Actually, the continent is called "The Americas" as well, which means that if we persist in calling everyone from the continent of Europe "Europeans", then everyone from the continent of America is called an "American".
Actually, there are two continents: North America and South America. Culturally, North Americans are Europeans and South Americans are Latino.
But it's the only thing that can work now... Goldman Sachs execs and senators hanging from street lights.
While it is certainly possible that that would solve the problems you imagine it would, it would introduce a host of worse problems.
I don't know about worse problems, but certainly different problems. Not the least of which will be the smell of decomposing corpses permeating the community, and the clouds of flies that will be attracted by the smell. Maybe if you embalm and mummify them first? And apply a coat of polyurethane as a sealer?
Too bad you didn't come up with this idea a little sooner. It would have been a real hit for the Halloween season. I could easily envision the clamor for such popular figures as Senators Leahy, Hatch and Ashcroft, as well as past and present CEO's and Board Members of the RIAA.
But I'm not sure if we have enough street lights to hang all the corrupt politicians in my home state of New Jersey. Maybe we can share some bodies with Wyoming or Alaska?
But if you advertise a "free upgrade" and then, after the purchase was made, change the terms to require payment of "shipping and handling" then you've committed fraud. Free is free.
If you advertise "Free*" and in the fine print says "shipping and handling charges will apply" then you can possibly get away with reasonable fees. I can duplicate, pack and ship a DVD to anywhere in the USA for about $5.79 per disk ($1.39 postage (USPS) + $0.36 DVD+R media + $0.15 DVD sleeve + $.89 padded DVD mailing envelope + 0.10 address label + $ 0.90 labor (2 min @ $20/hr + 40% benefits overhead) + $2.00 overhead = $5.79). Anything over this is windfall profit for the manufacturer/retailer.
Shipping to Zimbabwe is $2.23, raising the total price to $6.63. However, I don't know if the offer was valid in Zimbabwe. While I didn't check every country, I picked about a dozen at random and they are all in the range of $2.23 to $2.28 for a 2 ounce foam-lined, cardboard DVD mailing envelope. Sure, for larger and heavier items there might be an argument, but even if this offer extends to out-of-country buyers the difference in shipping and handling is small enough to be built into the price.
Unfortunately the FTC has yet to crack down on the widespread abuse of inflated shipping and handling fees (hopefully this day will come soon). So, as dishonest as it may be, it is not illegal for the vendor to make a 300% profit on S&H for a "free" offer.
Um... okay. Well it's still damned inconvenient to spend this VISA card, since I have to worry about when/where/how I'm going to use a card before it expires. A $25 check would have been easier, because I can just dump twenty-five dollars in my wallet or savings account and forget it.
Customer service sure has gone to shit in 2009. NBC talked about that in regards to bank accounts raising fees, or stores refusing to take returns. It must be the result of companies tightening their belts.
I have several price cards for each store, all of them with made-up names, addresses and phone numbers. When I forget or lose a card I just ask for a new one. I've never had to wait for a card and only once was I asked to show ID -- and refused and still got the card immediately.
At work we swap the cards around so I don't even know who physically applied for the card in the first place.
The point of these cards are to gather, mine and sell demographic data on a level that credit reporting agencies aren't allowed to report, all in an effort to maximize pricing and drive targeted marking. Research shows that consumers don't like targeted marking and considers such practices an invasion of privacy. I can personally vouch for being annoyed at receiving check-out reminders that I haven't bought any feminine napkins in a while and might be running low -- several months after divorcing my ex-wife!
However, if this update bricks my system, or if any future update stops home brew, then I'm done. I'm not going to buy any more nintendo games, any more VC games, etc. So by preventing me from using homebrew, they cost themselves those precious sales.
You and people like you are less than 1% of 1% of all Nintendo's sales. As much as this might offend your your delicate sensibilities, your saying "Fuck it" to Nintendo will get as much attention as a gnat fart in a hurricane. And still you won't get your money back.
