They may not be able to force Google to do anything, but they can eventually impact Google's ability to do business in Canada. It may be the Great White North of the border country to you, but I assure you there is a significant number of Canadian dollars at stake here. Enough to make it worth Google's time to do what they ask? I'm guessing YES.
Believe it or not... It seams the CIA apparently has issues with stealing from vending machines... So there are some morals and ethics left.... Leaking classified data is A OK, putting classified information on a private E-mail server is A OK, spying on US citizens with abandon is fine, but don't you dare steal from the vending machine in the break room down the hall.. Who knew?
To the business of mining the issue is how long does it take to make a return on my investment? You want to make money, you need to have a hardware setup that makes it pay to mine... Pay the hardware costs and the power bill.
BitCon (and other mined currencies) already have scads of mining hardware setups that can produce hashes for less power and cost than I could ever imagine a GPU would be capable of. I've already seen the price dropping on USB hashing ASICS on E-bay so much that new ones are no longer being made and used ones are approaching a dime a dozen. That tells me that the market for hashing hardware is saturated and unless you can drive the operating costs per hash down significantly there is no market.
Plus, as BitCoin gets older, the mining return keeps declining. The time to get into mining, and selling equipment to miners is quickly passing. It's like walking into the mountains and taking orders for shovels after most of the gold is already gone.... You might sell a few...
The tax treatment of oil companies isn't uniquely beneficial to them. Their tax burden per dollar sales is in line with other industries. They pay their share of taxes. These are NOT subsidies, the big oil companies pay LOTS in taxes too.
It's not solar panels, which I am absolutely not opposed to in any way, by all means, put them up where they make financial sense.... However, I do believe that unilaterally giving up economic advantage by regulating cheaper power sources out of use when our world competitors are not IS the issue. First, it doesn't actually succeed in reducing emissions (countries like China are not going to stop any time soon) and second it weakens our economy and thus our ability to protect ourselves which is stupid from a geopolitical perspective.
Also, your theories about the effects of global warming are a bit alarmist from my view.... If the big problem is fossil fuel use, then if you are going to advocate the elimination of their use, you condemn the world to starvation a whole lot sooner than even your dire global warming "the sky is falling" predictions. Do you have any idea where fertilizer comes from? We used up all the natural sources of that a LONG time ago.
As for specifics, subsidies range from depletion allowances, energy specific accelerated depreciation allowances, exploration and development expensing, credit for production of nonconventional fuels, reduced government take from federal oil and gas leasing, etc.
Depletion Allowances: Is basically the way you treat the loss in the asset value (the oil well) as you produce oil. It's exactly like how you treat a mine when you produce ore. So it is not a "subsidy" for the oil industry, but the rules used to determine the tax treatment of oil production.
Energy specific accelerated depreciation allowances: Are again, just tax rules used to govern how the industry can take depreciation deductions. They don't afford any novel or unique benefit to the oil industry and are not a subsidy.
Development Expensing: Are common tax rules used to determine the deductions for the costs of developing new oil resources. This is like any business making capital investments in buildings or infrastructure, so again this isn't a subsidy.
Credit for unconventional fuel production: Seriously? This is a credit for producing bio-diesel and distilling alcohol for motor fuel and you think it's a benefit to the Oil Industry?
So, in your case, all these are simply rules about how taxes are collected (or deductions allowed) and are NOT subsidies where government money is PAID to the oil industry. I know that in liberal land, tax deductions are subsidies and restraining future budget growth below the planned amount is a budget cut (even if the budget is still going up year over year), but come on, think about what you are saying and what the words mean.
IF you want to see subsidies, go take a look at all those "green" energy "investments" that the last administration engaged in... Where they actually loaned money to dodgy companies who went bankrupt and the government never got their cash back. That's a subsidy if anything is. But all this stuff you are pointing to are either common tax treatments for depreciation and deductions for the cost of doing business are NOT subsidies, they are just specific rules for the oil industry to follow when determining what taxes they have to pay.
