First, there were MANY credible witnesses that swore they saw a missile shoot into the sky before the explosion. Of course, it turned out to be the different trajectories of the airplane pieces, but that was only figured out after a detailed analysis of radar records.
Second, prior to Flight 800 the terrorist explanation WAS more likely - I don't think a modern airliner had EVER exploded by itself before that, but there had been a few that did it with outside help.
Finally, the intelligence and police agencies were careful NOT to peg it on terrorists as the only theory. It was the news media that ran with the "Arabs and Stingers and Bombs Oh My" stories incessantly. Yeah, the government floated the idea - because it was a definite possibility. What are they going to say? "We have some eyewitness acounts of what looks like a missile launch, but we have definitely ruled out terrorist involvement."
As an aside, where are the Flight 800 "Truthers"? Why isn't anyone blathering about the conspiracy to hide the REAL reason Flight 800 blew up?
"There's a web full of anti Wal-mart sites out there that can show you just how many companies (Levi Jeans, Master Locks, Huffy Bikes, etc.) this has happened to."
I've never understood that. Last time I checked, Walmart doesn't employ armed forces to compel suppliers to sell to them. These companies agreed to sell to Walmart, because they thought it would be profitable for them, and it didn't work out. It's unfortunate when it happens, but why is it Walmart's fault? Are you seriously saying that the 3 companies you named didn't know what they were doing?
I worked for a large general contractor for many years, and I did have instances where subcontractors got in way over their heads. I helped them out as best I could, but in the end they have obligations they need to meet. A couple couldn't handle it and went belly up; some rose to the occasion and are now our "go-to" contractor for tough jobs. And I don't lose any sleep over how I handled the matter.
What you seem to be advocating is a regime where NO ONE gets to graduate to playing with the big boys, out of concern they will go under. And bigger players should have a gentleman's agreement that no one will suffer a loss or go out of business, even if they do something stupid? Welcome back to Detroit in the 70's, and Big Steel in the 80's - expensive, poor quality, wasteful crap.
There's a saying that goes "speed, quality, cost - pick any 2". But in an environment where failure is not a possibility, you get a situation where we don't get ANY of those options.
The SSN was never intended to become a national ID number, but that's what it has evolved into. It's the only piece of identification data that is part of a nationwide system and is relatively unique. Organizations just started using the number on their own as an identifier, until it became ubiquitous. There was a small effort to halt this a few years ago, but now even the Feds have admitted defeat - per the REAL ID, ALL driver's licenses (the de-facto ID card in the US) must have the SSN on them, even though logic says my old age benefits have absolutely nothing to do with my ability to drive a car.
"MapReduce is a software framework developed by Google to handle parallel computations over large data sets on cheap or unreliable clusters of computers."
It ought to be a database, but since it isn't a database, it sucks.
"the war on drugs, which emphasizes prohibition (based mostly on dogma) over harm reduction (based on empiricism--"what works")"
While I agree that the "war on drugs" is an utter failure, I do question your assertion that "harm reduction" works.
If you are talking drug *sales*, than the only harm reduction strategy would be to end the prohibition (which I'm for)
If you are talking about drug *treatment*, then I think of methadone, and that hasn't exactly done a good job. In this case, what works IS "prohibition" or "abstinence" - it is very difficult to find an addict/alcoholic that can go back to being a casual user/social drinker.
"Because the court decided the price of the book was the total cost to the customer after the book cost itself AND ground shipping were taken into account. So if the book is $7.99 and ground shipping is $2, then the total cost to the customer is $9.99. By Amazon not charging the customer that $2 they have, in the eyes of the court, discounted the book by 20%."
So are they going to start fining bookstores for not charging shipping? After all, if the "consumer price" is $9.99, buying for $7.99 at the local bookstore is a deep discount.
"look at Wal-Mart by offering lower prices for so many years has hurt local economies,"
How? Unlike the classic monopolist, Wal-Mart DOESN'T increase prices when they have driven out the competition. How does being able to get goods at a lower price hurt a local economy?
As has been pointed out, Novell isn't a creditor: they didn't loan SCO any money, but instead SCO kept Novell's money and used it to pay lawyers and salaries. Another has pointed out that bankruptcy judges have a lot of latitude. It could be argued convincingly, I believe, that McBride et al. and Boies knew or should have known that they weren't supposed to do that, and so they could be ordered to "return" the money to SCO so SCO can fulfill it's obligation to Novell.
Don't get me wrong - I agree that it will probably never happen. But whatever opinion I had of Boies after the Microsoft case has been totally wiped away by this case and Gore v. Bush.
