Or perhaps the explanation is that he happened to be at the right place at the right time. You know, like proximal to Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft while they were in college. And lucky enough to become a VERY early Microsoft employee when they were not much more than a garage shop. And lucky enough to be an early, large shareholder. And lucky enough to be the best buddy to the largest single shareholder, Chairman and CEO of Microsoft.
I think it could be argued that Carly Fiorina could qualify as worse. She took an longer established and well respected company and put it on a path of financial ruin that may not be reversible. Or how about Kenneth Lay and Enron?
Ballmer my be inept or uninspired, but Microsoft is making money. Lots of it. He may be limiting Microsoft's future options due to poor planning and product development or strategy, but they're not going anywhere in the short term.
Microsoft's biggest problem is that they are now the leader of a mature and stagnant market. It is likely that they will never again lead a "new" market so decisively as they did in the past. Very few companies ever do. As time marches on, they will have less and less impact on the direction of general computing.
You are flogging a dead horse. Despite your skewed view on the subject, the publishers all settled with the DOJ; every single one of them. And only Apple fought. Apple lost.
Therefore, one can safely argue that you are in fact wrong in your both your assumptions and your reasoning.
Same here Between the talkers, texters, and the cost I never go anymore. I can buy a pizza and drinks and then buy the movie, watch it once and throw it away and it would still be cheaper than taking my family to the theater anymore. My home theater is much nicer than the theater experience now. I can wait the six months to see a movie.
A simplistic analogy only demonstrates either a profound lack of understanding of the complexities of the problem, or a serious apathy toward the parts of the population that would be thrown into a survival situation.
Yes...and? Sometimes people need to deal with hard times after decades of bad decisions and waste. We allowed this situation to happen, we supported it, we deserve the consequence of fixing it.
And as it took "decades" of bad decisions, you are not going to change it in a year. The economy does not shift instantly when there are disruptions. That is not to say that nothing should be done, but unless you enjoy civil unrest, crime, massive unemployment, it must be done with care. See Greece for how not to do that sort of thing. Pensioners were committing suicide to avoid starving to death.
Our economy is a LOT bigger and harder to radically redesign.
"Its going to suck for me" is not an excuse to continue doing the wrong thing and digging deeper and deeper. Simply put, tank manufactuers may not decide tomorow to make bicycles, but, if you don't cut them off, they will NEVER stop making tanks.
Cutting off a few tank orders is not the same thing as cutting 40% of Federal spending to arrive at a balanced budget. If you suddenly removed $1 Trillion from the US economy, it doesn't matter how much capital would be freed up for "investment," as you would have widespread panic and unemployment that would make the "great Recession" seem like a day at the park. The fact is, it would "suck" for everyone worldwide. We are 5 years out from the housing bubble and we are just now digging out from unemployment trouble.
The problem is demographics, growth stagnation, and poor planning. Simplistic edicts like yours will not suddenly fix everything.
The problem is that the public sector is so large there is so much of the private sector is directly and indirectly dependent upon it that abruptly stopping spending would throw the US economy into a tailspin. It has to be weaned to allow the economy to shift to other areas of commerce. That takes time. Tank manufacturers, don't wake up one morning and decide they will make bicycles that day. Massive unemployment would ensue if the government suddenly shut off the tap.
We may still end up in a double dip recession due to the sequester reductions and that is trivial to a real balanced budget.
Have you not noticed how practically all of our leaders are old, rich, white men?
Yes I did. Like Barack Obama. And Eric Holder. And Janet Napolitano. And Kathleen Sebelius. And Susan Rice. And Maxine Waters. And Charles Rangel. And Sheila Jackson Lee. And Dianne Feinstein, And Bennie Thompson. And Al Green. And John Conyers. And Elija Cummings. And Maria Cantwell. And Barbara Boxer. And Bobby Jindal. Ad naseum.