But if the cure is worse than the sickness, do you still do the cure?
I don't think your average person has any clue what war actually is or how many of the suggested "climate change" solutions will drag us closer to war. Hunger, sickness and a world run amok because there is no sane capitalistic economy with overwhelming military power to check the historically cyclic chaos that is obviously coming if the USA willingly and unilaterally gives up it's economic and political power. We don't remember WW1, WW2, Korea, Vietnam because most of us never lived though them, those who did are wondering what kind of pansies they've raised if this global warming thing gets you wound up.
Then there is the whole, "How bad can it be?" question that we have no idea how to answer. I hear all the dire predictions and new stories that you agree are mostly hype, and I openly wonder what are we actually trying to avoid here? What is global warming going to cause that's overall bad? Look that up and you get hype... Historically, war is a deadly affair, and trust me, that's where we are headed if the USA loses it's abilty and/or it's willingness to keep order.
So... What kinds of subsidies do you think fossil fuels are getting?
I'm given to believe that this is actually a damnable lie which being often repeated is blindly accepted as truth by some. Every time I get someone to actually try to detail what these things might be, I find that the are either non-existent (and the poster is mistaken) or they are not unique to fossil fuel producers (such as the ability of a company to deduct the cost of capital equipment as an expense.) About the only thing I can come up with that *might* be a subsidy is the leasing of Federal lands to producers, but I believe that is a competitive bidding process....
And then here we go. The science behind the global warming debate is not as settled as many believe. Many believe the "It's settled science" party line, but there are quite a few people in the field of climate studies who don't.
I point to the left's rhetoric on this issue as a reason why you don't hear about these decenters in the scientific community. You cannot disagree w/o being cast out, and many have tried. The message is loud and clear, much like the flat earth lobby of the past, you are NOT allowed to argue contrary to the party line, on pain of your professional career.
Personally, my perspective (as a lay person) is as follows. The climate is changing, but the questions are as follows:
1. How much actual control man really has? It is well known that the climate has varied greatly in the past.
2. How much actual harm does climate change actually represent? There are lots of theories about this, but the past predictions of catastrophic events have mysteriously not proven accurate (Al Gore, I'm looking at your "Inconvenient truth").
3. How much social and economic harm would come from some of the "save the world" initiatives being suggested? The problem I see with most of these is they assume that we are rushing headlong into catastrophic destruction and massive loss of life and use that debatable "truth" as justification for doing things that would cause grave social and economic damage and put us on a crash course with mass starvation, pestilence and war (and all the nearly certain death that comes with it)
I'm afraid that the "cure" for climate change will be worse than the "sickness" and I'm far from sure that the sickness being seen isn't mostly natural variations which we don't have much control over anyway.
Then why all the debate? Seems likely to me that it's about $$. There is money in climate change studies, in fostering government subsidies for "green" energy and things like that. Then there is the Big Government people who tend to support more socialist income redistribution schemes who don't have any problem with the government handing out cash. But if you follow the money, it gets pretty obvious that there is a lot of it involved in this issue.
Why do you have to be 'left' to support renewable energy? Renewable energy gives back control of your energy sources and localises them. This fully compatible with a conservative world view.
You don't... In fact, MANY on the right support "green" energy development where it makes sense both for the environment and economically. The *problem* is though, most of these "green energy" initiatives require massive subsidies and regulations to make financial sense, and this means bigger more intrusive government.
In general, the "left" is obsessed with bigger more expensive government and higher taxes while the "right" is obsessed with smaller government and lower taxes. Then you have the political tactic of isolating voting blocks by carving out interest groups, which ends up dividing the "right" which is accused of wanting "dirty air, dirty water and death" from the "left" which is accused of being big government globalists.
