Indeed it is. My last trip there was so bad that I am reluctant to ever go back. It wasn't just seeing poop and piss on the streets- it was seeing people pooping and pissing on the streets in plain view. My wife and I had to step over a frothy stream of piss on the sidewalk from a woman squatting against a wall 5 feet from me near the trolly stop while staring at me with her pants around her ankles.
I submit to you that you do not know what happened. Don't feel bad- very few people outside of the 12 members of the Grand Jury have heard all of known facts of the case. I certainly don't know what happened.
But please keep this in mind. Things that you accept as fact are not really facts. Case in point: your assumption that Brown had surrendered. Some of the sworn testimony that was released tonight following the prosecutor's press conference indicates that Brown had not surrendered, and in fact was charging the police officer "like a football player" with his head down and fists clenched. And at the same time, as the prosecutor detailed in his press conference, much of the early eye witness accounts that indicated that Brown had surrendered did not hold up under further scrutiny.
As I said, I don't know what happened, but I think this is enough to move the narrative that Brown had surrendered out of the "fact" category.
I have experimented with several CFL flood lights for my porch. When it is cold outside, the best CFLs I have tried take 2-3 minutes to get bright. For the first 30 seconds its an unusable purple glow.
Sales tax laws are not only at the state level, but each county and city as well. When you build a B&M store, you know what tax jurisdiction that store is in. An online retailer doesn't have that luxury and has to know the nuances of thousands of different and constantly changing tax codes.
Its quite a bit more complicated than that. Each state has different sales tax rates. So do many counties. So do many cities within those counties. And at each level, the taxes are applied differently to different products. In some areas, you don't pay sales tax on unprepared food. In other areas, this extends to most daily personal needs. And all of this is subject to the frequent changes from politicians and voters.
Figuring out an accurate sales tax rate for product X shipped to a particular address is a rather tricky problem.
It will never be worthless. The US Treasury Dept only accepts US dollars for tax payments, so we need to have dollars to pay our taxes, or we go to jail.
Easy: Let's say Dell sells 50 million machine a year, and they are using 100% Intel chips. AMD wants to supply some of their business, and makes a bid to sell Dell as many processors as they can make (let's say 20 million). Dell wants to take the deal, and buy the remaining 30 million processors from Intel, but Intel informs them that if they do any business with AMD, Intel no longer supply processors for them (or will supply them at a much higher price than previously). Dell, faced with the choice of losing a supplier they must have to be in business, makes the only logical choice and doesn't buy from AMD.
Except, of course, that nagging fact that Dell did decide to sell AMD processors and Intel continued to sell CPUs to Dell and provide volume rebates. Forced, eh?
AMD was very open that they were capacity constrained during the time in question- they were selling everything that they could manage to manufacture. They made a few feeble attempts to increase their capacity, like the whole UMC debacle. But in the end, the limits on AMD's success were all self-imposed by crappy management. At its heart, the semiconductor industry is about manufacturing, and whoever can make the most chips with the highest yields will win. AMD still doesn't understand that.
Well that helps, but also due to the anti-competitive tactics that Intel used against AMD.
Fab capacity more than helps- its main factor in the success of a semiconductor company! AMD was self-admittedly fab constrained for the entire period when they had a performance advantage over Intel. They were selling every chip that they made! The limits on their success during this period had nothing to do with what Intel did or didn't do- AMD did as good as they could have given their anemic manufacturing capabilities.
You can't blame Intel for AMD's crappy manufacturing history. AMD made several very public missteps with regard to their Fabs, ranging from high profile delays in opening new Fabs to that whole UMC debacle (where Hector Ruiz proudly declared that AMD no longer had to build any Fabs anymore only to see the deal fall through a year later). You can't blame that on Intel.
The removal of QPI in favor of DMI (much slower but simpler/cheaper) is a *significant* difference.
Funny. QPI was not removed or replaced by DMI in any sense of the word. In fact, DMI has existed for at least the last 5 generations of chipsets from Intel. On last year's Nehalem release, QPI connected the CPU with their "IOH" called Tylersburg. Tylersburg was then connected to the ICH with DMI. It was a 3 chip solution. With Lynnfield, the CPU and IOH have been combined to a single chip. The QPI connection still exists, its just internal to the (now combined) chip. Almost everything that used to be north of DMI is still north of it (including PCIe graphics, memory, etc), and everything that used to be south of it is still south (like USB and SATA).
Actually, thats what I said, not the person you are responding to, and your bizarre counter-example doesn't make any sense (even in context).
I don't think it is corrupt for me to have the right to exercise some control over the works that I invest my resources in to create. This control doesn't even need to be to generate profits (look at the GPL, for instance, whose entire existence is based on the so-called "corrupt" concept of copyrights).