Wal-Mart, like all the nationals, have started focusing on this type of fraud and now take the following actions for high-ticket items:
They call someone who regularly works in the returned item's department to inspect the merchandise, including matching the serial number of the item to that printed on the box;
If you don't have a receipt they will only give you store credit for the lowest price that item sold recently (I forget how long);
They maintain a list (and share it at least regionally, if not nationally) of all returns and make note of any "issues," such as apparently old merchandise returned, no-receipt returns, other signs of abuse.
If you are flagged as a repeat abuser your return "privileges" can be terminated and you won't be able to return anything else at any location.
I know this first-hand because I have an ex-wife who is now banned from returning anything to both Wal-Mart and K-Mart. I've seen her get turned-away at a K-Mart.
Actually your proposal is even dumber because you defrauded a store *in your own state* and *without the protection of Visa/Mastercard* to back you up, plus your standing *in their territory* where a security guard can grab you and drag you into a backroom for interrogation.
[blah blah blah]
Escalating the dumbness scale:
- interstate lines
That makes you guilty of Interstate Wire Fraud under 18 U.S.C. Â 1343, a crime investigated by the FBI and prosecuted in a United States Federal Court. Not a trivial offense.
- U.S. post office delivery confirmation ("Yes we returned the console")
Congratulates, you've now committed Mail Fraud, which is the parent of Interstate Wire Fraud, and carries the same penalties.
- the law itself which states - if the consumer can provide proof-of-return, then the business must refund the money
What specific law are you referring to? There's no law I'm aware of that requires a business (or any other entity) to refund your money for the return of something other than what they sold you. Furthermore, a business is able to stipulate terms limiting or forbidding the return of merchandise, impose penalties and fees or other conditions.
There is no legal right to a refund.
- The credit card company
That is the federal crime of Bank Fraud, also described in U.S.C.Title 18. A credit card company will not just accept your word for a dispute. They will also contact the merchant and decide on the information and evidence provided by the difference parties, and always with respect to the law. If the merchant responds that you returned a used, out-of-warranty, non-functional item in place of the new item you received, they will very likely rule in favor of the merchant.
And if you used Paypal to make the credit card payment, then that's yet another layer of protection between you and the megacorp.
PayPal protection only applies for items purchased from eBay. Otherwise, PayPal doesn't want to get involved.
And now, if anyone participating in this discussion actually takes your advice, you are both also guilt of conspiracy to commit fraud.
TiVO was a fantanstic invention. The problem is that it just can't compete against carrier-subsidized hardware.
You go to your Cable or Satellite TV operator and get an HD DVR for an extra $10 - 15 per month (versus a standard box) and no up-front hardware costs. Or you can buy an HD TiVO for $300 plus pay another $12.95 per month for TiVO service and $4 to $10 per month for two CableCards to work with your carrier, and still not be able to access video-on-demand services. As you can see, there's just no ROI to buying a TiVO, and only a die-hard TiVO evangelist would spend on the hardware if the carrier's box is free and monthly costs are the same or less.
That leaves TiVO with only one asset to capitalize on over the long term: their intellectual property. If indeed they own valid patents on storing TV programming to hard disk then they are not only entitled, but required as a public company, to protect and capitalize on those assets. I would think that they would need to go after the box manufacturers, and not the carriers, to enforce those patents, but IANAL.
What this means to F/OSS projects such as MythTV will have to be determined.
What I'm trying to grasp is that Kindle owners paid to obtain a book that was believed to be in the public domain (and, in fact, is in the public domain now in virtually every country but the United States)? So they paid money to get something that should be free???
Does Amazon sell or rent access to their customer list? I would love to market to such a group of compliant customers. Imagine: They'll pay $400 for the reader and then still cough-up more money for stuff that costs me nothing (except a few cents in airtime for the download). I love capitalism.
[...]
The reason for meters besides revenue collection is to control the availability of parking spots. Metered parking helps keeps store front spots open for customers. As well keeps abandoned or broken cars sitting indefinitely in good parking spots.
