This is a legal term which basically means that schools have the right to act as parents while kids are within its boundaries. Generally it's been citing and upheld by the courts in cases like searches of property such as back picks and lockers without needing a warrant. There have been several cases where it has been used to limit the rights of students.
Yes I can see the argument that the school would make: a parent could demand the child's creds therefore the school, by acting in loco parentis, can demand such information. And that may very well hold up in court as a defense against the ACLU.
I think about schools today compared to when I went through. Those 5 years before me learned to shoot.22 and shotguns in the 5th grade. When I went through we still learned archery with real bows and arrows. We were even allowed to bring our own bows to school for class. My parents generation would even bring guns to school so they could go hunting after class. They didn't have school shootings.
Re:It's better than Ruby's "best practices".
on
PHP 5.4 Released
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· Score: 1
That's why I still use Perl. I've been using basically the same API script I wrote for database interactions in 2003. Yes it's procedural Perl, not OO, but as I've had to show younger programers: guess what it STILL works and it's not a lot of overhead for maintenance. I think the last major update I've done to the script was adding the ability to return data in JSON in addition to XML circa 2008 or 2009. And that work took basically two days to implement and test. Now I admit, there are some nasty elsif statements that would look much better if I moved to a switch statement, but that means it wouldn't work in Perl 5.8.x. Frankly it's not broke so....
The only reason it didn't work for Ghaddafi this time was the fact that Europe wanted to shop it's fighter planes for export markets against the US F-35. A lot of countries will be replacing F-16's in the next 15 years and this was the perfect place to showcase the Typhoon and Rafael so they could earn their "proven in combat" badge to potential buyers. Now they can go to countries and say their planes are "combat proven now" while the F-35 is still in testing.
It worked for Iran in 2008. It's going to work now for Syria unless there is a similar international movement to arm the Syrian resistance and provide air support.
He seriously looked at a Volt. 90% of the time he's not driving more than about 15 miles from his house to go the store, get something to eat, or go to the doctor's. He does drive down to the farm 4 - 5 times a year (400 mile round trip) as well as 2 driving trips/vacations. It's the trips and farms that puts the miles on the car though.
He ended up buying a Buick LaCrosse with e-assist. Why? First off he's not an early adopter. Secondly he thought the Buick had a better overall ride. Lastly, the Buick was $14,000 cheaper. He chose the Buick over another Impala because of the E-essist. The way he drives he's getting 28MPG in town and 40MPG out on the road.
Something we both feel is that GM is the one on the right track. The thing is, this isn't going to help the Volt. Where it's going to help is when the technology gets implemented in such away where you can buy Extended Range Electric versions of the Malibu, Impala, Terrain, and on down the line.
As someone mentions, the basic design concept allows most to benefit from having the all electric capability, but without the limits. If you need to go further than 35 miles you still have the gas option which the current infrastructure supports.
Back then they called it mainframes and timeshare. It's why I called this timeshare 2.0.
I like some of these services like iCloud where as a small business owner I can update my calendar on my phone and it's automatically synced with my computer and iPad. Same even with Pages now and iCloud. I like the syncing feature. But you know what else that I like: the fact that a local copy still exists on my disk drives. If I'm flying across the country I can still read and edit the local copies on the plane even without internet.
That was the major complaint I had with google app offerings. Yes they were great for sharing, but you had to worry about remembering to download a copy to your local machine.
I got the Bluetooth keyboard case from think geek. For me, my iPad has replaced my laptop. My PowerBook finally died and I went into the apple store to get a new one. Well the sales person asked me did I really need one now. The answer was not really since I have An iMac.
I goto estate sales/actions for buyouts. What I need is something small to look up pricing. Often times I only have an hour to do a bid. So I need to get a ball park quickly. My 3G iPad is perfect.
I've found an accounting app that works for me so far, I have mobile banking and credit card swiping through the iPad, and I can deposit checks less than 7500 with the camera.
If I didn't need Xcode for my mobile app I could run my entire business from my iPad and iPhone with iCloud.
Ask me next year and it migh not. I'm opening a storefront/showroom next month. I may have payroll in another year, but for now the iPad Is exactly what I need.
I went through school about 5 - 10 years before the age of ADD and ADHD. I'm sure if I was going through today they'd demand that I be on drugs. Probably largely due to the fact I was tested into the "gifted" program, but my parents opted out. Why? Because the "gifted" program was about more busy work than anything else in the lower grades and my parents figured it was better for me to get to go out and play more rather do more work. As a result I was board sometimes in normal classes. I didn't act out much or anything and my grades were top notch, but I did enjoy day dreaming and usually took a bit longer to get things done than other students because of it.
