I see this guy's statement about cancer and his age as a simple justification when the bigger reason is too hard for many to grasp. As in, there are just some things than cannot be explained, they are just are. Self sacrificing people are special for reasons they cannot usually communicate.
and you would find many of them from the very same families our soldiers, police officers, and fire fighters, come from. There still are many people who make this country great, far too many write them off because these are also people with very strong values who do not bend to others views of those values. My parent's neighbor is in late sixties and works for FEMA going to about every disaster that pops up. He doesn't stop till they make him take time off. He could live comfortably never lifting a finger but he doesn't know how. I bet for every free loader someone digs up we can find their opposite, something keeps this country going.
there are many hints in the upcoming Lion version of the OS of a further tilt towards the iOS look and feel. With iTunes offering the Mac App store and following the same model as used for iDevices it is not hard to imagine that OS X changes enough to where it requires "FOR SECURITY PURPOSES" that you use only iTunes to load software onto your Mac and "JAILBROKEN" Macs will not be eligible.
I know, they can't force people to upgrade to that version of the OS. Sure they can't directly, but indirectly they will. They will add features to the mac that people want as well as exploit the mindset that exist in the Apple community.
I think my iMac is great but I am getting closer each day to believing it is the last Mac I will ever buy.
Sorry, but there are far too many stories about how you can buy reviews, both good and bad, and Yelp can't catch them all. I can see why Doctors are concerned. Are they taking the right course of action, not in my book. I heard two stories just today about micro transaction sites where you can buy reviews for less than a quarter, even going so far as stating what you wanted. Another story stated how Yelp was removing reviews from their patients that were positive.
There are also numerous articles on how someone representing Yelp may be asking for money to take down bad reviews or allow good ones to stay.
So in other words, it might have been a good service until people figured out how to game it. It might have been a good one until someone on the inside learned how to make extra money on it. Yet another site where its best to ignore the very good and very bad and aim for whats in the middle.
Search for Mechanical Turk and tell me, would you as a Doctor not be afraid? So what can they do?
China has a significant imbalance in its female to male population. Which is a source of unrest. So their government will need to keep them busy, distracted, etc.
Now this would be more troublesome to local adversaries than remote ones, simply because moving that many men is a logistical nightmare. So I would think that should they need to be aggressive Taiwan is toast of course quickly followed by Korea. Will they? Not while they have relatively stable finances, but if it implodes like a house of cards that some suspect they will need an outside bogeyman to keep those in power safe.
Sorry, but buying carbon offsets is just pure bull puckey. There is no such thing. You created the carbon, you do not get absolution by paying someone else off not to or whatever makes you feel good scheme they come up with. What is next? Give birth/father a child for every person you murder? Gee you honor, I know its bad I killed Bob, but I named my new child after him so it all works out?
If anything Carbon Offsets by the save the earth crowd are the ultimate hypocrisy. If they are so worried they could watch it on broadcast. Instead they flaunt it all the while telling people they care.
I am all for using ones personal jet / fortune as one sees fit. Don't just sell me a line about how you care by buying offsets. That is just arrogance.
they might have a place where I work. However they are not. See Apple has this one major problem. If the iOs device has an invalid password for a network it was previously connected to it will not prompt the user for the correct password, it will simply keep attempting to connect which in most shops locks out the account. This has caused a great amount of grief with the network people where they now simply tell people - no support. Please buy an Android device or Blackberry to get your mail and/or access the network. Supposedly Apple has a fix scheduled for 4q 2012.
So while gen Z might want their fad devices and similar in the work place it will require manufactures to have their heads somewhere else other than up their own butts. It will also require laws to change in some areas because I have been in jobs were removable media was not permitted, nor cell phones, nor cameras. I seriously doubt Gen Z will get a new rule set.
and don't underestimate the effect of the over confidence many Mac users have towards these events.
Hell, just attending a local users group was more than enough to convince me we have a sufficient number of idiots to open the door. Far too many reflexively type their password in when prompted it makes you realize nothing is secure with a user
Being 30% of the traffic merely tells me there is a market there waiting for more competitors. What I am curious about is whose lines are they saturating if any? Is there usage becoming a burden on some and if so who are those weaker players?