The truth is, both sides generally agree that environmentally friendly energy generation is a good thing. The only real question is about how far do we go with our government programs and regulations to achieve this? From my perspective, the left doesn't want to actually debate the real question, they just want to demagogue and call their opponents names... Your mileage may vary of course, just don't tell me the "right" doesn't care, we do, we just don't think the economics of all these government programs you want are a net positive in the long run.
You're the exception, Cowboy. Fly-over country is slowly failing. Why? Because you don't have open societies that are supported by the majority of the people. I feel real sorry for people moderate sensibilities living in your part of the world. And, if you think I'm blowing smoke I'd be willing to make a long bet that fly-over country will continue to lag in many world-wide developed nation standards. In the meantime, enjoy your bandwidth and the ability it gives you to rapidly access Brietbart feeds.
Yea, I'll take my 3 bedroom ranch home in the burbs for $200K over the third floor walk up one room apartment for $1Million ANY day. Having two choices for High Speed internet (greater than 50mbps) is just the icing on the cake, but it sure makes it nice streaming to any one of the three of the wide screen TV's we have.
Nothing wrong with being a cowboy either... You may not eat beef, but a lot of folks do and where do you think it comes from? Don't get me stared on wheat and corn and how hungry you'd be without it...
I never touched any of the systems after my departure and this was over 15 years ago at this point so I think the statute of limitations has run out. Not to mention, they are now out of business... Trust me, I'm golden.
The reason I didn't admit to remembering is three fold.. 1. I told them the passwords already in the document I left with them... 2. I didn't want to leave them the impression that I maintained a backdoor or had accessed any of these systems had they experienced a security problem... 3. I wanted them to leave me alone as they'd called multiple times asking for bits of design information and project history and I was getting tired of them being dependent on me and not paying me anything.
Not sure what I would have done if they took me up on my consultant contract offer though....
I'm so sorry for you guys in NYC running dial up. I have fiber AND coax based options into my home, but I'm in fly over country... You know that deep red backwater in the middle of the country that you east and west coast folks like to make fun of for being so backward...
My working theory is they canned me in a cost cutting effort driven by a new department director. She was a nice lady, but I think she misunderstood my perspective when she REQUIRED my presence at a 9 AM breakfast meeting the morning after a 2 AM maintenance window (the third one that week) and then asked us to share what we thought should be changed... Yea, it was stupid to complain about 9 AM mandatory meetings after being up all night working, but at that point I'd had about 2 hours sleep/night for a couple of days and wasn't thinking all that straight. I was a bit grouchy and should have stuffed a doughnut into my mouth and just smiled. So, I think she didn't know what I did for them, given it mostly didn't happen during normal business hours and she didn't think to ask my manager what was up.
However, it turned out great for me. By the time I departed the company, the 90 day notice turned into 120 days, this gave me another full week of severance pay, almost doubled my retention pay, so I walked away with about 8 months of severance. I started my next job 1 week later with a significant raise and collected 2 paychecks for over half a year. It wasn't until last year that I approached a yearly salary that matched those two taxable years.
I got laid off about 10 years ago and I was responsible for maintaining firewalls and remote access network equipment for the company's customers around the world. I left them with a document that listed *every* password that I had set on *every* one of the firewalls and VPN endpoints with instructions that said "CHANGE THESE!"
They called me a year later asking if I knew the passwords for customer "x" firewall and remote access server... Where I remembered what I had set them to, my response was "Didn't you read the document I left for you?" And when they said "No" I quickly responded with "I don't know the passwords and I don't have a copy of the document I gave you, you are on your own."
NO way I was going to admit that I had unfettered access to these systems....There was no upside for me and these idiots didn't have a clue what security was so I didn't dare risk being blamed for some problem by admitting I still knew the passwords...
I did offer to help them recover all the passwords at a few hundred dollars an hour plus expenses, with a minimum of 8 hours paid in advance... And they didn't ever call me back, which was fine with me. They were idiots, both for laying me off initially, then refusing to pay the retention bonus and keep me on after the 90 day notice period when they realized their error PLUS not changing such sensitive passwords when I departed then coming back to ask me for them a year later.