I can speak for fact that the "official" city map of my hometown has a street that doesn't exist on it. When I fist saw it as a kid, I wondered if it was a street that was planned and never built. Of course, now I recognize it as DRM as there is no room for a street to ever be there. It was fun to order a pizza now and then and have it delivered there.
All the people citing that the 2nd Amendment can be repealed need to understand that the Constitution's purpose is to limit the powers of the government. The Bill of Rights was an afterthought to prevent misinterpretation by authoritative tyrants like yourself who believe rights have to be enumerated to be enjoyed. See 10th Amendment.
Amen. The biggest problem driver I encountered this week was driving very slow and dropped from 20 mph down to 5 mph on the road. When I passed, I saw it was because they had unfolded a large map they were reading it. They had no idea what was in front of them or which way they were pointed. They were still moving when I turned.
I never drink coffee because it tastes like disgusting burnt plants or something. Maybe since it causes headaches, high blood pressure, dehydration, kidney stones, teeth stains, etc
You forgot the horrible breath. You cannot sit far enough away from a coffee drinker at a lunch table to avoid that horrible dragon breath that accompanies them everywhere after a morning of drinking the stuff. Worse, if they are also smokers. You always hope they order something with lots of garlic to mask the smell and that it arrives quickly. I always wondered if their spouses retched when they went home and kissed them hello.
Thanks for clearing that up. You are clearly the naive imbecile proudly marching along toward the police state smiling broadly and proclaiming, "I have nothing to hide."
The fact that your government "has access to all your records, phone calls, credit information and mostly likely everything you've ever googled" should scare the shit out of you, making you run to your representative demanding they strip those powers away from the president. Instead, you happily submit DNA, hand over passwords and cheer from the stands as your president spies on you and your neighbors while the courts redefine your "inalienable" rights to suit themselves better.
You might want to read up on history. You might want to start on Nazi Germany, or even communist East Germany for that matter. Or Stalinist Russia. Or Ceausescu's Romania, Or Paul Pot's Cambodia. Or Vichy France. Or Franco's Spain. Or more recently the Kim dynasty of North Korea. There's no shortage of cases to study. And if you think that it couldn't happen here, I'm sure that there were lots of naive imbeciles in those situations that didn't see it coming either. If the shit ever does hit the fan, you better hope that whoever ends up with the power finds you worth keeping. But hey! At least you'll be able to say you did your part to stop those evil child pornographers and terrorists or whomever the boogeyman du jour happens to be. Never mind that the people with REAL POWER to hurt you just got stronger.
But former Vice President Al Gore summed up the feelings of many when he wrote on Twitter: "Is it just me, or is secret blanket surveillance obscenely outrageous?"
Al Gore, not exactly a great bastion of conservatism, makes a statement that this activity is "obscenely outrageous" and I get modded flamebait for noting that Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat and chair of the Select Committee on Intelligence is anti-civil-rights thinks that this is lawful and right. She applies the same curtailment logic on other rights guaranteed by the Constitution.
Apparently, slashdotters think not all rights are created equal. Is your 4th amendment rights more valuable than my 2nd amendment rights?
If the man in question didn't even know about them then he should act in good faith and submit the computer / notebook for inspection, therefore in no way looking or acting guilty, it's the same theory behind people who refuse to submit DNA when they haven't done anything wrong, you look guilty by holding out.
You are either the most deluded sycophant I have ever seen, or the most naive imbecile. Make sure you keep thinking about how you "have nothing to hide" while the DoJ sifts through all you phone calls or comes asking for your "DNA" to make sure you're innocent.
"As far as I know, this is the exact three-month renewal of what has been the case for the past seven years," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California. "This renewal is carried out by the FISA court under the business records section of the Patriot Act. Therefore it is lawful. It has been briefed to Congress."
Finally, the truth wins out. All of us "gun lovers" have been trying to tell everyone that Dianne Feinstein is anti-freedom, anti-civil-rights, ant-privacy, and anti-American.