No, really. The Boies law firm representing SCO is being compensated by effectively taking part ownership in SCO. Having done that, should they not be liable for SCO's debts?
My contention for a while has been that, in taking compensation from SCO in terms of stock and shares, Boies has abdicated it's duty as an officer of the court. In a contingency compensation arrangement, the law firm gets paid when they win the case. But in this situation, they only get paid if SCO stock stays high, so their litigation goals are different than just winning.
I think they should be made to experience the full consequences of their agreement.
In response: "1. Microsoft must have no mechanism for tracking work order/help requests. Come on. Every manager has daily/weekly/monthly reports that show the number of requests opened/closed/carried over and it flags old requests, and it sorts by age, so the oldest issue shows up at the top of the list. A manager would have seen this."
You don't know any managers that don't read their reports? What fantasy company do you work at - I need to send in my resume.
"2. When the help desk guy was assigned to make the followup call, he didn't notice and find it odd that the original call came in 10 years ago? He didn't call his supervisor over and say, "hey I think somebody made a mistake here! Maybe we should just close this out."
You don't know any support personnel who are mindless drones? See response to #1 above re. "fantasy company"
"3. Somebody has the same phone number of 10 years."
Phone number portability, dude - you can keep your number forever. Oh, yeah - there are still folks that work and/or live at the same place for a long time. Rarer, sure, but they are still around.
"Imo, most americans would refuse if asked to kill and butcher a cow or a pig in order to cook and eat it, yet they wouldn't hesitate to order up some baby back ribs or a burger, not thinking twice about where the food came from."
That is correct, but only in the most limited sense. Most American would refuse to harvest and grind the wheat to make their bread - class consciousness and squeamishness has nothing to do with morality.
I spent some years growing and tending a medium size rose garden, and pests are always a problem. The Usenet group on roses had a running flame war about deer, divided between the "Kill 'em all - let Gaia sort 'em out" faction and the "Only subhuman monsters would kill such a pretty/majestic/fluffy animal" sort. One of the most vocal of the latter group also would post on other pests, and her favorite method for dealing with caterpillars was to pick them off by hand and pinch them in 2 between her fingers. Now, what was her moral justification for protecting one animal and inflicting horrible cruelty on another? I proposed that it was simply emotional - one is cute and another is not. Whereas I'm the opposite - blowing away Bambi is well withing my capability, but caterpillars just skeeve me out. Strictly emotional.
And another thing - ask the Americans who won't kill and butcher their own meat AFTER they have gone hungry for a while. Remember "Rabbits: Pets or Food"?
"A plant clipping will naturally re-grow, you don't really need to do much with it, because plants have evolved to propagate this way. Put the damned thing in water, and it grows. Hell, it's not even a clone, it's the same original plant essentially. We're cool with that."
That is almost wholly incorrect. While there may be a few species that will sprout from a branch or leaf that falls to the ground, the balance of the plant world will NOT reproduce that way without human intervention. Cloning via cutting can be a very labor intensive process, involving processed rooting hormones, growing media that don't exist in nature, and creating artificial environments where a mature plant would die. Even just sticking a cutting into the ground and watering it is an artificial process, unless trees suddenly evolve branch tips with weighted soil penetrators and a water bladder.
The populace accepts cloned plants not because it is somehow natural, but because: a) It's been practiced for hundreds of years, so we got used to it before there were labeling rules - or a consumer movement for that matter. b) It isn't CALLED cloning in the vernacular
Are you dense? There ALREADY ARE 50 state Departments of Education setting standards. The Federal Department has not added one whit of value to the education process in America. For one thing, they don't even set the standard you say you want! Under NCLB, the *state* sets the standards, and they get money as long as they live up to their own goals.
Are you not even aware that you are subject to 2 separate governments, State and Federal? Maybe the standards for HS graduation were too low in your *state* when you went to school; perhaps that's why you think the Feds will come to everyone's rescue. Good luck with that.
You are talking about the FEDERAL Department of Education, right? The most "tits on a boar" useless department ever?
But besides that, no, I don't have a problem with you teaching your kid that the elements are Earth, Air, Fire, and Water; or that the Universe is 6000 years old, or that he farts daisies. When your kid meets my kid in the job market, you get to reap what you sow. And if your kid turns to violence because he can't get a job, he gets jailed for the violence, not put on welfare.
Is my world going to come to pass? Probably not. Is it scary? Yeah, for many. But your world, where the Feds "care" for us at the expense of free opinion and dissent, is pretty scary, too. And I can see that one coming dead ahead.