Yet, science has shown that moving objects have a different perspective on what the speed of light actually is. Everybody sees the same speed from their perspective, but the passage of time runs at varying rates for other objects that are moving in relation to the observer.
Claiming to be part of Anonymous is going to get you some unwanted attention from law enforcement authorities. Anonymous may get the blame for your bogus claims but you now are associated with all the illegal garbage they are assumed to have done.
It's a two way street... The knife cuts both ways... Or any number of proverbs most would remember...
The three dissenting justices clearly support the ban in it's entirety, while apparently the rest favor the bulk of the Executive Order with some minor exceptions brought up by the lower court's previous orders.
The Court is obviously going to reinstate Trump's Second order, nearly in full force, if not in it's entirety. Unless something comes up that swings the majority of justices away from their current positions between now and oral arguments. I don't think it looks likely. We will, at a minimum, have a ban except for a small class of entries by people who have established relationships with the USA. Trump may make gains in the future, but he's unlikely to lose ground on this issue now.
How many people looking to emigrate can't cultivate a 'bona-fide' relationship with a legitimate person in the US sufficient to make this claim?
You need to read the actual order.. It actually addresses this idea. People who claim such relationships after being denied entry by the administration, will need to go to court to get the decision reversed. I expect the administration to quickly act on entry requests, but I don't suspect the appeals process will be a fast moving... So good luck with that...
Given that SCOTUS partially revived the ban, does that mean that they are predisposed to a more lenient view of the ban than lower courts? How much can we read into this.
No. It means that it sees that there is a significant constitutional issue that needs to be resolved. In the end, it could very well reject the ban.
I disagree. The tradition of the court is to NOT to preemptively reverse a decision before the case is actually argued unless there is a high probability that the appeal will be reversed and/or there is irreversible damage taking place that cannot be reversed before the court can hear the case in full.
On both of these reasons, the decision clearly shows that the court believes the lower courts have ruled in error. Of course, this decision *could* be reversed, but only three justices have decanted with this order (Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch), to varying degrees. Unless there is some novel argument produced during the argument phase, I doubt we will see a shift in the court's final opinion).
Anyway, it won't matter. The Travel ban goes into place immediately with only the narrow exception of people having an existing close relationship with somebody already in the country. It will stay in effect until the court actually rules, which could be a year from today, but no sooner than six months.
Given that SCOTUS partially revived the ban, does that mean that they are predisposed to a more lenient view of the ban than lower courts? How much can we read into this.
All you can read into this is that the court pretty much already knows that the portions of the travel ban they have specifically allowed have zero chance being upheld (i.e. the appeals court's decisions are wrong)... Well, that and the court realizes that there is at least SOME urgency to these portions being reversed.
There still remains significant questions to be argued and decided, but it's apparent from this decision that the Court will be reversing the lower courts in some significant ways.
In short, the administration apparently has some good arguments on the Travel Ban thing and it's obvious to the Supreme Court that the lower courts have made significant errors.
Just stop making all these crazy predictions. You don't know, seriously, you cannot know any of these things.
I applaud your theoretical work on astrophysics and agree that it's ground breaking work, but stop with the rest of this stuff. You are just soiling your name, diminishing your reputation with this garbage. I know you face your forthcoming mortality and it must be hard to realize that it will very soon be over for you, but these recent PR ploys are only going to damage your memory. Please stop. I beg you. Let us remember you for the good stuff you've done, not this craziness.
Slashdot Mirror
They may not be able to force Google to do anything, but they can eventually impact Google's ability to do business in Canada. It may be the Great White North of the border country to you, but I assure you there is a significant number of Canadian dollars at stake here. Enough to make it worth Google's time to do what they ask? I'm guessing YES.
Really? Except for stealing and getting caught, this activity actually was quite clever, even if it was a crime.
