Louisiana expat that wouldn't surprise me in the least. Down there, preparation is what we do AFTER shit gets bad, not before...
Well I have utmost respect for you being honest about that fact, as the vast majority of people who share your beliefs will do everything they can to avoid that label. Unfortunately my own beliefs happen to be diametrically opposed to yours, but that doesn't mean we couldn't share a beer someday.
Well probably because BP gave him a lot of money... Which is pretty funny considering after a recent Supreme Court Decision regarding campaign finance laws and corporations he had the gall to say the Court was allowing foreign companies to invest money in American politics... When he was a beneficiary of money from a foreign company.:)
Again, he probably listened to his advisors who told him that there was a disaster plan, who listened to BP who told them there was a disaster plan...
It's pretty deep. You'd need a DSV, which (to my knowledge) aren't staged in the Gulf of Mexico. A normal Navy sub might get that deep, but they don't have windows. The Feds were also probably trying to stay out of the way since they tend to just fuck things up when they get involved, so they were leaving the job to people who supposedly know what they're doing. In this case it seems maybe those people DON'T know what they're doing, though, so oh well...
Because Congress requires the company with the oil lease to have a disaster recovery plan, last I checked. So this is what Congress wanted. Maybe a better idea would be to take the money from the oil leases and invest them in a neutral company based somewhere like Intercoastal C
Actually I funnily enough just helped a coworker deal with a real estate transaction that involved a not-up-to-code septic system in a house he was buying (but decided not to). The homeowners weren't in trouble at all, as the contractor claimed the system met codes and it was on him to get it certified. But that's just how it works in this state...
The only way your analogy works is if the homeowner KNOWINGLY has a bad septic system installed.
What? Every BFG board I've ever bought my wife (which has been about three so far since her previous, non-BFG card burned out a month after its warranty period) has been practically a reference board with upgraded RAM and cooling. They ship the damned reference drivers on their CDs.
As far as not water-cooling friendly... They've got a lifetime warranty if you don't screw with them. So, yeah, most people aren't buying them to screw with them.
I don't believe you. If they had burned out, I don't believe you'd of just happily replaced them with some other card, as all BFG cards have a lifetime warranty.
The only way I might believe you is if you bought three 9600s, as every manufacturer had problem with that chip (Black Screen of Death), including the BFG GeForce FX 9600 I bought for my wife. BFG happily replaced it for me free of charge, however.
So yeah, if you honestly just did go buy three new cards, can I buy the broken ones off you for $5 apiece? I'll even foot the shipping.
BP obtains a permit to drill the same way you as a homeowner obtain a permit for a contractor to do work on your house. BP is still the customer.
In this case, though, BP is 'you' and Transocean is the general contractor.
Or maybe because he really didn't think it was a problem and the tests on the blowout preventer checked out? Now even if that's true, that doesn't absolve him from criminal negligence. Being an idiot in a position of command is negligence, in my opinion...
I didn't mean to say BP should be absolved of all liability. My point was that people keep pointing at BP like they're the sole and primary culprit, and that's simply not the case. They were a customer.
I'm sorry, but even for a car analogy that's terrible. You're mixing your actors and actions here--having the customer also be the primary actor.
A more correct analogy would be that you hired a delivery driver who's rates are below the market average to haul your hazardous waste and the driver crashed the truck into an orphanage or something. Yeah you bear some of the responsibility here, but if the driver presented you with a proper CDL with hazardous materials endorsements and proof of insurance, are you really the one who's primarily responsible?
Now if you knowingly allowed (or even pressured) a driver who didn't have the proper training or coverage into carrying your waste... That's a whole different story.
And yet BP is the customer, it's not their rig. They can demand all they want, Transocean gets the final say in what's done. If BP demanded something criminally negligent be done then by all means nail the people who demanded it to the wall, but Transocean is still the one primarily responsible for the safe operation of the rig.
Where? WHERE? Show me the line! I'll happily correct your misunderstanding. I didn't say BP was innocent, I said people were taking actions of Transocean personnel and using them as evidence as to why BP needs to be punished. You did it yourself when you attributed the 'tested the preventer' claim to BP. Like I said, if the BP execs involved with this did something negligent nail the fuckers to the wall. But at the end of the day BP was the *customer*. A customer can request whatever they want from a contractor, it's still the contractor's final decision as to what they do or don't do. If a US Army General had asked Blackwater to go into Fallujah and massacre a bunch of civilians yeah that General should be court-martialed but Blackwater shouldn't be able to use the excuse "But we were ordered to!".
I love this uniquely Internet phenomenon. Can't find a logically consistent way to disagree with someone? Claim they're a sleeper agent! This crap would never fly in a face-to-face discussion...