"I can't help but suspect that the whole low morale issue is created by those in the office feeling that they're not being treated so well as those who get to work from home in their pyjamas, and, as a result, resenting that they have to be in the office."
I think it's a little more complex than that. There's a guy in the Purchasing department who handles almost all my contracts. He telecommutes 2 days/week and his schedule seems kind of random. But since he forwards his phone and responds to emails, it's pretty transparent - until I need him to actually DO something. See, he doesn't take all of his office home with him, just the computer. So if I have something urgent come up, he can't help me. Period.
So now, not only am I irritated and delayed, but the guy that sits across from him in the office is pissed. Why, you ask? Because if it can't wait the until the first guy gets back, I go upstairs and drop it on his coworkers desk. So now his coworker is doing his job.
Is it supposed to work that way? No. Does it work that way in real life? Yes. And isn't that the root cause of stress - that things don't work the way they are supposed to?
I think the director backed himself into a corner by making the Dark Seekers more animalistic. In "Omega Man", the whole second half of the movie was about Heston interacting with articulate characters. But once Smith meets the zombies in "I Am Legend", there's really nowhere for it to go except violence and explosions. I mean, an extra 5 minutes with the captive zombie coming out of her state and being coherent would have added a whole dimension the directors just flushed down the action movie commode.
"4. New Marine units composed of the Islamic extremists worst nightmare: superbutch lesbians locked into eternal PMS synchronization. Name? The Crimson Tide."
But since they are only really effective for 1 week/month, you will need Crimson Tide Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta. House them separately and deploy them in rotation. 24/7/365 PMS goodness.
"Regardless of his own views on race, Ron Paul is the hated candidate of just about everyone in the government. This is because Ron Paul's anti-Federalist agenda would go so far as to gut the governments's ability to clamp down on any groups it doesn't like, right or left."
Fixed that for you. "Society" can clamp down on radical groups just fine. I don't want the GOVERNMENT clamping down on anybody because of what they say, radical left or right.
Slashdot Mirror
Because when the cheap computers come with Vista preloaded, it will cost MORE to go to XP. They will want it because it is cheaper in the short term.
A little bit of perspective here.
First, there were MANY credible witnesses that swore they saw a missile shoot into the sky before the explosion. Of course, it turned out to be the different trajectories of the airplane pieces, but that was only figured out after a detailed analysis of radar records.
Second, prior to Flight 800 the terrorist explanation WAS more likely - I don't think a modern airliner had EVER exploded by itself before that, but there had been a few that did it with outside help.
Finally, the intelligence and police agencies were careful NOT to peg it on terrorists as the only theory. It was the news media that ran with the "Arabs and Stingers and Bombs Oh My" stories incessantly. Yeah, the government floated the idea - because it was a definite possibility. What are they going to say? "We have some eyewitness acounts of what looks like a missile launch, but we have definitely ruled out terrorist involvement."
As an aside, where are the Flight 800 "Truthers"? Why isn't anyone blathering about the conspiracy to hide the REAL reason Flight 800 blew up?
"There's a web full of anti Wal-mart sites out there that can show you just how many companies (Levi Jeans, Master Locks, Huffy Bikes, etc.) this has happened to."
I've never understood that. Last time I checked, Walmart doesn't employ armed forces to compel suppliers to sell to them. These companies agreed to sell to Walmart, because they thought it would be profitable for them, and it didn't work out. It's unfortunate when it happens, but why is it Walmart's fault? Are you seriously saying that the 3 companies you named didn't know what they were doing?
I worked for a large general contractor for many years, and I did have instances where subcontractors got in way over their heads. I helped them out as best I could, but in the end they have obligations they need to meet. A couple couldn't handle it and went belly up; some rose to the occasion and are now our "go-to" contractor for tough jobs. And I don't lose any sleep over how I handled the matter.
What you seem to be advocating is a regime where NO ONE gets to graduate to playing with the big boys, out of concern they will go under. And bigger players should have a gentleman's agreement that no one will suffer a loss or go out of business, even if they do something stupid? Welcome back to Detroit in the 70's, and Big Steel in the 80's - expensive, poor quality, wasteful crap.
There's a saying that goes "speed, quality, cost - pick any 2". But in an environment where failure is not a possibility, you get a situation where we don't get ANY of those options.
The SSN was never intended to become a national ID number, but that's what it has evolved into. It's the only piece of identification data that is part of a nationwide system and is relatively unique. Organizations just started using the number on their own as an identifier, until it became ubiquitous. There was a small effort to halt this a few years ago, but now even the Feds have admitted defeat - per the REAL ID, ALL driver's licenses (the de-facto ID card in the US) must have the SSN on them, even though logic says my old age benefits have absolutely nothing to do with my ability to drive a car.
