The corp doesn't do electricity. They do water. Dams, canals, dikes, etc. The information is likely sufficiency reports that include known weaknesses of the system, such as small foundation cracks in a dam that are a potential future issue that is being monitored but has not presented sufficient information to warrant repair.
Information such as that can be used to plan and execute attacks on system weaknesses. Another example would be ultimate capacity of a dam, which is the point at which an inflow would compromise the design of the spillway and result in dam failure. If you know the precise amount of inflow required to cause failure you can more precisely target with much higher success.
Many people don't realize how destructive these systems can be if unleashed. Destroying the Hoover dam would probably kill more than a million people in the subsequent flooding as much of the LA valley was washed into the ocean.
The other aspect is that much of this information will remain useful for decades to come. Inflow failure rates used in my previous example will likely remain constant as long as the dam stands. Many of these weaknesses will never be repaired because their risks will never out weigh the costs. So in theory even 50 years from now some of that information would still be valuable in an attack scenario.
The human memory thing is why we should have moved to pass phrases a LONG time ago. You can get far more entropy with a phrase than you can ever get with a password, no matter how complex.
A simple four word phrase with capitalized words and some punctuation would easily have 4x the number of characters as that impossible to remember 15 letter password. And as you noted, 30 day changes ensure there is a date, or number that allows the use of the same password with a slight variation.
No one else is being "hurt". They are being denied access to good science. That's not the same thing. Parents have the right to deny kids access to information, it's parental prerogative and fundamental to parental rights.
Education in the US has up until recently been the jurisdiction of the local community. Federalizing education with no child left behind (NCLB) and other initiatives to force national education standards and parenting by committee are a travesty of EPIC proportions. Advocating for more of that by dictating federal involvement in what is taught is just asking for trouble.
And frankly if you thought I was saying "screw you if you're not me or mine" you didn't actually read what I wrote and implied your own meaning to my words. I've been very clear that my intent is to protect locally managed education and parental prerogative, even if that means kids grow up ignorant of science. Like you claim you experienced, I was exposed to much of that same bullshit with overt religious tampering in my education and all it did in the long run is damage my view of religion. I wasn't hurt by it, it wasn't abuse and even though I myself experienced it (and think it's a terribly bad idea) I'm not going to support attempts to tell other people what to teach their kids.
From my experience all you do when you try to prevent other people from making their kids ignorant of science is retrenchment by the parents. It needs to be handled locally, either by parents in the community opposing the standards, outside clubs, home schooling or simply setting up a charter school.
How you could draw "fine if only someone else gets hurt" from that is beyond me.
Physical abuse and denying children access to scientific information are NOT the same thing. Parents are responsible for children's learning.
I do not support the idea of a state that's responsible for the parental upbringing of every child in society. That's a dangerously slippery slope I don't want anywhere near. Parenting by committee is not a society I intend to live in.
The parents, biological or appointed guardians are responsible for raising the child. The only exception to that should be physical or mental abuse. Denying access to science or even indoctrinating into a religion is NOT abuse, it's parental prerogative. Parents have a right to turn their kids into uneducated idiots. Most of them will find out how well that strategy works later in life when their kids want nothing to do with them.
And personally, I don't appreciate your straw man attempt to equate physical abuse with preventing the teaching of science. They aren't equivalent and your attempt to equate them speaks a lot about you.
Why? It's their own kids that will suffer. If the parents want their kids to be ignorant of science let them. What they don't' realize is that in the long run it will damage religion more to conceal the truth.
I was exposed to much the same handwaving as this bill advocates, and when I was finally exposed to the truth later in life it damaged my impressions of religion, as I suspect it does with a lot of kids. Oh sure, there's the mouth breathers that will fall for the BS hook line and sinker, but their own parents want them to be ignorant of science, so what gives anyone the right to stop them?
If you don't want your kids exposed to it, put them in private school or move out of state. Education should be a local issue. I think this intelligent design ploy at K-12 education will eventually backfire but the groups pushing it won't care, they've laughed all the way to the bank.
John Galt is a character from an Ayn Rand novel that presented the Robber Baron capitalists as innocent victims of evil communists and hero's of the working man. This is the same Ayn rand that is on record as admiring the pure efficiency of a serial killer of her time along with a long string of people she admired that would probably make your skin crawl.
Randian philosophy is the basis for people that call themselves libertarians, but in fact who have more fascist leanings than true libertarianism. The adherents are often at best frat boy capitalists with no concept what capitalism is, how markets work or any sense of empathy for other people. Many of them are from the "me" generation.
