This is the exact reason that Lex Luthor keeps superman around. I mean come on, everyone knows that Lex could rack up a clip of kryptonite bullets and pop a cap in The Man of Steel any time he wants, right? But Lex needs superman around. You see as long as superman is around then no matter how many people Lex kills, now matter how horrible his actions the regular cops won't ever come after him. They leave the job up to Superman. And what does Lex get when superman comes calling? A stern lecture. So it's handy for Lex to keep Superman around to make sure he can get away with anything for nothing more than a slap on the wrist.
I'm saying we shouldn't go jumping willy nilly into purposefully attempting to change the climate without thinking it through. If the current warming trend is natural and we go sticking a monkey wrench into it we may do actual damage to the climate. It's always better to understand the consequences of your actions first.
Yes, similar to how he says there needs to be "more study, more debate" about global warming. All this while average yearly temperatures are going up, hurricanes are getting stronger, Greenland glaciers are moving 130x faster, Antarctic ice shelves are crubmling, etc.
Fearmonger. There is still a lot of climate evidence that points to the current warming trend being the completion of the global recovery from the previous ice age. Possibly accelerated by human activity, but possibly not affected at all.
And just like the THEORY of Evolution, the THEORY of gravity is completely wrong! Everyone knows that it's actually the Mighty Thumb of Thor that keeps people and things on the earth!
Though seriously, I'd kind of like someone to clear up the life from non-life issue you run into if you follow the evolutionary path far enough back. Spontaneous Generation is still wrong.
But I don't know that my assumption is wrong. That's the point. If I see a sign in front of a house that says "Free Lemonade, come on in!" I assume that the owner of the house put it there and he doesn't mind if I come get some lemonade. But I don't know whether I'm right or not. The access point is designed to allow you to choose who you give access to. Someone chose to give access to everyone on this WAP. I don't know if that was intentional or not. But I'm going to assume the owner meant to do it, just like I'm going to assume that the Free Lemonade sign is legit. Otherwise I have to rethink my entire trust framework and start calling the 7/11 to ask permission to come inside.
Ok, maybe I'm the only person left that lives in a place where the nearest employment of ANY kind is a 30 minute drive with no public transportation available.
As for the points on your license around here there are MANY places where the speed limit changes from 55 or 65 down to 35 or 45 for no reason, with no change in road conditions and with no warning. Cops like to set traps there and nail people who are going 55 in the 45 after just being in a 65. So they are slowing down, but they aren't slamming on their brakes. So BAM speeding ticket. You hit 3 or 4 of those over the course of 6 months and all of a sudden you are in danger of losing your license. So yeah, it takes some repeat offenses, but repeat offense can mean a lot of different things. Drunk or reckless drivers aren't the only ones who get their licenses pulled.
Ohhh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize that I had the CHOICE of paying 3000$ a month for an apartment within walking distance of my 9$ an hour job. Now that you've enlightened me I can just move my stuff in and stop worrying about getting to work! GREAT! I know this might be hard to fathom for you LA born and Bred city folk, but not everyone makes 65 or 70K a year. And y'know what, a lot of those people work in areas where walking distance from their job (Call it 5 miles) is either filled with apartments FAR FAR out of their income range, or filled with industrial and commercial centers that don't offer housing. I suppose they could all choose to quit their jobs and get different ones. But how about you spend 15 minutes thinking about the effect that would have on your local downtown shopping experience. Driving is a necessity in our country. There is no argument about that. Taking away someones license completely would usually mean the loss of their job, followed by the loss of their home, car, quite likely the loss of their spouse... All because they were driving a little faster than some cop thought they should be? I don't think that's a reasonable punishment.
It just seems to me that the idea that a "Normal" life involves a 9-5 job, imbibing of alcohol, and the cessation of almost every activity that you found enjoyable prior to turning 18 is a falacy. I'm currently engaged, working a 10pm - 4am job, about to be working another part time job, and my primary recreation tends to be Video Games, or live RPG games with my friends. But as soon as I have a little more cash me and my fiance are going to get WoW to play together and so we can play with my brother and HIS fiance who live 1200 miles away. Does this mean we are somehow leading a less than optimal life? Are we REALLY missing out on some important aspect of culture by not watching television and not spending time in bars? I really don't think so. The culturaly pervasive idea that adult fun has to involve sex and alcohol is just wrong.
