That's the first thing that came to my mind when I saw this happen: someone is going to get fired over this... So, who got fired?
Presumably the person that receives the big end-of-year bonus when everything goes well?
They probably get a higher end-of-year bonus for resolving the problem. Upper level compensation works in mysterious ways - plenty of CEOs manage to get guaranteed bonuses that are completely detached from company performance.
Hooray, let's rally the resistance fighters in Phoenix!
Oh, wait, does Phoenix have an international airport? Because apparently that can count as a border, too.
Has this arbitrary bullshit of a definition with 100 miles been tested in supreme court?
Look at a map of the original United States, and then imagine a 100-mile zone inside those borders. It looks to me like virtually the entire country would have been within 100 miles of a border. Somehow, I doubt that those who wrote the Bill of Rights would have agreed that they didn't intend it to apply to 90% of their country.
I blame inflation.
I bet 100 miles in 2013 is worth no more than 2 miles back then.
1. Track politicians. Get a sense of who, over time, is authoring, signing on, voting for, or otherwise supporting these bills.
Not enough of those politicians face viable competition. You can shame them all you want, but if due to the masterful feat of gerrymandering they have a reliable 70%+ base in their district, there is nothing you can do to depose them.
Just for future reference... is there somewhere to get a price list on each piece of legislation. Just so we know how much they are spending every time we shoot something down (or forget to and it gets through)...
All laws should require re-confirming every 4 years or so. Once something gets on the books it is impossible to get rid of it
Automatically expiring laws would be worth somewhat less lobbying money than what they are worth now.
Now we can see who sits in the cockpit of the "invisible hand". When the people at the top of our complex financial system, with the trust and responsibility placed on them to safeguard the well-being of the whole community...
The mechanism operates just as intended. Bankers are not really there to "safeguard" our community and it is foolish to expect them to do so. If they are punished for bad behavior, they will (mostly) stop behaving badly. If they are rewarded for bad behavior, they will behave worse and worse until they are punished
Even if they aren't sociopaths, that is a normal reaction.
To be frank, deregulation has started in the 80s, with Reagan, Thatcher in the UK, and then continued with Bush senior and Clinton.... Obviously lessons are quickly forgotten when a lot of money are involved.
Deregulation is a secondary issue. *Something* done in 2008 must have still been illegal, but no one is even hinting at trying to prosecute. Hell, look at HSBC that got away with a fine for *blatantly* illegal activities just a few weeks ago.
Laws (and enacting new laws) are useless if they are not being enforced.
It's not the 90's anymore... you can load a page that's connected to dozens of different services that are almost completely independent of each other and the page you're on.
Yes, but do we have to?
Most of those websites look crippled until the last of these dozen services finally loads 3 minutes later. Blockbuster.com used to hang (unresponsive) for about 30 seconds while the browser said "contacting adserve...fb.com".
That's fine and dandy as long as they can guarantee that in case of an error they under-count rather than over-count.
Most ISPs count traffic before the restriction of your slow connection, therefore packet loss and re-transmits get counted against you
And that's the problem. A combination of "black box" meter and a claim that "measuring bandwidth exactly is hard" cannot be allowed. They should have to chose one out of two.
As much as I hate that narcissistic slacker, it's not all Obama's fault. It's a powerful central government that has a limitless appetite for power, so both Democrats and Republicans are to blame
Oh yes it is!
Obama may not have invented drones, but he ramped up their use (Bush never dreamed of using drones so much and has also not quite dared to assassinate people so very brazenly and openly)
And then Obama is the one who DECIDES on the "kill list" candidates. He is literally the life/death decider. Once he picks someone from the list, drones will target that person for a kill and there is no option to appeal the decision or even surrender.
This is the one case where you cannot just blame it on Democrats/Republicans. It is pretty much Obama's fault (the rest of the fault lies with spineless Congress that allows this to go on).
Impeachment can only happen if a law has been broken, and US law explicitly grants those rights.
Targeting people (US citizens or not) for drone assassination is only legal based on a secret legal memorandum. As in, they wrote the legal explanation on a piece of paper and put it somewhere safe, where no one can read it.
Kafka (and possibly Joseph Heller) must be spinning in his grave and preparing to sue for copyright infringement.
