I've had it since April 2016, so I guess I'm doing good at 8 months and you are wrong. Here's hoping you continue to be wrong...
My last Ford (a 2000 Expedition) did 12 years and 120K miles with out too much trouble... At least until it was totaled by a VW Bug that hit it in exactly the wrong place and broke the lower front suspension and bent up enough stuff to make it uneconomical to repair given it's value...
But that was 16 years ago and Ford has had serous financial issues since... But hey, you pay your money and take your chances these days, especially with cars and trucks.
But the president's policies CAN have a large affect on corporate business. Tax law and regulations can have a drastic affect on when, how and where a company chooses to do things.
Where it's unlikely a president can do all that much by themselves, they do hold a large sway over the making of laws, regulations and enforcement activities, which CAN and DO have drastic affects on business activity.
Don't believe me? Wait and watch as Obamacare is dismantled and the corporate tax rates get lowered as I expect when Trump keeps his campaign promises. Good or bad, everyone agrees something dramatic will happen.
I think you are correct.. I think this is a result of the CAFE standards more than anything else. Electric Vehicles are not viable in the USA where distances are huge, even for urban dwellers. Where the average daily commute exceeds the EV's battery's ability to keep the wheels turning.
The question of if Trump deserves the victory lap or not is really moot... What matters is how the voters/workers in Michigan and elsewhere perceive this move by Ford...If THEY think Trump is responsible, then that's all that matters. Give Trump his due, he's at least TRYING to market himself using these accomplishments.
Besides, all the political posturing is not new... What IS new though is a Republican (even if in name only) is taking credit for something largely seen as a good thing for labor... After all, we've been beguiled with tall tales of Obama's accomplishments for 8 years where he's taken credit for things he wasn't responsible for (and a few things he actively took actions to oppose.)
Everybody knows Ford sucks. Hard. They haven't won a NASCAR championship in years.
Perhaps that NASCAR thing matters to some, but my '16 F150 is a sweet ride that gets me comfortably back and forth to work and gets 20 MPG city and 25 MPG highway... I'm not so sure Ford sucks all that hard in that user space...
Now how Ford fares with the muscle car crowd is beyond me, as my midlife crisis is behind me at this point.
LOL... Look, I'm on your side about the fashion statement part, but I depart from you on owning Apple... No Sir, I'm strictly attached to Android... But you are welcome to pay Apple for whatever you want to pay them for. I really hated the planned obsolesce they build in by moving IOS forward and totally killing the performance of that 2 year old Apple phone. It's what drove me to Android... I got tired of replacing my handset every 2 years...
Maybe not a fashion statement.. But I know people who have them because they feel they are "cool" and love to have the latest gadgetry.. It's kind of the same thing.
So neither China nor Russia would prefer Trump over Hillary on military grounds....
Here's the thing. Why does there need to be a preference? Just interfering with an election increases the distrust for Trump and increases the divisiveness in US politics. That looks like a win for both Russia and China.
Then, why are we discussing this at all? Doesn't it just play into their hands?
Apple is and always has been expensive for what you get. They make healthy profits by doing this. They are not going to change the business model just because folks complain. Now if they don't sell, THEN expect them to change the price, but I have a feeling they will sell like hotcakes like most of what Apple introduces. They have a knack for that kind of thing.
So, if you want those new fangled ear pods and get rid of that pesky cord, be prepared to pay Apple what they ask. I mean that cell phone you got was nearly $1K anyway, so what's a few hundred more? If you cannot afford this, then may I suggest you stick with that 6S and the live with the cord...
Jaguar announced that it has completed designs for a self-assembling car. It builds itself, transports itself to the dealer, sells itself, obtains it's own financing, then drives it's new owner home. At that point it's up to the new owner to drive it back to the dealer to repair the electronics.
In Detroit, getting a Jag safely home is no minor feat.... The locals would have it on blocks and stripped in less than one cycle of the traffic light if it's the Detroit city I know and love but refuse to visit after dark or unarmed.
Or on the sidewalks and in the cross walks when there is a sensor malfunction.
