Considering what this type of spill will end up costing them, it's probably a safe bet they did not spend enough even without hindsight. Especially considering this was only a matter of a limited schedule delay and poor leadership decision making.
We're not talking about a minor worst-case scenario, such as a single death preventable by having three supervisors triple-check a rig worker's harness, tragic as a single death is. This is was far more deaths and drastic financial (corporate), economic (national) and environmental damages. With such a potential outcome, increased investment in safety measures is warranted until such a point that either (1) the threat is sufficiently mitigated, (2) the activity is cancelled on account of an unacceptable level of risk.
Remember that nobody is forcing these companies to drill at that depth- it's a business decision that they chose to undertake despite this risk, and the fact that they're complaining about Obama's moratorium just says they've either ignored or accepted this now-pretty damn obvious risk. I don't expect the level of certainty which NASA strives for and there's room to cut costs as unjustifiable, but this does't seem to be such a case and they're responsible for their poor judgements.
$1/litre doesn't make sense considering the elevated risk in this type of extraction and that it represents a small percentage of global consumption for which prices would increase in proportion. And if I had the option to vote on the matter, yes I'd prefer the more expensive petrol as I advocate conservation over quantity.
Morally, yes. But you can't sue them because they were "bad".
Legally it was BP's operation and based on what I've heard they approved what its contractors did. It can't hide behind them, but they can try behind it.
Legality is all that matters as far as government is concerned. You can boycott and campaign against both companies on moral grounds.
But there you go again with the same old wrong premise: that part of socialism requires spending outside your means, which is patently false. Politics makes it easy to do that and any government which does not have the strength to remain above it fails in this regard, regardless of political system: socialist, communist, dictatorship, monarchy, democracy, corporate, playground and gaming clans. If you're a bad leader and your organization fails to replace you, it's going down the toilet. Why does this need pointing out?
As for government spending the economics are, as economics always are, debatable. Partisans love using sweeping language like "spending is bad" because it's nice and easy hackery, but unless one is a "government can't do anything good" extremist, it's counterproductive to assume that kind of extremism. It's debatable as to the merits of particular cases but the intention is one of investment, not the mindless waste you imply. Even the most staunch fiscal conservative would not argue that the notion of investment is necessarily bad, regardless of how they would view the specific ones enacted by congress. Your selection of debt as a measure of GDP isn't necessarily the best way to look at the issue, as convenient as it is for your narrative. The US having a much larger GDP makes it that much harder to actually influence the trend, not to mention the fact that only China can afford to loan to us the amounts we need.
The important take-away: "Spending" does not equal "spending" as much as it may seem to one-dimensional thinkers. Spending "too much money on X year after year" has absolutely nothing to do with "one-time expenditure for the purpose of stimulating the economy". Given this, you and Republicans have provided absolutely no good reason why the stimulus was a bad idea, so all we have to go on is what the Democrats tell us. If Republicans quit their political maneuvering and actually propose an alternative philosophy instead of fearmongering, there may be something to talk about.
And yes asking for pity because 'we Republicans only have idiotic radio fanatics to fight for us' and George Soros conspiracies are going to get you modded troll for moving the conversation towards boring point-counterpoint of the same old extreme partisan nonsense. Only you fanatics care.
The "right wingers" want nothing of the sort. What we want is for the government to get the hell out of the way and stop taxing and regulating business to the point that makes it impossible to even run a business unless you're a huge corporation.
"Impossible" is hyperbole, kindly avoid that. The executive branch actually supports small business. There's arguably too much regulation, but that's part of the cost of doing business and it's not put in place for the sake of making things harder but in theory as a lesser evil. In this country small business is completely free to petition against these, just as corporations do, using their collective power to lobby for their interests. That they don't is their failure, not the politicians'. As much as Republicans like to talk about the importance of small businesses, they're just as happy as democrats to be bought off by corporations for the purpose of increasing their power and limiting competition. Want small business to compete on a fair playing field? Get congress to stop giving large corporations legal loopholes. You're complaining about the wrong branch.
Your entire post talked about how conservatives make "socialism" sound bad, but that it's really good and Europe loves it. Of course they do - who doesn't love free shit? You know what they don't love? Paying for it, as they eventually will.