Theoretically, yes. But in practice it fails. Local employees just feed the meters (which itself might be illegal but is much more difficult to enforce). Meanwhile, the people you want to attract -- new customers -- have to worry about having change or a parking card AND finding a convenient, open parking spot before they can visit your store.
I draw the line at complete rat genocide.* After all, you've got to leave at least one breeding pair so you can restock for the next round of experiments.
Have you ever owned or bread rats? 3 weeks gestation, litter size of 6 to 16, sexual maturity after 90 days... it doesn't take long to be completely overwhelmed. I tried it once as an alternative to driving 45 minutes to a pet store to feed my 10-ft python. It only took me a few months to give up.
How many rat deaths exactly is a person walking again worth? A million? Could you stomach the hundred thousand gallons of blood flowing from the chopping block, knowing it was saving someone's mobility?
Yes, undoubtedly. I would wield the ax. Even x10, or x100. Well, maybe not for your life. 8^)
Let's put another twist on your question. You have kids? BANG!, I just shot one in the back. Maybe, with a few years of research and a couple thousand dead rats, monkeys and pigs, we will have an experimental treatment that might allow your son or daughter to walk again. Truthfully, would you say no to save the lives of those laboratory animals?
Can you imagine the kind of tax evasion that goes on, and the parallel cash economy that springs up immediately?
Is this so much worse than the current situation, where many just charge and pay 15% or higher interest to those wonderful financial institutions responsible for our current economic crisis?
How many people you know who evade the simple 5% or 6% local sales tax on the services by the landscaper or the handy man? That is the tax that goes to pay for your own local neighbourhood schools and snow removal
Not in my state. School budgets, county and local services come out of property taxes. State Sales Tax and State Income Tax goes to big feeding troth in Trenton.
Now imagine how willing they will be to pay a 17% or 22% tax to distant Washington DC?
I already pay that amount. If it comes out as a sales tax then I'm better off because a) I don't have to deal with filing returns and the associated costs, and b) my savings and investments aren't taxed.
Once cash economy takes root, corrupt people will work their way into every crevice of power and it would exceedingly difficult to get rid of them.
Once again, I live in NJ. We already have corrupt people in every crevice of power. Taking power away from the corrupt banks would be an improvement.
In practical applications, I've never encountered a stretch of asphalt highway that's gone more than 10 years without repaving that didn't obviously need repaving. It seems that most asphalt highways are on a 5-year resurfacing cycle.
Conversely, I know of several stretches of concrete highway that is still in good shape after 30-40 years without general resurfacing. I'm talking about the areas I'm familiar with: NY, NJ & PA.
Even up north, concrete roadbeds -- if properly constructed and maintained -- are much stronger and last much longer than asphalt. Where problems occur is when the roadway needs to be opened and closed to service underground utilities and such. If the patches are not properly sealed and the seals (and expansion joints) maintained, freezing water can tear them up as quickly as asphalt.
Another advantages to concrete is they use no petroleum products in the manufacturing process other than as necessary to move and mix the ingredients, (asphalt requires petroleum products as an ingredient plus must be heated to around 300F during manufacturing and laid and finished above 174F), and concrete's lighter color converts less sunlight into heat and so contributes less to global warming.
you've got to have a real solid maintenance plan in place or you'll pretty quickly end up with impassable roads. It's not expensive to maintain them (gravel isn't expensive)--but it is labor-intensive.
I believe the state already has a large, captive workforce: Convict Labor. While Michigan's prisons can't supply all the labor needed to maintain the roads, it can lower the cost of maintenance by supplementing its Public Works or Dept of Transportation workers with low-cost convict labor.