I don't see how this kind of fraud is even possible. In Georgia in order to receive unemployment benefits you have to have been laid off, which they verify with your employer, or have a letter of seperation from your employer, and the employer has to not dispute the unemployment claim. Then you have to provide weekly updates to the unemployment office or they stop sending you money. In addition you had to have made at least a certain amount of money during the period you were employed in order to qualify, also verified with your employer and with your tax records. So really, I'd LOVE to know how this is done, because I couldn't even get legitimate unemployment when I was out of work.
Like I said, just because the persecution is less severe than before doesn't make it right. Period, end of story. You do not limit someones freedom based on what you think they might do because of their particular skin color, place of birth, or anything else superficial.
It's called pride of workmanship. Yes, they are fictional entertainment. But why bother writing a series if you are going to change the details in every book/movie? Just make completely seperate works. That whole "People make mistakes" mindset is just an excuse for shoddy work.
So are you trying to say that because we did some reprehensible things in the past that it's OK to do some reprehensible things now just because they are slightly less reprehensible than the previous ones? I think not. It was wrong when it happened to German citizens and it's wrong now when it happens to Arab citizens, and it will be wrong tommorow when it happens to someone else.
Except that one of the primary issues with her novels is indeed skin color. She was one of the first writers to create science fiction and fantasy stories with minority main characters and it is important to her that those characters be portrayed in the fashion she intended.
Part of the problem is the type of competition between the cell phone companies. If a company came along that said "No Overages, No Roaming, No Long Distance", and their plan was a flat.20 per minute would most people use it? 400 minutes on that plan is 80$. Is that better or worse than paying 39.99 for your 400 minutes with the posibility of being charged.45/minute after that? The flat rate would have to be.10/min in order to equal the package rate. I honestly don't think that it would be a viable business model for a company to charge like that. Of course, that's just the low end plan. For something like a 2000 minute plan, 99.99 for the package. You would be charged 200$ at.10/min. So the price would have to go down further to.5/min to equal the higher end packages. I'm not sure if that's doable for the companies. I don't know precisely the per minute cost for them to carry a call, but I don't think there would be any profit in that arrangement for them.
And frankly, I like being able to pay 69.99 for 850 peak mins (Shared between 2 lines), with unlimited offpeak and unlimited calling to other cingular customers. I would rather pay that than.5/min because this way almost all of my calls are free. So I just pay the 69.99 and even when we have 2000 mins worth of calls between us, no charges.
If you live in the New York Metro area then rush hour is never going to get better. We've saturated the area with cell towers, but each tower can only carry so many calls. When all of you people get on the phone at once when you get off work there just isn't enough infrastructure to carry the calls. The deadspots in the cities are usually caused by dense buildings like parking garages between you and the cell tower. Older skyscrapers will also kill the signal.
I do customer service for Verizon Wireless. People in the US expect their phone provider to give them a new phone every 8 months or so for free. They expect this because they pay a monthly fee for their service. Somehow they think that the service doesn't cost Verizon anything to provide them, so their 39.99 a month is pure profit. We make about 1$ per month on each customer in profit. When customers go over their minutes we make more. But if every 8 months we give a phone to that customer that cost us 100$ to get from the manufacturer (And retails for 250) all of a sudden we've paid that customer to use our service. I just want to know why these customers feel like they are entitled to free stuff just because they paid their bill on time? Do cellphone customers in Europe and Japan do that?
A Big Ol' railgun would do the trick without the fossil fuel expenditure. And as one other poster pointed out, if we might need the waste again just build an orbitting collection facility. Set it in a fixed, known, orbit (To avoid the clutter issues) and just store the stuff there. I'm sure you could even automate the whole process by sticking a broadcast beacon on each load of waste and having the collection facility pick it up instead of having people ferry it over. Personally, I'm not particularly worried about nuclear waste on earth. It came out of the ground to start with, if it goes back into the ground, eh, well...
I'm gonna vote for loading it onto a big 'ol spacebound garbage scow and launching it straight into the sun. Problem solved. And for the cost per launch issues, remember we can cut down entirely on all of the stuff that keeps humans alive in during launch. So it will be closer to a satellite launch in cost than a shuttle launch.
