And who was enforcing a low take? Upper level criminals use the threat of violence to keep the lower level criminals from stealing from the "wrong persons". This wasn't a mere skimming operation.
Nah, jokes like "64xx should be enough for anybody" actually suck the humor out of the reader due to old age. The GP is probably an inmate in the Home for the Terminally Bland.
The Israelis were condemned by the sort of people who always condemn Israel. And their action towards that ship seems to have stopped any other of Hama supporters from deciding they'd like to also become martyrs by provoking the Israelis.
It may be making everyone else nervous, but I view it as a breath of fresh air. The Chinese government is finally showing their true colors and what they have in store for the rest of the world when they control enough raw materials and have a military to back it up. This won't be the last time the Chinese government pulls a stunt like this. Japan has already announced they are going to release the captain. China has just learned this sort of behavior works for them.
You need to think like a Permanent Secretary. "Yes Minister, it is true that there will be no forced upgrades and less orphaned products risk. And the national infrastructure of trained programmers is something we want to think about. That would be a courageous stand to take, Minister. May I suggest a possibly less courageous stand though. With companies footing the expense, we can squeeze them and announce our savings to the voters in your district. There is the possibility that all those programmers now on the public payroll will compete with private business and their tax dollars. Those tax dollars help lower the income taxes of your everyday voter. But you decide, Minister, a courageous stand or a sensible one that can be defended properly."
Of the new $700 billion defense bill (not yet passed) about $400 billion goes to defense contractors, I presume because that's the amount for procurement...including bullets, boots, fuel, etc. The entire federal budget is roughly $3.2 trillion, of that, 2/3s is entitlement programs. So, the American people are sucking about $2 trillion from the federal government every year. And that is expected to balloon as the Me generation starts retiring and declaring they get their "fair" share of benefits.
So, let's assume we can cut approximately $200 billion from defense contractors. There goes the balance sheet of Boeing, Northrup-Grumman, etc. and some of their employees get laid off, which means they'll be added to the fed. dole. And that probably knackers any thought of countering China and their claims on Taiwan, the entire S. China Sea, and and other assorted mineral and territorial claims they can think of...and they can think of a lot. And it is only $200 against a deficit this year of $1.3 trillion.
Of course, there is that $2 trillion just waiting for a bit of means testing. Oh, and the TARP program, most of that has been paid back. Admittedly, they pissed it off on all the wrong things, but then the financial system failed to collapse...which frankly was all it was intended to do.
Now, if the Bush tax cuts were allowed to expire, that would almost cover the projected deficits. Hmmm....The American people like their entitlements. I think Congress should properly recognize this and see to it that they pay for it. Once the budgets are balanced, then the American people should choose which entitlements to axe to give them x amount of tax relief.
"Only last month the story about Indians having small cocks, and condoms being too large, made the list for a week." They seem to replay that story about every 6-8 months. I just figured the BBC just liked to tweaks the Indians out of boredom.
Damn it, you caught us. Now we'll have to move the White House's We Hate the Brits tea parties into some other quarters. Sheesh, a government can't even enjoy a bit of incomprehensible silly hi-jinks any more.
"Say, Barack, d'ya see what we did to that kid with the "prick" email."
"Hehehehe, that one never gets old. Hey, about we find some visiting Russian scientist and prevent him from returning without a visa for Russia. I can't get enough of that."
"Snicker, good one, Barack. Let's make him go to the British Embassy for that visa too, he'll spend the next year in bureaucratic limbo."
See poster above, apparently the Canadian gov. isn't stopping peer reviewed publication, just gov. scientists pimping their asses to the popular media. In a way, there's a certain logic to that; why should a scientist get media coverage (with enough points it can be turned into real money) on the government dime. On the other hand, there should be wider dissemination for scientific results even if the public is in general too uneducated or distracted to care.
Bullshit. The War in the Pacific was caused because Imperial Japan thought they were superior humans and decided to start by raping Manchuria. Then they started in on Indochina. The U.S. did enforce an embargo which the Japanese took umbrage over and decided they needed the whole damn Pacific to show everyone how superior they were. The War in the Pacific was caused by the Japanese and their notions of superior race.
"but it was a working country", as long as you weren't an Iraqi Shi'ite or Kurd...about 80% of the population.
BTW: the U.S. did attempt to kill off Al-Qaeda first off. It didn't work because they ran with their tails between their legs to their buddies the Pakistani Taliban....you know, the ones who will be the first to use a nuke on India...or the U.S....or Iran...or Russia...they aren't particular.
Yeah, and let's not forget about the fluoride in the water. What a sweet deal government has with that one. First, the aliens land at Roswell, then the fluoride, now this. It all fits together now.
Did you actually read that (don't forget, wikipedia never lies). I'll reprint the most salient blurb here:
"According to documents Posada stopped being a CIA asset in 1974, but that there remained "occasional contact" until June 1976, a few months before the bombing. CIA had concrete advance intelligence, as early as June 1976, on possible plans by Cuban exile terrorist groups to bomb a Cubana airliner, and the FBI's attache in Caracas had multiple contacts with one of the Venezuelans who placed the bomb on the plane, and provided him with a visa to the U.S. five days before the bombing, despite suspicions that he was engaged in terrorist activities at the direction of Luis Posada Carriles."
That hardly constitutes proof. It sounds like someone went off on a plot of his own.
Yes, however, let's talk recent history, say, after the Sen. Church and President Carter cut the balls off the CIA. The only ones I can think of the current drone strikes in Pakistan. But since the Taliban have declared war on everyone, I think the CIA ought to be commended for taking them seriously.