No, I have no vested interest in the success of BP, other than a significant dislike of anything motivated by blind anti-corporate hatred or stupid class warfare (which I think your comments vis a vis corporate executives and being allowed to join their "psycopaths club" are a perfect example of). Nor am I a paid anti-Free Software astroturfer (as I was told on Groklaw), nor a trust fund baby or a CIA plant working some new COINTELPRO operation (as some entirely too full of themselves members of some liberal political board once told me). I wish one of those things was true, I'd hope they all paid better than my day job. The honest truth is I gain nothing from all these fights... I just enjoy a good argument and can't stand to see people talking about things they know nothing about like they are authorities. (There was, I believe, an XKCD comic about a geek screaming "I'll come to bed in a minute, someone said something stupid on the internet!" that's unfortunately me to a T)
Anyway, enough of a digression... I really think it might be a healthy exercise for you to try considering that maybe someone who disagrees with you just honestly disagrees with you, not that they have some sinister reason for it.
And I'm all for that. The problem is people who are trying to go off half-cocked or assuming that the solution to the spill is easy and the people involved just aren't doing it.
Yeah actually I did know Halliburton was involved. They're involved in pretty much any drilling operation both on land or at sea, as they're the only company that really does what they do (hence why they just got another "no bid" deal out of the Obama administration). Looks like they probably didn't have much to do with the accident, though, since they were just their for cementing operations. Maybe they put a bad plug in? We'll find out, eventually.
Except that's just the latest theory based on anecdotal evidence. It may very well be that it's the truth, but we won't know if it is until a proper investigation is done.
Except that the entire recovery process has been out in the open and such a claim makes absolutely no sense.
If they actually proceeded knowingly with a broken BOP I don't think additional regulation would have prevented this. That's already criminal.
My point wasn't that angry people are preventing better regulation, my point was that the average layman/politician doesn't understand the industry well enough to regulate it. For instance I've seen a lot of 20/20 hindsight about certain groups that have been pushing to have relief wells pre-drilled for every well that gets drilled... On the surface, that seems like a great idea... Until you think about how many wells are already out there and what the additional cost of requiring every well to be drilled twice would be. (The CBS news article quotes a cost of 25 million for the re-drill they ALREADY had to do for Deepwater Horizon) These extra costs would be reflected in the prices we pay at the pump... All to prevent a type of accident that's only really occurred twice that I know of.
Yeah we can improve safety/regulation, but some sanity and cost/benefit analysis has to be part of the problem.
When have I defended BP? When everything comes out in the end we'll (hopefully) know WHY this happened and then we can find out who (if anyone) was responsible for the bad decisions being made. The point I was making is that people are taking evidence of misbehavior by Transocean and using it as an argument that BP should be punished. We don't even know for sure how this accident happened. Now is not the time for figuring out how exactly we want to crucify those involved, now is the time to concentrate on fixing the damn leak and then once everything is calmed down we can figure out what went wrong and who gets the bill.
Yeah I wouldn't be surprised to find out BP execs put pressure on Transocean, but at the end of the day it wasn't BP's rig. Even as a government contractor, I have a responsibility to not do something dangerous/illegal if my customer (the Federal Freaking Government) tells me to do it. Even blaming BP for pushing the limits does not absolve Transocean of primary responsibility.
Are you a stakeholder in the corporation?
Thankfully, no. I have family in the old field, but last I checked they worked for BP's competitors.
It's not BP's word they tested the preventer, it's Transocean's! THIS IS WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT! People can't even keep the companies involved in this disaster straight and yet they think they're qualified to decide what needs to be done to whom!
When did I say I didn't believe the employee's story as to what happened? I *DO* believe him, but that doesn't mean what happened had any bearing on the accident because WE STILL DON'T KNOW WHY THE ACCIDENT HAPPENED!
I'm not willing to believe EITHER a BP exec's word (who is looking out for his bottom line) or the word of a Transocean employee as to what happened at this point in time. I will believe the word of some independent, third party investigative body as to why the accident happened when a thorough and open examination of the evidence has been conducted. Until such a time finger pointing and witch hunts are POINTLESS.
And yet people like you are trying to heap blame on BP and ignore the fact that Transocean was in charge of the drilling! Who exactly is trying to excuse corporations of responsibility here?
Yeah, based on that article, if the Blowout Preventer WAS damaged, then it wasn't BP that decided to ignore it. Transocean made that call. The article also goes on to say they successfully tested the preventer, so it may be that it really didn't matter.
What exactly has BP done wrong since the spill? I'm curious.