What your asking for has already been done, they are cable companies. Next thing down the road we would see people screaming that NetFlix should share all those lines they put down and such and such.
While I agree they probably need to work on making content delivery more efficient we don't have those numbers in the article. Is there caching going on? How many sites are providing the data?
I guess you didn't read my entire comment where I referred to embedded taxes. Perhaps you should do actual research before spouting off with your obvious hatred of all things you perceive right wing. However, sad as it is, your type is the norm for around here. Your just rattling numbers out of context. You obviously don't want to do the research to show the effective rates paid versus.
So, next time read my whole post before knee jerk replying with your obvious pent up hatred.
It certainly has to be someone who has the resources to do so. No offense, but your statement leaves only the poor and I doubt they create jobs. Usually those who create jobs do so because they have exhausted their personal abilities and need an extension of themselves, hence employees. Corporations are merely that process grown over a longer period of time.
Your flat tax rate is a bit low to sustain the government we have now.
The real problem with the tax system is not in its complexity, its just how high our taxes truly are. Adding the embedded taxes; this is the taxes rolled into every product and service you buy; to your income taxes, medicare, medicaid, social security, sales taxes, fuel taxes, and associated fees and such, and you would probably have open rebellion if people knew just how much it really takes from them.
Simply put, the Federal Government has grown too large from over promising everyone something. There is not enough taxable income in the United States to sustain the promises made on the local, state, and federal levels of government.
The reason Obama and Washington love to talk about reforming the tax system is not to reduce our tax burden but to increase government revenues. If they were truly serious about fixing the system they would be talking primarily about how to fix entitlement programs. Then top that off with a system where either we have a flat tax rate for all combined taxes at the Federal level with no corporate tax to hide even more or go to a consumption tax.
A flat tax will work but it must be honest. To be honest it means we cannot tax corporations. Every dollar a corporation pays in taxes comes from its customers, that means we pay those dollars. Whether or not you buy a particular company's product or service someone you do buy from may. This is the problem Washington faces, showing Americans their true tax load scares them. They don't want to admit the size of the beast. Also, everyone must have some skin in the game as the old saying goes. This means there must be a rate, I would not go below 10%, applied to all incomes. This must not be offset with give backs and entitlement programs. Everyone needs to know they are paying for it all.
An alternative to a flat tax would be a consumption tax. Even the rich would have no method other than not spending money to avoid this one. Using ideas brought forward with the Fair Tax we would rebate the cost of living to every family using the IRS. It is a simple process that far too many claim is impossible. After all, if they can track the current system they surely can trace a prebate system. The shock here again is that people will see their real tax costs. This is why Washington routinely has their sycophants in the media and academia falsely portray this plan. When they shoot this down it is fun to watch them march over to the flat tax and start over there too.
Ask yourself, why does he want to fix the tax system. If he uses the word "fair" in the conversation you can be assured of one thing, he does not intend to reduce the burden on the American people he merely wishes to increase the revenues to the Federal Government hiding behind common class warfare tactics
Let those who are using the product; songs in this case; pay. I'd rather have those suing to prove the guilt of those they sue. I see no reason to just hand them money on the basis that some people are guilty, especially my money.
Whats next, raising road fees because we know some people exceed the speed limit?
but I am a Luddite. No TV or computer in my bedroom. Not even the iPad invades our space. Though we did talk about putting a TV in the bathroom behind the mirror. That might happen. If anything not having the world show up in our bedroom has made life so much better.
Now I will admit to the cell phones do have cradles in the bedroom.
the problem is Congress. We should not ban corporate lobbying anymore than we ban lobbying from any group. What we should is reform the election system so that it does not take millions and millions of dollars to become an elected official. This is the inroad that all the money has. This is how corporations, unions, and special interest groups, get control of Congress. They buy the campaigns. They can do this because we don't have limits on how much a campaign cost.
Three methods.
One method would be to set a financial limit on how much a campaign for a specific office can be spent. This includes putting costs on volunteer work as well. We have the very real chance of a billion dollar campaign for the office of the President in 2012. You think Wall Street is going to give up what they (and yes they won it) in 2008? Like hell.