For instance, divide their income by the number of full-time employees they have (averaged over the year, not just on a particular date), and determine their tax rate based on that metric.
Don't you know that many profitable corporations have NO INCOME to divide?
That's the problem we need to solve.
Priorities. Poor people are used to walking. Sometimes I would walk 14km just to go to the mall, sometimes 20-30km to get home from a party.
Some people have children to get back to. It is not just the matter of not willing to walk 10-20km, but the lack of spare time to do so. Same with owning a car -- needing to get back home and/or to the 2nd job quickly enough is a must for many people.
Car ownership is not really a luxury. I am quite happy to get along without a car nowdays, but I live in a major US city with decent public transport.
Sure, poor people with cars and laptops.... When I got my first part time minimum wage job (in Vancouver)
In US, one usually has to have a car if they are to hold a job. Public transport is a joke in most locations. That may not be so in Vancouver - I don't know.
The minimum wage in Vancouver is currently $10.25 ($10.28 US) and the federal minimal wage in United States is $7.25. I can't speak about your circumstances, but currently there is a 40%+ gap between those two.
"A laptop" can cost any amount of money -- even brand new anywhere between $350 and $2000, so ownership of a laptop does not contradict being poor.
I rtfa and am quite suprised by what passes for 'poor'. Seems more like people who don't know how to budget and set priorities.
Believe me, you cannot solve a poverty-line salary by budgeting or "setting priorities". Most (granted, not all) of those people are poor because they do not make enough money. Inflation-adjusted wages have been stagnant for decades.
Also, states are promoting state lottery that has about 50% effective payoff (vs casinos at 98% or so). That's gotta stop too - it is not helping.
that displays âoeTRUE" or âoeFALSEâ in real time next to video of politicians as they speak.
Few statements can be classified as "true" or "false" exactly. There is always some fraction of bullshit, but the fraction varies:
Politifact has
True --The statement is accurate and thereâ(TM)s nothing significant missing.
Mostly True -- The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information.
Half True -- The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.
Mostly False -- The statement contains some element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression.
False -- The statement is not accurate.
Pants on Fire -- The statement is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim.
It's pretty simple what you can do about it: Don't buy subsidized phones.
NO! What you mean is -- "Don't subsidize phones"
With most carriers (except T-Mobile) you pay the same price regardless. Therefore, if you do not get a subsidized phone, you still pay the phone subsidy! If you go with Verizon/AT&T/etc you might as well get a subsidized phone because you will be paying for it no matter what.
So what you meant to say is -- do not buy a subsidized phone and get an account with T-Mobile (to my knowledge, the only major carrier that will actually offer a cheaper non-subsidized plan rate).
The law would have to be reversed by Congress, and right now, even if Obama wanted to, he's going to save his political capital for those fights which advance his own goals
And there is very little reason to think Obama will want to. White House has not been taking these petitions seriously -- the "build a death star" petition got a much (much!) more thorough and well-written response than "legalize pot" or "ban TSA" petitions. This tells me quite a bit about the expected petition impact.
We should do more to keep these people in the USA when they graduate. Most want to stay.
We make it incredibly difficult for them to stay though
Graduates (particularly PhD variety) may find it difficult to find a job right away, but they have very little time before they are summarily kicked out (as the student visa expires). There is barely any grace period. And quite a few employees strongly prefer a citizen/green-card holder to avoid the expenses of filing for a visa.
Don't create more visa's, give the workers easy pathways to citizenship. Work on an H1-b for 5 years without run-ins with the law and you're a citizen.
The law of unintended consequences says that your rule will cause H1-B holders to be fired after exactly 4 years to be replaced by brand new H1-B visa holders.
Slashdot Mirror
Reminds me of an episode of the Syfy-channel show Alphas
Yeah, Superbowl reminds me of SyFy shows too.
That's the first thing that came to my mind when I saw this happen: someone is going to get fired over this... So, who got fired?
Presumably the person that receives the big end-of-year bonus when everything goes well?
They probably get a higher end-of-year bonus for resolving the problem.
Upper level compensation works in mysterious ways - plenty of CEOs manage to get guaranteed bonuses that are completely detached from company performance.
The largest city that's safe, is Phoenix.
Hooray, let's rally the resistance fighters in Phoenix!
