Personal responsibility and individual effort are what brought such success to the US over its life, until about now.
This is in fact the story.
It isn't particularly true. We didn't throw off the British yoke that way without creating an army with generals and even a government with taxation powers behind it. We didn't conquer our continent without the government buying land, setting expansion policies, and subsidzing canals, the postal service, and heavily subsidized railways (often using eminent domain to take the land from private holders), government land sales and giveaways to small farmers, and more professional Army support to deal with the inevitable clashes with our Indian and Mexican neighbors. We didn't defeat the Nazis without a huge centralized government effort that nearly every human being in the country pitched in on (even the kids of those we callously stuck in internment camps). We didn't go to the moon without a huge government effort, and we didn't pioneer the internet without large amounts of DARPA R&D.
The fact of the matter is that most of the truly inspiring stuff America has done, it has been collective action with a large amount of Government support, and typically downright direction.
More like centuries. The first Sears catalog appeared in the 1880's. They didn't even have storefronts for 40 more years.
States not being able to tax interstate commerce was a feature (meaning purposeful part of) the Constituion. If Congress essentially makes this legal by fiat, what's stopping states (or even Municipalities like New York City) from charging higher taxes for these transactions? It could certianly be justified with the same "protect local businesses" argument that is being used now.
Sales taxes are already just about the worst, most regressive kind of tax available. The only reason they tend to exist at all is because the rich and powerful don't feel them. So if they are hurting your local businesses, perhaps a better suggestion would be to get rid of them and use a fairer tax to fund yourself instead. I would not mourn their passing in the slightest.
First, private equity firms do invest a lot of their own money in the firms they buy
They "invest" that money, then take every penny back from the company coffers the instant they take it over. The only way any of that initial money is at any kind of risk is if either they fail to take over the company (and their run at it didn't drive up the stock price before they bailed), or if it turns out the company can't borrow enough money to cover their nut once they take it over. Assuming they did their homework right, there is very little risk there, and it is very breif.
it is in the interests of the private equity firm that the company do well
To a certian extent this is quite true, because when the Vulture firm flies off, every penny they get for either the stock or the pieces is now profit for them. More profit is clearly better.
However, this is not the cheif way they make money on the "venture". The main goal is to get the company in question to borrow every penny they can, which the Vulture Capital Firm greedily swallows up. Once that is accomplished, they fly away.If they can sell the remnants for more than they paid, that is great. If not, that's not as good, but still not a disaster because the company itself paid for a lot of its own takeover. They only really lose money if they couldn't siphon out more cash than the delta between their entrance costs and their exit costs.
So basically, they take a company that is hurting but as has one big thing going for it (an ability to borrow money to find a way out of their current difficulties), and swoop in to take that away from them.
Finally, if it is more profitable to sell a companies assets and fire all its workers, then this is a good thing
In finance / Gordon Gekko land, this is quite true. In the real world, not so much. Actual products and actual jobs mean a great deal to socieity. I guarantee you that Apple, Microsoft, and Google all had several times in their early history where they would have been worth far more if someone had swooped in and done exactly what you suggest. Probably every company that was ever done anything worth a damn has. However, they had people in charge who belived there was something worthwhile about what that company was about and could potentially do in the future that was worth fighting for. They persevered and changed the world.
This is like complaining that you don't like the way everyone else in the world uses the word "hacker". You may have a bit of a point, but human language is about communication, so majority really does rule. Sorry. I hate what the same process has done to the words "hacker" and "enormity", but I only get one vote.
In this case, I don't think its that bad though. Essentially, "Vulture Capital Firm" has come to mean something a bit different than "Vulture Fund". A "Vulture Capital Firm" is simply a supposed "Venture Capital Firm", that instead of looking for promising startups to fund like we normally think of such firms, looks for companies with a very low cost to potential further debt ratio, snaps them up, then loads them up with all the debt they can, while extracting all the cash they can as "fees". This easily includes every penny spent to acquire the company. Sure, they do try to keep the company afloat as best as they can until they can unload either it and its assests, just because if its still worth something then, that's even more money for them. But if that means they sell it for scrap, or the company falls apart like the Bluesmobile the instant they step out of it, they don't really care.