Care to explain what you mean by "they eventually will"? Europe's in nowhere near the economic mess we are, nor does it have anything like our debt. What's more, they've actually been doing something about their budget deficits. Where's this prophecy of yours coming from? Try not to use the outlier Greece, which was as fiscally mismanaged as California.
As for the little "Socialism - in practice" nonsense, you seem to be confused with- and arguing against communism. Socialism does not demands equity, only a decent lowest common denominator. Whether or not there are still rich people or not has nothing to do with the fact that the poor are far better off than in the US and won't die a minor medical condition due to lack of insurance. They may just be a little less rich and may actually be able to waste all of their money.
It's not hard to identify at all. Federal tax revenue is allocated away from things we're been using nationally and locally. Education (higher ed. loans and grants), science, arts, bridge maintenance have long been under threat of reduced or maintained low-level funding (like they weren't already low priorities previously). It affects the military itself with slightly more scrutiny for especially wasteful programs and I'm sure you're familiar with BRAC. Granted, many of these are not obvious to the average citizen, but it's all information publicly available to those interested in specifics and quantifying. Start with CBO from inside the government and CBPP from outside.
Federal aid to your state is an easier and more personal place to see negative funding changes due to the current wars, deficit, recession, etc. States and localities are all going through rough times, with an exceptionally large portion faced with large budget deficits. State and local sales taxes have been increased, real estate tax hikes are especially high, school and library budgets are being slashed including public colleges which cause huge tuition increases, reduced services alongside layoffs and furloughs are happening in the public sector. Local newspapers show these signs of budget strain daily.
I'm so tired I initially misread the title as saying "Darth Vader robes long and black", to which my reaction was "yeah, I knew that- how's that news?". Which in retrospect was actually funny. As you pointed out, humor is a great thing, but I believe for more reasons than that given by Heinlein to "Mike", who put it thus:
"I had thought -- I had been told -- that a 'funny' thing is a thing of a goodness. It isn't. Not ever is it funny to the person it happens to. Like that sheriff without his pants. The goodness is in the laughing itself. I grok it is a bravery . . . and a sharing... against pain and sorrow and defeat."
Top Secret really isn't all that high, and a very small percent of holders belong to the intelligence community. A great number of them are civilians working for contractors which you'd know if you knew anything other than you don't like this government which you don't understand.
Any idiot that saw this and thought it was true without checking up on the named Senator/Congressman
You really don't have to go to "all that trouble". Once you hear the part about the Air Force taking on aliens, you should be pretty clued in to the obvious fact it's fake.
I loved the part (1:13) where the actor goes ".... Jesus.... ah... that's classified, far surpassing our darkest nightmares." Classic Onion exaggeration.
That'd be one hell of a bluff to try when it's entirely possible one of the jury would actually feel it was as necessary for the jury to see the photos as the parent suggested.
What are the consequences of faking evidence? Contempt of court, firing, disbarment? Nobody could get away with "I didn't realize I had my vacation pics in the evidence folder."
Advocating that a child escalate a minor conflict to a knife fight is just a very strange from my point of view. It's stupid because the isn't likely to know how to use that knife and is likely to drop it and have it turned back on him. Likewise in a car, if they can even reach the peddles, they're just as likely to crash or hurt innocents than hit their target.
Nobody is arguing that you don't have the right to self defense. We are questioning the insanity of turning children into walking time bombs.
I think the point was that BMC, Warner, etc. should have built iTunes before Apple did. Had they been first or even slightly after, competing with them would be very *very* difficult.
The argument is an evolutionary one suggesting that we've adapted to books. That's an idiotic thing to say and requires no citations (because it's common knowledge that only books evolved in the last few centuries, not the fingers of all humans), especially considering the original poster bears the burden of proof.
If anyone is trolling, it's more likely you. If you're trying to be a grammar Nazi you have to do better than just accuse someone of being wrong. Otherwise you're just an ass, which you've clearly demonstrated in other ways. To name one, you made the debate about your implied superior self and about reading whereas SquarePixel and casings were talking about holding them.