Oh, wait, does Phoenix have an international airport? Because apparently that can count as a border, too.
Has this arbitrary bullshit of a definition with 100 miles been tested in supreme court?
Look at a map of the original United States, and then imagine a 100-mile zone inside those borders. It looks to me like virtually the entire country would have been within 100 miles of a border. Somehow, I doubt that those who wrote the Bill of Rights would have agreed that they didn't intend it to apply to 90% of their country.
I blame inflation.
I bet 100 miles in 2013 is worth no more than 2 miles back then.
1. Track politicians. Get a sense of who, over time, is authoring, signing on, voting for, or otherwise supporting these bills.
Not enough of those politicians face viable competition.
You can shame them all you want, but if due to the masterful feat of gerrymandering they have a reliable 70%+ base in their district, there is nothing you can do to depose them.
Just for future reference... is there somewhere to get a price list on each piece of legislation. Just so we know how much they are spending every time we shoot something down (or forget to and it gets through)...
All laws should require re-confirming every 4 years or so. Once something gets on the books it is impossible to get rid of it
Automatically expiring laws would be worth somewhat less lobbying money than what they are worth now.
I rent ebooks...
FTFY.
And, oddly enough, I still pay a full purchase price for that rental service (sometimes higher than the cost of a paper copy)
E-books are too expensive for not having a physical copy.
It is also not unheard of to have a higher (or very similar) price for an eBook. So sometimes they are literally too expensive.
Also, does the license automatically offer a non-DRM version if my new eReader is unable to support current format 20 years later?
Now we can see who sits in the cockpit of the "invisible hand". When the people at the top of our complex financial system, with the trust and responsibility placed on them to safeguard the well-being of the whole community...
The mechanism operates just as intended. Bankers are not really there to "safeguard" our community and it is foolish to expect them to do so.
If they are punished for bad behavior, they will (mostly) stop behaving badly. If they are rewarded for bad behavior, they will behave worse and worse until they are punished
Even if they aren't sociopaths, that is a normal reaction.
To be frank, deregulation has started in the 80s, with Reagan, Thatcher in the UK, and then continued with Bush senior and Clinton. ... Obviously lessons are quickly forgotten when a lot of money are involved.
Deregulation is a secondary issue. *Something* done in 2008 must have still been illegal, but no one is even hinting at trying to prosecute. Hell, look at HSBC that got away with a fine for *blatantly* illegal activities just a few weeks ago.
Laws (and enacting new laws) are useless if they are not being enforced.
It's not the 90's anymore... you can load a page that's connected to dozens of different services that are almost completely independent of each other and the page you're on.
Yes, but do we have to?
Most of those websites look crippled until the last of these dozen services finally loads 3 minutes later. Blockbuster.com used to hang (unresponsive) for about 30 seconds while the browser said "contacting adserve...fb.com".
Building an incorrect bandwidth meter is easy.
That's fine and dandy as long as they can guarantee that in case of an error they under-count rather than over-count.
Most ISPs count traffic before the restriction of your slow connection, therefore packet loss and re-transmits get counted against you
And that's the problem. A combination of "black box" meter and a claim that "measuring bandwidth exactly is hard" cannot be allowed. They should have to chose one out of two.
As much as I hate that narcissistic slacker, it's not all Obama's fault. It's a powerful central government that has a limitless appetite for power, so both Democrats and Republicans are to blame
Oh yes it is!
Obama may not have invented drones, but he ramped up their use (Bush never dreamed of using drones so much and has also not quite dared to assassinate people so very brazenly and openly)
And then Obama is the one who DECIDES on the "kill list" candidates. He is literally the life/death decider. Once he picks someone from the list, drones will target that person for a kill and there is no option to appeal the decision or even surrender.
This is the one case where you cannot just blame it on Democrats/Republicans. It is pretty much Obama's fault (the rest of the fault lies with spineless Congress that allows this to go on).
Impeachment can only happen if a law has been broken, and US law explicitly grants those rights.
Targeting people (US citizens or not) for drone assassination is only legal based on a secret legal memorandum. As in, they wrote the legal explanation on a piece of paper and put it somewhere safe, where no one can read it.
Kafka (and possibly Joseph Heller) must be spinning in his grave and preparing to sue for copyright infringement.