Bingo. The barcodes being scanned are outdoor and often can be in low or limited lighting conditions with dust, dirt, and speed is key. Motorola makes a pretty good ruggedized barcode scanner for the purpose that works extremely well in those conditions. If a little bit of dirt is obscuring the barcode we've found it still reads correctly 95% of the time.
However here's the difference: the USB version is about $500. The bluetooth is about $800. Multiple that over 100 - 150 devices and it adds up...
We know about the camera kit trick. But the problem with that is:
A) It requires a separate piece of equipment, easily misplaced, knocked offed, etc.
B) It works today, but Apple's been known before to kill such work arounds with software patches down the road. It's far less likely they are going to kill bluetooth on the iPad in the next 18 months...
Using memory for db cluster nodes isn't new. Teradata has been doing it for a long time now in their data warehousing. It has its advantages on large databases and you have the money to afford the nodes you need for reliability.
The problem with that fantastic android tablet hardware is that it appears to be on a 90 production schedule. I've been writing an app designed for both iOS and Android tablets. We had one client that was more intersted in the android tablets because they could get usb ports and use existing usb cabled barcode scanners.
Well of the three android tablets we bought last fall, only one is still available. We even talked with a couple manufactures in china and they couldn't garuntee the tablets we orders three months from now would be the same as the ones we ordered today. That means if we were to go to market today with android as our lead platform we would have to sink a lot of money into inventory and hope we sold the devices because there is no garuntee that in six months we can find the same tablets. It's also a pain because we don't want to be in the hardware business. We want to sell the app and related support services for the software.
The appeal of the iPad has been, if one breaks our customer can go to walmart or other big box store today and get another one right then and there. Also, in the past several of our customers had a bad experience with another solution that used propitarty hardware. They view the ipad as off the shelf defacto standard stuff.
The biggest threat is if google gets into the hardware business themselves and the other handset makers see this action as a threat. If google gets serious about making their own google branded phones and tablets watch how quickly LG, Samsung, and HTC start releasing phones with other OS's such as windows mobile or adopt another platform (like a webos).
The short answer: No. The main reason: lack of mainstream commercial apps. I can't go buy TurboTax for linux or Quicken for linux. Are there opensource alternatives? Yes, but most aren't as polished, don't interface with banks, and scare most users.
Frankly linux lost the desktop over 10 years to OSX as the unix desktop of choice. The reason 10 years ago was a Unix based machine that was easy to use, all the hardware worked out of the box (especially on laptops), and you could buy mainstream applications like adobe and even MS Office.
My last few attempts (usually once a year) of putting linux on as a desktop still results in a couple hours of futzing around finding a driver or reconfiguring a driver it seams no matter how much research I do before hand. (Last time it was an ethernet card that said worked, checked the model number, but different revision therefore different chipset with no linux driver).
My dad was a VP at McDonnell Douglas. Their in house folks were mainly contracts and advisors to determine if litigation was necessary. If they needed to litigate, they hired Bryan Cave.
Out of my 30 or so friends with smart phones for more than 2 years, 1 of the iPhone users switched to Android. Of the 14 people I knew who bought the first droids, 10 now have iPhone 4Gs or 4GSs. Only 4 elected to get another android phone. When I asked why, the reason was they wanted an iPhone 2 years ago, but going with AT&T was not an option. So android was the best they had. My friends wanted to stay with Verizon or Sprint. Well now that the carriers have iPhones people are getting what they originally wanted.
What I found was most interesting was how few apps overall the android users downloaded compared to iPhone users. Even more interesting was that none of my friends actually bought an app for their android phone. I have 2 apps I've released on both platforms in the past 2 years. Both are HTML5/JS using Phonegap to create the native distributions. Both have a free ad supported version and a paid "no ads" version for $1.99 each with a few extra features. Android has about 60% of the total downloads yet iOS makes up 88% of my revenue from people buying the paid versions. The ad revenue from both platforms doesn't really amount to much. We aren't talking huge numbers, but at last check 64 people have bought the app for Android, 719 on the iPhone. Granted the apps I've made were things I created mostly for myself and thought others could use it. And this work is mainly stuff I do in the evenings or on the weekends for fun and to support my coffee habbit.