I do think it would be corrupt for somebody else to be able to take those works that I created and do whatever they want with them- even at my expense- with no recourse. But, oh, I forgot, information needs to be freeeeeeee, man!
No, copyright is not corruption. Like anything else, it is susceptible to corruption, but the concept itself is not corrupt. Instead, it is intended to limit truly corrupt practices, like attempting to unfairly profit from somebody else's hard work.
Except Humans have been around for much less than 30% of the earth's existence are are HIGHLY dependant on the current state of the earth's climate.
If there is one thing that we humans have demonstrated in our existence, it is that we are adapt to the constant changes to our environment. Do you really think that we would just sit in a paralyzed fear if the earth warmed to dangerous levels?
US manufacturing activity is now down to its lowest level since 1948. That's right, we've lost 60 years of growth.
Good grief. If people misunderstand basic economic indicators as badly as you have, it is no wonder that they are so pessimistic about the current economy.
I assume you are basing your comment on todays release of the Manufacturing Index by the Institute for Supply Management because of this statement in the release:
"New orders have contracted for 13 consecutive months, and are at the lowest level on record going back to January 1948."
That is the index for new orders- not the overall index for manufacturing. That overall manufacturing index is at 32.4%, which is a horribly low number, but not as bad as the recession in 1980. And none of these indexes describe an absolute level of manufacturing activity like you seem to think. The indexes are derived through surveying manufacturers and asking them if they expect to expand or contract their activity levels in the next quarter. An index of 32.4% means that almost one third of the manufacturers surveyed still expect to see some expansion. It has nothing to do with 60 years of growth.
I've learned to lower my expectations for honest reporting of the economy- especially when current political leaders are unpopular. Just this morning in the local news one of their headlines was that 1 in 5 local businesses were planning on laying off employees this year. The article was full of doom and gloom about unemployment and the economy, but buried at the very end they mentioned that "only" 16% of businesses planned to hire new employees during that same timeframe- almost the same % as were planning on laying off employees. Good grief.
Well, thats exactly why the claims that he was looking for uranium in Africa were never central to the intelligence agencies assessment that he was trying to develop a nuclear weapon.
The reports that I read about it indicated that he wanted a supply that was outside the knowledge and control of the IAEA. That 550 tons of yellowcake that everybody knew that he had was sealed off and monitored by the IAEA.
Bush did not make an argument about Yellowcake that Saddam had. He said he was buying more... which... was...a... LIE.
Here is what President Bush said: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
I find it pretty sad that you are still blindly claiming that it was a "lie". Try thinking for yourself once in a while instead of following the Bush-hating sheep.
Its pretty clear that you are not actually arguing about "Republicans". Instead, you are arguing about a cartoon characature of what you think those rascally Republicans are.
Although Iran has been found in non-compliance with some aspects of its IAEA safeguards obligations, Iran has not been in breach of its obligations under the terms of the NPT.
The NPT requires compliance with an acceptable safeguard agreement. Being in violation of your negotiated safeguard agreement is a direct violation of the NPT. You cannot seperate the two. From the Sept 2005 IAEA Governors report that I linked to above (emphasis mine):
1. Finds that Iran's many failures and breaches of its obligations to comply with its NPT Safeguards Agreement, as detailed in GOV/2003/75, constitute non compliance in the context of Article XII.C of the Agency's Statute;
The Security Council can demand anything it likes, but that has little to do with the NPT.
Again, from the Sept 2005 IAEA report:
2. Finds also that the history of concealment of Iran's nuclear activities referred to in the Director General's report, the nature of these activities, issues brought to light in the course of the Agency's verification of declarations made by Iran since September 2002 and the resulting absence of confidence that Iran's nuclear programme is exclusively for peaceful purposes have given rise to questions that are within the competence of the Security Council, as the organ bearing the main responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security;
This has everything to do with the Security Council because the IAEA referred it there.
Try not to confuse non-compliance with the actual requirements of the NPT with non-compliance with a safeguards agreement due to a "failure to report".
The actual requirements of the NPT require compliance with the safeguards agreement, so I'm not sure where you are going with this.
None of these resolutions say that the big 5 will nuke anyone who attacks a non-nuclear weapons state and they certainly do not say that they must keep nuclear weapons permanently for that purpose. The clear NPT obligations to disarm stand.
That is a pretty obtuse reading of the resolutions. Do you really think that the non-nuclear states were seeking non-nuclear security assurances from the big 5 in the face of nuclear aggression? Of course not- that does them no good. The only real deterrent to nuclear aggression is the prospect of a nuclear counter-attack. The language in the statements released by the US, Britian, and Soviet Union that accompanied Resolution 255 make it clear that they were providing the security assurances of their own nuclear arsenals to the non-nuclear states, and this was the premise that the non-nuclear states accepted when they signed the NPT a month later.