It is still a bit consistent, as typically it isn't perfectly healthy companies that end up in this situation. A perfectly healthy company that isn't already loaded down with debt won't have a low stock price unless investors are staying away from it for some reason. Assuming the investors are being rational, there's probably something systemically wrong with it. So in this case the "vultures" are swooping in on something that isn't dead, but is probabaly walking wounded, and finishing it off. That is in fact part of the normal behavior of the Vulture they are being named after.
Vultures seldom attack healthy animals, but may kill the wounded or sick.
This is the sad fate in store for companies that are relatively cheap to buy compared to how much debt they can still take on.
Some vulture capital firm will swoop in, borrow a bunch of money to take them over, then force the poor company to pay them back for the takeover costs, plus every other last cent the victim is now capable of borrowing. They make millions (sometimes) billions without risking a cent once the takeover is complete.
Everybody wins. Well, except perhaps for the banks and their investors when the companies go backrupt. And the workers who thought they were dedicating their toil to making products people wanted, not creating temporary paper value for rich folks to come in and loot.
This is why they call themselves "job craters". They don't spell it that way in print of course, but we all know what they mean when they say it.
Shoot to Thrill, like every AC/DC song, is a double entendre. They don't exactly hide this, so only the dimmest of bulbs take an AC/DC song literally.
I suggest you look instead at Guns'N'Roses. their songs are all pretty much about what they say they are about, so much less chance of getting fooled. For instance, Used to Love Her is pretty damn sick.
Nice start, but this goes way past that. You can't convince me that somebody who did something this aggregiously unjust hasn't been doing it for a while, and won't do it again when the media isn't looking. The public shouldn't have to spend its time begging a public employee to perform his/her job properly in every instance it hears about. This is what we hire people in the D.A.'s office to do for us, so we can get on with our lives.
I wanna see the petition to get the assistant DA fired.
Her story (from the multiple FA's) was that a friend suggested she try it, and it was her understanding there would just be smoke. She hadn't seen the videos herself, the "friend" had.
Now it is certianly your perrogative to not believe her, and to instead invent all kinds of malicious motivations starting with "I think...". However, it is equally my perrogative to notice that you aren't doing the same thing with the white kid...
"Obvious" in what way? The girl said she was expecting some smoke from her chemical reaction, not a (very small) explosion. The boy said he thought the gun wasn't loaded, but admitted to puposely aiming at the other kid's head and pulling the trigger. So what exactly, besides the skin color difference, makes one more "obvious" than the other?
The situation is now *significantly* different. You're comparing one thing that was ruled as a tragic accident caused by someone being a bit of an idiot, and another where someone had created a small bomb on school grounds.
This right here is the part that really infuriates me. Her story was that she thought there'd be some smoke, not an explosion. The boy's story was that he thought the gun wasn't loaded (but was purposely aiming it at his brother and pulling the trigger). So if we believe their stories, neither was purposely trying to commit a crime. So why does his story get believed without question, and hers totally ignored?
I could almost deal with the injustice, but the hypocracy on top of it drives me nuts. I can be forced to eat a turd sandwich, but don't try to convince me its chocolate cake.
Which one would that be? Reading TFAs, the girl in question is claiming that she expected to see a bunch of smoke, not an actual explosion. The boy in question is claiming he was purposely aiming the gun at his brother and pulling the trigger, but that he didn't think there was an actual round in the gun.
If we assume they are both telling the truth, the criminal results weren't intentional in either case.
You still aren't explaining, without using race, how one kid who broke the law needs to have the most extreme charges possible filed agasint her, while another who broke a much more serious law (manslaughter) gets nothing.
The thing I find particularly telling is that nobody involved is arguing that this is just. The argument is that a law was technically broken, so they have no choice but to charge her. So why doesn't that argument apply to both people?