Given some of the headaches with Android (having to maintain a separate build branches for 2.2, 2.3, 3.0) the next paid app I'm releasing next month is for iOS and possibly the Kindle Fire, which is android but unlike "android" is a specific device, and not general "android" devices.
But Apple already has the entertainment industry by the balls. It's called the iTunes Music Store. Every time some network or label was going to "leave" iTMS they quietly came back within a few months because their sales of online music/movies/tv shows tanked.
Or in other words, in the end might makes right. Just as it has for the bulk of the past 10,000 years of human history.
The passing of the resolution in the Security Council was mere puppet theatre, nothing more. As you pointed out, in the end they just passed something vague so that both sides could be "right".
It's been kind of interesting to watch the differences of culture here. Our doctrine of trying not to cause "civilian" casualties is seen as attempting to be noble and of a military/cultural doctrine that grew out of European warfare and mentality. The Geneva Convention sort of works with a european land war because most of the cultures have at least some common stance on morality and ethics. I've often said that outside of Europe the Geneva Convention need not apply, because it doesn't. The cultures are much difference. Just look at the general treatment of POW's by Germany vs. Japan in WWII to see that difference.
In the middle east and Arab cultures, our hesitancy is seen as a sign of weakness and used against us. If the enemy is unwilling to wear a uniform then you have to treat everyone as hostile. This creates a problem for a lot of people. Take Fallujah. Instead of sending in the marines house to house we could have just cordoned off the area with the marines and army and sent in the B-52's to carpet bomb until there was nothing left and do it publicly. It is a message Arab populations understand very well and will respect. No it doesn't solve the problem of the circle of hatred and violence, but nothing will in that part of the world. This current spat with the Saudis et. al on one side and Iran on the other has nothing to do with oil or Shia vs Shiite Muslims. It has to do with Arabs vs. Persians. It's a fight that been going on for the better part of at least 3,000 years now. The whole Shia/Shiite thing is just the latest justification, that is all.
Afganistan wasn't. While it wasn't directly the country of Afghanistan who attacked us they were aiding and harbouring those who did.
Problem is by deviding our attention with Iraq well, I'll paraphrase Charlie Wilson: "We fucked it up[...again]".
Re:Deader Than a Doornail
on
Is E85 Dead Now?
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· Score: 5, Interesting
We still have our family farms (my dad has a little more than half I have the rest), but we rent them out to other farmers these days. It totals about 600 acres, 450 roughly farmable the rest is woods, in southeast missouri. About 12 years ago we basically spent the cash we inherited when my grandmother died on leveling the land, putting in irrigation, etc. as well as grain bins on the farm. We expected about an 18 year return on the cash investment (on paper the value of the land we made an instant profit of about $300 an acre. Dry land it was worth about $1200 an acre, cost about $850 an acre to level and could be sold as irrigated/leveled land at about $2300 at the time. These days you can easily get $3500 an acre and maybe $4k if you are willing to wait for the right buyer). What we didn't foresee was $10 a bushel soybeans starting to be the "average". The increase in production we've seen from being able to water and switch to rise basically went from $20k a year to $60k a year. Now that's been closer to $80 and even close to $100k a couple years and we recouped the cash investment about 2009.
About 2007, the farmers decided basically go to a three crop rotation of 50% rice, 25% soybean, and 25% corn. That lasted about one season because we put a stop to it. There are a couple 20 acre fields that are still "dry land" and those do get corn placed on them every other year and that's fine, but we saw the bubble that was corn. We decided a few years ago to come up with a rotation and stick to it. Don't try and play roulette with the market. That rotation is rice, then the following year double crop spring wheat and come back with late beans. If for some reason that combination stops yielding the returns we desire, then we'll reevaluate. But there is no sense in getting suckered in with hype (like our farmers were). "Oh Corn is high this year, we better plant more next year". Problem is too many other farmers think that way and guess what: next year there is more supply and the price goes down. As my grand father said: The time to get into the hog market is when the price is low. The time to get out is when it's high."
My father remembered the whole Ethanol debacle from the 70's and 80's. One of our close family friends is a retired sales/marketing head for GM trucks. We were talking with him about it and back in 2002 or 2003 he said, "Yeah, these guys are going to get suckered in again. Once they've spent all these billions on these ethanol plants the Saudis will drop the price of oil and quickly put them out of business just like they did in the 1980's". Well I'm not sure if it was the Saudis pumping more oil, but the same thing happened. The price of oil dropped like a rock and just long enough to put most of these producers out of business.