Books are great but not ideal in this regard, regardless of how primitive e-readers may be. You may have no problem with them but I'm not that old and I already have trouble at times. Spines force books closed requiring fingers to constantly struggle to keep them open, which can be very difficult or impossible to someone with weak fingers (or without fingers). As we're living longer than we did centuries ago, books are actually becoming less useful. Any light tablet removes this problem which is more important to some people than ambient light. Cookbooks are a great example where even the young and able could benefit: it would be better if you didn't have to place a heavy object on them or buy a stand.
1) Sounds plausible. Plus I think that generally speaking MMOs attract plenty of children and other people with nothing better to do. 2) First we'd have to think about what "enough" and "misbehavior" mean. It's a tricky thing, telling your own customers how to behave and having to punish them for breaking rules you set up unilaterally through a Terms of Service. This isn't a free forum we're talking about, it's a very large and quite public space where the moderators cannot afford to antagonize posters unless absolutely necessary. It's also not simple to define boundaries of acceptable behavior. While Blizzard isn't legally restricted by the first amendment, the same issues are still relevant. American customers would not likely appreciate overly broad enforcement.
I'll grant you they're very different environments (at worst we'd get some heated discussions in the religion and politics "zones" I think they were called, but only the most minor name-calling).
I defer to your experience but I'm still unfamiliar with specifics of your point of view. I would hazard a guess that you're probably familiar with the clientèle in question, but that Blizzard forums and resources are of a much larger scope.
My problem with your line of argument is that, first it still seems a fool's errand as I've not yet been convinced otherwise and second, that 90% of everything that goes on the various Blizzard forums is too obscene an amount to handle (incidentally the main reason I personally stay away, I can't even bother enough to be bothered by the trolls). I assume problems with scaling moderators linearly with subscribers, for technical&logistical reasons and because it's just bad business to increase your per unit cost. This suggests that at some point you just can't afford read 90%. Scan with algorithms, perhaps manually read every title or the occasional 10-20+ page topic, sure, I'll compromise there. But I can't agree with calls to simply hire in ever increasing numbers as the only answer and superior to seeking a technical solution. Blizzard's suggestion isn't ideal, but neither is the even more low-tech suggestion of hiring high-school grads to be professional forum-readers. I'm not saying stop hiring altogether, just don't go spending crazy amounts of money.
To me it makes far more sense at an early point (which they've probably long passed by now) to spend invest more towards improving the effectiveness of each moderator. I think that it would be far smarter to focus primarily on the methods used by trolls: alternate characters, duplicate posts across threads. Add to that capabilities such as allowing users to not only downgrade or block but specifically flag various types of unwanted posts (something flagged as profanity, though not necessarily outside of TOS could be hidden/erased for children).
Not sure what your point is Bob. Venturing a guess that Chinese subscribers aren't paying $15US a month, so revenue is significantly below $150M? That'd be a good point, though I suspect Blizzard's costs in that market get reduced to some effect as well. I wonder if Europe makes a difference one way or another too.
Yeah, I trust you because you clearly know what you're talking about in that response. Real forum managers can stop flame wars with thread locking and bans, they don't need to waste their life.
I kind of know what I'm talking about. I moderated on ExpertsExchange years and years ago, where there was no point in reading everything. We moderated where we were needed- users questions, user complaints, open questions. I couldn't give a damn about any other posts unless they were personally interesting to me or became my business through the above demands.
Do you really think CNN moderates every comment? Think every YouTube producer or Google itself reads every idiotic comment posted on videos? Think every single change on Wikipedia gets checked? There's just too damn much to bother in these cases, and it's not worth it unless you're definitely going to be slapped with a massive lawsuit.
Want to read everything? That's your call and depends on what kind of forums you want to run. The idiots on Conservapedia tend towards the censorship-loving authoritarian so they may actually care enough.
Affect is the verb and effect is the noun, kid. Nobody actually cares about your pitiful lives and base satisfactions. I just want tools to hide you deformed freaks from sight.
... and by doing that you proved Blizzard's point on killing anonymity. Now people who don't care for your language can set you as "foe" so they'll never see your posts again.
Slashdot Mirror
Considering what this type of spill will end up costing them, it's probably a safe bet they did not spend enough even without hindsight. Especially considering this was only a matter of a limited schedule delay and poor leadership decision making.