Perhaps I should have said cutting edge hardware feature to prevent you from being deliberately obtuse. Apple could add a Pez dispenser and it would not improve their position either. Despite feigning ignorance, you, Apple, and smartphone buyers at large are quite well aware of what constitutes a premium feature.
Does Casio now sell diamond studded or solid gold watches? GP notes that Apple phones no longer have exclusive hardware features to distinguish it as high end.
The value to me for using a prepaid phone (Straight Talk) is that I'm not subject to AT&T or Verizon changing the rules in the middle of the game and penalizing me for bailing out just as we are discussing. Contracts are for losers that can't figure out that when you sign on for two years, your provider no longer has to provide a good value or good customer service. If it's no longer a good value proposition, I can port my number over to a different service; no harm done.
If you think it's only about money, then you are mistaken.
One Sunday afternoon, I tried to refill a prescription at Walgreen's for my daughter. This was a refill for a prescription that had been filled there before. The insurance company rejected the claim saying that she was not a covered party. The pharmacist and I worked for an hour trying to get it to be accepted. He even called their hotline twice and read off all the claim and policy numbers manually. The next day, I called the insurance company and straightened it out. The girl in "customer services" could not tell me why it was rejected, nor would she give me any assurances that it would not happen again at a more critical time. She had no intention of making any extra effort to resolve the underlying cause for the claim being rejected. As far as she was concerned, the case was closed.
I wrote an email to the benefits manager of my company with my concerns. I received a phone call on Tuesday from a supervisor at the insurance company who researched the problem and discovered it was a transposed number in the claim. He even called Walgreen's to make sure it never happened again. He told me he planned to pull the phone call and if my version of what happened was true, he was going to fire the girl. I knew my story WAS true and I suspected she was a gonner.
I asked him firmly not to fire her and stated that it was not my intent. I just wanted her to fix the cause and make sure it did not happen during, say, an ER visit. It was two weeks before Christmas, and I didn't want to be responsible for getting her fired. She may have just been having a bad day. She probably never knew how close she was to me getting her fired and then saving her job.
ACORN should have been investigated; as should the IRS. You judge a group not by the "best" good they do, but by the "worst" bad they do. And if some of the allegations about the IRS that I have read are true, someone should go to jail. To wield that kind of governmental power and arbitrarily train it on groups you do not like is unconscionable. And it's starting to look like the AP phone records grab is the same kind of crap.
I voted for Obama and the shit coming from his "administration" is enough to make ME want to join the Tea Party.
Slashdot Mirror
Or perhaps the explanation is that he happened to be at the right place at the right time. You know, like proximal to Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft while they were in college. And lucky enough to become a VERY early Microsoft employee when they were not much more than a garage shop. And lucky enough to be an early, large shareholder. And lucky enough to be the best buddy to the largest single shareholder, Chairman and CEO of Microsoft.
It's not what you know, it's who you know.
I think it could be argued that Carly Fiorina could qualify as worse. She took an longer established and well respected company and put it on a path of financial ruin that may not be reversible. Or how about Kenneth Lay and Enron?
Ballmer my be inept or uninspired, but Microsoft is making money. Lots of it. He may be limiting Microsoft's future options due to poor planning and product development or strategy, but they're not going anywhere in the short term.
Microsoft's biggest problem is that they are now the leader of a mature and stagnant market. It is likely that they will never again lead a "new" market so decisively as they did in the past. Very few companies ever do. As time marches on, they will have less and less impact on the direction of general computing.
You are flogging a dead horse. Despite your skewed view on the subject, the publishers all settled with the DOJ; every single one of them. And only Apple fought. Apple lost.
Therefore, one can safely argue that you are in fact wrong in your both your assumptions and your reasoning.
Same here Between the talkers, texters, and the cost I never go anymore. I can buy a pizza and drinks and then buy the movie, watch it once and throw it away and it would still be cheaper than taking my family to the theater anymore. My home theater is much nicer than the theater experience now. I can wait the six months to see a movie.
A simplistic analogy only demonstrates either a profound lack of understanding of the complexities of the problem, or a serious apathy toward the parts of the population that would be thrown into a survival situation.