We talk about the farms quite a bit and something we did about 2006 was sit down and look at the statistics on prices. Figured out where our high and lows should be. If the price got basically 1 standard deviation above the "average" price over the past 10 years we sold half the stock. If it went up more we sold the rest. If it went back down we'd sell again once it closed just below the price mark (which was $7.03 a bushel). Well now the price seems to averaging about $9 - $10 and we've locked in prices the past couple years around $12 on the futures market.
The only thing is we can see there is a bubble, especially in the land prices, maybe in the commodity markets as well. Now it's no where near what it is in say Iowa or Nebraska where some are getting $6k an acre, but there's a bubble there. That's why 6 years ago when all my friends were out buying houses and I didn't. I know my Dad is holding onto well over a $1M in cash with nothing he's willing to invest it in at the moment. He's basically divested from the stock market at this point. He holds a few bond funds and is buying into some energy funds and natural resource funds (mining, etc..) as well pipe lines (master limited partnerships). He doesn't feel particu
I had an OSX-server box with several mac minis for a couple years that I messed around with Xgrid for various tasks. It was more of a hobby, but one thing I liked was the Apple Remote Server toolkit. I had my choice, I could connect to my OSX server box with SSH and do everything command line like any other *iux box, or I could fire up the remote GUI tool on my PowerMac or PowerBook at the time and administrate the machine with the GUI, which was far more handy for some tasks.
I have to agree. Doing a pure blackout I think will just make average users mad at the companies not SOPA. Doing some kind of educational page or system of "Hey if SOPA passes this service may have to go offline and here is why and what you can do about it" seems to be a much better idea.
I mean, if suddenly a few of these turkey's start getting the business end of a small caliber pistol to the back of the head it wouldn't be that bad would it?
My problem was the roughly $5k premium vs a Corolla. If I was planning to keep a car for 10+ years, there may have been a payback, but I was likely looking at 5 years or less. There was no way the Prius was going to pay for itself in that time frame.
Personally I think the Chevy Volt solution, once they got the kinks worked out, is going to be the way to go. On most days I'll never use gas. It's about 20 miles round trip to work and back. But then if I want to drive to visit my Dad on a weekend (about 200 miles one way) I don't have to worry. Fill up and go.
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This is a legal term which basically means that schools have the right to act as parents while kids are within its boundaries. Generally it's been citing and upheld by the courts in cases like searches of property such as back picks and lockers without needing a warrant. There have been several cases where it has been used to limit the rights of students.
Yes I can see the argument that the school would make: a parent could demand the child's creds therefore the school, by acting in loco parentis, can demand such information. And that may very well hold up in court as a defense against the ACLU.
I think about schools today compared to when I went through. Those 5 years before me learned to shoot .22 and shotguns in the 5th grade. When I went through we still learned archery with real bows and arrows. We were even allowed to bring our own bows to school for class. My parents generation would even bring guns to school so they could go hunting after class. They didn't have school shootings.
That's why I still use Perl. I've been using basically the same API script I wrote for database interactions in 2003. Yes it's procedural Perl, not OO, but as I've had to show younger programers: guess what it STILL works and it's not a lot of overhead for maintenance. I think the last major update I've done to the script was adding the ability to return data in JSON in addition to XML circa 2008 or 2009. And that work took basically two days to implement and test. Now I admit, there are some nasty elsif statements that would look much better if I moved to a switch statement, but that means it wouldn't work in Perl 5.8.x. Frankly it's not broke so....
The only reason it didn't work for Ghaddafi this time was the fact that Europe wanted to shop it's fighter planes for export markets against the US F-35. A lot of countries will be replacing F-16's in the next 15 years and this was the perfect place to showcase the Typhoon and Rafael so they could earn their "proven in combat" badge to potential buyers. Now they can go to countries and say their planes are "combat proven now" while the F-35 is still in testing.
It worked for Iran in 2008. It's going to work now for Syria unless there is a similar international movement to arm the Syrian resistance and provide air support.
He seriously looked at a Volt. 90% of the time he's not driving more than about 15 miles from his house to go the store, get something to eat, or go to the doctor's. He does drive down to the farm 4 - 5 times a year (400 mile round trip) as well as 2 driving trips/vacations. It's the trips and farms that puts the miles on the car though.