We're not talking about a minor worst-case scenario, such as a single death preventable by having three supervisors triple-check a rig worker's harness, tragic as a single death is. This is was far more deaths and drastic financial (corporate), economic (national) and environmental damages. With such a potential outcome, increased investment in safety measures is warranted until such a point that either (1) the threat is sufficiently mitigated, (2) the activity is cancelled on account of an unacceptable level of risk.
Remember that nobody is forcing these companies to drill at that depth- it's a business decision that they chose to undertake despite this risk, and the fact that they're complaining about Obama's moratorium just says they've either ignored or accepted this now-pretty damn obvious risk. I don't expect the level of certainty which NASA strives for and there's room to cut costs as unjustifiable, but this does't seem to be such a case and they're responsible for their poor judgements.
$1/litre doesn't make sense considering the elevated risk in this type of extraction and that it represents a small percentage of global consumption for which prices would increase in proportion. And if I had the option to vote on the matter, yes I'd prefer the more expensive petrol as I advocate conservation over quantity.
Morally, yes. But you can't sue them because they were "bad".
Legally it was BP's operation and based on what I've heard they approved what its contractors did. It can't hide behind them, but they can try behind it.
Legality is all that matters as far as government is concerned. You can boycott and campaign against both companies on moral grounds.
But there you go again with the same old wrong premise: that part of socialism requires spending outside your means, which is patently false. Politics makes it easy to do that and any government which does not have the strength to remain above it fails in this regard, regardless of political system: socialist, communist, dictatorship, monarchy, democracy, corporate, playground and gaming clans. If you're a bad leader and your organization fails to replace you, it's going down the toilet. Why does this need pointing out?
As for government spending the economics are, as economics always are, debatable. Partisans love using sweeping language like "spending is bad" because it's nice and easy hackery, but unless one is a "government can't do anything good" extremist, it's counterproductive to assume that kind of extremism. It's debatable as to the merits of particular cases but the intention is one of investment, not the mindless waste you imply. Even the most staunch fiscal conservative would not argue that the notion of investment is necessarily bad, regardless of how they would view the specific ones enacted by congress. Your selection of debt as a measure of GDP isn't necessarily the best way to look at the issue, as convenient as it is for your narrative. The US having a much larger GDP makes it that much harder to actually influence the trend, not to mention the fact that only China can afford to loan to us the amounts we need.
The important take-away: "Spending" does not equal "spending" as much as it may seem to one-dimensional thinkers. Spending "too much money on X year after year" has absolutely nothing to do with "one-time expenditure for the purpose of stimulating the economy". Given this, you and Republicans have provided absolutely no good reason why the stimulus was a bad idea, so all we have to go on is what the Democrats tell us. If Republicans quit their political maneuvering and actually propose an alternative philosophy instead of fearmongering, there may be something to talk about.
And yes asking for pity because 'we Republicans only have idiotic radio fanatics to fight for us' and George Soros conspiracies are going to get you modded troll for moving the conversation towards boring point-counterpoint of the same old extreme partisan nonsense. Only you fanatics care.
The "right wingers" want nothing of the sort. What we want is for the government to get the hell out of the way and stop taxing and regulating business to the point that makes it impossible to even run a business unless you're a huge corporation.
"Impossible" is hyperbole, kindly avoid that. The executive branch actually supports small business. There's arguably too much regulation, but that's part of the cost of doing business and it's not put in place for the sake of making things harder but in theory as a lesser evil. In this country small business is completely free to petition against these, just as corporations do, using their collective power to lobby for their interests. That they don't is their failure, not the politicians'.
As much as Republicans like to talk about the importance of small businesses, they're just as happy as democrats to be bought off by corporations for the purpose of increasing their power and limiting competition. Want small business to compete on a fair playing field? Get congress to stop giving large corporations legal loopholes. You're complaining about the wrong branch.
Your entire post talked about how conservatives make "socialism" sound bad, but that it's really good and Europe loves it. Of course they do - who doesn't love free shit? You know what they don't love? Paying for it, as they eventually will.
Care to explain what you mean by "they eventually will"? Europe's in nowhere near the economic mess we are, nor does it have anything like our debt. What's more, they've actually been doing something about their budget deficits. Where's this prophecy of yours coming from? Try not to use the outlier Greece, which was as fiscally mismanaged as California.