Of course people aren't all equal. We're all created equal, everyone comes into the world a naked crying helpless idiot. But we don't stay that way. Barring some serious fundamental handicap you become what you make of yourself. All of this self-esteem, we're all the same bullshit is destroying humanities drive for achievment.
As an example of this, Lazlo (from previous GTA talk radio) starts out the game as a caller on one of the shows, by the time you get to San Fiero Lazlo has his own show again and you can listen to it.
If your child can be mentally or emotionally scarred by someone talking about something they saw on TV then you really need to invest some time in strengthening your childs personality. To make that statement a little clearer, You are a BAD PARENT if your child is damaged by hearing about a TV show.
That may be true. But if you're trying to go back to school, and just need enough of a job to pay a few hundred $ a month in bills why should you have to travel half way across the world? I'm trying to change fields and go into physical therapy, I've got the school situation taken care of, but I need a job in the area and there just aren't any. Even the places with NOW HIRING signs aren't hiring now. They are just collecting applications to ignore.
Of course, that supposes that one lives in an area where occasional low stress jobs are available. I recently moved to DeLand Florida and despite a few dozen "NOW HIRING" signs on various businesses in the area I've been looking for a month and still haven't gotten a job. The last time I went job hunting was 2 years ago and I was employed within a couple of weeks. This time there just don't seem to be any jobs available despite the hiring signs. Oh well.... The disbursement from my 401k should hold me for a few more months. Maybe I'll have something at Target or Walgreens or something by then... But if anyone around is in the area and knows someplaces that actually IS hiring. Let me know!
That's pretty close to the same reason I quit working as a Telemarketer when I was in college. I kept getting people on the phone who obviously were old, confused, and had no idea what they were buying. The product we were selling was a scam and there was just nothing worthwhile in the whole operation. It worked there for about 2 months.
Slashdot Mirror
This is the exact reason that Lex Luthor keeps superman around. I mean come on, everyone knows that Lex could rack up a clip of kryptonite bullets and pop a cap in The Man of Steel any time he wants, right? But Lex needs superman around. You see as long as superman is around then no matter how many people Lex kills, now matter how horrible his actions the regular cops won't ever come after him. They leave the job up to Superman. And what does Lex get when superman comes calling? A stern lecture. So it's handy for Lex to keep Superman around to make sure he can get away with anything for nothing more than a slap on the wrist.
Kintanon
I'm saying we shouldn't go jumping willy nilly into purposefully attempting to change the climate without thinking it through. If the current warming trend is natural and we go sticking a monkey wrench into it we may do actual damage to the climate. It's always better to understand the consequences of your actions first.
Kintanon
Yes, similar to how he says there needs to be "more study, more debate" about global warming. All this while average yearly temperatures are going up, hurricanes are getting stronger, Greenland glaciers are moving 130x faster, Antarctic ice shelves are crubmling, etc.
Fearmonger. There is still a lot of climate evidence that points to the current warming trend being the completion of the global recovery from the previous ice age. Possibly accelerated by human activity, but possibly not affected at all.
Kintanon
And just like the THEORY of Evolution, the THEORY of gravity is completely wrong! Everyone knows that it's actually the Mighty Thumb of Thor that keeps people and things on the earth!
Though seriously, I'd kind of like someone to clear up the life from non-life issue you run into if you follow the evolutionary path far enough back. Spontaneous Generation is still wrong.
Kintanon
But I don't know that my assumption is wrong. That's the point. If I see a sign in front of a house that says "Free Lemonade, come on in!" I assume that the owner of the house put it there and he doesn't mind if I come get some lemonade. But I don't know whether I'm right or not. The access point is designed to allow you to choose who you give access to. Someone chose to give access to everyone on this WAP. I don't know if that was intentional or not. But I'm going to assume the owner meant to do it, just like I'm going to assume that the Free Lemonade sign is legit. Otherwise I have to rethink my entire trust framework and start calling the 7/11 to ask permission to come inside.
Kintanon
Yes, and the owner has quite obviously decided to give access to anyone who tries to connect. Because that's the way his access point is configured.
Kintanon
Ok, maybe I'm the only person left that lives in a place where the nearest employment of ANY kind is a 30 minute drive with no public transportation available.