Yet at the same time it will require reigning in all these new shadow groups that Congress writes into law like the 527 groups. Simple attempts by Congress to allow their buddies to keep them in office while dodging all the restrictions they attempt to place on those who attempt to keep them out.
The second method
Term limits. One term in Senate and three in the House.
The third
Repeal the Seventeenth Amendment and go back to having state legislators appoint their Senators.
Who contributes money is not a problem, its how much and why it is of such influence. It has such influence because you can nearly buy an election (sometimes that fails) and once in your nearly there forever.
Why? Because my bedroom and sitting are bigger than his apartment. It really makes it obvious how much space (well that and other things) we waste here. I can see how some "areas" of the house would be restricted to outside walls, that being anything with plumbing. With that little floor space I figure heating and cooling if provided at the building level would be at opposite ends of the area centered restricting those sides. It then becomes a game of what can you pack in each shelf width and the hard part is, ordering them.
The lesson that most will miss is, regardless how some here will claim they don't have this, that, or something else, they sure got most of the world beat and they need to stop crying
The showed their hand when they renamed their channel. As in, they were more interested in being hip than being a place to be for science fiction.
If I want premium shows I will watch HBO (usually on DVD - used to on Netflix till HBO yanked what I wanted from them - BOOO!). Considering the quality or should I say lack there of when it came to in house stuff are we losing much that they show wrestling? At least with wrestling the costumes and special effects are better.
I will admit being a fan of Children of Dune (did not care much for their Dune remake - but the follow up was great to watch and had an awesome soundtrack) and I also found Tin Man to be great. FWIW, I thought it was NBC who did BSG and SyFy who did only the follow ups which really were muddled messes.
Seeing that they are the basis for many of the rebuttals to the exaggerated claims in the Gasland movie?
This is a problem I generally have with these groups that produce movies such as Gasland (Michael Moore is similar). They love to exaggerate, misdirect, and some out right lie in their presentations, all to make their case more dire. They love to incite fear and then quickly go elsewhere when objections are raised. They are quick to dismiss any objection under the head nodding, wink wink, type claim that those who don't agree are obviously shills.
This in the end weakens their cause because they come off as crack pots. I lived on a farm as a child in North Eastern Ohio. We changed wells three times during my twelves years of growing up there because of naturally occurring contamination. They are was very high in coal. We ran a water softener and a filter system just to have drinkable water. By drinkable I mean water that didn't taste outright odd. Toilets would have iron stains in days from cleaning.
So I am quite sure someone with a chip on their shoulder who didn't like the coal industry (or NG) in my old area could gen up a good scare story without revealing the pre existing issues.
the US government was not building rail lines. The majority of rail lines built in the 180s were done by private businesses, many without any grants or federal assistance. As such we have an abundance of rail still to this day for moving freight. As society improved roads became dominant because people valued their freedom, freedom to travel and where to live, all within their means.
I don't understand why so many bemoan out passenger train service. There are only two profitable lines in the world and all the rest require subsidy because the expected number of riders never materialized. There is also the problem in the US of population density, or lack thereof across much of the country. I remember many years ago (think early 90s) having friends over from France who asked if I could pick them up at the airport. They flew into NY, I live in Atlanta. They asked about a short train ride and I explained to them how long it would take. Naturally they flew to Atlanta from NY. We then lent them our van and they toured the US. What was supposed to be two weeks for them turned into six.
It is all about scale. Railroads do what they do best here, move freight. We then top that off with a large number of trucks because as a people we value convenience. That means not having just a few stores with items we want but many stores. It really is phenomenal how convenient we have it. Bring friends over from the Poland and Czech and they were amazed not at our grocery stores (they actually have a couple of good ones) but the sheer number of them. Just driving back from the airport to my house (twenty miles) we passed more of them than they knew of in their own home areas. Not one of them even mentioned travel by train btw, apparently they are quite used to travel by car. Even going so far as to tell me, never drive through Poland with a car that has German plates.
We don't have a need for widespread high speed rail. We don't have the population density to support it. Even Europe doesn't have it in many areas even served by rail. It takes a lot of extra money to keep it all operating. Regardless of what some think, travel by train ain't fast, no matter the speed of the train. Airports even with our boneheaded security will get you farther faster. I can engineer a few "what about X to Y" but it still doesn't make it right.