For instance, divide their income by the number of full-time employees they have (averaged over the year, not just on a particular date), and determine their tax rate based on that metric.
Don't you know that many profitable corporations have NO INCOME to divide?
That's the problem we need to solve.
Priorities. Poor people are used to walking. Sometimes I would walk 14km just to go to the mall, sometimes 20-30km to get home from a party.
Some people have children to get back to. It is not just the matter of not willing to walk 10-20km, but the lack of spare time to do so. Same with owning a car -- needing to get back home and/or to the 2nd job quickly enough is a must for many people.
Car ownership is not really a luxury. I am quite happy to get along without a car nowdays, but I live in a major US city with decent public transport.
A Big Mac is about $4. How do these kids have money for McDonald's but can't afford a low end data plan?
What makes you think that they are buying anything in McDonalds?
Also, there is a dollar menu (with cheesburgers, fries, etc.)
Sure, poor people with cars and laptops. ... When I got my first part time minimum wage job (in Vancouver)
In US, one usually has to have a car if they are to hold a job. Public transport is a joke in most locations. That may not be so in Vancouver - I don't know.
The minimum wage in Vancouver is currently $10.25 ($10.28 US) and the federal minimal wage in United States is $7.25. I can't speak about your circumstances, but currently there is a 40%+ gap between those two.
"A laptop" can cost any amount of money -- even brand new anywhere between $350 and $2000, so ownership of a laptop does not contradict being poor.
I rtfa and am quite suprised by what passes for 'poor'. Seems more like people who don't know how to budget and set priorities.
Believe me, you cannot solve a poverty-line salary by budgeting or "setting priorities". Most (granted, not all) of those people are poor because they do not make enough money. Inflation-adjusted wages have been stagnant for decades.
Also, states are promoting state lottery that has about 50% effective payoff (vs casinos at 98% or so). That's gotta stop too - it is not helping.
that displays âoeTRUE" or âoeFALSEâ in real time next to video of politicians as they speak.
Few statements can be classified as "true" or "false" exactly. There is always some fraction of bullshit, but the fraction varies:
Politifact has
True --The statement is accurate and thereâ(TM)s nothing significant missing.
Mostly True -- The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information.
Half True -- The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.
Mostly False -- The statement contains some element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression.
False -- The statement is not accurate.
Pants on Fire -- The statement is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim.
And even this may be too coarse-grained.
It's pretty simple what you can do about it: Don't buy subsidized phones.
NO! What you mean is -- "Don't subsidize phones"
With most carriers (except T-Mobile) you pay the same price regardless. Therefore, if you do not get a subsidized phone, you still pay the phone subsidy! If you go with Verizon/AT&T/etc you might as well get a subsidized phone because you will be paying for it no matter what.
So what you meant to say is -- do not buy a subsidized phone and get an account with T-Mobile (to my knowledge, the only major carrier that will actually offer a cheaper non-subsidized plan rate).
The law would have to be reversed by Congress, and right now, even if Obama wanted to, he's going to save his political capital for those fights which advance his own goals
And there is very little reason to think Obama will want to.
White House has not been taking these petitions seriously -- the "build a death star" petition got a much (much!) more thorough and well-written response than "legalize pot" or "ban TSA" petitions. This tells me quite a bit about the expected petition impact.
We should do more to keep these people in the USA when they graduate. Most want to stay.
We make it incredibly difficult for them to stay though
Graduates (particularly PhD variety) may find it difficult to find a job right away, but they have very little time before they are summarily kicked out (as the student visa expires). There is barely any grace period. And quite a few employees strongly prefer a citizen/green-card holder to avoid the expenses of filing for a visa.
Don't create more visa's, give the workers easy pathways to citizenship. Work on an H1-b for 5 years without run-ins with the law and you're a citizen.
The law of unintended consequences says that your rule will cause H1-B holders to be fired after exactly 4 years to be replaced by brand new H1-B visa holders.
I have zero sympathy for this kind of hacker, but that's a lot of time for a DDOS that apparently they didn't even execute
It is just a lesson that PayPal and others have purchased (lobbied) from our government.
These hackers should have gone into money laundering (e.g. HSBC - Too Big to Indict) instead.