Lenovo, who gets to destroy EMC's brand name and reap the profit of doing so. Duh.
Now if you are asking why EMC would agree to that it's usually some MBA that just saw the bonus he'd get for signing up for some guaranteed revenue from Lenovo. On the other hand in 6months when EMC takes the PR disaster that's inevitable they will be fuming mad.
Personally I'd support abolishing the Department of Education as long as NCLB goes with it. I concur completely on the disaster such an overreach of federal authority has created in our K-12 education.
If you could even get the law passed assume they did, there is a major project a fine issued, the utility company raises rates, when people complain they blame the law that allows them to be fined, a week later the law is revoked. In actuality any attempt to pass such a law would result in one of the largest publicity blitzes by Utility companies you'd ever have seen.
In reality any attempt to issue a fine would be litigated, the costs of the litigation would far exceed any additional costs or schedule slips. The courts are NOT friendly to perceived government bullying. Even cases where you have zero controversy such as ROW acquisition are frequently litigated. This doesn't even include things like lawsuits filed by groups like the Sierra club that lengthen schedules.
And you most certainly are Naive to think there is a solution that hasn't already been tried. The fact is you just don't understand the business or it's constraints but you feel you are qualified to make judgements about what is or isn't appropriate schedule delays. Do you often feel you are an expert in fields you have no experience in?
Fine the utility company? Lol, under what authority? Do you actually think the government can run around fining companies for made up things? Do you think a Judge wouldn't throw out any attempt or even retaliate against the government by fining the government for exceeding authority?
You have NO idea how much freeways cost to build. If you think they could build a double decker freeway for that distance for a billion dollars you've been smoking way to much crack.
Oh and BTW, when using the "Richter" scale earthquake measurement the highest value earthquake is 9.5, to exceed 9.5 the amount of energy released would turn the rocks molten. Not that I expect you to understand that given you just claimed you could build a bridge the entire distance or tunnel the 405 through the mountain for the same money.
So you hold the contractor to a schedule that says a utility line will be moved by a certain date, but the utility company doesn't get it done? If you expect that you better be prepared to pay about 100x more for road construction.
Most states have strict liquidated damages for exceeding schedule. But there are often factors beyond the control of the contractor and beyond the control of the government. When the power company fails to move the power pole that prevents the traffic shift that allows the construction to move forward you do what you have to do and stretch the schedule because you can't do jack shit to the utility company and they know it.
Settlement is easy to deal with (at a cost, there was a project with projected settlement times of around 5 years that was completed in 60 days through available mitigation measures), the project delays are often driven by the uncontrollable externals that sink every project, those being, required federal environmental documents, utility relocation and ROW acquisition. You simply can't force the electric company to relocate a power line that serves the entire LA valley in the middle of the summer. Nor can you speed up a condemnation process when there are specific time frames required by law to condemn the property of an unwilling seller. Though you hope for a smooth process, in the real world the process is often anything but smooth with no end to headaches. It also doesn't help that construction workers in California have been issued bulletproof vests in the past due to "road rage incidents".
Don't think he's an exception, half the country thinks their experts on road design/construction, even when confronted by indisputable facts that run contrary to their initial thesis they will simply reformat their premise to reach the same conclusion.
I always get a kick out of people that like the OP claim there is no basis for the cost but it's designed by registered professional engineers to standards dictated by the American Association of State and Highway Transportation Officials (AASHTO is a committee of experts in the field from state and federal government and private business). Those plans are then built by low bid contractors (often with 3+ bidders and prices that are frequently with 1-2%) operating under strict quality control guidelines with engineers supervising the installation, inspection, testing and quality assurance. And in the end the entire project is audited by both State and Federal auditors to ensure that no tax payer money was diverted or used contrary to law.
Yet, according to the OP the whole thing is horseshit and you could build roads for half the cost. That is of course if you didn't care if they lasted more than a week, nor cared at all about safety such as whether the bridges will fall down in a strong wind. That's because the OP is an absolute expert in examining his rectum visually up close and personal.
Yes roads cost a lot, and it's because they are designed to last anywhere from 20-40 years depending on pavement type. Considering the interstates were originally built in the 60's they've more than proved that the standards are adequate. But with truck weights more than 10 times larger than when the interstates were originally built it means complete reconstruction with much thicker pavements than the interstates used in the 60's. A typical interstate pavement section is over 3' thick with a foot of granular borrow, a foot of road base and a foot of concrete you aren't going to get any of that cheap.