He ended up buying a Buick LaCrosse with e-assist. Why? First off he's not an early adopter. Secondly he thought the Buick had a better overall ride. Lastly, the Buick was $14,000 cheaper. He chose the Buick over another Impala because of the E-essist. The way he drives he's getting 28MPG in town and 40MPG out on the road.
Something we both feel is that GM is the one on the right track. The thing is, this isn't going to help the Volt. Where it's going to help is when the technology gets implemented in such away where you can buy Extended Range Electric versions of the Malibu, Impala, Terrain, and on down the line.
As someone mentions, the basic design concept allows most to benefit from having the all electric capability, but without the limits. If you need to go further than 35 miles you still have the gas option which the current infrastructure supports.
What's the cost of the machines when you factor in both hardware AND software?
Back then they called it mainframes and timeshare. It's why I called this timeshare 2.0.
I like some of these services like iCloud where as a small business owner I can update my calendar on my phone and it's automatically synced with my computer and iPad. Same even with Pages now and iCloud. I like the syncing feature. But you know what else that I like: the fact that a local copy still exists on my disk drives. If I'm flying across the country I can still read and edit the local copies on the plane even without internet.
That was the major complaint I had with google app offerings. Yes they were great for sharing, but you had to worry about remembering to download a copy to your local machine.
I got the Bluetooth keyboard case from think geek. For me, my iPad has replaced my laptop. My PowerBook finally died and I went into the apple store to get a new one. Well the sales person asked me did I really need one now. The answer was not really since I have An iMac.
I goto estate sales/actions for buyouts. What I need is something small to look up pricing. Often times I only have an hour to do a bid. So I need to get a ball park quickly. My 3G iPad is perfect.
I've found an accounting app that works for me so far, I have mobile banking and credit card swiping through the iPad, and I can deposit checks less than 7500 with the camera.
If I didn't need Xcode for my mobile app I could run my entire business from my iPad and iPhone with iCloud.
Ask me next year and it migh not. I'm opening a storefront/showroom next month. I may have payroll in another year, but for now the iPad Is exactly what I need.
I went through school about 5 - 10 years before the age of ADD and ADHD. I'm sure if I was going through today they'd demand that I be on drugs. Probably largely due to the fact I was tested into the "gifted" program, but my parents opted out. Why? Because the "gifted" program was about more busy work than anything else in the lower grades and my parents figured it was better for me to get to go out and play more rather do more work. As a result I was board sometimes in normal classes. I didn't act out much or anything and my grades were top notch, but I did enjoy day dreaming and usually took a bit longer to get things done than other students because of it.
Bingo. The barcodes being scanned are outdoor and often can be in low or limited lighting conditions with dust, dirt, and speed is key. Motorola makes a pretty good ruggedized barcode scanner for the purpose that works extremely well in those conditions. If a little bit of dirt is obscuring the barcode we've found it still reads correctly 95% of the time.
However here's the difference: the USB version is about $500. The bluetooth is about $800. Multiple that over 100 - 150 devices and it adds up...
We know about the camera kit trick. But the problem with that is:
A) It requires a separate piece of equipment, easily misplaced, knocked offed, etc.
B) It works today, but Apple's been known before to kill such work arounds with software patches down the road. It's far less likely they are going to kill bluetooth on the iPad in the next 18 months...
Using memory for db cluster nodes isn't new. Teradata has been doing it for a long time now in their data warehousing. It has its advantages on large databases and you have the money to afford the nodes you need for reliability.
The problem with that fantastic android tablet hardware is that it appears to be on a 90 production schedule. I've been writing an app designed for both iOS and Android tablets. We had one client that was more intersted in the android tablets because they could get usb ports and use existing usb cabled barcode scanners.
Well of the three android tablets we bought last fall, only one is still available. We even talked with a couple manufactures in china and they couldn't garuntee the tablets we orders three months from now would be the same as the ones we ordered today. That means if we were to go to market today with android as our lead platform we would have to sink a lot of money into inventory and hope we sold the devices because there is no garuntee that in six months we can find the same tablets. It's also a pain because we don't want to be in the hardware business. We want to sell the app and related support services for the software.
The appeal of the iPad has been, if one breaks our customer can go to walmart or other big box store today and get another one right then and there. Also, in the past several of our customers had a bad experience with another solution that used propitarty hardware. They view the ipad as off the shelf defacto standard stuff.