I love this one fact, the US moves nearly fives times as much by rail as Europe does. This is measured as how much freight is moved by train. Now tell me who has the problem?
about prices when they exceeded $3 and nearly had a cow when they were at $4.
Just wow.
They don't concern themselves with current gas prices; watch this change in months leading to the election; because it doesn't fit their model. See, we, the public are too ignorant, too stupid, etc, to do what is right so those who are obviously much smarter than us have to "hurt" us because they love us so much, even though we don't really deserve it.
The sad part is, the people who propose policies rarely would ever adhere to them for their personal consumption. Thats for the little people, leaders need exceptions to rules and laws to be effective, y'know, after all they are so much better and smarter.
The real achievement wasn't the helicopters, it was flying from their station in Afghanistan without being picked up by Pakistan's military. A lot of that had to do with know where the coverage was and the terrain combined with great flying and planning. Never underestimate the skill of those flying these machines. Flying helicopters in the dark at the levels and speeds they were moving isn't for the feint at heart.
The explosives were most likely done to break up certain shapes and destroy electronics. I doubt the materials themselves used to skin the helicopter are as important as compared to the shape of the various components of the copter.
They are only in the RED because they are required to handle their pensions differently than other entities.
If they were able to stop having pensions they would probably be just fine. However the Constitution gives Congress the authority to establish Post Offices which means they can do as they see fit. So they saddle the Post Office with requirements which can best be described as "What is your Whim today Mr Congressman???"
Yes they have some archaic work rules and some horrid processes (like you can ship your publication with them but if you use that rate they are not even required to deliver it - I mean, WTF? I paid you to deliver something they legally can lose) but they do make money.
Slashdot Mirror
I see this guy's statement about cancer and his age as a simple justification when the bigger reason is too hard for many to grasp. As in, there are just some things than cannot be explained, they are just are. Self sacrificing people are special for reasons they cannot usually communicate.
and you would find many of them from the very same families our soldiers, police officers, and fire fighters, come from. There still are many people who make this country great, far too many write them off because these are also people with very strong values who do not bend to others views of those values. My parent's neighbor is in late sixties and works for FEMA going to about every disaster that pops up. He doesn't stop till they make him take time off. He could live comfortably never lifting a finger but he doesn't know how. I bet for every free loader someone digs up we can find their opposite, something keeps this country going.
there are many hints in the upcoming Lion version of the OS of a further tilt towards the iOS look and feel. With iTunes offering the Mac App store and following the same model as used for iDevices it is not hard to imagine that OS X changes enough to where it requires "FOR SECURITY PURPOSES" that you use only iTunes to load software onto your Mac and "JAILBROKEN" Macs will not be eligible.
I know, they can't force people to upgrade to that version of the OS. Sure they can't directly, but indirectly they will. They will add features to the mac that people want as well as exploit the mindset that exist in the Apple community.
I think my iMac is great but I am getting closer each day to believing it is the last Mac I will ever buy.
You are still required to click through an install wizard, so this is in no shape or form an install performed without the user.
Sorry, but there are far too many stories about how you can buy reviews, both good and bad, and Yelp can't catch them all. I can see why Doctors are concerned. Are they taking the right course of action, not in my book. I heard two stories just today about micro transaction sites where you can buy reviews for less than a quarter, even going so far as stating what you wanted. Another story stated how Yelp was removing reviews from their patients that were positive.
There are also numerous articles on how someone representing Yelp may be asking for money to take down bad reviews or allow good ones to stay.
So in other words, it might have been a good service until people figured out how to game it. It might have been a good one until someone on the inside learned how to make extra money on it. Yet another site where its best to ignore the very good and very bad and aim for whats in the middle.
Search for Mechanical Turk and tell me, would you as a Doctor not be afraid? So what can they do?
Here, to save some time http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/05/23/how-to-ethically-improve-your-customer-reviews/
China has a significant imbalance in its female to male population. Which is a source of unrest. So their government will need to keep them busy, distracted, etc.