And what happens when the lady that's running this system dies of a heart attack and the only people that even know how to use one of these computers are all retired and senile?
It's not just the machine costs, the retraining. It's what happens if the only person who truly understands the system gets hit by a bus. The hit by a bus scenario is often overlooked in small businesses. You don't just need to be able to replace the system and hardware, you need to be able to replace the people running it, without advance notice.
The only incompetence is your understanding. Out here in the real world things change in the field. That's because when the plans say install the line 1' off the sidewalk but as they start installing it they find the gas line is in that exact location they do some quick test holes and make a field change to move the wire to different spot.
This is why in civil engineering you have plans, and you have a second set of plans called As-Builts, because how it was built often has serious variations form where it actually was shown to be built. I've seen utilities on the opposite side of the street, Buried 10' deep when they are supposed to be 18 inches, I've seen them follow a relatively straight line then jog 20' off for 10' then jog right back.
See in the real world when you go to bury something you don't always know what you are going to run into. There is all kinds of stuff out there that's buried that no one knows is there and sometimes people don't even know what it is. I've stood in front of excavations staring at pipes that no one has any idea what it is, it's not on plans, city maps or even acknowledged by the dig locating service. I've also seen them run into buried rail lines, coffins and all sorts of things that would make your head spin. I've seen lines that were installed exactly as shown, but the road and homes that delineated it's location are gone because they were torn down and a shopping mall was built in their place. Real world buried utilities is very very hard and your an idiot for thinking it's easy.
Oh and $500k is CHEAP for a subsurface utility investigation on a city the size of provo.
I don't actually think our positions are that different. I had meant to mention in my post that even for all the blame I heaped on Europe for the "old" world problems America has at her feet (along with many other) the disaster we wrecked on the western hemisphere. While Europe was destroying Africa for the next hundred years we were destroying central and south American governments and subjugating their people. There are very few nations within the America's that the US didn't at one time overthrow or impose a government on. In fact I lay much of the blame for dysfunction in the western hemisphere on the US. In fact the only nation in the western hemisphere that never felt significant US meddling (Canada) is easily the most healthy country outside the US.
The point though that I wanted to make is that for all our (USA and Europe) fuckups as nation-states, Europe and the US are cut from the same cloth. Our differences are so minor that in comparison to the rest of the world we are essentially of the same viewpoint. And rather than spend our time on pathetic arguments about who is better we should be focused on what we both agree on and working with each other to see those views dominate our worldview and interaction with the world. IMO those shared views (universal human rights, freedom, democracy) trump even the most severe of our differences. Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing we shouldn't call each other out for misbehavior by our governments, we grow stronger by pointing out the failings. But the Jackasses that act like we should be enemies or one of us should be on our knees worshiping the other are fucking morons.
Governments aren't perfect, the US and Europe have far more in common than we have in conflict. It's important to remember that often governments don't even represent the majority viewpoint. Embrace our commonality and show respect for each other along with all of us shouting down the idiots that propagate the idiot views that I responded to. American's should be shouting down the Americans claiming Europe owes us for WWII, just as I think Europeans should be shouting down European idiots that would focus on how the US is nothing but evil.
You're an ass. What we did in WWII we did for ourselves. Don't you think for a fucking minute that the "Europeans" owe us a god damned thing because the American sacrifice in WWI and WWII barely pays them back for the French support during the revolutionary war. Millions of French starved and the country went bankrupt because they supported our revolution, again for purely self interested reasons, just like our own reasons during WWII.
Don't get me wrong, the asshole you're replying to is just as big of an ass. Almost every single problem area or hot spot with atrocities going on in the world today is almost directly at the feet of European meddling. From India, Pakistan and Afghanistan having bullshit borders drawn by some British general, to the creation of Israel to the havoc colonialism has wrecked on Africa. Almost every single problem in the "old" world can be traced to bullshit Europeans caused.
Sure the US has it's problems and Bush's meddling and in particular the Iraq war deserve the ridicule they often receive. But no nation in this world has clean hands with regards world relations. Even those Scandinavian countries that have done the least meddling deserve blame for standing silent while their European neighbors raped half the worlds populace.
Americans and Europeans have both fucked up at various times. Rather than confrontational bullshit about claiming one is better than the other why don't we focus on what we both agree on instead of letting our minor (and they are very minor) fucking differences dominate the conversation. We can both help each other be better but not if you jackasses keep pretending one of us is better than the other because it ain't fucking true.