The thing that worries the crap out of me is that the kids we are runing through this robot factory will (despite our best efforts) grow up one day and be running this country. If they get used to thinking that the relationship between people and authority figures should be one of unconditional one-way obediance to "the rules", what can we expect when they all become the cops and lawyers and judges? What kind of future society are we making for ourselves?
So explain to me how a white teenager who shoots and kills his brother doesn't deserve to be charged with anything, while the same prosecutor decides that a black teenager who didn't injure anyone needs an adult felony conviction to show her that "there are consequences to actions.".
Perhaps they aren't being racist on purpose, but that's hardly a consolation to the student. Sufficently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
Look at it this way: Your job may be lost forever, but in 15 years or so, after they graduate from the colleges you can no longer afford to send them to, your kids will be able to get better jobs than were available before.
Presumably there are some electronics in the gun making this decision, which means if the electronics are messed up (eg: with an EMP or by being immersed in water), the gun becomes unreliable.
Just imagine someone with this gun living in fear of an assailant with... a water pistol! (scary music here).
Syntax highlighting - editors like Emacs or Notepad++ get you part way, but for completeness your editor needs to understand the build system.
This is because of the unmitigated evil that is the C preprocessor. Avoid it, and you don't have that issue. (Better yet, avoid languages that support preprocessing...)
To use these tools on Windows you need to get Cygwin to make it work more smoothly
Unless you need fully-emulated Unix on your PC (clear down to Unix signals, fork(), etc.), Cygwin is really overkill. To make matters worse some of the toolchain renders code built with it GPL unless you pay Red Hat for a looser license.
Any Windows developer who doesn't need full Unix emulation should probably be using MingGW.
have enough money to give to other countries, even when we cant open the white house the school kids
The White House tour closure isn't about priorities like you imply. The option of switching the two was never available. The sequester mandated each agency come up with the same flat percentage cut. The only complaint you can levy about foriegn aid WRT sequester cuts is which country gets how much.
For my money, fluff like public tours is exactly the kind of things an agency should cut first, if forced. If you disagree with that decision, that's what the political process is for. On the other hand, if a few hundred million to a middle-eastern state buys us a decent chance to avoid having to send troops in to another Afghanistan or Iraq war situation, its money damn well spent. If you diagree with me, that's what we have a political process for. Encourage your Congressman to support a funding/spending bill that is more specific.
The only reason we are in this current dumb sequestration mess is that it was the only kind of compromise bill the Republicans running the House of Representatives were willing to entertain. Sure, they are quite willing to "cut fat" as long as the supposed fat is not spelled out. They also have no trouble throwing a few mild specifics out in a "plan", as long as it has no chance of passing as a bill. They have so far proven completely unwilling to write a bill that can pass both houses of Congress and get a POTUS signature.
However, that 20 hours of lockdown meant that he was unable to carjack anyone (something he already did once), he was unable to kill anyone (something else he already did), he was unable to steal a car and escape (would have been instantly noticed),
But we don't actually know any of that (except the carjacking part is probably correct), because he was hurt that entire time. If he'd been healthy, we don't know what he may have done. You could be absolutely right. However, there could very well have been a home invasion, with more deaths that nobody else noticed until the next day because there was nowhere else they were expected that day and nobody could go out visiting. He might have escaped the perimeter and fallen off the radar to commit more mahem elsewhere. He might have done exactly what he did, but with the presence of mind to put the tarp back so the boat owner didn't notice, and then escape under cover of darkness. Saying that the shutdown saved civilian lives is like saying the TSA's security theater has protected us from any subsequent hijacking, or that my pencil protects me from tiger attacks. We just don't know.
Slashdot Mirror
Personal responsibility and individual effort are what brought such success to the US over its life, until about now.
This is in fact the story.