And as it took "decades" of bad decisions, you are not going to change it in a year. The economy does not shift instantly when there are disruptions. That is not to say that nothing should be done, but unless you enjoy civil unrest, crime, massive unemployment, it must be done with care. See Greece for how not to do that sort of thing. Pensioners were committing suicide to avoid starving to death.
Our economy is a LOT bigger and harder to radically redesign.
Cutting off a few tank orders is not the same thing as cutting 40% of Federal spending to arrive at a balanced budget. If you suddenly removed $1 Trillion from the US economy, it doesn't matter how much capital would be freed up for "investment," as you would have widespread panic and unemployment that would make the "great Recession" seem like a day at the park. The fact is, it would "suck" for everyone worldwide. We are 5 years out from the housing bubble and we are just now digging out from unemployment trouble.
The problem is demographics, growth stagnation, and poor planning. Simplistic edicts like yours will not suddenly fix everything.
The problem is that the public sector is so large there is so much of the private sector is directly and indirectly dependent upon it that abruptly stopping spending would throw the US economy into a tailspin. It has to be weaned to allow the economy to shift to other areas of commerce. That takes time. Tank manufacturers, don't wake up one morning and decide they will make bicycles that day. Massive unemployment would ensue if the government suddenly shut off the tap.
We may still end up in a double dip recession due to the sequester reductions and that is trivial to a real balanced budget.
It's hard to take your rant seriously when our President is black and was elected twice. Sorry, but "practically" or not, you fail.
Yes I did. Like Barack Obama. And Eric Holder. And Janet Napolitano. And Kathleen Sebelius. And Susan Rice. And Maxine Waters. And Charles Rangel. And Sheila Jackson Lee. And Dianne Feinstein, And Bennie Thompson. And Al Green. And John Conyers. And Elija Cummings. And Maria Cantwell. And Barbara Boxer. And Bobby Jindal. Ad naseum.
Rich, old, white men. The whole lot of them.
I can speak for fact that the "official" city map of my hometown has a street that doesn't exist on it. When I fist saw it as a kid, I wondered if it was a street that was planned and never built. Of course, now I recognize it as DRM as there is no room for a street to ever be there. It was fun to order a pizza now and then and have it delivered there.
Can I pay my tax liability with monopoly money?
I guess you missed that part about "We The People." Perhaps you wish to abrogate your rights, but there are others of us that don't.
All the people citing that the 2nd Amendment can be repealed need to understand that the Constitution's purpose is to limit the powers of the government. The Bill of Rights was an afterthought to prevent misinterpretation by authoritative tyrants like yourself who believe rights have to be enumerated to be enjoyed. See 10th Amendment.
Amen. The biggest problem driver I encountered this week was driving very slow and dropped from 20 mph down to 5 mph on the road. When I passed, I saw it was because they had unfolded a large map they were reading it. They had no idea what was in front of them or which way they were pointed. They were still moving when I turned.
You forgot the horrible breath. You cannot sit far enough away from a coffee drinker at a lunch table to avoid that horrible dragon breath that accompanies them everywhere after a morning of drinking the stuff. Worse, if they are also smokers. You always hope they order something with lots of garlic to mask the smell and that it arrives quickly. I always wondered if their spouses retched when they went home and kissed them hello.
Income Statement. Sales revenue is recorded on an income statement. A balance sheet records assets and liabilities.
Thanks for clearing that up. You are clearly the naive imbecile proudly marching along toward the police state smiling broadly and proclaiming, "I have nothing to hide."
The fact that your government "has access to all your records, phone calls, credit information and mostly likely everything you've ever googled" should scare the shit out of you, making you run to your representative demanding they strip those powers away from the president. Instead, you happily submit DNA, hand over passwords and cheer from the stands as your president spies on you and your neighbors while the courts redefine your "inalienable" rights to suit themselves better.