IIRC total deaths were around 137 civilians (about 2/3rd of the hostages) along with all the terrorists who were killed by the breaching police force. Everyone "small" was killed by complications from the opiates, either breathing, aspirated vomit or any of the about 100 ways opiates can kill. But about 1/3rd of the casualties were normal sized men.
I wasn't implying that everyone that died did so from simply stopping breathing. Vomiting is actually quite common with overdose because the body is trying to expel the poison. In addition, higher body mass was not a guaranteed protection against death, it was a combination not only of body mass, but a dozen other factors including sensitivity to opiates all the way to proximity to the vents. People closer to the ventilation system got higher doses because they had to flood enough fentanyl into the theater to knock out the terrorists in the middle rows of the theater. Again, IIRC the terrorist leader was sitting in the middle of the middle row with his hand on the trigger of a several hundred pound bomb and he was a big dude. He was about as far from the ventilation system as you could be and he surrounded himself with hostages meaning there were people all around him breathing in the fentanyl before it got to him.
It was a bad situation, and I don't think the Russians did a terrible job either, all told there was almost 1000 lbs of explosive in the theater. That they were able to breach and kill every single terrorist without any of the bombs being detonated is an amazing feat.
There has been a lot of criticism that they didn't have enough naxolone on hand, but I don't think that is a fair criticism. It took them about 20 minutes to get enough fentanyl into the theater to knock out the central terrorists. The first people to have opiate complications did so within a minute of the gas being deployed. You've got about 5 minutes after you have a complication before your dead. That means by the time they breached there were people that were likely brain dead even if they were able to resuscitate them.
Given that they would have had 100% fatalities had even one of the linked bombs been detonated I think it's amazing they could save as many people as they did. Opiates are terrible for knocking someone out, you are far more likely to kill someone than sedate them.
The Consumer and Entertainment divisions don't make money. That is unless you mean to include Windows in that split.
Then you are stuck with questions of how to split windows between two companies when the code base for server, desktop and phone are all unified as of version 8.0.
Russia had a terrorist attack about a decade ago where Terrorists took an entire theater of people hostage. Russians pumped the theater full of Fentanyl gas (Fentanyl is a synthetic opiate, very strong, but colorless, odorless and tasteless). They did this because opiates put you to sleep rather quickly and you are often unaware it's happening.
To ensure they had enough gas in there to knock out the biggest (body mass) terrorist they basically ended up killing everyone in the theater that was under about 180lbs (more than 100 innocent people). Using opiates as knock out drugs is a good way to kill someone because if you miss dose even a little bit they stop breathing.
It's nice you found links that aren't directly from Glenn Beck but the story line you are propagating is directly from Mr. Conspiracy himself. He's tried to turn every single rumor about this into an attack on Obama, in this case being that the kid is actually involved but connected and so Obama is trying to sneak him out of the country. He doesn't need facts on his side, he relies on innuendo and people like you to propagate the falsehoods. Did you realize you just became a willing participant in a propaganda campaign by a crazy Mormon?
As the other poster said there could be a million reasons to deport him, including that when they searched his apartment they found cannabis or even that his parents asked him to come home so he doesn't get hurt by vigilantes. If I was him I'd think about leaving too, you never know when someone like Glenn Beck is going to point the mob in your direction and laugh all the way to bank when his vigilante mob murders the wrong person.
Your Naive if you think there is a soul on the board of directors that wasn't hand picked by Dell. Most boards of public companies these days are friends of the CEO (often CEO's of other companies) picked and appointed by the CEO. It one of the primary reason the entire system is gamed against the small investor (the other being institutional investors taking no active role in management or voting through the often significant stock positions they hold).
Dell has a poison pill provision. They can't stop Ichan from buying shares, but they can create so many more shares to dilute his ownership that every shareholder, including Ichan, could lose a ton of money in the process.
Though finding the other devices helps the one thing about bombs is that all the evidence survives the blast. Fingerprints, DNA, etc are fully preserved by the blast because the bomb components themselves are blown wide before there is any fire or other damage that actually destroys evidence.
The one thing that's almost guaranteed is that unless the bomb maker was VERY careful (like clean room careful) they left evidence on the bomb and their only hope of evading capture is that they have never been fingerprinted or had their DNA taken. I'd wager you are far more likely to be caught with a bomb than most other methods.
There's a darn good chance they'll catch whoever did it. But honestly my first thought with two bombs and two declared dead that the dead were the bombers.