And it's a win-win situation. In most prisons, inmates want to work. In 2000, Michigan was paying convict labor $7.00/hour. Inmates get to spend time outside the confines of the prison, engage in productive physical activity, and learn job skills and work discipline that can translate into real jobs when they are released. The state offsets the cost of imprisonment by saving on the cost of road maintenance and recapturing some of the convict's wages to offset the cost of imprisonment. It's also reported that prisoners participating in similar prison labor programs are much better behaved than the average. (Information sources: http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=4476),
A lot of young adults go to prison on drug charges or related crimes having never held a job of any significance. They usually come out of prison withno job skills, no car to get to a job, no place to live, no money to get a car or a place to live, and a criminal record that makes it virtually impossible to get a job that can provide a living wage. Faced with this situation it's inevitable that most will go back to selling drugs or theft as a matter of survival.
But if an inmate can work on public works projects such as maintaining roads, and earn wages during their imprisonment -- even if below minimum wage levels -- they have a chance to have enough money saved upon release to buy a cheap used car, legally register and insure it, and get an apartment, without resorting to criminal enterprise. And they also have skills, experience and a work discipline they can capitalize on to find work in an marketplace that can be more forgiving of a criminal record than most others.
First of all, I assume you mean liable and not libel.
Second, what are the liability risks? Sexual Harassment comes to mind, but this would be primarily focused at the individual who accessed the adult content, unless the company elected to not take action to stop the harassment once reported. Negligence or "fostering an environment" are the most likely risks.
Third, how do you mitigate these risks? The primary method is to enact a company policy prohibiting employees from accessing (or possessing, distributing, or creating) adult materials in the workplace or using company resources, and then require each employee to sign a letter of acceptance of this policy as a condition of employment.
What else is required beyond the policy to mitigate liability? Enforcement. Not filtering, but appropriate and consistent disciplinary response to each infraction. Failing this opens a company up to liability for failing to protect its employees from sexual harassment.
Filtering is an added factor that demonstrates a company's commitment to enforcing its sexual harassment policies. But, as we well know, filtering is not difficult to bypass. Just because an employee can find a way to circumvent the filtering does not mean the policy forbidding this activity is no longer in effect. It is the policy itself, and consistent disciplinary action for offenders, that mitigates the risk of liability.
Not that Verizon is great by any means, but through them I have unlimited voice, data, and 1000 texts per month for about $65, after taxes & fees.
I call bullshit on you. There is no Verizon plan available to the general public at or around $65/month, with or without taxes, that provides unlimited voice and data plus 1000 texts. Post a link and I bet Verizon will see several hundred thousand new subscribers this month.
...we are happy enough with the iPhones that we will stay with AT&T as long as the exclusive agreement lasts, but listen up AT&T, you are expendable and we would GLADLY drop your ass. We and everyone else is fed up with your BS.
And do what? You'll go to Verizon and have exactly the same problems. Or you'll go to Sprint and have mostly the same problems with less signal coverage. Or you'll go to T-Mobile and get mostly the same problems and shit-poor coverage.
Unless the FCC or FTC gets involved and puts an end to this BS practice of bait-and-switch pricing it will only get worse. Just look at airline ticket pricing. You can buy a ticket for $25 one way but it will cost you another $80 in fees, surcharges and taxes before you can get to your destination with your clothing.
Survival of the most fit. What's wrong with giving the best advantages to the kids who can make the most of it? Is there some nobility to having a world full of mediocre achievers?
Putting "dumb"kids in class with "smart" kids limits the heights to which the smart kids can grow. Putting emotionally or psychologically deficient kids in class with normal kids is disruptive to the normal kids. Do you think the smart/normal kids want the dumb/deficient kids in their class? Of course not.
But guess what? The dumb/deficient kids don't want to be there either. These dumb/deficient kids would much prefer to be in classes with others that are more like them, so they can feel "normal" by comparison with their peers, and receive the appropriate teaching methodologies at a comfortable rate that allows them to feel a sense of accomplishment they otherwise could never achieve when mixed in with kids far above their intelligence.
It's Firefox. Slashdot has looked like crap for at least a month now. For a news for nerds site, it's curious that they aren't concerned with making it look decent on one of the most popular browsers among nerds.