The biggest threat is if google gets into the hardware business themselves and the other handset makers see this action as a threat. If google gets serious about making their own google branded phones and tablets watch how quickly LG, Samsung, and HTC start releasing phones with other OS's such as windows mobile or adopt another platform (like a webos).
The short answer: No. The main reason: lack of mainstream commercial apps. I can't go buy TurboTax for linux or Quicken for linux. Are there opensource alternatives? Yes, but most aren't as polished, don't interface with banks, and scare most users.
Frankly linux lost the desktop over 10 years to OSX as the unix desktop of choice. The reason 10 years ago was a Unix based machine that was easy to use, all the hardware worked out of the box (especially on laptops), and you could buy mainstream applications like adobe and even MS Office.
My last few attempts (usually once a year) of putting linux on as a desktop still results in a couple hours of futzing around finding a driver or reconfiguring a driver it seams no matter how much research I do before hand. (Last time it was an ethernet card that said worked, checked the model number, but different revision therefore different chipset with no linux driver).
My dad was a VP at McDonnell Douglas. Their in house folks were mainly contracts and advisors to determine if litigation was necessary. If they needed to litigate, they hired Bryan Cave.
Out of my 30 or so friends with smart phones for more than 2 years, 1 of the iPhone users switched to Android. Of the 14 people I knew who bought the first droids, 10 now have iPhone 4Gs or 4GSs. Only 4 elected to get another android phone. When I asked why, the reason was they wanted an iPhone 2 years ago, but going with AT&T was not an option. So android was the best they had. My friends wanted to stay with Verizon or Sprint. Well now that the carriers have iPhones people are getting what they originally wanted.
What I found was most interesting was how few apps overall the android users downloaded compared to iPhone users. Even more interesting was that none of my friends actually bought an app for their android phone. I have 2 apps I've released on both platforms in the past 2 years. Both are HTML5/JS using Phonegap to create the native distributions. Both have a free ad supported version and a paid "no ads" version for $1.99 each with a few extra features. Android has about 60% of the total downloads yet iOS makes up 88% of my revenue from people buying the paid versions. The ad revenue from both platforms doesn't really amount to much. We aren't talking huge numbers, but at last check 64 people have bought the app for Android, 719 on the iPhone. Granted the apps I've made were things I created mostly for myself and thought others could use it. And this work is mainly stuff I do in the evenings or on the weekends for fun and to support my coffee habbit.
Given some of the headaches with Android (having to maintain a separate build branches for 2.2, 2.3, 3.0) the next paid app I'm releasing next month is for iOS and possibly the Kindle Fire, which is android but unlike "android" is a specific device, and not general "android" devices.
But Apple already has the entertainment industry by the balls. It's called the iTunes Music Store. Every time some network or label was going to "leave" iTMS they quietly came back within a few months because their sales of online music/movies/tv shows tanked.
Or in other words, in the end might makes right. Just as it has for the bulk of the past 10,000 years of human history.
The passing of the resolution in the Security Council was mere puppet theatre, nothing more. As you pointed out, in the end they just passed something vague so that both sides could be "right".
It's been kind of interesting to watch the differences of culture here. Our doctrine of trying not to cause "civilian" casualties is seen as attempting to be noble and of a military/cultural doctrine that grew out of European warfare and mentality. The Geneva Convention sort of works with a european land war because most of the cultures have at least some common stance on morality and ethics. I've often said that outside of Europe the Geneva Convention need not apply, because it doesn't. The cultures are much difference. Just look at the general treatment of POW's by Germany vs. Japan in WWII to see that difference.
In the middle east and Arab cultures, our hesitancy is seen as a sign of weakness and used against us. If the enemy is unwilling to wear a uniform then you have to treat everyone as hostile. This creates a problem for a lot of people. Take Fallujah. Instead of sending in the marines house to house we could have just cordoned off the area with the marines and army and sent in the B-52's to carpet bomb until there was nothing left and do it publicly. It is a message Arab populations understand very well and will respect. No it doesn't solve the problem of the circle of hatred and violence, but nothing will in that part of the world. This current spat with the Saudis et. al on one side and Iran on the other has nothing to do with oil or Shia vs Shiite Muslims. It has to do with Arabs vs. Persians. It's a fight that been going on for the better part of at least 3,000 years now. The whole Shia/Shiite thing is just the latest justification, that is all.
Problem is by deviding our attention with Iraq well, I'll paraphrase Charlie Wilson: "We fucked it up[...again]".