"MapReduce is a software framework developed by Google to handle parallel computations over large data sets on cheap or unreliable clusters of computers."
It ought to be a database, but since it isn't a database, it sucks.
"the war on drugs, which emphasizes prohibition (based mostly on dogma) over harm reduction (based on empiricism--"what works")"
While I agree that the "war on drugs" is an utter failure, I do question your assertion that "harm reduction" works.
If you are talking drug *sales*, than the only harm reduction strategy would be to end the prohibition (which I'm for)
If you are talking about drug *treatment*, then I think of methadone, and that hasn't exactly done a good job. In this case, what works IS "prohibition" or "abstinence" - it is very difficult to find an addict/alcoholic that can go back to being a casual user/social drinker.
and see if it is filled with solid rocket fuel.
"you force them to only buy from you by offering a low price"
I guess that really summarizes it all, doesn't it?
"Because the court decided the price of the book was the total cost to the customer after the book cost itself AND ground shipping were taken into account. So if the book is $7.99 and ground shipping is $2, then the total cost to the customer is $9.99. By Amazon not charging the customer that $2 they have, in the eyes of the court, discounted the book by 20%."
So are they going to start fining bookstores for not charging shipping? After all, if the "consumer price" is $9.99, buying for $7.99 at the local bookstore is a deep discount.
"look at Wal-Mart by offering lower prices for so many years has hurt local economies,"
How? Unlike the classic monopolist, Wal-Mart DOESN'T increase prices when they have driven out the competition. How does being able to get goods at a lower price hurt a local economy?
As has been pointed out, Novell isn't a creditor: they didn't loan SCO any money, but instead SCO kept Novell's money and used it to pay lawyers and salaries. Another has pointed out that bankruptcy judges have a lot of latitude. It could be argued convincingly, I believe, that McBride et al. and Boies knew or should have known that they weren't supposed to do that, and so they could be ordered to "return" the money to SCO so SCO can fulfill it's obligation to Novell.
Don't get me wrong - I agree that it will probably never happen. But whatever opinion I had of Boies after the Microsoft case has been totally wiped away by this case and Gore v. Bush.
True, but the law firm is a *partnership*, where the partners ARE liable - witness the Anderson/Enron debacle.
I'll admit that I'm not sure what the actual arrangement of Boies's ownership is, but would not that be grounds for discovery?
No, really. The Boies law firm representing SCO is being compensated by effectively taking part ownership in SCO. Having done that, should they not be liable for SCO's debts?
My contention for a while has been that, in taking compensation from SCO in terms of stock and shares, Boies has abdicated it's duty as an officer of the court. In a contingency compensation arrangement, the law firm gets paid when they win the case. But in this situation, they only get paid if SCO stock stays high, so their litigation goals are different than just winning.
I think they should be made to experience the full consequences of their agreement.
In response:
"1. Microsoft must have no mechanism for tracking work order/help requests. Come on. Every manager has daily/weekly/monthly reports that show the number of requests opened/closed/carried over and it flags old requests, and it sorts by age, so the oldest issue shows up at the top of the list. A manager would have seen this."
You don't know any managers that don't read their reports? What fantasy company do you work at - I need to send in my resume.
"2. When the help desk guy was assigned to make the followup call, he didn't notice and find it odd that the original call came in 10 years ago? He didn't call his supervisor over and say, "hey I think somebody made a mistake here! Maybe we should just close this out."
You don't know any support personnel who are mindless drones? See response to #1 above re. "fantasy company"
"3. Somebody has the same phone number of 10 years."
Phone number portability, dude - you can keep your number forever. Oh, yeah - there are still folks that work and/or live at the same place for a long time. Rarer, sure, but they are still around.
Microsoft offers support on their products? When did this start?
"Imo, most americans would refuse if asked to kill and butcher a cow or a pig in order to cook and eat it, yet they wouldn't hesitate to order up some baby back ribs or a burger, not thinking twice about where the food came from."
That is correct, but only in the most limited sense. Most American would refuse to harvest and grind the wheat to make their bread - class consciousness and squeamishness has nothing to do with morality.
I spent some years growing and tending a medium size rose garden, and pests are always a problem. The Usenet group on roses had a running flame war about deer, divided between the "Kill 'em all - let Gaia sort 'em out" faction and the "Only subhuman monsters would kill such a pretty/majestic/fluffy animal" sort. One of the most vocal of the latter group also would post on other pests, and her favorite method for dealing with caterpillars was to pick them off by hand and pinch them in 2 between her fingers. Now, what was her moral justification for protecting one animal and inflicting horrible cruelty on another? I proposed that it was simply emotional - one is cute and another is not. Whereas I'm the opposite - blowing away Bambi is well withing my capability, but caterpillars just skeeve me out. Strictly emotional.