It isn't particularly true. We didn't throw off the British yoke that way without creating an army with generals and even a government with taxation powers behind it. We didn't conquer our continent without the government buying land, setting expansion policies, and subsidzing canals, the postal service, and heavily subsidized railways (often using eminent domain to take the land from private holders), government land sales and giveaways to small farmers, and more professional Army support to deal with the inevitable clashes with our Indian and Mexican neighbors. We didn't defeat the Nazis without a huge centralized government effort that nearly every human being in the country pitched in on (even the kids of those we callously stuck in internment camps). We didn't go to the moon without a huge government effort, and we didn't pioneer the internet without large amounts of DARPA R&D.
The fact of the matter is that most of the truly inspiring stuff America has done, it has been collective action with a large amount of Government support, and typically downright direction.
More like centuries. The first Sears catalog appeared in the 1880's. They didn't even have storefronts for 40 more years.
States not being able to tax interstate commerce was a feature (meaning purposeful part of) the Constituion. If Congress essentially makes this legal by fiat, what's stopping states (or even Municipalities like New York City) from charging higher taxes for these transactions? It could certianly be justified with the same "protect local businesses" argument that is being used now.
Sales taxes are already just about the worst, most regressive kind of tax available. The only reason they tend to exist at all is because the rich and powerful don't feel them. So if they are hurting your local businesses, perhaps a better suggestion would be to get rid of them and use a fairer tax to fund yourself instead. I would not mourn their passing in the slightest.
First, private equity firms do invest a lot of their own money in the firms they buy
They "invest" that money, then take every penny back from the company coffers the instant they take it over. The only way any of that initial money is at any kind of risk is if either they fail to take over the company (and their run at it didn't drive up the stock price before they bailed), or if it turns out the company can't borrow enough money to cover their nut once they take it over. Assuming they did their homework right, there is very little risk there, and it is very breif.
it is in the interests of the private equity firm that the company do well
To a certian extent this is quite true, because when the Vulture firm flies off, every penny they get for either the stock or the pieces is now profit for them. More profit is clearly better.
However, this is not the cheif way they make money on the "venture". The main goal is to get the company in question to borrow every penny they can, which the Vulture Capital Firm greedily swallows up. Once that is accomplished, they fly away.If they can sell the remnants for more than they paid, that is great. If not, that's not as good, but still not a disaster because the company itself paid for a lot of its own takeover. They only really lose money if they couldn't siphon out more cash than the delta between their entrance costs and their exit costs.
So basically, they take a company that is hurting but as has one big thing going for it (an ability to borrow money to find a way out of their current difficulties), and swoop in to take that away from them.
Finally, if it is more profitable to sell a companies assets and fire all its workers, then this is a good thing
In finance / Gordon Gekko land, this is quite true. In the real world, not so much. Actual products and actual jobs mean a great deal to socieity. I guarantee you that Apple, Microsoft, and Google all had several times in their early history where they would have been worth far more if someone had swooped in and done exactly what you suggest. Probably every company that was ever done anything worth a damn has. However, they had people in charge who belived there was something worthwhile about what that company was about and could potentially do in the future that was worth fighting for. They persevered and changed the world.
This is like complaining that you don't like the way everyone else in the world uses the word "hacker". You may have a bit of a point, but human language is about communication, so majority really does rule. Sorry. I hate what the same process has done to the words "hacker" and "enormity", but I only get one vote.
In this case, I don't think its that bad though. Essentially, "Vulture Capital Firm" has come to mean something a bit different than "Vulture Fund". A "Vulture Capital Firm" is simply a supposed "Venture Capital Firm", that instead of looking for promising startups to fund like we normally think of such firms, looks for companies with a very low cost to potential further debt ratio, snaps them up, then loads them up with all the debt they can, while extracting all the cash they can as "fees". This easily includes every penny spent to acquire the company. Sure, they do try to keep the company afloat as best as they can until they can unload either it and its assests, just because if its still worth something then, that's even more money for them. But if that means they sell it for scrap, or the company falls apart like the Bluesmobile the instant they step out of it, they don't really care.