Can we say LAWSUITS? This will be an interesting bit of product safety litigation that won't soon go away. It will keep an army of lawyers and "expert witnesses" employed for decades. I think I need to get an AI degree and some experience in self driving cars so I can collect some the bundles of cash that will be forthcoming for "experts" in the field.
Did the Iraq war rhetoric not make it clear what side of this kind of thing she was actually on? She was all for reductions in military funding and "bringing out boys home" just like Obama was (or at least SAID he was). She SAID she was going to continue Obama's foreign policy, which has CLEARLY been war adverse and avoidance of using even "show of force" military moves which has emboldened the Russians and China greatly. Heck, even North Korea has been acting out because of Obama's pacifist leanings...
Look, I truly believe that Hills would have at least brought us to the brink of war, but NOT on purpose. She would be out there trying to back one side or the other in various local conflicts around the world and end up giving arms to bad people. However, she would have backed down from Russia and China and everybody knows it.
So the other option was Trump... Who on earth knows what this guy will do? We literally have zero history to try and figure out what he's going to do. On one hand he didn't support the Iraq war, but on the other his rhetoric was for a strong and rebuilt military. I heard him as channeling the "Speak softly and Carry a BIG stick" kind of position, one where nobody bothers you or your friends because it's obvious they wouldn't prevail in an open conflict. Russia knows what that means, another arms race/Cold War thing that they simply CANNOT financially manage. China is in a better position to keep up, but it would be a struggle for them too. Neither wants to be in an arms race with the USA, and that's where Trump is headed, if we can believe what he says.
So neither China nor Russia would prefer Trump over Hillary on military grounds....
Also, the pipeline thing is already done... The Russians already have secured that with Obama/Hillary sitting on their hands though the conflict in Ukraine and now the Arab Spring thing over the last few years. That's a done deal and Putin knows it. He got NATO to ignore it's charter and it's now going to be reduced to the ash heap of history. Hillary vowed to *continue* this foreign policy... They wanted her to follow Obama to help solidify their hold on the regain.. Trump will at least object to this, perhaps in some meaningful way, projecting with some show of force.. But he will have some credibility if he just DOES something, once will be all that's required, to prove he means what he says... Russia doesn't want him in office....
Ah yes, the same argument I use for those famous idiots that willingly allow their picture or video to be taken in compromising activates then act all shocked, hurt and embarrassed when some tabloid or porn site publishes said materials. Well, why did you take the pictures in the first place, and further, why did you keep it on your smartphone, or tablet, e-mail it to others and somehow thought it was safe...
IF the DNC didn't want this stuff to come out, then they should have been more careful. Keep it OUT of E-mail (unless encrypted) and communicate this stuff face to face, or at least by voice if you are sure nobody is recording the call... It was seriously stupid to put this embarrassing stuff into E-mail for a whole host of (you never know who will see it in transit) reasons.
But it's pretty obvious Hills wasn't the sharpest knife in the security drawer, so I suppose this is what you get... "You mean wipe it with a cloth?" Sure, it was in the bathroom and we all know Billy's boy has trouble with his am, why don't you use some "bleach bit" on it too!
Some DNC operative fell for a common G-Mail Phising attack, gives up his password to some *unknown* hacker, possibly Russian based and his E-mail's start showing up on WikI Leaks and now the Russians are responsible for "hacking the election"? Seriously? I don't know, maybe I'm a bit too partisan here, but you know the DNC would be coming unglued if hacked RNC E-mails showed even a whiff of something like what was reveled.
MAYBE, just maybe, the DNC should take careful stock of what they are saying and doing in private and perhaps clean up their act a bit security wise and stop trying to blame the Russians (as in the country) for the acts of Russian (as in a location) hackers. The two are not necessarily the same thing, though I'm not hearing very many reporters making this distinction clear.
Then there are those who try to imply that the Russians deliberately did this to get Trump elected.... An idea that seems totally without reason to me. Why would they prefer Trump over Hillary? I mean we have an anti war preaching military budget cutting democrat on one side and what ever Trump is on the other. If I'm a Russian leader, I know who I'm going to pick. Perhaps I'm wrong, so does anybody have any reasonable ideas why the Russians would want Trump over Hillary?