I think I'd be smiling at their cleverness while I was yanking their clearances, badges and escorting them out of the building....
How did they not get a promotion?
Believe it or not... It seams the CIA apparently has issues with stealing from vending machines... So there are some morals and ethics left.... Leaking classified data is A OK, putting classified information on a private E-mail server is A OK, spying on US citizens with abandon is fine, but don't you dare steal from the vending machine in the break room down the hall.. Who knew?
To the business of mining the issue is how long does it take to make a return on my investment? You want to make money, you need to have a hardware setup that makes it pay to mine... Pay the hardware costs and the power bill.
BitCon (and other mined currencies) already have scads of mining hardware setups that can produce hashes for less power and cost than I could ever imagine a GPU would be capable of. I've already seen the price dropping on USB hashing ASICS on E-bay so much that new ones are no longer being made and used ones are approaching a dime a dozen. That tells me that the market for hashing hardware is saturated and unless you can drive the operating costs per hash down significantly there is no market.
Plus, as BitCoin gets older, the mining return keeps declining. The time to get into mining, and selling equipment to miners is quickly passing. It's like walking into the mountains and taking orders for shovels after most of the gold is already gone.... You might sell a few...
The tax treatment of oil companies isn't uniquely beneficial to them. Their tax burden per dollar sales is in line with other industries. They pay their share of taxes. These are NOT subsidies, the big oil companies pay LOTS in taxes too.
These subsidies for wind mostly ARE: http://www.nationalreview.com/...
And an Oh By the Way.... Wind couldn't make it on it's own w/o the subsidies. Why? Because it doesn't make enough money to pay for itself.
It's not solar panels, which I am absolutely not opposed to in any way, by all means, put them up where they make financial sense.... However, I do believe that unilaterally giving up economic advantage by regulating cheaper power sources out of use when our world competitors are not IS the issue. First, it doesn't actually succeed in reducing emissions (countries like China are not going to stop any time soon) and second it weakens our economy and thus our ability to protect ourselves which is stupid from a geopolitical perspective.
Also, your theories about the effects of global warming are a bit alarmist from my view.... If the big problem is fossil fuel use, then if you are going to advocate the elimination of their use, you condemn the world to starvation a whole lot sooner than even your dire global warming "the sky is falling" predictions. Do you have any idea where fertilizer comes from? We used up all the natural sources of that a LONG time ago.
As for specifics, subsidies range from depletion allowances, energy specific accelerated depreciation allowances, exploration and development expensing, credit for production of nonconventional fuels, reduced government take from federal oil and gas leasing, etc.
Depletion Allowances: Is basically the way you treat the loss in the asset value (the oil well) as you produce oil. It's exactly like how you treat a mine when you produce ore. So it is not a "subsidy" for the oil industry, but the rules used to determine the tax treatment of oil production.
Energy specific accelerated depreciation allowances: Are again, just tax rules used to govern how the industry can take depreciation deductions. They don't afford any novel or unique benefit to the oil industry and are not a subsidy.
Development Expensing: Are common tax rules used to determine the deductions for the costs of developing new oil resources. This is like any business making capital investments in buildings or infrastructure, so again this isn't a subsidy.
Credit for unconventional fuel production: Seriously? This is a credit for producing bio-diesel and distilling alcohol for motor fuel and you think it's a benefit to the Oil Industry?
So, in your case, all these are simply rules about how taxes are collected (or deductions allowed) and are NOT subsidies where government money is PAID to the oil industry. I know that in liberal land, tax deductions are subsidies and restraining future budget growth below the planned amount is a budget cut (even if the budget is still going up year over year), but come on, think about what you are saying and what the words mean.
IF you want to see subsidies, go take a look at all those "green" energy "investments" that the last administration engaged in... Where they actually loaned money to dodgy companies who went bankrupt and the government never got their cash back. That's a subsidy if anything is. But all this stuff you are pointing to are either common tax treatments for depreciation and deductions for the cost of doing business are NOT subsidies, they are just specific rules for the oil industry to follow when determining what taxes they have to pay.