It's not Slashdot OR Firefox. PEBKAC Configure your script blocking to ALLOW FSDN.COM and the problem should disappear.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, the continent is called "The Americas" as well, which means that if we persist in calling everyone from the continent of Europe "Europeans", then everyone from the continent of America is called an "American".
Actually, there are two continents: North America and South America. Culturally, North Americans are Europeans and South Americans are Latino.
Time to start a non-political-party party!
How about the Straight Talking American Government (STAG) Party or the Transcendent Ombudsmen for Government Accountability (TOGA) Party?
I'll drink to that!
While it is certainly possible that that would solve the problems you imagine it would, it would introduce a host of worse problems.
I don't know about worse problems, but certainly different problems. Not the least of which will be the smell of decomposing corpses permeating the community, and the clouds of flies that will be attracted by the smell. Maybe if you embalm and mummify them first? And apply a coat of polyurethane as a sealer?
Too bad you didn't come up with this idea a little sooner. It would have been a real hit for the Halloween season. I could easily envision the clamor for such popular figures as Senators Leahy, Hatch and Ashcroft, as well as past and present CEO's and Board Members of the RIAA.
But I'm not sure if we have enough street lights to hang all the corrupt politicians in my home state of New Jersey. Maybe we can share some bodies with Wyoming or Alaska?
But if you advertise a "free upgrade" and then, after the purchase was made, change the terms to require payment of "shipping and handling" then you've committed fraud. Free is free.
If you advertise "Free*" and in the fine print says "shipping and handling charges will apply" then you can possibly get away with reasonable fees. I can duplicate, pack and ship a DVD to anywhere in the USA for about $5.79 per disk ($1.39 postage (USPS) + $0.36 DVD+R media + $0.15 DVD sleeve + $.89 padded DVD mailing envelope + 0.10 address label + $ 0.90 labor (2 min @ $20/hr + 40% benefits overhead) + $2.00 overhead = $5.79). Anything over this is windfall profit for the manufacturer/retailer.
Shipping to Zimbabwe is $2.23, raising the total price to $6.63. However, I don't know if the offer was valid in Zimbabwe. While I didn't check every country, I picked about a dozen at random and they are all in the range of $2.23 to $2.28 for a 2 ounce foam-lined, cardboard DVD mailing envelope. Sure, for larger and heavier items there might be an argument, but even if this offer extends to out-of-country buyers the difference in shipping and handling is small enough to be built into the price.
Unfortunately the FTC has yet to crack down on the widespread abuse of inflated shipping and handling fees (hopefully this day will come soon). So, as dishonest as it may be, it is not illegal for the vendor to make a 300% profit on S&H for a "free" offer.
Um... okay. Well it's still damned inconvenient to spend this VISA card, since I have to worry about when/where/how I'm going to use a card before it expires. A $25 check would have been easier, because I can just dump twenty-five dollars in my wallet or savings account and forget it.
Customer service sure has gone to shit in 2009. NBC talked about that in regards to bank accounts raising fees, or stores refusing to take returns. It must be the result of companies tightening their belts.
ADD much? Oh look, a chicken!
I have several price cards for each store, all of them with made-up names, addresses and phone numbers. When I forget or lose a card I just ask for a new one. I've never had to wait for a card and only once was I asked to show ID -- and refused and still got the card immediately.
At work we swap the cards around so I don't even know who physically applied for the card in the first place.
The point of these cards are to gather, mine and sell demographic data on a level that credit reporting agencies aren't allowed to report, all in an effort to maximize pricing and drive targeted marking. Research shows that consumers don't like targeted marking and considers such practices an invasion of privacy. I can personally vouch for being annoyed at receiving check-out reminders that I haven't bought any feminine napkins in a while and might be running low -- several months after divorcing my ex-wife!
However, if this update bricks my system, or if any future update stops home brew, then I'm done. I'm not going to buy any more nintendo games, any more VC games, etc. So by preventing me from using homebrew, they cost themselves those precious sales.