Well.. If you want to get technical, Fission is a FORM of Nuclear decay.... It's just decay controlled by the physical geometry of the fuel and reactor...
Seems like a lot of hubris is involved in thinking we KNOW what's really going on and why
And that supports a decision to defund climate research... how?
Who's saying we should defund? Perhaps we don't need to spend money hand over fist on this and perhaps invest some of those research dollars on other more pressing things? Although, I'm seeing the scads of money we have thrown down this rat hole as more beating a dead horse at this point...
You do realize that the climate has been warmer and colder than it is now in the past, both near and far. Right?
What caused "global warming" back when things where warmer than they are now? Surely it wasn't man burring fossil fuels, or was it?
Personally, I think the evidence is pretty clear, the earth is getting warmer AND CO2 levels are going up.... What's not so clear is the linking of one to the other. Just because they coincide doesn't mean they are causally related. We've had warming trends in the past which where not associated with CO2 levels and vice versa.
Seems like a lot of hubris is involved in thinking we KNOW what's really going on and why, much less thinking humans can do such things to the global system that has obviously out lasted our short stent here within it. And there is a good chance that Warmer + more CO2 might just benefit all the green things that are growth constrained by the lack of CO2.... But hey, lets not quibble about trifles...
What color is the sky in the universe you live in?
The sky on my WORLD is blue during the day and mostly black at night.. The Universe is mostly black and it doesn't really have a sky persay... In fact some think of it as what's beyond the sky for the most part...
When he's in office, he still won't be their employer.... He will be their head administrator, but he won't have much to say about getting them paid unless Congress agrees to it.
Paper's written on the public dollar while doing their assigned duties are NOT personal papers, but publicly owned information. Unless you can come up with a national security reason to not make them public, they should be available for all to see. It's called transparency... Something government desperately needs right now.
It's for this kind of stonewalling that the FOIA laws were necessary.
The management has to know this will get them sacked, and yet they still protected their team.
Good on them, and may they be showered by job offers once sacked.
I doubt it. Where are they going to get jobs? Who will hire them? I mean there are only so many people Al Gore can keep on his payroll and there really isn't enough funding for the activists organizations to take them all on. The UN might take some of them, but again, how many? I'm thinking these organizations are pretty much full already.
No, I think they are doomed and will have to consider some form of career change, regardless of if they give up name or not because heads will be rolling far and wide... But hey, isn't that EXACTLY what Trump campaigned on? Draining the swamp, tearing down the inside the beltway echo chamber? Like it or not, it sure looks like he intends to do what he promised, at least as he sees it.
You must not run Windows or the more recent games... In my experience with computers (which is considerable at this point), starting with old thumb switched program boot loaders and magnetic drum drive through modern super computers, I can tell you that as processing power increases, so does the processing power required by the applications we run.
So, yea, my smart phone could likely do the whole of Bletchley Park breaking of the German's enigma machine in a few seconds a day, but it wasn't available, and wouldn't be available for nearly 6 decades at any cost. Same with that PC on your desk....
As AMD and Intel build faster processors, Microsoft fills them with boat, wiz bang graphics, animated cursers and Office which has boated beyond my wildest dreams when I first used Word Perfect and Lotus... Now, we have USB 3 which wouldn't be possible with your common 286 because it couldn't possibly service the interrupts fast enough to handle even a legacy USB 2.0 device...
So, I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm only pointing out that the "state of the art" in speed in a reasonably reliable system doesn't come cheap, nor does rock solid reliability at mill spec temperatures or radiation levels, that's expensive too. What you actually have with that PC of yours is a cheap, non-reliable and less than state of the art performance computer that suits your needs. It is not exceptional in any way... It's just a common computer of the day.
But still, you pick two in terms of what's available today. It's always been this way and will always be. I dare say your home computer is cheap and reliable like mine, but it's nowhere near the peak performance available today. In fact, I'm willing to bet that even the best performing PC system you could build from off the shelf parts today still is a far cry cheaper than a "high performance" system of the same reliability currently available... You always get two of the three... Think about it....
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I've had it since April 2016, so I guess I'm doing good at 8 months and you are wrong. Here's hoping you continue to be wrong...