And another thing - ask the Americans who won't kill and butcher their own meat AFTER they have gone hungry for a while. Remember "Rabbits: Pets or Food"?
"as intelligent as mammals,"
Given some of the comments around here, the chickens are aiming WAYYY too low.
"A plant clipping will naturally re-grow, you don't really need to do much with it, because plants have evolved to propagate this way. Put the damned thing in water, and it grows. Hell, it's not even a clone, it's the same original plant essentially. We're cool with that."
That is almost wholly incorrect. While there may be a few species that will sprout from a branch or leaf that falls to the ground, the balance of the plant world will NOT reproduce that way without human intervention. Cloning via cutting can be a very labor intensive process, involving processed rooting hormones, growing media that don't exist in nature, and creating artificial environments where a mature plant would die. Even just sticking a cutting into the ground and watering it is an artificial process, unless trees suddenly evolve branch tips with weighted soil penetrators and a water bladder.
The populace accepts cloned plants not because it is somehow natural, but because:
a) It's been practiced for hundreds of years, so we got used to it before there were labeling rules - or a consumer movement for that matter.
b) It isn't CALLED cloning in the vernacular
Are you dense? There ALREADY ARE 50 state Departments of Education setting standards. The Federal Department has not added one whit of value to the education process in America. For one thing, they don't even set the standard you say you want! Under NCLB, the *state* sets the standards, and they get money as long as they live up to their own goals.
Are you not even aware that you are subject to 2 separate governments, State and Federal? Maybe the standards for HS graduation were too low in your *state* when you went to school; perhaps that's why you think the Feds will come to everyone's rescue. Good luck with that.
You are talking about the FEDERAL Department of Education, right? The most "tits on a boar" useless department ever?
But besides that, no, I don't have a problem with you teaching your kid that the elements are Earth, Air, Fire, and Water; or that the Universe is 6000 years old, or that he farts daisies. When your kid meets my kid in the job market, you get to reap what you sow. And if your kid turns to violence because he can't get a job, he gets jailed for the violence, not put on welfare.
Is my world going to come to pass? Probably not. Is it scary? Yeah, for many. But your world, where the Feds "care" for us at the expense of free opinion and dissent, is pretty scary, too. And I can see that one coming dead ahead.
"I can't help but suspect that the whole low morale issue is created by those in the office feeling that they're not being treated so well as those who get to work from home in their pyjamas, and, as a result, resenting that they have to be in the office."
I think it's a little more complex than that. There's a guy in the Purchasing department who handles almost all my contracts. He telecommutes 2 days/week and his schedule seems kind of random. But since he forwards his phone and responds to emails, it's pretty transparent - until I need him to actually DO something. See, he doesn't take all of his office home with him, just the computer. So if I have something urgent come up, he can't help me. Period.
So now, not only am I irritated and delayed, but the guy that sits across from him in the office is pissed. Why, you ask? Because if it can't wait the until the first guy gets back, I go upstairs and drop it on his coworkers desk. So now his coworker is doing his job.
Is it supposed to work that way? No. Does it work that way in real life? Yes. And isn't that the root cause of stress - that things don't work the way they are supposed to?
I think the director backed himself into a corner by making the Dark Seekers more animalistic. In "Omega Man", the whole second half of the movie was about Heston interacting with articulate characters. But once Smith meets the zombies in "I Am Legend", there's really nowhere for it to go except violence and explosions. I mean, an extra 5 minutes with the captive zombie coming out of her state and being coherent would have added a whole dimension the directors just flushed down the action movie commode.
Add to that the really-fast-moving "I Am Legend" zombies. Say what you will about the movie; those bastards MOVED.
"4. New Marine units composed of the Islamic extremists worst nightmare: superbutch lesbians locked into eternal PMS synchronization. Name? The Crimson Tide."
But since they are only really effective for 1 week/month, you will need Crimson Tide Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta. House them separately and deploy them in rotation. 24/7/365 PMS goodness.
"Regardless of his own views on race, Ron Paul is the hated candidate of just about everyone in the government. This is because Ron Paul's anti-Federalist agenda would go so far as to gut the governments's ability to clamp down on any groups it doesn't like, right or left."
Fixed that for you. "Society" can clamp down on radical groups just fine. I don't want the GOVERNMENT clamping down on anybody because of what they say, radical left or right.