As for the little "Socialism - in practice" nonsense, you seem to be confused with- and arguing against communism. Socialism does not demands equity, only a decent lowest common denominator. Whether or not there are still rich people or not has nothing to do with the fact that the poor are far better off than in the US and won't die a minor medical condition due to lack of insurance. They may just be a little less rich and may actually be able to waste all of their money.
It's not hard to identify at all. Federal tax revenue is allocated away from things we're been using nationally and locally. Education (higher ed. loans and grants), science, arts, bridge maintenance have long been under threat of reduced or maintained low-level funding (like they weren't already low priorities previously). It affects the military itself with slightly more scrutiny for especially wasteful programs and I'm sure you're familiar with BRAC. Granted, many of these are not obvious to the average citizen, but it's all information publicly available to those interested in specifics and quantifying. Start with CBO from inside the government and CBPP from outside.
Federal aid to your state is an easier and more personal place to see negative funding changes due to the current wars, deficit, recession, etc. States and localities are all going through rough times, with an exceptionally large portion faced with large budget deficits. State and local sales taxes have been increased, real estate tax hikes are especially high, school and library budgets are being slashed including public colleges which cause huge tuition increases, reduced services alongside layoffs and furloughs are happening in the public sector. Local newspapers show these signs of budget strain daily.
I'm so tired I initially misread the title as saying "Darth Vader robes long and black", to which my reaction was "yeah, I knew that- how's that news?". Which in retrospect was actually funny. As you pointed out, humor is a great thing, but I believe for more reasons than that given by Heinlein to "Mike", who put it thus:
"I had thought -- I had been told -- that a 'funny' thing is a thing of a goodness. It isn't. Not ever is it funny to the person it happens to. Like that sheriff without his pants. The goodness is in the laughing itself. I grok it is a bravery . . . and a sharing... against pain and sorrow and defeat."
Top Secret really isn't all that high, and a very small percent of holders belong to the intelligence community. A great number of them are civilians working for contractors which you'd know if you knew anything other than you don't like this government which you don't understand.
Any idiot that saw this and thought it was true without checking up on the named Senator/Congressman
You really don't have to go to "all that trouble". Once you hear the part about the Air Force taking on aliens, you should be pretty clued in to the obvious fact it's fake.
I loved the part (1:13) where the actor goes ".... Jesus.... ah... that's classified, far surpassing our darkest nightmares." Classic Onion exaggeration.
I'd relax, Mr. Sensitive. I found it to be a nonsensical joke about the idiocy you find on Slashdot.
Well the article did have the following bit:
We help each other through any rough spots we have," said Mr. Bess, 52, who previously worked in the stockrooms at Wal-Mart and Target.
So I'm guessing these aren't high-paying jobs.
That'd be one hell of a bluff to try when it's entirely possible one of the jury would actually feel it was as necessary for the jury to see the photos as the parent suggested.
What are the consequences of faking evidence? Contempt of court, firing, disbarment? Nobody could get away with "I didn't realize I had my vacation pics in the evidence folder."
Cars and knives are not equivalent to firearms.
Advocating that a child escalate a minor conflict to a knife fight is just a very strange from my point of view. It's stupid because the isn't likely to know how to use that knife and is likely to drop it and have it turned back on him. Likewise in a car, if they can even reach the peddles, they're just as likely to crash or hurt innocents than hit their target.
Nobody is arguing that you don't have the right to self defense. We are questioning the insanity of turning children into walking time bombs.
I think the point was that BMC, Warner, etc. should have built iTunes before Apple did. Had they been first or even slightly after, competing with them would be very *very* difficult.
The argument is an evolutionary one suggesting that we've adapted to books. That's an idiotic thing to say and requires no citations (because it's common knowledge that only books evolved in the last few centuries, not the fingers of all humans), especially considering the original poster bears the burden of proof.
If anyone is trolling, it's more likely you. If you're trying to be a grammar Nazi you have to do better than just accuse someone of being wrong. Otherwise you're just an ass, which you've clearly demonstrated in other ways. To name one, you made the debate about your implied superior self and about reading whereas SquarePixel and casings were talking about holding them.