My last Ford (a 2000 Expedition) did 12 years and 120K miles with out too much trouble... At least until it was totaled by a VW Bug that hit it in exactly the wrong place and broke the lower front suspension and bent up enough stuff to make it uneconomical to repair given it's value...
But that was 16 years ago and Ford has had serous financial issues since... But hey, you pay your money and take your chances these days, especially with cars and trucks.
But the president's policies CAN have a large affect on corporate business. Tax law and regulations can have a drastic affect on when, how and where a company chooses to do things.
Where it's unlikely a president can do all that much by themselves, they do hold a large sway over the making of laws, regulations and enforcement activities, which CAN and DO have drastic affects on business activity.
Don't believe me? Wait and watch as Obamacare is dismantled and the corporate tax rates get lowered as I expect when Trump keeps his campaign promises. Good or bad, everyone agrees something dramatic will happen.
I think you are correct.. I think this is a result of the CAFE standards more than anything else. Electric Vehicles are not viable in the USA where distances are huge, even for urban dwellers. Where the average daily commute exceeds the EV's battery's ability to keep the wheels turning.
The question of if Trump deserves the victory lap or not is really moot... What matters is how the voters/workers in Michigan and elsewhere perceive this move by Ford...If THEY think Trump is responsible, then that's all that matters. Give Trump his due, he's at least TRYING to market himself using these accomplishments.
Besides, all the political posturing is not new... What IS new though is a Republican (even if in name only) is taking credit for something largely seen as a good thing for labor... After all, we've been beguiled with tall tales of Obama's accomplishments for 8 years where he's taken credit for things he wasn't responsible for (and a few things he actively took actions to oppose.)
Everybody knows Ford sucks. Hard. They haven't won a NASCAR championship in years.
Perhaps that NASCAR thing matters to some, but my '16 F150 is a sweet ride that gets me comfortably back and forth to work and gets 20 MPG city and 25 MPG highway... I'm not so sure Ford sucks all that hard in that user space...
Now how Ford fares with the muscle car crowd is beyond me, as my midlife crisis is behind me at this point.
LOL... Look, I'm on your side about the fashion statement part, but I depart from you on owning Apple... No Sir, I'm strictly attached to Android... But you are welcome to pay Apple for whatever you want to pay them for. I really hated the planned obsolesce they build in by moving IOS forward and totally killing the performance of that 2 year old Apple phone. It's what drove me to Android... I got tired of replacing my handset every 2 years...
Maybe not a fashion statement.. But I know people who have them because they feel they are "cool" and love to have the latest gadgetry.. It's kind of the same thing.
So neither China nor Russia would prefer Trump over Hillary on military grounds....
Here's the thing. Why does there need to be a preference? Just interfering with an election increases the distrust for Trump and increases the divisiveness in US politics. That looks like a win for both Russia and China.
Then, why are we discussing this at all? Doesn't it just play into their hands?
Apple is and always has been expensive for what you get. They make healthy profits by doing this. They are not going to change the business model just because folks complain. Now if they don't sell, THEN expect them to change the price, but I have a feeling they will sell like hotcakes like most of what Apple introduces. They have a knack for that kind of thing.
So, if you want those new fangled ear pods and get rid of that pesky cord, be prepared to pay Apple what they ask. I mean that cell phone you got was nearly $1K anyway, so what's a few hundred more? If you cannot afford this, then may I suggest you stick with that 6S and the live with the cord...
Jaguar announced that it has completed designs for a self-assembling car. It builds itself, transports itself to the dealer, sells itself, obtains it's own financing, then drives it's new owner home. At that point it's up to the new owner to drive it back to the dealer to repair the electronics.
In Detroit, getting a Jag safely home is no minor feat.... The locals would have it on blocks and stripped in less than one cycle of the traffic light if it's the Detroit city I know and love but refuse to visit after dark or unarmed.
I wonder who got the ticket for that?
On the roads.
Or on the sidewalks and in the cross walks when there is a sensor malfunction.
Can we say LAWSUITS? This will be an interesting bit of product safety litigation that won't soon go away. It will keep an army of lawyers and "expert witnesses" employed for decades. I think I need to get an AI degree and some experience in self driving cars so I can collect some the bundles of cash that will be forthcoming for "experts" in the field.