But if the cure is worse than the sickness, do you still do the cure?
I don't think your average person has any clue what war actually is or how many of the suggested "climate change" solutions will drag us closer to war. Hunger, sickness and a world run amok because there is no sane capitalistic economy with overwhelming military power to check the historically cyclic chaos that is obviously coming if the USA willingly and unilaterally gives up it's economic and political power. We don't remember WW1, WW2, Korea, Vietnam because most of us never lived though them, those who did are wondering what kind of pansies they've raised if this global warming thing gets you wound up.
Then there is the whole, "How bad can it be?" question that we have no idea how to answer. I hear all the dire predictions and new stories that you agree are mostly hype, and I openly wonder what are we actually trying to avoid here? What is global warming going to cause that's overall bad? Look that up and you get hype... Historically, war is a deadly affair, and trust me, that's where we are headed if the USA loses it's abilty and/or it's willingness to keep order.
So... What kinds of subsidies do you think fossil fuels are getting?
I'm given to believe that this is actually a damnable lie which being often repeated is blindly accepted as truth by some. Every time I get someone to actually try to detail what these things might be, I find that the are either non-existent (and the poster is mistaken) or they are not unique to fossil fuel producers (such as the ability of a company to deduct the cost of capital equipment as an expense.) About the only thing I can come up with that *might* be a subsidy is the leasing of Federal lands to producers, but I believe that is a competitive bidding process....
So... Citation please....
And then here we go. The science behind the global warming debate is not as settled as many believe. Many believe the "It's settled science" party line, but there are quite a few people in the field of climate studies who don't.
I point to the left's rhetoric on this issue as a reason why you don't hear about these decenters in the scientific community. You cannot disagree w/o being cast out, and many have tried. The message is loud and clear, much like the flat earth lobby of the past, you are NOT allowed to argue contrary to the party line, on pain of your professional career.
Personally, my perspective (as a lay person) is as follows. The climate is changing, but the questions are as follows:
1. How much actual control man really has? It is well known that the climate has varied greatly in the past.
2. How much actual harm does climate change actually represent? There are lots of theories about this, but the past predictions of catastrophic events have mysteriously not proven accurate (Al Gore, I'm looking at your "Inconvenient truth").
3. How much social and economic harm would come from some of the "save the world" initiatives being suggested? The problem I see with most of these is they assume that we are rushing headlong into catastrophic destruction and massive loss of life and use that debatable "truth" as justification for doing things that would cause grave social and economic damage and put us on a crash course with mass starvation, pestilence and war (and all the nearly certain death that comes with it)
I'm afraid that the "cure" for climate change will be worse than the "sickness" and I'm far from sure that the sickness being seen isn't mostly natural variations which we don't have much control over anyway.
Then why all the debate? Seems likely to me that it's about $$. There is money in climate change studies, in fostering government subsidies for "green" energy and things like that. Then there is the Big Government people who tend to support more socialist income redistribution schemes who don't have any problem with the government handing out cash. But if you follow the money, it gets pretty obvious that there is a lot of it involved in this issue.
Lemme guess! M$ windoze? /roflmao
How did you know? You must be some Zen Master computer hacker or something.... (Or just a script kiddy running the IIS attack from 10 years ago)
Why do you have to be 'left' to support renewable energy? Renewable energy gives back control of your energy sources and localises them. This fully compatible with a conservative world view.
You don't... In fact, MANY on the right support "green" energy development where it makes sense both for the environment and economically. The *problem* is though, most of these "green energy" initiatives require massive subsidies and regulations to make financial sense, and this means bigger more intrusive government.