You and people like you are less than 1% of 1% of all Nintendo's sales. As much as this might offend your your delicate sensibilities, your saying "Fuck it" to Nintendo will get as much attention as a gnat fart in a hurricane. And still you won't get your money back.
I know this first-hand because I have an ex-wife who is now banned from returning anything to both Wal-Mart and K-Mart. I've seen her get turned-away at a K-Mart.
Actually your proposal is even dumber because you defrauded a store *in your own state* and *without the protection of Visa/Mastercard* to back you up, plus your standing *in their territory* where a security guard can grab you and drag you into a backroom for interrogation.
[blah blah blah]
Escalating the dumbness scale:
- interstate lines
That makes you guilty of Interstate Wire Fraud under 18 U.S.C. Â 1343, a crime investigated by the FBI and prosecuted in a United States Federal Court. Not a trivial offense.
- U.S. post office delivery confirmation ("Yes we returned the console")
Congratulates, you've now committed Mail Fraud, which is the parent of Interstate Wire Fraud, and carries the same penalties.
- the law itself which states - if the consumer can provide proof-of-return, then the business must refund the money
What specific law are you referring to? There's no law I'm aware of that requires a business (or any other entity) to refund your money for the return of something other than what they sold you. Furthermore, a business is able to stipulate terms limiting or forbidding the return of merchandise, impose penalties and fees or other conditions.
There is no legal right to a refund.
- The credit card company
That is the federal crime of Bank Fraud, also described in U.S.C.Title 18. A credit card company will not just accept your word for a dispute. They will also contact the merchant and decide on the information and evidence provided by the difference parties, and always with respect to the law. If the merchant responds that you returned a used, out-of-warranty, non-functional item in place of the new item you received, they will very likely rule in favor of the merchant.
And if you used Paypal to make the credit card payment, then that's yet another layer of protection between you and the megacorp.
PayPal protection only applies for items purchased from eBay. Otherwise, PayPal doesn't want to get involved.
And now, if anyone participating in this discussion actually takes your advice, you are both also guilt of conspiracy to commit fraud.
TiVO was a fantanstic invention. The problem is that it just can't compete against carrier-subsidized hardware.
You go to your Cable or Satellite TV operator and get an HD DVR for an extra $10 - 15 per month (versus a standard box) and no up-front hardware costs. Or you can buy an HD TiVO for $300 plus pay another $12.95 per month for TiVO service and $4 to $10 per month for two CableCards to work with your carrier, and still not be able to access video-on-demand services. As you can see, there's just no ROI to buying a TiVO, and only a die-hard TiVO evangelist would spend on the hardware if the carrier's box is free and monthly costs are the same or less.
That leaves TiVO with only one asset to capitalize on over the long term: their intellectual property. If indeed they own valid patents on storing TV programming to hard disk then they are not only entitled, but required as a public company, to protect and capitalize on those assets. I would think that they would need to go after the box manufacturers, and not the carriers, to enforce those patents, but IANAL.
What this means to F/OSS projects such as MythTV will have to be determined.
What I'm trying to grasp is that Kindle owners paid to obtain a book that was believed to be in the public domain (and, in fact, is in the public domain now in virtually every country but the United States)? So they paid money to get something that should be free???
Does Amazon sell or rent access to their customer list? I would love to market to such a group of compliant customers. Imagine: They'll pay $400 for the reader and then still cough-up more money for stuff that costs me nothing (except a few cents in airtime for the download). I love capitalism.
[...] The reason for meters besides revenue collection is to control the availability of parking spots. Metered parking helps keeps store front spots open for customers. As well keeps abandoned or broken cars sitting indefinitely in good parking spots.
Theoretically, yes. But in practice it fails. Local employees just feed the meters (which itself might be illegal but is much more difficult to enforce). Meanwhile, the people you want to attract -- new customers -- have to worry about having change or a parking card AND finding a convenient, open parking spot before they can visit your store.