Now I've heard it all.. Hills a war hawk?
Did the Iraq war rhetoric not make it clear what side of this kind of thing she was actually on? She was all for reductions in military funding and "bringing out boys home" just like Obama was (or at least SAID he was). She SAID she was going to continue Obama's foreign policy, which has CLEARLY been war adverse and avoidance of using even "show of force" military moves which has emboldened the Russians and China greatly. Heck, even North Korea has been acting out because of Obama's pacifist leanings...
Look, I truly believe that Hills would have at least brought us to the brink of war, but NOT on purpose. She would be out there trying to back one side or the other in various local conflicts around the world and end up giving arms to bad people. However, she would have backed down from Russia and China and everybody knows it.
So the other option was Trump... Who on earth knows what this guy will do? We literally have zero history to try and figure out what he's going to do. On one hand he didn't support the Iraq war, but on the other his rhetoric was for a strong and rebuilt military. I heard him as channeling the "Speak softly and Carry a BIG stick" kind of position, one where nobody bothers you or your friends because it's obvious they wouldn't prevail in an open conflict. Russia knows what that means, another arms race/Cold War thing that they simply CANNOT financially manage. China is in a better position to keep up, but it would be a struggle for them too. Neither wants to be in an arms race with the USA, and that's where Trump is headed, if we can believe what he says.
So neither China nor Russia would prefer Trump over Hillary on military grounds....
Also, the pipeline thing is already done... The Russians already have secured that with Obama/Hillary sitting on their hands though the conflict in Ukraine and now the Arab Spring thing over the last few years. That's a done deal and Putin knows it. He got NATO to ignore it's charter and it's now going to be reduced to the ash heap of history. Hillary vowed to *continue* this foreign policy... They wanted her to follow Obama to help solidify their hold on the regain.. Trump will at least object to this, perhaps in some meaningful way, projecting with some show of force.. But he will have some credibility if he just DOES something, once will be all that's required, to prove he means what he says... Russia doesn't want him in office....
Ah yes, the same argument I use for those famous idiots that willingly allow their picture or video to be taken in compromising activates then act all shocked, hurt and embarrassed when some tabloid or porn site publishes said materials. Well, why did you take the pictures in the first place, and further, why did you keep it on your smartphone, or tablet, e-mail it to others and somehow thought it was safe...
IF the DNC didn't want this stuff to come out, then they should have been more careful. Keep it OUT of E-mail (unless encrypted) and communicate this stuff face to face, or at least by voice if you are sure nobody is recording the call... It was seriously stupid to put this embarrassing stuff into E-mail for a whole host of (you never know who will see it in transit) reasons.
But it's pretty obvious Hills wasn't the sharpest knife in the security drawer, so I suppose this is what you get... "You mean wipe it with a cloth?" Sure, it was in the bathroom and we all know Billy's boy has trouble with his am, why don't you use some "bleach bit" on it too!
Ah come on...
Some DNC operative fell for a common G-Mail Phising attack, gives up his password to some *unknown* hacker, possibly Russian based and his E-mail's start showing up on WikI Leaks and now the Russians are responsible for "hacking the election"? Seriously? I don't know, maybe I'm a bit too partisan here, but you know the DNC would be coming unglued if hacked RNC E-mails showed even a whiff of something like what was reveled.
MAYBE, just maybe, the DNC should take careful stock of what they are saying and doing in private and perhaps clean up their act a bit security wise and stop trying to blame the Russians (as in the country) for the acts of Russian (as in a location) hackers. The two are not necessarily the same thing, though I'm not hearing very many reporters making this distinction clear.
Then there are those who try to imply that the Russians deliberately did this to get Trump elected.... An idea that seems totally without reason to me. Why would they prefer Trump over Hillary? I mean we have an anti war preaching military budget cutting democrat on one side and what ever Trump is on the other. If I'm a Russian leader, I know who I'm going to pick. Perhaps I'm wrong, so does anybody have any reasonable ideas why the Russians would want Trump over Hillary?
Fission != Nuclear decay
Well.. If you want to get technical, Fission is a FORM of Nuclear decay.... It's just decay controlled by the physical geometry of the fuel and reactor...