We still have our family farms (my dad has a little more than half I have the rest), but we rent them out to other farmers these days. It totals about 600 acres, 450 roughly farmable the rest is woods, in southeast missouri. About 12 years ago we basically spent the cash we inherited when my grandmother died on leveling the land, putting in irrigation, etc. as well as grain bins on the farm. We expected about an 18 year return on the cash investment (on paper the value of the land we made an instant profit of about $300 an acre. Dry land it was worth about $1200 an acre, cost about $850 an acre to level and could be sold as irrigated/leveled land at about $2300 at the time. These days you can easily get $3500 an acre and maybe $4k if you are willing to wait for the right buyer). What we didn't foresee was $10 a bushel soybeans starting to be the "average". The increase in production we've seen from being able to water and switch to rise basically went from $20k a year to $60k a year. Now that's been closer to $80 and even close to $100k a couple years and we recouped the cash investment about 2009.
About 2007, the farmers decided basically go to a three crop rotation of 50% rice, 25% soybean, and 25% corn. That lasted about one season because we put a stop to it. There are a couple 20 acre fields that are still "dry land" and those do get corn placed on them every other year and that's fine, but we saw the bubble that was corn. We decided a few years ago to come up with a rotation and stick to it. Don't try and play roulette with the market. That rotation is rice, then the following year double crop spring wheat and come back with late beans. If for some reason that combination stops yielding the returns we desire, then we'll reevaluate. But there is no sense in getting suckered in with hype (like our farmers were). "Oh Corn is high this year, we better plant more next year". Problem is too many other farmers think that way and guess what: next year there is more supply and the price goes down. As my grand father said: The time to get into the hog market is when the price is low. The time to get out is when it's high."
My father remembered the whole Ethanol debacle from the 70's and 80's. One of our close family friends is a retired sales/marketing head for GM trucks. We were talking with him about it and back in 2002 or 2003 he said, "Yeah, these guys are going to get suckered in again. Once they've spent all these billions on these ethanol plants the Saudis will drop the price of oil and quickly put them out of business just like they did in the 1980's". Well I'm not sure if it was the Saudis pumping more oil, but the same thing happened. The price of oil dropped like a rock and just long enough to put most of these producers out of business.
We talk about the farms quite a bit and something we did about 2006 was sit down and look at the statistics on prices. Figured out where our high and lows should be. If the price got basically 1 standard deviation above the "average" price over the past 10 years we sold half the stock. If it went up more we sold the rest. If it went back down we'd sell again once it closed just below the price mark (which was $7.03 a bushel). Well now the price seems to averaging about $9 - $10 and we've locked in prices the past couple years around $12 on the futures market.
The only thing is we can see there is a bubble, especially in the land prices, maybe in the commodity markets as well. Now it's no where near what it is in say Iowa or Nebraska where some are getting $6k an acre, but there's a bubble there. That's why 6 years ago when all my friends were out buying houses and I didn't. I know my Dad is holding onto well over a $1M in cash with nothing he's willing to invest it in at the moment. He's basically divested from the stock market at this point. He holds a few bond funds and is buying into some energy funds and natural resource funds (mining, etc..) as well pipe lines (master limited partnerships). He doesn't feel particu
I had an OSX-server box with several mac minis for a couple years that I messed around with Xgrid for various tasks. It was more of a hobby, but one thing I liked was the Apple Remote Server toolkit. I had my choice, I could connect to my OSX server box with SSH and do everything command line like any other *iux box, or I could fire up the remote GUI tool on my PowerMac or PowerBook at the time and administrate the machine with the GUI, which was far more handy for some tasks.
I liked the either/or....
I have to agree. Doing a pure blackout I think will just make average users mad at the companies not SOPA. Doing some kind of educational page or system of "Hey if SOPA passes this service may have to go offline and here is why and what you can do about it" seems to be a much better idea.
I mean, if suddenly a few of these turkey's start getting the business end of a small caliber pistol to the back of the head it wouldn't be that bad would it?
My problem was the roughly $5k premium vs a Corolla. If I was planning to keep a car for 10+ years, there may have been a payback, but I was likely looking at 5 years or less. There was no way the Prius was going to pay for itself in that time frame.
Personally I think the Chevy Volt solution, once they got the kinks worked out, is going to be the way to go. On most days I'll never use gas. It's about 20 miles round trip to work and back. But then if I want to drive to visit my Dad on a weekend (about 200 miles one way) I don't have to worry. Fill up and go.