Finally, I'm vindicated for my superior driving skills!
Just doing my part to prevent traffic jams since 1975!
I draw the line at complete rat genocide.* After all, you've got to leave at least one breeding pair so you can restock for the next round of experiments.
Have you ever owned or bread rats? 3 weeks gestation, litter size of 6 to 16, sexual maturity after 90 days... it doesn't take long to be completely overwhelmed. I tried it once as an alternative to driving 45 minutes to a pet store to feed my 10-ft python. It only took me a few months to give up.
How many rat deaths exactly is a person walking again worth? A million? Could you stomach the hundred thousand gallons of blood flowing from the chopping block, knowing it was saving someone's mobility?
Yes, undoubtedly. I would wield the ax. Even x10, or x100. Well, maybe not for your life. 8^)
Let's put another twist on your question. You have kids? BANG!, I just shot one in the back. Maybe, with a few years of research and a couple thousand dead rats, monkeys and pigs, we will have an experimental treatment that might allow your son or daughter to walk again. Truthfully, would you say no to save the lives of those laboratory animals?
What makes you think that all companies in the US treat their workers with dignity and respect?
Can you imagine the kind of tax evasion that goes on, and the parallel cash economy that springs up immediately?
Is this so much worse than the current situation, where many just charge and pay 15% or higher interest to those wonderful financial institutions responsible for our current economic crisis?
How many people you know who evade the simple 5% or 6% local sales tax on the services by the landscaper or the handy man? That is the tax that goes to pay for your own local neighbourhood schools and snow removal
Not in my state. School budgets, county and local services come out of property taxes. State Sales Tax and State Income Tax goes to big feeding troth in Trenton.
Now imagine how willing they will be to pay a 17% or 22% tax to distant Washington DC?
I already pay that amount. If it comes out as a sales tax then I'm better off because a) I don't have to deal with filing returns and the associated costs, and b) my savings and investments aren't taxed.
Once cash economy takes root, corrupt people will work their way into every crevice of power and it would exceedingly difficult to get rid of them.
Once again, I live in NJ. We already have corrupt people in every crevice of power. Taking power away from the corrupt banks would be an improvement.
In practical applications, I've never encountered a stretch of asphalt highway that's gone more than 10 years without repaving that didn't obviously need repaving. It seems that most asphalt highways are on a 5-year resurfacing cycle.
Conversely, I know of several stretches of concrete highway that is still in good shape after 30-40 years without general resurfacing. I'm talking about the areas I'm familiar with: NY, NJ & PA.
Is this atypical?
Even up north, concrete roadbeds -- if properly constructed and maintained -- are much stronger and last much longer than asphalt. Where problems occur is when the roadway needs to be opened and closed to service underground utilities and such. If the patches are not properly sealed and the seals (and expansion joints) maintained, freezing water can tear them up as quickly as asphalt.
Another advantages to concrete is they use no petroleum products in the manufacturing process other than as necessary to move and mix the ingredients, (asphalt requires petroleum products as an ingredient plus must be heated to around 300F during manufacturing and laid and finished above 174F), and concrete's lighter color converts less sunlight into heat and so contributes less to global warming.
you've got to have a real solid maintenance plan in place or you'll pretty quickly end up with impassable roads. It's not expensive to maintain them (gravel isn't expensive)--but it is labor-intensive.
I believe the state already has a large, captive workforce: Convict Labor. While Michigan's prisons can't supply all the labor needed to maintain the roads, it can lower the cost of maintenance by supplementing its Public Works or Dept of Transportation workers with low-cost convict labor.