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The corp doesn't do electricity. They do water. Dams, canals, dikes, etc. The information is likely sufficiency reports that include known weaknesses of the system, such as small foundation cracks in a dam that are a potential future issue that is being monitored but has not presented sufficient information to warrant repair.
Information such as that can be used to plan and execute attacks on system weaknesses. Another example would be ultimate capacity of a dam, which is the point at which an inflow would compromise the design of the spillway and result in dam failure. If you know the precise amount of inflow required to cause failure you can more precisely target with much higher success.
Many people don't realize how destructive these systems can be if unleashed. Destroying the Hoover dam would probably kill more than a million people in the subsequent flooding as much of the LA valley was washed into the ocean.
The other aspect is that much of this information will remain useful for decades to come. Inflow failure rates used in my previous example will likely remain constant as long as the dam stands. Many of these weaknesses will never be repaired because their risks will never out weigh the costs. So in theory even 50 years from now some of that information would still be valuable in an attack scenario.
The human memory thing is why we should have moved to pass phrases a LONG time ago. You can get far more entropy with a phrase than you can ever get with a password, no matter how complex.
A simple four word phrase with capitalized words and some punctuation would easily have 4x the number of characters as that impossible to remember 15 letter password. And as you noted, 30 day changes ensure there is a date, or number that allows the use of the same password with a slight variation.
No one else is being "hurt". They are being denied access to good science. That's not the same thing. Parents have the right to deny kids access to information, it's parental prerogative and fundamental to parental rights.
Education in the US has up until recently been the jurisdiction of the local community. Federalizing education with no child left behind (NCLB) and other initiatives to force national education standards and parenting by committee are a travesty of EPIC proportions. Advocating for more of that by dictating federal involvement in what is taught is just asking for trouble.
And frankly if you thought I was saying "screw you if you're not me or mine" you didn't actually read what I wrote and implied your own meaning to my words. I've been very clear that my intent is to protect locally managed education and parental prerogative, even if that means kids grow up ignorant of science. Like you claim you experienced, I was exposed to much of that same bullshit with overt religious tampering in my education and all it did in the long run is damage my view of religion. I wasn't hurt by it, it wasn't abuse and even though I myself experienced it (and think it's a terribly bad idea) I'm not going to support attempts to tell other people what to teach their kids.
From my experience all you do when you try to prevent other people from making their kids ignorant of science is retrenchment by the parents. It needs to be handled locally, either by parents in the community opposing the standards, outside clubs, home schooling or simply setting up a charter school.
How you could draw "fine if only someone else gets hurt" from that is beyond me.
Physical abuse and denying children access to scientific information are NOT the same thing. Parents are responsible for children's learning.
I do not support the idea of a state that's responsible for the parental upbringing of every child in society. That's a dangerously slippery slope I don't want anywhere near. Parenting by committee is not a society I intend to live in.
The parents, biological or appointed guardians are responsible for raising the child. The only exception to that should be physical or mental abuse. Denying access to science or even indoctrinating into a religion is NOT abuse, it's parental prerogative. Parents have a right to turn their kids into uneducated idiots. Most of them will find out how well that strategy works later in life when their kids want nothing to do with them.
And personally, I don't appreciate your straw man attempt to equate physical abuse with preventing the teaching of science. They aren't equivalent and your attempt to equate them speaks a lot about you.
Why? It's their own kids that will suffer. If the parents want their kids to be ignorant of science let them. What they don't' realize is that in the long run it will damage religion more to conceal the truth.
I was exposed to much the same handwaving as this bill advocates, and when I was finally exposed to the truth later in life it damaged my impressions of religion, as I suspect it does with a lot of kids. Oh sure, there's the mouth breathers that will fall for the BS hook line and sinker, but their own parents want them to be ignorant of science, so what gives anyone the right to stop them?
If you don't want your kids exposed to it, put them in private school or move out of state. Education should be a local issue. I think this intelligent design ploy at K-12 education will eventually backfire but the groups pushing it won't care, they've laughed all the way to the bank.
John Galt is a character from an Ayn Rand novel that presented the Robber Baron capitalists as innocent victims of evil communists and hero's of the working man. This is the same Ayn rand that is on record as admiring the pure efficiency of a serial killer of her time along with a long string of people she admired that would probably make your skin crawl.
Randian philosophy is the basis for people that call themselves libertarians, but in fact who have more fascist leanings than true libertarianism. The adherents are often at best frat boy capitalists with no concept what capitalism is, how markets work or any sense of empathy for other people. Many of them are from the "me" generation.