In general, the "left" is obsessed with bigger more expensive government and higher taxes while the "right" is obsessed with smaller government and lower taxes. Then you have the political tactic of isolating voting blocks by carving out interest groups, which ends up dividing the "right" which is accused of wanting "dirty air, dirty water and death" from the "left" which is accused of being big government globalists.
The truth is, both sides generally agree that environmentally friendly energy generation is a good thing. The only real question is about how far do we go with our government programs and regulations to achieve this? From my perspective, the left doesn't want to actually debate the real question, they just want to demagogue and call their opponents names... Your mileage may vary of course, just don't tell me the "right" doesn't care, we do, we just don't think the economics of all these government programs you want are a net positive in the long run.
You're the exception, Cowboy. Fly-over country is slowly failing. Why? Because you don't have open societies that are supported by the majority of the people. I feel real sorry for people moderate sensibilities living in your part of the world. And, if you think I'm blowing smoke I'd be willing to make a long bet that fly-over country will continue to lag in many world-wide developed nation standards. In the meantime, enjoy your bandwidth and the ability it gives you to rapidly access Brietbart feeds.
Yea, I'll take my 3 bedroom ranch home in the burbs for $200K over the third floor walk up one room apartment for $1Million ANY day. Having two choices for High Speed internet (greater than 50mbps) is just the icing on the cake, but it sure makes it nice streaming to any one of the three of the wide screen TV's we have.
Nothing wrong with being a cowboy either... You may not eat beef, but a lot of folks do and where do you think it comes from? Don't get me stared on wheat and corn and how hungry you'd be without it...
I never touched any of the systems after my departure and this was over 15 years ago at this point so I think the statute of limitations has run out. Not to mention, they are now out of business... Trust me, I'm golden.
The reason I didn't admit to remembering is three fold.. 1. I told them the passwords already in the document I left with them... 2. I didn't want to leave them the impression that I maintained a backdoor or had accessed any of these systems had they experienced a security problem... 3. I wanted them to leave me alone as they'd called multiple times asking for bits of design information and project history and I was getting tired of them being dependent on me and not paying me anything.
Not sure what I would have done if they took me up on my consultant contract offer though....
I'm so sorry for you guys in NYC running dial up. I have fiber AND coax based options into my home, but I'm in fly over country... You know that deep red backwater in the middle of the country that you east and west coast folks like to make fun of for being so backward...
My working theory is they canned me in a cost cutting effort driven by a new department director. She was a nice lady, but I think she misunderstood my perspective when she REQUIRED my presence at a 9 AM breakfast meeting the morning after a 2 AM maintenance window (the third one that week) and then asked us to share what we thought should be changed... Yea, it was stupid to complain about 9 AM mandatory meetings after being up all night working, but at that point I'd had about 2 hours sleep/night for a couple of days and wasn't thinking all that straight. I was a bit grouchy and should have stuffed a doughnut into my mouth and just smiled. So, I think she didn't know what I did for them, given it mostly didn't happen during normal business hours and she didn't think to ask my manager what was up.
However, it turned out great for me. By the time I departed the company, the 90 day notice turned into 120 days, this gave me another full week of severance pay, almost doubled my retention pay, so I walked away with about 8 months of severance. I started my next job 1 week later with a significant raise and collected 2 paychecks for over half a year. It wasn't until last year that I approached a yearly salary that matched those two taxable years.
I got laid off about 10 years ago and I was responsible for maintaining firewalls and remote access network equipment for the company's customers around the world. I left them with a document that listed *every* password that I had set on *every* one of the firewalls and VPN endpoints with instructions that said "CHANGE THESE!"
They called me a year later asking if I knew the passwords for customer "x" firewall and remote access server... Where I remembered what I had set them to, my response was "Didn't you read the document I left for you?" And when they said "No" I quickly responded with "I don't know the passwords and I don't have a copy of the document I gave you, you are on your own."
NO way I was going to admit that I had unfettered access to these systems....There was no upside for me and these idiots didn't have a clue what security was so I didn't dare risk being blamed for some problem by admitting I still knew the passwords...