And it's a win-win situation. In most prisons, inmates want to work. In 2000, Michigan was paying convict labor $7.00/hour. Inmates get to spend time outside the confines of the prison, engage in productive physical activity, and learn job skills and work discipline that can translate into real jobs when they are released. The state offsets the cost of imprisonment by saving on the cost of road maintenance and recapturing some of the convict's wages to offset the cost of imprisonment. It's also reported that prisoners participating in similar prison labor programs are much better behaved than the average. (Information sources: http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=4476),
A lot of young adults go to prison on drug charges or related crimes having never held a job of any significance. They usually come out of prison withno job skills, no car to get to a job, no place to live, no money to get a car or a place to live, and a criminal record that makes it virtually impossible to get a job that can provide a living wage. Faced with this situation it's inevitable that most will go back to selling drugs or theft as a matter of survival.
But if an inmate can work on public works projects such as maintaining roads, and earn wages during their imprisonment -- even if below minimum wage levels -- they have a chance to have enough money saved upon release to buy a cheap used car, legally register and insure it, and get an apartment, without resorting to criminal enterprise. And they also have skills, experience and a work discipline they can capitalize on to find work in an marketplace that can be more forgiving of a criminal record than most others.
First of all, I assume you mean liable and not libel.
Second, what are the liability risks? Sexual Harassment comes to mind, but this would be primarily focused at the individual who accessed the adult content, unless the company elected to not take action to stop the harassment once reported. Negligence or "fostering an environment" are the most likely risks.
Third, how do you mitigate these risks? The primary method is to enact a company policy prohibiting employees from accessing (or possessing, distributing, or creating) adult materials in the workplace or using company resources, and then require each employee to sign a letter of acceptance of this policy as a condition of employment.
What else is required beyond the policy to mitigate liability? Enforcement. Not filtering, but appropriate and consistent disciplinary response to each infraction. Failing this opens a company up to liability for failing to protect its employees from sexual harassment.
Filtering is an added factor that demonstrates a company's commitment to enforcing its sexual harassment policies. But, as we well know, filtering is not difficult to bypass. Just because an employee can find a way to circumvent the filtering does not mean the policy forbidding this activity is no longer in effect. It is the policy itself, and consistent disciplinary action for offenders, that mitigates the risk of liability.
Not that Verizon is great by any means, but through them I have unlimited voice, data, and 1000 texts per month for about $65, after taxes & fees.
I call bullshit on you. There is no Verizon plan available to the general public at or around $65/month, with or without taxes, that provides unlimited voice and data plus 1000 texts. Post a link and I bet Verizon will see several hundred thousand new subscribers this month.
...we are happy enough with the iPhones that we will stay with AT&T as long as the exclusive agreement lasts, but listen up AT&T, you are expendable and we would GLADLY drop your ass. We and everyone else is fed up with your BS.
And do what? You'll go to Verizon and have exactly the same problems. Or you'll go to Sprint and have mostly the same problems with less signal coverage. Or you'll go to T-Mobile and get mostly the same problems and shit-poor coverage.
Unless the FCC or FTC gets involved and puts an end to this BS practice of bait-and-switch pricing it will only get worse. Just look at airline ticket pricing. You can buy a ticket for $25 one way but it will cost you another $80 in fees, surcharges and taxes before you can get to your destination with your clothing.
Survival of the most fit. What's wrong with giving the best advantages to the kids who can make the most of it? Is there some nobility to having a world full of mediocre achievers?
Putting "dumb"kids in class with "smart" kids limits the heights to which the smart kids can grow. Putting emotionally or psychologically deficient kids in class with normal kids is disruptive to the normal kids. Do you think the smart/normal kids want the dumb/deficient kids in their class? Of course not.
But guess what? The dumb/deficient kids don't want to be there either. These dumb/deficient kids would much prefer to be in classes with others that are more like them, so they can feel "normal" by comparison with their peers, and receive the appropriate teaching methodologies at a comfortable rate that allows them to feel a sense of accomplishment they otherwise could never achieve when mixed in with kids far above their intelligence.
It's Firefox. Slashdot has looked like crap for at least a month now. For a news for nerds site, it's curious that they aren't concerned with making it look decent on one of the most popular browsers among nerds.
It's not Slashdot OR Firefox. PEBKAC Configure your script blocking to ALLOW FSDN.COM and the problem should disappear.