As for the points on your license around here there are MANY places where the speed limit changes from 55 or 65 down to 35 or 45 for no reason, with no change in road conditions and with no warning. Cops like to set traps there and nail people who are going 55 in the 45 after just being in a 65. So they are slowing down, but they aren't slamming on their brakes. So BAM speeding ticket. You hit 3 or 4 of those over the course of 6 months and all of a sudden you are in danger of losing your license. So yeah, it takes some repeat offenses, but repeat offense can mean a lot of different things. Drunk or reckless drivers aren't the only ones who get their licenses pulled.
Kintanon
Ohhh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize that I had the CHOICE of paying 3000$ a month for an apartment within walking distance of my 9$ an hour job. Now that you've enlightened me I can just move my stuff in and stop worrying about getting to work! GREAT!
I know this might be hard to fathom for you LA born and Bred city folk, but not everyone makes 65 or 70K a year. And y'know what, a lot of those people work in areas where walking distance from their job (Call it 5 miles) is either filled with apartments FAR FAR out of their income range, or filled with industrial and commercial centers that don't offer housing. I suppose they could all choose to quit their jobs and get different ones. But how about you spend 15 minutes thinking about the effect that would have on your local downtown shopping experience. Driving is a necessity in our country. There is no argument about that. Taking away someones license completely would usually mean the loss of their job, followed by the loss of their home, car, quite likely the loss of their spouse... All because they were driving a little faster than some cop thought they should be? I don't think that's a reasonable punishment.
Kintanon
It just seems to me that the idea that a "Normal" life involves a 9-5 job, imbibing of alcohol, and the cessation of almost every activity that you found enjoyable prior to turning 18 is a falacy. I'm currently engaged, working a 10pm - 4am job, about to be working another part time job, and my primary recreation tends to be Video Games, or live RPG games with my friends. But as soon as I have a little more cash me and my fiance are going to get WoW to play together and so we can play with my brother and HIS fiance who live 1200 miles away.
Does this mean we are somehow leading a less than optimal life? Are we REALLY missing out on some important aspect of culture by not watching television and not spending time in bars?
I really don't think so. The culturaly pervasive idea that adult fun has to involve sex and alcohol is just wrong.
Kintanon
I don't see how this kind of fraud is even possible. In Georgia in order to receive unemployment benefits you have to have been laid off, which they verify with your employer, or have a letter of seperation from your employer, and the employer has to not dispute the unemployment claim. Then you have to provide weekly updates to the unemployment office or they stop sending you money. In addition you had to have made at least a certain amount of money during the period you were employed in order to qualify, also verified with your employer and with your tax records.
So really, I'd LOVE to know how this is done, because I couldn't even get legitimate unemployment when I was out of work.
Kintanon
Like I said, just because the persecution is less severe than before doesn't make it right. Period, end of story. You do not limit someones freedom based on what you think they might do because of their particular skin color, place of birth, or anything else superficial.
Kintanon
It's called pride of workmanship. Yes, they are fictional entertainment. But why bother writing a series if you are going to change the details in every book/movie? Just make completely seperate works. That whole "People make mistakes" mindset is just an excuse for shoddy work.
Kintanon
So are you trying to say that because we did some reprehensible things in the past that it's OK to do some reprehensible things now just because they are slightly less reprehensible than the previous ones? I think not. It was wrong when it happened to German citizens and it's wrong now when it happens to Arab citizens, and it will be wrong tommorow when it happens to someone else.
Kintanon
Except that one of the primary issues with her novels is indeed skin color. She was one of the first writers to create science fiction and fantasy stories with minority main characters and it is important to her that those characters be portrayed in the fashion she intended.
Kintanon
Part of the problem is the type of competition between the cell phone companies. If a company came along that said "No Overages, No Roaming, No Long Distance", and their plan was a flat .20 per minute would most people use it? 400 minutes on that plan is 80$. Is that better or worse than paying 39.99 for your 400 minutes with the posibility of being charged .45/minute after that? The flat rate would have to be .10/min in order to equal the package rate. I honestly don't think that it would be a viable business model for a company to charge like that. Of course, that's just the low end plan. For something like a 2000 minute plan, 99.99 for the package. You would be charged 200$ at .10/min. So the price would have to go down further to .5/min to equal the higher end packages.