It is still a bit consistent, as typically it isn't perfectly healthy companies that end up in this situation. A perfectly healthy company that isn't already loaded down with debt won't have a low stock price unless investors are staying away from it for some reason. Assuming the investors are being rational, there's probably something systemically wrong with it. So in this case the "vultures" are swooping in on something that isn't dead, but is probabaly walking wounded, and finishing it off. That is in fact part of the normal behavior of the Vulture they are being named after.
Vultures seldom attack healthy animals, but may kill the wounded or sick.
This is the sad fate in store for companies that are relatively cheap to buy compared to how much debt they can still take on.
Some vulture capital firm will swoop in, borrow a bunch of money to take them over, then force the poor company to pay them back for the takeover costs, plus every other last cent the victim is now capable of borrowing. They make millions (sometimes) billions without risking a cent once the takeover is complete.
Everybody wins. Well, except perhaps for the banks and their investors when the companies go backrupt. And the workers who thought they were dedicating their toil to making products people wanted, not creating temporary paper value for rich folks to come in and loot.
This is why they call themselves "job craters". They don't spell it that way in print of course, but we all know what they mean when they say it.
AC/DC's Shoot to Thrill is about firearms in exactly the same way that their song Big Balls is about fancy dress parties.
Shoot to Thrill, like every AC/DC song, is a double entendre. They don't exactly hide this, so only the dimmest of bulbs take an AC/DC song literally.
I suggest you look instead at Guns'N'Roses. their songs are all pretty much about what they say they are about, so much less chance of getting fooled. For instance, Used to Love Her is pretty damn sick.
Nice start, but this goes way past that. You can't convince me that somebody who did something this aggregiously unjust hasn't been doing it for a while, and won't do it again when the media isn't looking. The public shouldn't have to spend its time begging a public employee to perform his/her job properly in every instance it hears about. This is what we hire people in the D.A.'s office to do for us, so we can get on with our lives.
I wanna see the petition to get the assistant DA fired.
That doesn't really answer the question, because the "War on Drugs" itself is deeply rooted in racisim..
Its like someone asked you to assess a mentally-messed up veteran, and you insisted he isn't shellshocked, but instead suffers from PTSD.
Her story (from the multiple FA's) was that a friend suggested she try it, and it was her understanding there would just be smoke. She hadn't seen the videos herself, the "friend" had.
Now it is certianly your perrogative to not believe her, and to instead invent all kinds of malicious motivations starting with "I think ...". However, it is equally my perrogative to notice that you aren't doing the same thing with the white kid...
"Obvious" in what way? The girl said she was expecting some smoke from her chemical reaction, not a (very small) explosion. The boy said he thought the gun wasn't loaded, but admitted to puposely aiming at the other kid's head and pulling the trigger. So what exactly, besides the skin color difference, makes one more "obvious" than the other?
The situation is now *significantly* different. You're comparing one thing that was ruled as a tragic accident caused by someone being a bit of an idiot, and another where someone had created a small bomb on school grounds.
This right here is the part that really infuriates me. Her story was that she thought there'd be some smoke, not an explosion. The boy's story was that he thought the gun wasn't loaded (but was purposely aiming it at his brother and pulling the trigger). So if we believe their stories, neither was purposely trying to commit a crime. So why does his story get believed without question, and hers totally ignored?
I could almost deal with the injustice, but the hypocracy on top of it drives me nuts. I can be forced to eat a turd sandwich, but don't try to convince me its chocolate cake.
It is standard practice. Charge as much as you can possibly get away with and plea bargain down from there.
In that case, why wasn't the "standard practice" applied to the boy?
One was an accident and one was intentional.
Which one would that be? Reading TFAs, the girl in question is claiming that she expected to see a bunch of smoke, not an actual explosion. The boy in question is claiming he was purposely aiming the gun at his brother and pulling the trigger, but that he didn't think there was an actual round in the gun.
If we assume they are both telling the truth, the criminal results weren't intentional in either case.
You still aren't explaining, without using race, how one kid who broke the law needs to have the most extreme charges possible filed agasint her, while another who broke a much more serious law (manslaughter) gets nothing.