Now this would be more troublesome to local adversaries than remote ones, simply because moving that many men is a logistical nightmare. So I would think that should they need to be aggressive Taiwan is toast of course quickly followed by Korea. Will they? Not while they have relatively stable finances, but if it implodes like a house of cards that some suspect they will need an outside bogeyman to keep those in power safe.
Sorry, but buying carbon offsets is just pure bull puckey. There is no such thing. You created the carbon, you do not get absolution by paying someone else off not to or whatever makes you feel good scheme they come up with. What is next? Give birth/father a child for every person you murder? Gee you honor, I know its bad I killed Bob, but I named my new child after him so it all works out?
If anything Carbon Offsets by the save the earth crowd are the ultimate hypocrisy. If they are so worried they could watch it on broadcast. Instead they flaunt it all the while telling people they care.
I am all for using ones personal jet / fortune as one sees fit. Don't just sell me a line about how you care by buying offsets. That is just arrogance.
they might have a place where I work. However they are not. See Apple has this one major problem. If the iOs device has an invalid password for a network it was previously connected to it will not prompt the user for the correct password, it will simply keep attempting to connect which in most shops locks out the account. This has caused a great amount of grief with the network people where they now simply tell people - no support. Please buy an Android device or Blackberry to get your mail and/or access the network. Supposedly Apple has a fix scheduled for 4q 2012.
So while gen Z might want their fad devices and similar in the work place it will require manufactures to have their heads somewhere else other than up their own butts. It will also require laws to change in some areas because I have been in jobs were removable media was not permitted, nor cell phones, nor cameras. I seriously doubt Gen Z will get a new rule set.
I wonder how they will deal with the banks of pay phones ...
and don't underestimate the effect of the over confidence many Mac users have towards these events.
Hell, just attending a local users group was more than enough to convince me we have a sufficient number of idiots to open the door. Far too many reflexively type their password in when prompted it makes you realize nothing is secure with a user
Being 30% of the traffic merely tells me there is a market there waiting for more competitors. What I am curious about is whose lines are they saturating if any? Is there usage becoming a burden on some and if so who are those weaker players?
What your asking for has already been done, they are cable companies. Next thing down the road we would see people screaming that NetFlix should share all those lines they put down and such and such.
While I agree they probably need to work on making content delivery more efficient we don't have those numbers in the article. Is there caching going on? How many sites are providing the data?
I guess you didn't read my entire comment where I referred to embedded taxes. Perhaps you should do actual research before spouting off with your obvious hatred of all things you perceive right wing. However, sad as it is, your type is the norm for around here. Your just rattling numbers out of context. You obviously don't want to do the research to show the effective rates paid versus.
So, next time read my whole post before knee jerk replying with your obvious pent up hatred.
It certainly has to be someone who has the resources to do so. No offense, but your statement leaves only the poor and I doubt they create jobs. Usually those who create jobs do so because they have exhausted their personal abilities and need an extension of themselves, hence employees. Corporations are merely that process grown over a longer period of time.
Your flat tax rate is a bit low to sustain the government we have now.
The real problem with the tax system is not in its complexity, its just how high our taxes truly are. Adding the embedded taxes; this is the taxes rolled into every product and service you buy; to your income taxes, medicare, medicaid, social security, sales taxes, fuel taxes, and associated fees and such, and you would probably have open rebellion if people knew just how much it really takes from them.
Simply put, the Federal Government has grown too large from over promising everyone something. There is not enough taxable income in the United States to sustain the promises made on the local, state, and federal levels of government.
The reason Obama and Washington love to talk about reforming the tax system is not to reduce our tax burden but to increase government revenues. If they were truly serious about fixing the system they would be talking primarily about how to fix entitlement programs. Then top that off with a system where either we have a flat tax rate for all combined taxes at the Federal level with no corporate tax to hide even more or go to a consumption tax.
A flat tax will work but it must be honest. To be honest it means we cannot tax corporations. Every dollar a corporation pays in taxes comes from its customers, that means we pay those dollars. Whether or not you buy a particular company's product or service someone you do buy from may. This is the problem Washington faces, showing Americans their true tax load scares them. They don't want to admit the size of the beast. Also, everyone must have some skin in the game as the old saying goes. This means there must be a rate, I would not go below 10%, applied to all incomes. This must not be offset with give backs and entitlement programs. Everyone needs to know they are paying for it all.