And there is no clear NPT obligation to disarm. The goals of the NPT were to stop nuclear weapon proliferation and work towards conditions where nations could start to disarm. Actual disarmament would obviously require further treaties (which don't exist yet).
Which resolution is that? Can you provide a reference? I am fairly certain no such directive exists since it would be completely at odds with the NPT.
Sure. The relevant resolutions are Resolution 255 in June, 1968, and Resolution 984 in April 1995. Resolution 255 came about because non-nuclear states did not want to sign the NPT without any security assurances. In response, the USA, Britian, and the Soviet Union drafted resolution 255 along with individual statements of their security assurances to non-nuclear states (these are referenced in paragraph 2 of the resolution). The US in particular gave is assurance to protect non-nuclear states that sign the treaty, and vowed that it would only use nuclear weapons to defend itself or any country that it had given a security committment to (which now included those non-nuclear states). The result is clear- non-nuclear signatories were promised the protection of the United State's nuclear arsenal. Without these statements and resolution 255, there would have been very few signatures when the treaty opened the next month.
These assurances were reiterated in 1995 with Resolution 984, and this time all 5 nuclear states gave statements of assurance to non-nuclear states.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed it is. My last trip there was so bad that I am reluctant to ever go back. It wasn't just seeing poop and piss on the streets- it was seeing people pooping and pissing on the streets in plain view. My wife and I had to step over a frothy stream of piss on the sidewalk from a woman squatting against a wall 5 feet from me near the trolly stop while staring at me with her pants around her ankles.
Google and Amazon both say its negligible.
http://www.businessinsider.com...
Here you go: 181 pages of testimony that the Grand Jury heard.
https://cbsstlouis.files.wordp...
I submit to you that you do not know what happened. Don't feel bad- very few people outside of the 12 members of the Grand Jury have heard all of known facts of the case. I certainly don't know what happened.
But please keep this in mind. Things that you accept as fact are not really facts. Case in point: your assumption that Brown had surrendered. Some of the sworn testimony that was released tonight following the prosecutor's press conference indicates that Brown had not surrendered, and in fact was charging the police officer "like a football player" with his head down and fists clenched. And at the same time, as the prosecutor detailed in his press conference, much of the early eye witness accounts that indicated that Brown had surrendered did not hold up under further scrutiny.
As I said, I don't know what happened, but I think this is enough to move the narrative that Brown had surrendered out of the "fact" category.
I have experimented with several CFL flood lights for my porch. When it is cold outside, the best CFLs I have tried take 2-3 minutes to get bright. For the first 30 seconds its an unusable purple glow.
Do you think it is in the purview or expertise of the Federal government to tell private business what products they must offer?
Sales tax laws are not only at the state level, but each county and city as well. When you build a B&M store, you know what tax jurisdiction that store is in. An online retailer doesn't have that luxury and has to know the nuances of thousands of different and constantly changing tax codes.
Its quite a bit more complicated than that. Each state has different sales tax rates. So do many counties. So do many cities within those counties. And at each level, the taxes are applied differently to different products. In some areas, you don't pay sales tax on unprepared food. In other areas, this extends to most daily personal needs. And all of this is subject to the frequent changes from politicians and voters.
Figuring out an accurate sales tax rate for product X shipped to a particular address is a rather tricky problem.
It will never be worthless. The US Treasury Dept only accepts US dollars for tax payments, so we need to have dollars to pay our taxes, or we go to jail.
Except, of course, that nagging fact that Dell did decide to sell AMD processors and Intel continued to sell CPUs to Dell and provide volume rebates. Forced, eh?
What could possibly go wrong?
AMD was very open that they were capacity constrained during the time in question- they were selling everything that they could manage to manufacture. They made a few feeble attempts to increase their capacity, like the whole UMC debacle. But in the end, the limits on AMD's success were all self-imposed by crappy management. At its heart, the semiconductor industry is about manufacturing, and whoever can make the most chips with the highest yields will win. AMD still doesn't understand that.
Fab capacity more than helps- its main factor in the success of a semiconductor company! AMD was self-admittedly fab constrained for the entire period when they had a performance advantage over Intel. They were selling every chip that they made! The limits on their success during this period had nothing to do with what Intel did or didn't do- AMD did as good as they could have given their anemic manufacturing capabilities.