The thing I find particularly telling is that nobody involved is arguing that this is just. The argument is that a law was technically broken, so they have no choice but to charge her. So why doesn't that argument apply to both people?
The thing that worries the crap out of me is that the kids we are runing through this robot factory will (despite our best efforts) grow up one day and be running this country. If they get used to thinking that the relationship between people and authority figures should be one of unconditional one-way obediance to "the rules", what can we expect when they all become the cops and lawyers and judges? What kind of future society are we making for ourselves?
I'd like to believe that too. I really would.
So explain to me how a white teenager who shoots and kills his brother doesn't deserve to be charged with anything, while the same prosecutor decides that a black teenager who didn't injure anyone needs an adult felony conviction to show her that "there are consequences to actions.".
Perhaps they aren't being racist on purpose, but that's hardly a consolation to the student. Sufficently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
Look at it this way: Your job may be lost forever, but in 15 years or so, after they graduate from the colleges you can no longer afford to send them to, your kids will be able to get better jobs than were available before.
Presumably there are some electronics in the gun making this decision, which means if the electronics are messed up (eg: with an EMP or by being immersed in water), the gun becomes unreliable.
Just imagine someone with this gun living in fear of an assailant with ... a water pistol! (scary music here).
Don't worry though, we can fix this by banning water pistols!
Syntax highlighting - editors like Emacs or Notepad++ get you part way, but for completeness your editor needs to understand the build system.
This is because of the unmitigated evil that is the C preprocessor. Avoid it, and you don't have that issue. (Better yet, avoid languages that support preprocessing...)
To use these tools on Windows you need to get Cygwin to make it work more smoothly
Unless you need fully-emulated Unix on your PC (clear down to Unix signals, fork(), etc.), Cygwin is really overkill. To make matters worse some of the toolchain renders code built with it GPL unless you pay Red Hat for a looser license.
Any Windows developer who doesn't need full Unix emulation should probably be using MingGW.
Cherish it. You're not likely to see that again in your lifetime.
Wrong! Anytime you need something to not get done, the US Senate is there for you. Its like their superpower.
[citation needed]
have enough money to give to other countries, even when we cant open the white house the school kids
The White House tour closure isn't about priorities like you imply. The option of switching the two was never available. The sequester mandated each agency come up with the same flat percentage cut. The only complaint you can levy about foriegn aid WRT sequester cuts is which country gets how much.
For my money, fluff like public tours is exactly the kind of things an agency should cut first, if forced. If you disagree with that decision, that's what the political process is for. On the other hand, if a few hundred million to a middle-eastern state buys us a decent chance to avoid having to send troops in to another Afghanistan or Iraq war situation, its money damn well spent. If you diagree with me, that's what we have a political process for. Encourage your Congressman to support a funding/spending bill that is more specific.
The only reason we are in this current dumb sequestration mess is that it was the only kind of compromise bill the Republicans running the House of Representatives were willing to entertain. Sure, they are quite willing to "cut fat" as long as the supposed fat is not spelled out. They also have no trouble throwing a few mild specifics out in a "plan", as long as it has no chance of passing as a bill. They have so far proven completely unwilling to write a bill that can pass both houses of Congress and get a POTUS signature.
However, that 20 hours of lockdown meant that he was unable to carjack anyone (something he already did once), he was unable to kill anyone (something else he already did), he was unable to steal a car and escape (would have been instantly noticed),
But we don't actually know any of that (except the carjacking part is probably correct), because he was hurt that entire time. If he'd been healthy, we don't know what he may have done. You could be absolutely right. However, there could very well have been a home invasion, with more deaths that nobody else noticed until the next day because there was nowhere else they were expected that day and nobody could go out visiting. He might have escaped the perimeter and fallen off the radar to commit more mahem elsewhere. He might have done exactly what he did, but with the presence of mind to put the tarp back so the boat owner didn't notice, and then escape under cover of darkness. Saying that the shutdown saved civilian lives is like saying the TSA's security theater has protected us from any subsequent hijacking, or that my pencil protects me from tiger attacks. We just don't know.