Can I get the source for that? It's not that I don't believe you, it's just that based on your quote BP isn't at fault, as the supervisor on the rig made the call... And people keep conveniently forgetting that this wasn't BP's rig.
You have no idea what you're talking about.
First, it's not a bay. It's the Gulf of Mexico.
Second, no attempt was made to "save the well". If you knew anything about drilling (or even if you'd even of bothered to read the freaking summary) you'd know that the reason drastic measures like injecting a plug into the well have not been tried is that there's a very real possibility this might do further damage to the well and make the spill significantly worse, possibly to the point of not being able to stop the leak at all. Every step of this process (from remotely activating the blowout preventer, placing the "dome" on top of the break, and syphoning off the oil as it comes up) has been done with meticulous care specifically to prevent making the situation worse, as we still don't even know why it happened!
Do you know why we don't have "disinterested" parties regulating this industry or overseeing the cleanup? Because they're people like you, who don't know what the hell they're talking about but are perfectly happy to act like the solutions are obvious and simple.
The fact that you got a single mod point for searching for a mispelling of my slashdot user name and then making a snide remark about the fact that the person you found lives in 'the southern US' makes me feel justified in my plans for the extermination of the human race. It'll be a mercy killing.
To be fair, I wasn't being fair, I was trolling because the blatant stupidity and bigotry of the person I responded to didn't deserve a well-reasoned response. I have no doubt that most Canadians prefer the system to the alternative (ie: nothing), but it's also true that most Americans are happy with the health care they receive. I also can reasonably assume that the majority of Canadians would happily avail themselves to American health care given the option, as those with money regularly do.
Well I can't really offer a comparison to that since there's no treatment I can think of that I'd have to leave the US for, but I will say even elective surgeries are covered under my current health plan. Then again, the phrase "medically necessary" can have very different meanings.
Not familiar with any propaganda videos. I got my stories directly from Canadian friends. See my response to the person above this one for one such anecdote. Based on what I've seen, it's not just hypochondriacs. People regularly waiting six months to a year for routine diagnostics like MRIs, mammograms, etc. borders on criminal. When I came down with sudden debilitating pain in my lower back, I was in for an MRI within two hours to verify that it was a kidney stone. And that's when I was without health coverage.
And it seems the majority of those who can pay take that option? So it's not a case of people liking the health system, per se, but of being left with a choice between 'government health care' and 'nothing'?
That's actually incorrect, assuming your parents had insurance. Even if they didn't have insurance, it would only be a pre-existing condition if you'd received medical treatment for it within three months before purchasing your insurance policy. Not saying that's right or good (as that's a whole other argument), just saying you have your facts wrong regarding pre-existing conditions.
As did my brother. Though luckily it didn't take him seven years of treatment, thankfully.
In my case my allergies appeared in my teen years but I haven't bothered treating them, as I don't have the time and my previous doctor didn't treat food allergies and my environmental allergies weren't severe enough to warrant it. I could have treated them, but I didn't want to go to another Doctor. Oh well, my loss.
That's untrue. Assuming your parents were employed, they paid a not-insignificant amount of taxes to pay for your health coverage. Assuming you've gone on to be a contributing member of society, you've probably paid for your treatment several times over via taxes. Assuming neither of these things were true, then someone else paid your bill. Regardless, the cost was significantly higher than zero. Meanwhile a person unlike you or me who was not cursed with bad genes (or poisoning, a whole other story...) and therefore did not require your treatment is paying just as much for a service they have no need for.
What about a broken back? I have a miner friend up in Saskatchewan that waited ~9 months to see a specialist about his broken back. In the mean time all they could do was provide him with painkillers (which he eventually became addicted to). When he finally saw someone, his vertebrate had fused and his back had to be re-broken and he now required significantly more physical therapy and even more painkillers. You're saying he didn't deserve faster attention? Yeah it's just an anecdote, but so is your story.
The amount of money you have does dictate the quality and speed of your care in Canada. If you have the money, you just to to the US. Otherwise, you wait... :)
I traveled in rural New Jersey and Pennsylvania recently and I saw the same people.
My God, it's an EPIDEMIC! ...
Or maybe your own biases vis a vis the South have coloured your perceptions a bit? Just maybe?
p.s. No offense intented to my neighbors in Millville, but seriously? Can you deny it? :P
Then can we also start saying something about the abysmal failures in education found in other states? You don't think there are students already being brainwashed or turned into mindless zombies by government schools elsewhere in the nation? Is it only a crime when they're brainwashed to disagree with you?
Also, I'm confused by your rant about states rights vs individual rights. I fail to see how forcing Texans to set their school curriculum to your standard does anything but violate their individual rights. What am I missing?