Lenovo, who gets to destroy EMC's brand name and reap the profit of doing so. Duh.
Now if you are asking why EMC would agree to that it's usually some MBA that just saw the bonus he'd get for signing up for some guaranteed revenue from Lenovo. On the other hand in 6months when EMC takes the PR disaster that's inevitable they will be fuming mad.
Personally I'd support abolishing the Department of Education as long as NCLB goes with it. I concur completely on the disaster such an overreach of federal authority has created in our K-12 education.
If you could even get the law passed assume they did, there is a major project a fine issued, the utility company raises rates, when people complain they blame the law that allows them to be fined, a week later the law is revoked. In actuality any attempt to pass such a law would result in one of the largest publicity blitzes by Utility companies you'd ever have seen.
In reality any attempt to issue a fine would be litigated, the costs of the litigation would far exceed any additional costs or schedule slips. The courts are NOT friendly to perceived government bullying. Even cases where you have zero controversy such as ROW acquisition are frequently litigated. This doesn't even include things like lawsuits filed by groups like the Sierra club that lengthen schedules.
And you most certainly are Naive to think there is a solution that hasn't already been tried. The fact is you just don't understand the business or it's constraints but you feel you are qualified to make judgements about what is or isn't appropriate schedule delays. Do you often feel you are an expert in fields you have no experience in?
Fine the utility company? Lol, under what authority?
Do you actually think the government can run around fining companies for made up things? Do you think a Judge wouldn't throw out any attempt or even retaliate against the government by fining the government for exceeding authority?
You are very naive.
You have NO idea how much freeways cost to build. If you think they could build a double decker freeway for that distance for a billion dollars you've been smoking way to much crack.
Oh and BTW, when using the "Richter" scale earthquake measurement the highest value earthquake is 9.5, to exceed 9.5 the amount of energy released would turn the rocks molten. Not that I expect you to understand that given you just claimed you could build a bridge the entire distance or tunnel the 405 through the mountain for the same money.
So you hold the contractor to a schedule that says a utility line will be moved by a certain date, but the utility company doesn't get it done? If you expect that you better be prepared to pay about 100x more for road construction.
Most states have strict liquidated damages for exceeding schedule. But there are often factors beyond the control of the contractor and beyond the control of the government. When the power company fails to move the power pole that prevents the traffic shift that allows the construction to move forward you do what you have to do and stretch the schedule because you can't do jack shit to the utility company and they know it.
Settlement is easy to deal with (at a cost, there was a project with projected settlement times of around 5 years that was completed in 60 days through available mitigation measures), the project delays are often driven by the uncontrollable externals that sink every project, those being, required federal environmental documents, utility relocation and ROW acquisition. You simply can't force the electric company to relocate a power line that serves the entire LA valley in the middle of the summer. Nor can you speed up a condemnation process when there are specific time frames required by law to condemn the property of an unwilling seller. Though you hope for a smooth process, in the real world the process is often anything but smooth with no end to headaches. It also doesn't help that construction workers in California have been issued bulletproof vests in the past due to "road rage incidents".
Don't think he's an exception, half the country thinks their experts on road design/construction, even when confronted by indisputable facts that run contrary to their initial thesis they will simply reformat their premise to reach the same conclusion.
I always get a kick out of people that like the OP claim there is no basis for the cost but it's designed by registered professional engineers to standards dictated by the American Association of State and Highway Transportation Officials (AASHTO is a committee of experts in the field from state and federal government and private business). Those plans are then built by low bid contractors (often with 3+ bidders and prices that are frequently with 1-2%) operating under strict quality control guidelines with engineers supervising the installation, inspection, testing and quality assurance. And in the end the entire project is audited by both State and Federal auditors to ensure that no tax payer money was diverted or used contrary to law.
Yet, according to the OP the whole thing is horseshit and you could build roads for half the cost. That is of course if you didn't care if they lasted more than a week, nor cared at all about safety such as whether the bridges will fall down in a strong wind. That's because the OP is an absolute expert in examining his rectum visually up close and personal.
Yes roads cost a lot, and it's because they are designed to last anywhere from 20-40 years depending on pavement type. Considering the interstates were originally built in the 60's they've more than proved that the standards are adequate. But with truck weights more than 10 times larger than when the interstates were originally built it means complete reconstruction with much thicker pavements than the interstates used in the 60's. A typical interstate pavement section is over 3' thick with a foot of granular borrow, a foot of road base and a foot of concrete you aren't going to get any of that cheap.