Books are great but not ideal in this regard, regardless of how primitive e-readers may be. You may have no problem with them but I'm not that old and I already have trouble at times. Spines force books closed requiring fingers to constantly struggle to keep them open, which can be very difficult or impossible to someone with weak fingers (or without fingers). As we're living longer than we did centuries ago, books are actually becoming less useful. Any light tablet removes this problem which is more important to some people than ambient light. Cookbooks are a great example where even the young and able could benefit: it would be better if you didn't have to place a heavy object on them or buy a stand.
1) Sounds plausible. Plus I think that generally speaking MMOs attract plenty of children and other people with nothing better to do.
2) First we'd have to think about what "enough" and "misbehavior" mean. It's a tricky thing, telling your own customers how to behave and having to punish them for breaking rules you set up unilaterally through a Terms of Service. This isn't a free forum we're talking about, it's a very large and quite public space where the moderators cannot afford to antagonize posters unless absolutely necessary. It's also not simple to define boundaries of acceptable behavior. While Blizzard isn't legally restricted by the first amendment, the same issues are still relevant. American customers would not likely appreciate overly broad enforcement.
I can't argue with anything there :)
I've enjoyed our conversation. Thank you.
... and a doorbell that goes "moooooooo".
I'll grant you they're very different environments (at worst we'd get some heated discussions in the religion and politics "zones" I think they were called, but only the most minor name-calling).
I defer to your experience but I'm still unfamiliar with specifics of your point of view. I would hazard a guess that you're probably familiar with the clientèle in question, but that Blizzard forums and resources are of a much larger scope.
My problem with your line of argument is that, first it still seems a fool's errand as I've not yet been convinced otherwise and second, that 90% of everything that goes on the various Blizzard forums is too obscene an amount to handle (incidentally the main reason I personally stay away, I can't even bother enough to be bothered by the trolls). I assume problems with scaling moderators linearly with subscribers, for technical&logistical reasons and because it's just bad business to increase your per unit cost. This suggests that at some point you just can't afford read 90%. Scan with algorithms, perhaps manually read every title or the occasional 10-20+ page topic, sure, I'll compromise there. But I can't agree with calls to simply hire in ever increasing numbers as the only answer and superior to seeking a technical solution. Blizzard's suggestion isn't ideal, but neither is the even more low-tech suggestion of hiring high-school grads to be professional forum-readers. I'm not saying stop hiring altogether, just don't go spending crazy amounts of money.
To me it makes far more sense at an early point (which they've probably long passed by now) to spend invest more towards improving the effectiveness of each moderator. I think that it would be far smarter to focus primarily on the methods used by trolls: alternate characters, duplicate posts across threads. Add to that capabilities such as allowing users to not only downgrade or block but specifically flag various types of unwanted posts (something flagged as profanity, though not necessarily outside of TOS could be hidden/erased for children).
Wow. You're one angry little child. Let me know when you grow up and can handle an adult conversation.
Not sure what your point is Bob. Venturing a guess that Chinese subscribers aren't paying $15US a month, so revenue is significantly below $150M? That'd be a good point, though I suspect Blizzard's costs in that market get reduced to some effect as well. I wonder if Europe makes a difference one way or another too.
Yeah, I trust you because you clearly know what you're talking about in that response. Real forum managers can stop flame wars with thread locking and bans, they don't need to waste their life.
I kind of know what I'm talking about. I moderated on ExpertsExchange years and years ago, where there was no point in reading everything. We moderated where we were needed- users questions, user complaints, open questions. I couldn't give a damn about any other posts unless they were personally interesting to me or became my business through the above demands.
Do you really think CNN moderates every comment? Think every YouTube producer or Google itself reads every idiotic comment posted on videos? Think every single change on Wikipedia gets checked? There's just too damn much to bother in these cases, and it's not worth it unless you're definitely going to be slapped with a massive lawsuit.
Want to read everything? That's your call and depends on what kind of forums you want to run. The idiots on Conservapedia tend towards the censorship-loving authoritarian so they may actually care enough.
Affect is the verb and effect is the noun, kid. Nobody actually cares about your pitiful lives and base satisfactions. I just want tools to hide you deformed freaks from sight.
Just because you don't like the idea doesn't mean I don't, your highness.
I'm sorry nobody told you this yet: you're not the smartest guy in the room.
And yeah, posted under my /. RealID
... and by doing that you proved Blizzard's point on killing anonymity. Now people who don't care for your language can set you as "foe" so they'll never see your posts again.