You can't blame Intel for AMD's crappy manufacturing history. AMD made several very public missteps with regard to their Fabs, ranging from high profile delays in opening new Fabs to that whole UMC debacle (where Hector Ruiz proudly declared that AMD no longer had to build any Fabs anymore only to see the deal fall through a year later). You can't blame that on Intel.
Funny. QPI was not removed or replaced by DMI in any sense of the word. In fact, DMI has existed for at least the last 5 generations of chipsets from Intel. On last year's Nehalem release, QPI connected the CPU with their "IOH" called Tylersburg. Tylersburg was then connected to the ICH with DMI. It was a 3 chip solution. With Lynnfield, the CPU and IOH have been combined to a single chip. The QPI connection still exists, its just internal to the (now combined) chip. Almost everything that used to be north of DMI is still north of it (including PCIe graphics, memory, etc), and everything that used to be south of it is still south (like USB and SATA).
Actually, thats what I said, not the person you are responding to, and your bizarre counter-example doesn't make any sense (even in context).
I don't think it is corrupt for me to have the right to exercise some control over the works that I invest my resources in to create. This control doesn't even need to be to generate profits (look at the GPL, for instance, whose entire existence is based on the so-called "corrupt" concept of copyrights).
I do think it would be corrupt for somebody else to be able to take those works that I created and do whatever they want with them- even at my expense- with no recourse. But, oh, I forgot, information needs to be freeeeeeee, man!
No, copyright is not corruption. Like anything else, it is susceptible to corruption, but the concept itself is not corrupt. Instead, it is intended to limit truly corrupt practices, like attempting to unfairly profit from somebody else's hard work.
If there is one thing that we humans have demonstrated in our existence, it is that we are adapt to the constant changes to our environment. Do you really think that we would just sit in a paralyzed fear if the earth warmed to dangerous levels?
Good grief. If people misunderstand basic economic indicators as badly as you have, it is no wonder that they are so pessimistic about the current economy.
I assume you are basing your comment on todays release of the Manufacturing Index by the Institute for Supply Management because of this statement in the release:
"New orders have contracted for 13 consecutive months, and are at the lowest level on record going back to January 1948."
That is the index for new orders- not the overall index for manufacturing. That overall manufacturing index is at 32.4%, which is a horribly low number, but not as bad as the recession in 1980. And none of these indexes describe an absolute level of manufacturing activity like you seem to think. The indexes are derived through surveying manufacturers and asking them if they expect to expand or contract their activity levels in the next quarter. An index of 32.4% means that almost one third of the manufacturers surveyed still expect to see some expansion. It has nothing to do with 60 years of growth.
I've learned to lower my expectations for honest reporting of the economy- especially when current political leaders are unpopular. Just this morning in the local news one of their headlines was that 1 in 5 local businesses were planning on laying off employees this year. The article was full of doom and gloom about unemployment and the economy, but buried at the very end they mentioned that "only" 16% of businesses planned to hire new employees during that same timeframe- almost the same % as were planning on laying off employees. Good grief.
Central? He never even mentioned it! Don't believe me? Here is the text of his presentation.
You have formed a strong opinion on a "stupid war" that you clearly know nothing about. Again, sad.
Well, thats exactly why the claims that he was looking for uranium in Africa were never central to the intelligence agencies assessment that he was trying to develop a nuclear weapon.
The reports that I read about it indicated that he wanted a supply that was outside the knowledge and control of the IAEA. That 550 tons of yellowcake that everybody knew that he had was sealed off and monitored by the IAEA.
Here is what President Bush said: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
Given that:
I find it pretty sad that you are still blindly claiming that it was a "lie". Try thinking for yourself once in a while instead of following the Bush-hating sheep.
Its pretty clear that you are not actually arguing about "Republicans". Instead, you are arguing about a cartoon characature of what you think those rascally Republicans are.
The NPT requires compliance with an acceptable safeguard agreement. Being in violation of your negotiated safeguard agreement is a direct violation of the NPT. You cannot seperate the two. From the Sept 2005 IAEA Governors report that I linked to above (emphasis mine):
The Security Council can demand anything it likes, but that has little to do with the NPT.
Again, from the Sept 2005 IAEA report:This has everything to do with the Security Council because the IAEA referred it there.
Try not to confuse non-compliance with the actual requirements of the NPT with non-compliance with a safeguards agreement due to a "failure to report".
The actual requirements of the NPT require compliance with the safeguards agreement, so I'm not sure where you are going with this.
And there is no clear NPT obligation to disarm. The goals of the NPT were to stop nuclear weapon proliferation and work towards conditions where nations could start to disarm. Actual disarmament would obviously require further treaties (which don't exist yet).
These assurances were reiterated in 1995 with Resolution 984, and this time all 5 nuclear states gave statements of assurance to non-nuclear states.