.5/min because this way almost all of my calls are free. So I just pay the 69.99 and even when we have 2000 mins worth of calls between us, no charges.
I'm not sure if that's doable for the companies. I don't know precisely the per minute cost for them to carry a call, but I don't think there would be any profit in that arrangement for them.
And frankly, I like being able to pay 69.99 for 850 peak mins (Shared between 2 lines), with unlimited offpeak and unlimited calling to other cingular customers. I would rather pay that than
Kintanon
If you live in the New York Metro area then rush hour is never going to get better. We've saturated the area with cell towers, but each tower can only carry so many calls. When all of you people get on the phone at once when you get off work there just isn't enough infrastructure to carry the calls. The deadspots in the cities are usually caused by dense buildings like parking garages between you and the cell tower. Older skyscrapers will also kill the signal.
Kintanon
I do customer service for Verizon Wireless. People in the US expect their phone provider to give them a new phone every 8 months or so for free. They expect this because they pay a monthly fee for their service. Somehow they think that the service doesn't cost Verizon anything to provide them, so their 39.99 a month is pure profit. We make about 1$ per month on each customer in profit. When customers go over their minutes we make more. But if every 8 months we give a phone to that customer that cost us 100$ to get from the manufacturer (And retails for 250) all of a sudden we've paid that customer to use our service. I just want to know why these customers feel like they are entitled to free stuff just because they paid their bill on time? Do cellphone customers in Europe and Japan do that?
Kintanon
A Big Ol' railgun would do the trick without the fossil fuel expenditure. And as one other poster pointed out, if we might need the waste again just build an orbitting collection facility. Set it in a fixed, known, orbit (To avoid the clutter issues) and just store the stuff there. I'm sure you could even automate the whole process by sticking a broadcast beacon on each load of waste and having the collection facility pick it up instead of having people ferry it over. Personally, I'm not particularly worried about nuclear waste on earth. It came out of the ground to start with, if it goes back into the ground, eh, well...
Kintanon
I'm gonna vote for loading it onto a big 'ol spacebound garbage scow and launching it straight into the sun. Problem solved. And for the cost per launch issues, remember we can cut down entirely on all of the stuff that keeps humans alive in during launch. So it will be closer to a satellite launch in cost than a shuttle launch.
Kintanon
Of course people aren't all equal. We're all created equal, everyone comes into the world a naked crying helpless idiot. But we don't stay that way. Barring some serious fundamental handicap you become what you make of yourself. All of this self-esteem, we're all the same bullshit is destroying humanities drive for achievment.
Kintanon
As an example of this, Lazlo (from previous GTA talk radio) starts out the game as a caller on one of the shows, by the time you get to San Fiero Lazlo has his own show again and you can listen to it.
Kintanon
If your child can be mentally or emotionally scarred by someone talking about something they saw on TV then you really need to invest some time in strengthening your childs personality. To make that statement a little clearer, You are a BAD PARENT if your child is damaged by hearing about a TV show.
Kintanon
That may be true. But if you're trying to go back to school, and just need enough of a job to pay a few hundred $ a month in bills why should you have to travel half way across the world? I'm trying to change fields and go into physical therapy, I've got the school situation taken care of, but I need a job in the area and there just aren't any. Even the places with NOW HIRING signs aren't hiring now. They are just collecting applications to ignore.
Kintanon
Of course, that supposes that one lives in an area where occasional low stress jobs are available.
I recently moved to DeLand Florida and despite a few dozen "NOW HIRING" signs on various businesses in the area I've been looking for a month and still haven't gotten a job. The last time I went job hunting was 2 years ago and I was employed within a couple of weeks. This time there just don't seem to be any jobs available despite the hiring signs. Oh well.... The disbursement from my 401k should hold me for a few more months. Maybe I'll have something at Target or Walgreens or something by then... But if anyone around is in the area and knows someplaces that actually IS hiring. Let me know!
Kintanon
That's pretty close to the same reason I quit working as a Telemarketer when I was in college. I kept getting people on the phone who obviously were old, confused, and had no idea what they were buying. The product we were selling was a scam and there was just nothing worthwhile in the whole operation. It worked there for about 2 months.
Kintanon