And what happens when the lady that's running this system dies of a heart attack and the only people that even know how to use one of these computers are all retired and senile?
It's not just the machine costs, the retraining. It's what happens if the only person who truly understands the system gets hit by a bus. The hit by a bus scenario is often overlooked in small businesses. You don't just need to be able to replace the system and hardware, you need to be able to replace the people running it, without advance notice.
The only incompetence is your understanding. Out here in the real world things change in the field. That's because when the plans say install the line 1' off the sidewalk but as they start installing it they find the gas line is in that exact location they do some quick test holes and make a field change to move the wire to different spot.
This is why in civil engineering you have plans, and you have a second set of plans called As-Builts, because how it was built often has serious variations form where it actually was shown to be built. I've seen utilities on the opposite side of the street, Buried 10' deep when they are supposed to be 18 inches, I've seen them follow a relatively straight line then jog 20' off for 10' then jog right back.
See in the real world when you go to bury something you don't always know what you are going to run into. There is all kinds of stuff out there that's buried that no one knows is there and sometimes people don't even know what it is. I've stood in front of excavations staring at pipes that no one has any idea what it is, it's not on plans, city maps or even acknowledged by the dig locating service. I've also seen them run into buried rail lines, coffins and all sorts of things that would make your head spin. I've seen lines that were installed exactly as shown, but the road and homes that delineated it's location are gone because they were torn down and a shopping mall was built in their place. Real world buried utilities is very very hard and your an idiot for thinking it's easy.
Oh and $500k is CHEAP for a subsurface utility investigation on a city the size of provo.
I don't actually think our positions are that different. I had meant to mention in my post that even for all the blame I heaped on Europe for the "old" world problems America has at her feet (along with many other) the disaster we wrecked on the western hemisphere. While Europe was destroying Africa for the next hundred years we were destroying central and south American governments and subjugating their people. There are very few nations within the America's that the US didn't at one time overthrow or impose a government on. In fact I lay much of the blame for dysfunction in the western hemisphere on the US. In fact the only nation in the western hemisphere that never felt significant US meddling (Canada) is easily the most healthy country outside the US.
The point though that I wanted to make is that for all our (USA and Europe) fuckups as nation-states, Europe and the US are cut from the same cloth. Our differences are so minor that in comparison to the rest of the world we are essentially of the same viewpoint. And rather than spend our time on pathetic arguments about who is better we should be focused on what we both agree on and working with each other to see those views dominate our worldview and interaction with the world. IMO those shared views (universal human rights, freedom, democracy) trump even the most severe of our differences. Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing we shouldn't call each other out for misbehavior by our governments, we grow stronger by pointing out the failings. But the Jackasses that act like we should be enemies or one of us should be on our knees worshiping the other are fucking morons.
Governments aren't perfect, the US and Europe have far more in common than we have in conflict. It's important to remember that often governments don't even represent the majority viewpoint. Embrace our commonality and show respect for each other along with all of us shouting down the idiots that propagate the idiot views that I responded to. American's should be shouting down the Americans claiming Europe owes us for WWII, just as I think Europeans should be shouting down European idiots that would focus on how the US is nothing but evil.
As a red blooded American let me say, FUCK YOU.
You're an ass. What we did in WWII we did for ourselves. Don't you think for a fucking minute that the "Europeans" owe us a god damned thing because the American sacrifice in WWI and WWII barely pays them back for the French support during the revolutionary war. Millions of French starved and the country went bankrupt because they supported our revolution, again for purely self interested reasons, just like our own reasons during WWII.
Don't get me wrong, the asshole you're replying to is just as big of an ass. Almost every single problem area or hot spot with atrocities going on in the world today is almost directly at the feet of European meddling. From India, Pakistan and Afghanistan having bullshit borders drawn by some British general, to the creation of Israel to the havoc colonialism has wrecked on Africa. Almost every single problem in the "old" world can be traced to bullshit Europeans caused.
Sure the US has it's problems and Bush's meddling and in particular the Iraq war deserve the ridicule they often receive. But no nation in this world has clean hands with regards world relations. Even those Scandinavian countries that have done the least meddling deserve blame for standing silent while their European neighbors raped half the worlds populace.
Americans and Europeans have both fucked up at various times. Rather than confrontational bullshit about claiming one is better than the other why don't we focus on what we both agree on instead of letting our minor (and they are very minor) fucking differences dominate the conversation. We can both help each other be better but not if you jackasses keep pretending one of us is better than the other because it ain't fucking true.