Seems like a lot of hubris is involved in thinking we KNOW what's really going on and why
And that supports a decision to defund climate research ... how?
Who's saying we should defund? Perhaps we don't need to spend money hand over fist on this and perhaps invest some of those research dollars on other more pressing things? Although, I'm seeing the scads of money we have thrown down this rat hole as more beating a dead horse at this point...
You do realize that the climate has been warmer and colder than it is now in the past, both near and far. Right?
What caused "global warming" back when things where warmer than they are now? Surely it wasn't man burring fossil fuels, or was it?
Personally, I think the evidence is pretty clear, the earth is getting warmer AND CO2 levels are going up.... What's not so clear is the linking of one to the other. Just because they coincide doesn't mean they are causally related. We've had warming trends in the past which where not associated with CO2 levels and vice versa.
Seems like a lot of hubris is involved in thinking we KNOW what's really going on and why, much less thinking humans can do such things to the global system that has obviously out lasted our short stent here within it. And there is a good chance that Warmer + more CO2 might just benefit all the green things that are growth constrained by the lack of CO2.... But hey, lets not quibble about trifles...
What color is the sky in the universe you live in?
The sky on my WORLD is blue during the day and mostly black at night.. The Universe is mostly black and it doesn't really have a sky persay... In fact some think of it as what's beyond the sky for the most part...
So what color is the SKY in your World?
When he's in office, he still won't be their employer.... He will be their head administrator, but he won't have much to say about getting them paid unless Congress agrees to it.
Paper's written on the public dollar while doing their assigned duties are NOT personal papers, but publicly owned information. Unless you can come up with a national security reason to not make them public, they should be available for all to see. It's called transparency... Something government desperately needs right now.
It's for this kind of stonewalling that the FOIA laws were necessary.
Try harder! Calling people Nazis stopped being effective about 3 weeks ago.
What do you expect... That they'd recycle the racist charge? Oh wait, let's not give them any ideas...
The management has to know this will get them sacked, and yet they still protected their team. Good on them, and may they be showered by job offers once sacked.
I doubt it. Where are they going to get jobs? Who will hire them? I mean there are only so many people Al Gore can keep on his payroll and there really isn't enough funding for the activists organizations to take them all on. The UN might take some of them, but again, how many? I'm thinking these organizations are pretty much full already.
No, I think they are doomed and will have to consider some form of career change, regardless of if they give up name or not because heads will be rolling far and wide... But hey, isn't that EXACTLY what Trump campaigned on? Draining the swamp, tearing down the inside the beltway echo chamber? Like it or not, it sure looks like he intends to do what he promised, at least as he sees it.
You must not run Windows or the more recent games... In my experience with computers (which is considerable at this point), starting with old thumb switched program boot loaders and magnetic drum drive through modern super computers, I can tell you that as processing power increases, so does the processing power required by the applications we run.
So, yea, my smart phone could likely do the whole of Bletchley Park breaking of the German's enigma machine in a few seconds a day, but it wasn't available, and wouldn't be available for nearly 6 decades at any cost. Same with that PC on your desk....
As AMD and Intel build faster processors, Microsoft fills them with boat, wiz bang graphics, animated cursers and Office which has boated beyond my wildest dreams when I first used Word Perfect and Lotus... Now, we have USB 3 which wouldn't be possible with your common 286 because it couldn't possibly service the interrupts fast enough to handle even a legacy USB 2.0 device...
So, I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm only pointing out that the "state of the art" in speed in a reasonably reliable system doesn't come cheap, nor does rock solid reliability at mill spec temperatures or radiation levels, that's expensive too. What you actually have with that PC of yours is a cheap, non-reliable and less than state of the art performance computer that suits your needs. It is not exceptional in any way... It's just a common computer of the day.
Not inconsiderate at all...
But still, you pick two in terms of what's available today. It's always been this way and will always be. I dare say your home computer is cheap and reliable like mine, but it's nowhere near the peak performance available today. In fact, I'm willing to bet that even the best performing PC system you could build from off the shelf parts today still is a far cry cheaper than a "high performance" system of the same reliability currently available... You always get two of the three... Think about it....