An alternative to a flat tax would be a consumption tax. Even the rich would have no method other than not spending money to avoid this one. Using ideas brought forward with the Fair Tax we would rebate the cost of living to every family using the IRS. It is a simple process that far too many claim is impossible. After all, if they can track the current system they surely can trace a prebate system. The shock here again is that people will see their real tax costs. This is why Washington routinely has their sycophants in the media and academia falsely portray this plan. When they shoot this down it is fun to watch them march over to the flat tax and start over there too.
Ask yourself, why does he want to fix the tax system. If he uses the word "fair" in the conversation you can be assured of one thing, he does not intend to reduce the burden on the American people he merely wishes to increase the revenues to the Federal Government hiding behind common class warfare tactics
Let those who are using the product; songs in this case; pay. I'd rather have those suing to prove the guilt of those they sue. I see no reason to just hand them money on the basis that some people are guilty, especially my money.
Whats next, raising road fees because we know some people exceed the speed limit?
Seems to me that government officials and religious officials have one major thing in common.
They are more than willing to demand that you live your life a certain way but tend to shy away from doing so themselves.
Both will have ardent followers who will defend their leaders infractions. Royalty simply assumed a new title.
but I am a Luddite. No TV or computer in my bedroom. Not even the iPad invades our space. Though we did talk about putting a TV in the bathroom behind the mirror. That might happen. If anything not having the world show up in our bedroom has made life so much better.
Now I will admit to the cell phones do have cradles in the bedroom.
the problem is Congress. We should not ban corporate lobbying anymore than we ban lobbying from any group. What we should is reform the election system so that it does not take millions and millions of dollars to become an elected official. This is the inroad that all the money has. This is how corporations, unions, and special interest groups, get control of Congress. They buy the campaigns. They can do this because we don't have limits on how much a campaign cost.
Three methods.
One method would be to set a financial limit on how much a campaign for a specific office can be spent. This includes putting costs on volunteer work as well. We have the very real chance of a billion dollar campaign for the office of the President in 2012. You think Wall Street is going to give up what they (and yes they won it) in 2008? Like hell.
Yet at the same time it will require reigning in all these new shadow groups that Congress writes into law like the 527 groups. Simple attempts by Congress to allow their buddies to keep them in office while dodging all the restrictions they attempt to place on those who attempt to keep them out.
The second method
Term limits. One term in Senate and three in the House.
The third
Repeal the Seventeenth Amendment and go back to having state legislators appoint their Senators.
Who contributes money is not a problem, its how much and why it is of such influence. It has such influence because you can nearly buy an election (sometimes that fails) and once in your nearly there forever.
Why? Because my bedroom and sitting are bigger than his apartment. It really makes it obvious how much space (well that and other things) we waste here. I can see how some "areas" of the house would be restricted to outside walls, that being anything with plumbing. With that little floor space I figure heating and cooling if provided at the building level would be at opposite ends of the area centered restricting those sides. It then becomes a game of what can you pack in each shelf width and the hard part is, ordering them.
The lesson that most will miss is, regardless how some here will claim they don't have this, that, or something else, they sure got most of the world beat and they need to stop crying
The showed their hand when they renamed their channel. As in, they were more interested in being hip than being a place to be for science fiction.
If I want premium shows I will watch HBO (usually on DVD - used to on Netflix till HBO yanked what I wanted from them - BOOO!). Considering the quality or should I say lack there of when it came to in house stuff are we losing much that they show wrestling? At least with wrestling the costumes and special effects are better.
I will admit being a fan of Children of Dune (did not care much for their Dune remake - but the follow up was great to watch and had an awesome soundtrack) and I also found Tin Man to be great. FWIW, I thought it was NBC who did BSG and SyFy who did only the follow ups which really were muddled messes.
Seeing that they are the basis for many of the rebuttals to the exaggerated claims in the Gasland movie?