I did offer to help them recover all the passwords at a few hundred dollars an hour plus expenses, with a minimum of 8 hours paid in advance... And they didn't ever call me back, which was fine with me. They were idiots, both for laying me off initially, then refusing to pay the retention bonus and keep me on after the 90 day notice period when they realized their error PLUS not changing such sensitive passwords when I departed then coming back to ask me for them a year later.
Yet, science has shown that moving objects have a different perspective on what the speed of light actually is. Everybody sees the same speed from their perspective, but the passage of time runs at varying rates for other objects that are moving in relation to the observer.
Let that sink in....
But who would want to?
Claiming to be part of Anonymous is going to get you some unwanted attention from law enforcement authorities. Anonymous may get the blame for your bogus claims but you now are associated with all the illegal garbage they are assumed to have done.
It's a two way street... The knife cuts both ways... Or any number of proverbs most would remember...
We have to stay here...
The three dissenting justices clearly support the ban in it's entirety, while apparently the rest favor the bulk of the Executive Order with some minor exceptions brought up by the lower court's previous orders.
The Court is obviously going to reinstate Trump's Second order, nearly in full force, if not in it's entirety. Unless something comes up that swings the majority of justices away from their current positions between now and oral arguments. I don't think it looks likely. We will, at a minimum, have a ban except for a small class of entries by people who have established relationships with the USA. Trump may make gains in the future, but he's unlikely to lose ground on this issue now.
How many people looking to emigrate can't cultivate a 'bona-fide' relationship with a legitimate person in the US sufficient to make this claim?
You need to read the actual order.. It actually addresses this idea. People who claim such relationships after being denied entry by the administration, will need to go to court to get the decision reversed. I expect the administration to quickly act on entry requests, but I don't suspect the appeals process will be a fast moving... So good luck with that...
Given that SCOTUS partially revived the ban, does that mean that they are predisposed to a more lenient view of the ban than lower courts? How much can we read into this.
No. It means that it sees that there is a significant constitutional issue that needs to be resolved. In the end, it could very well reject the ban.
I disagree. The tradition of the court is to NOT to preemptively reverse a decision before the case is actually argued unless there is a high probability that the appeal will be reversed and/or there is irreversible damage taking place that cannot be reversed before the court can hear the case in full.
On both of these reasons, the decision clearly shows that the court believes the lower courts have ruled in error. Of course, this decision *could* be reversed, but only three justices have decanted with this order (Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch), to varying degrees. Unless there is some novel argument produced during the argument phase, I doubt we will see a shift in the court's final opinion).
Anyway, it won't matter. The Travel ban goes into place immediately with only the narrow exception of people having an existing close relationship with somebody already in the country. It will stay in effect until the court actually rules, which could be a year from today, but no sooner than six months.
Given that SCOTUS partially revived the ban, does that mean that they are predisposed to a more lenient view of the ban than lower courts? How much can we read into this.
All you can read into this is that the court pretty much already knows that the portions of the travel ban they have specifically allowed have zero chance being upheld (i.e. the appeals court's decisions are wrong)... Well, that and the court realizes that there is at least SOME urgency to these portions being reversed.
There still remains significant questions to be argued and decided, but it's apparent from this decision that the Court will be reversing the lower courts in some significant ways.
In short, the administration apparently has some good arguments on the Travel Ban thing and it's obvious to the Supreme Court that the lower courts have made significant errors.
Just stop making all these crazy predictions. You don't know, seriously, you cannot know any of these things.
I applaud your theoretical work on astrophysics and agree that it's ground breaking work, but stop with the rest of this stuff. You are just soiling your name, diminishing your reputation with this garbage. I know you face your forthcoming mortality and it must be hard to realize that it will very soon be over for you, but these recent PR ploys are only going to damage your memory. Please stop. I beg you. Let us remember you for the good stuff you've done, not this craziness.