You might want to read up on history. You might want to start on Nazi Germany, or even communist East Germany for that matter. Or Stalinist Russia. Or Ceausescu's Romania, Or Paul Pot's Cambodia. Or Vichy France. Or Franco's Spain. Or more recently the Kim dynasty of North Korea. There's no shortage of cases to study. And if you think that it couldn't happen here, I'm sure that there were lots of naive imbeciles in those situations that didn't see it coming either. If the shit ever does hit the fan, you better hope that whoever ends up with the power finds you worth keeping. But hey! At least you'll be able to say you did your part to stop those evil child pornographers and terrorists or whomever the boogeyman du jour happens to be. Never mind that the people with REAL POWER to hurt you just got stronger.
Al Gore, not exactly a great bastion of conservatism, makes a statement that this activity is "obscenely outrageous" and I get modded flamebait for noting that Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat and chair of the Select Committee on Intelligence is anti-civil-rights thinks that this is lawful and right. She applies the same curtailment logic on other rights guaranteed by the Constitution.
Apparently, slashdotters think not all rights are created equal. Is your 4th amendment rights more valuable than my 2nd amendment rights?
You are either the most deluded sycophant I have ever seen, or the most naive imbecile. Make sure you keep thinking about how you "have nothing to hide" while the DoJ sifts through all you phone calls or comes asking for your "DNA" to make sure you're innocent.
Finally, the truth wins out. All of us "gun lovers" have been trying to tell everyone that Dianne Feinstein is anti-freedom, anti-civil-rights, ant-privacy, and anti-American.
Perhaps I should have said cutting edge hardware feature to prevent you from being deliberately obtuse. Apple could add a Pez dispenser and it would not improve their position either. Despite feigning ignorance, you, Apple, and smartphone buyers at large are quite well aware of what constitutes a premium feature.
Does Casio now sell diamond studded or solid gold watches? GP notes that Apple phones no longer have exclusive hardware features to distinguish it as high end.
The value to me for using a prepaid phone (Straight Talk) is that I'm not subject to AT&T or Verizon changing the rules in the middle of the game and penalizing me for bailing out just as we are discussing. Contracts are for losers that can't figure out that when you sign on for two years, your provider no longer has to provide a good value or good customer service. If it's no longer a good value proposition, I can port my number over to a different service; no harm done.
If you think it's only about money, then you are mistaken.
One Sunday afternoon, I tried to refill a prescription at Walgreen's for my daughter. This was a refill for a prescription that had been filled there before. The insurance company rejected the claim saying that she was not a covered party. The pharmacist and I worked for an hour trying to get it to be accepted. He even called their hotline twice and read off all the claim and policy numbers manually. The next day, I called the insurance company and straightened it out. The girl in "customer services" could not tell me why it was rejected, nor would she give me any assurances that it would not happen again at a more critical time. She had no intention of making any extra effort to resolve the underlying cause for the claim being rejected. As far as she was concerned, the case was closed.
I wrote an email to the benefits manager of my company with my concerns. I received a phone call on Tuesday from a supervisor at the insurance company who researched the problem and discovered it was a transposed number in the claim. He even called Walgreen's to make sure it never happened again. He told me he planned to pull the phone call and if my version of what happened was true, he was going to fire the girl. I knew my story WAS true and I suspected she was a gonner.
I asked him firmly not to fire her and stated that it was not my intent. I just wanted her to fix the cause and make sure it did not happen during, say, an ER visit. It was two weeks before Christmas, and I didn't want to be responsible for getting her fired. She may have just been having a bad day. She probably never knew how close she was to me getting her fired and then saving her job.
ACORN should have been investigated; as should the IRS. You judge a group not by the "best" good they do, but by the "worst" bad they do. And if some of the allegations about the IRS that I have read are true, someone should go to jail. To wield that kind of governmental power and arbitrarily train it on groups you do not like is unconscionable. And it's starting to look like the AP phone records grab is the same kind of crap.
I voted for Obama and the shit coming from his "administration" is enough to make ME want to join the Tea Party.