This is a problem I generally have with these groups that produce movies such as Gasland (Michael Moore is similar). They love to exaggerate, misdirect, and some out right lie in their presentations, all to make their case more dire. They love to incite fear and then quickly go elsewhere when objections are raised. They are quick to dismiss any objection under the head nodding, wink wink, type claim that those who don't agree are obviously shills.
This in the end weakens their cause because they come off as crack pots. I lived on a farm as a child in North Eastern Ohio. We changed wells three times during my twelves years of growing up there because of naturally occurring contamination. They are was very high in coal. We ran a water softener and a filter system just to have drinkable water. By drinkable I mean water that didn't taste outright odd. Toilets would have iron stains in days from cleaning.
So I am quite sure someone with a chip on their shoulder who didn't like the coal industry (or NG) in my old area could gen up a good scare story without revealing the pre existing issues.
the US government was not building rail lines. The majority of rail lines built in the 180s were done by private businesses, many without any grants or federal assistance. As such we have an abundance of rail still to this day for moving freight. As society improved roads became dominant because people valued their freedom, freedom to travel and where to live, all within their means.
I don't understand why so many bemoan out passenger train service. There are only two profitable lines in the world and all the rest require subsidy because the expected number of riders never materialized. There is also the problem in the US of population density, or lack thereof across much of the country. I remember many years ago (think early 90s) having friends over from France who asked if I could pick them up at the airport. They flew into NY, I live in Atlanta. They asked about a short train ride and I explained to them how long it would take. Naturally they flew to Atlanta from NY. We then lent them our van and they toured the US. What was supposed to be two weeks for them turned into six.
It is all about scale. Railroads do what they do best here, move freight. We then top that off with a large number of trucks because as a people we value convenience. That means not having just a few stores with items we want but many stores. It really is phenomenal how convenient we have it. Bring friends over from the Poland and Czech and they were amazed not at our grocery stores (they actually have a couple of good ones) but the sheer number of them. Just driving back from the airport to my house (twenty miles) we passed more of them than they knew of in their own home areas. Not one of them even mentioned travel by train btw, apparently they are quite used to travel by car. Even going so far as to tell me, never drive through Poland with a car that has German plates.
We don't have a need for widespread high speed rail. We don't have the population density to support it. Even Europe doesn't have it in many areas even served by rail. It takes a lot of extra money to keep it all operating. Regardless of what some think, travel by train ain't fast, no matter the speed of the train. Airports even with our boneheaded security will get you farther faster. I can engineer a few "what about X to Y" but it still doesn't make it right.
I love this one fact, the US moves nearly fives times as much by rail as Europe does. This is measured as how much freight is moved by train. Now tell me who has the problem?
at least the fourth installment?
Being old school I would want to see Starflight in there :P
about prices when they exceeded $3 and nearly had a cow when they were at $4.
Just wow.
They don't concern themselves with current gas prices; watch this change in months leading to the election; because it doesn't fit their model. See, we, the public are too ignorant, too stupid, etc, to do what is right so those who are obviously much smarter than us have to "hurt" us because they love us so much, even though we don't really deserve it.
The sad part is, the people who propose policies rarely would ever adhere to them for their personal consumption. Thats for the little people, leaders need exceptions to rules and laws to be effective, y'know, after all they are so much better and smarter.
The real achievement wasn't the helicopters, it was flying from their station in Afghanistan without being picked up by Pakistan's military. A lot of that had to do with know where the coverage was and the terrain combined with great flying and planning. Never underestimate the skill of those flying these machines. Flying helicopters in the dark at the levels and speeds they were moving isn't for the feint at heart.
The explosives were most likely done to break up certain shapes and destroy electronics. I doubt the materials themselves used to skin the helicopter are as important as compared to the shape of the various components of the copter.
They are only in the RED because they are required to handle their pensions differently than other entities.
If they were able to stop having pensions they would probably be just fine. However the Constitution gives Congress the authority to establish Post Offices which means they can do as they see fit. So they saddle the Post Office with requirements which can best be described as "What is your Whim today Mr Congressman???"
Yes they have some archaic work rules and some horrid processes (like you can ship your publication with them but if you use that rate they are not even required to deliver it - I mean, WTF? I paid you to deliver something they legally can lose) but they do make money.