IIRC total deaths were around 137 civilians (about 2/3rd of the hostages) along with all the terrorists who were killed by the breaching police force. Everyone "small" was killed by complications from the opiates, either breathing, aspirated vomit or any of the about 100 ways opiates can kill. But about 1/3rd of the casualties were normal sized men.
I wasn't implying that everyone that died did so from simply stopping breathing. Vomiting is actually quite common with overdose because the body is trying to expel the poison. In addition, higher body mass was not a guaranteed protection against death, it was a combination not only of body mass, but a dozen other factors including sensitivity to opiates all the way to proximity to the vents. People closer to the ventilation system got higher doses because they had to flood enough fentanyl into the theater to knock out the terrorists in the middle rows of the theater. Again, IIRC the terrorist leader was sitting in the middle of the middle row with his hand on the trigger of a several hundred pound bomb and he was a big dude. He was about as far from the ventilation system as you could be and he surrounded himself with hostages meaning there were people all around him breathing in the fentanyl before it got to him.
It was a bad situation, and I don't think the Russians did a terrible job either, all told there was almost 1000 lbs of explosive in the theater. That they were able to breach and kill every single terrorist without any of the bombs being detonated is an amazing feat.
There has been a lot of criticism that they didn't have enough naxolone on hand, but I don't think that is a fair criticism. It took them about 20 minutes to get enough fentanyl into the theater to knock out the central terrorists. The first people to have opiate complications did so within a minute of the gas being deployed. You've got about 5 minutes after you have a complication before your dead. That means by the time they breached there were people that were likely brain dead even if they were able to resuscitate them.
Given that they would have had 100% fatalities had even one of the linked bombs been detonated I think it's amazing they could save as many people as they did. Opiates are terrible for knocking someone out, you are far more likely to kill someone than sedate them.
The Consumer and Entertainment divisions don't make money. That is unless you mean to include Windows in that split.
Then you are stuck with questions of how to split windows between two companies when the code base for server, desktop and phone are all unified as of version 8.0.
Russia had a terrorist attack about a decade ago where Terrorists took an entire theater of people hostage. Russians pumped the theater full of Fentanyl gas (Fentanyl is a synthetic opiate, very strong, but colorless, odorless and tasteless). They did this because opiates put you to sleep rather quickly and you are often unaware it's happening.
To ensure they had enough gas in there to knock out the biggest (body mass) terrorist they basically ended up killing everyone in the theater that was under about 180lbs (more than 100 innocent people). Using opiates as knock out drugs is a good way to kill someone because if you miss dose even a little bit they stop breathing.
It's nice you found links that aren't directly from Glenn Beck but the story line you are propagating is directly from Mr. Conspiracy himself. He's tried to turn every single rumor about this into an attack on Obama, in this case being that the kid is actually involved but connected and so Obama is trying to sneak him out of the country. He doesn't need facts on his side, he relies on innuendo and people like you to propagate the falsehoods. Did you realize you just became a willing participant in a propaganda campaign by a crazy Mormon?
As the other poster said there could be a million reasons to deport him, including that when they searched his apartment they found cannabis or even that his parents asked him to come home so he doesn't get hurt by vigilantes. If I was him I'd think about leaving too, you never know when someone like Glenn Beck is going to point the mob in your direction and laugh all the way to bank when his vigilante mob murders the wrong person.
Your Naive if you think there is a soul on the board of directors that wasn't hand picked by Dell. Most boards of public companies these days are friends of the CEO (often CEO's of other companies) picked and appointed by the CEO. It one of the primary reason the entire system is gamed against the small investor (the other being institutional investors taking no active role in management or voting through the often significant stock positions they hold).
Dell has a poison pill provision. They can't stop Ichan from buying shares, but they can create so many more shares to dilute his ownership that every shareholder, including Ichan, could lose a ton of money in the process.
Though finding the other devices helps the one thing about bombs is that all the evidence survives the blast. Fingerprints, DNA, etc are fully preserved by the blast because the bomb components themselves are blown wide before there is any fire or other damage that actually destroys evidence.
The one thing that's almost guaranteed is that unless the bomb maker was VERY careful (like clean room careful) they left evidence on the bomb and their only hope of evading capture is that they have never been fingerprinted or had their DNA taken. I'd wager you are far more likely to be caught with a bomb than most other methods.
There's a darn good chance they'll catch whoever did it. But honestly my first thought with two bombs and two declared dead that the dead were the bombers.