Probably has more to do with our alleged Euro friends not wanting the U.S. to poach their talent, whereas countries that treat their women like cattle generally treat all their people like cattle and getting rid of the few troublemakers who have a brain to think for themselves isn't a bad deal. Or, if they treat their people decently but are a poor country, they decide training some of their people in the U.S. for a time and then luring them back to start homegrown companies is a great way to jump start their own techno-base. I know a few Indians who did that.
Well, databases are exactly a hot innovation area any longer. Oracle has been squeezing profits out by hook and crook for years. Maybe Hurd is just the guy to carry on that fine tradition. He knows how to run a tight ship as long as the ship is not going anywhere in particular.
I use Google for Apple's site. Apple's search is obnoxious. I want to find Apple gadget that does x with a spec sheet and a price. Instead I get a list of mostly irrelevant links and any relevant ones are to white papers or some other useless pile of crap. It's as though there were a politician in charge of their search and he was asked to state his policy on x so he rummages around in his brain for anything but x.
Reminds me of a joke. Three Business School Product were sitting down at lunch and all were trying to show how technologically advanced their companies were. One guy starts tapping his fingers and then puts his thumb near his ear and his pinkie by his mouth and starts talking. Then he says goodbye and explains to his amazed buddies that his company had installed phones in their hands and their fingers do the dialing. One of the others, not to be outdone, starts touching various teeth with his tongue, looking very odd. Then he starts talking, says goodbye, and explains his company has installed phones in their teeth. The third fellow, feeling a bit behind the times, lets out a rip-roaring fart that wakes the dead. He quickly takes his leave to go the bathroom because a fax has just come in.
The real issue is not so much what science does, it is the outlook of politicians. They see everything as a political game. Science, in their minds, is simply something to be used for political ends. Being a suspicious lot, they assume a scientific view at odds with their political view must have been promulgated by the opposition to their political view.
Writ large, people in general are reluctant to give up their beliefs in response to contravening evidence. What makes things worse is that science, in typical fashion, is rarely 100% unequivocal about any one issue. It is in the core of what it means to be a scientist to always question and include the known assumptions. When those assumptions get violated, few recall the original assumptions. All they have heard is that science got something wrong.
In addition, politicians work on a time scale much shorter than science. This has a tendency to whipsaw science; politician make nonsense claim, science shows years later precisely why that is a stupid claim, public policy has already been made in the intervening time.
This is why an uneducated populace and an uneducated, or an educated but corrupt political class, will doom a society to always being in the position of reacting to forces they don't understand or willfully ignore until it is too late.
A whole trillion, eh? So if the U.S. government took it all this year, they'd still be $400 Billion in the hole...and $1.4 Trillion next year. Me thinks that's not an enormous amount of money in the relative scheme of things.
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And who was enforcing a low take? Upper level criminals use the threat of violence to keep the lower level criminals from stealing from the "wrong persons". This wasn't a mere skimming operation.
Nah, jokes like "64xx should be enough for anybody" actually suck the humor out of the reader due to old age. The GP is probably an inmate in the Home for the Terminally Bland.
"I know that Mossad, the CIA, or whoever did this probably intended this to be a one-shot deal", really? How do you know this?
"When did Microsoft stop leveraging assets to achieve strategic successes that harmonize the enterprise?"
Hehehehe...made my whole day. Although seeing someone parrot the MS Marketing Dept so well is a bit disturbing.
The Israelis were condemned by the sort of people who always condemn Israel. And their action towards that ship seems to have stopped any other of Hama supporters from deciding they'd like to also become martyrs by provoking the Israelis.
It may be making everyone else nervous, but I view it as a breath of fresh air. The Chinese government is finally showing their true colors and what they have in store for the rest of the world when they control enough raw materials and have a military to back it up. This won't be the last time the Chinese government pulls a stunt like this. Japan has already announced they are going to release the captain. China has just learned this sort of behavior works for them.
You need to think like a Permanent Secretary. "Yes Minister, it is true that there will be no forced upgrades and less orphaned products risk. And the national infrastructure of trained programmers is something we want to think about. That would be a courageous stand to take, Minister. May I suggest a possibly less courageous stand though. With companies footing the expense, we can squeeze them and announce our savings to the voters in your district. There is the possibility that all those programmers now on the public payroll will compete with private business and their tax dollars. Those tax dollars help lower the income taxes of your everyday voter. But you decide, Minister, a courageous stand or a sensible one that can be defended properly."
Of the new $700 billion defense bill (not yet passed) about $400 billion goes to defense contractors, I presume because that's the amount for procurement...including bullets, boots, fuel, etc. The entire federal budget is roughly $3.2 trillion, of that, 2/3s is entitlement programs. So, the American people are sucking about $2 trillion from the federal government every year. And that is expected to balloon as the Me generation starts retiring and declaring they get their "fair" share of benefits.
So, let's assume we can cut approximately $200 billion from defense contractors. There goes the balance sheet of Boeing, Northrup-Grumman, etc. and some of their employees get laid off, which means they'll be added to the fed. dole. And that probably knackers any thought of countering China and their claims on Taiwan, the entire S. China Sea, and and other assorted mineral and territorial claims they can think of...and they can think of a lot. And it is only $200 against a deficit this year of $1.3 trillion.
Of course, there is that $2 trillion just waiting for a bit of means testing. Oh, and the TARP program, most of that has been paid back. Admittedly, they pissed it off on all the wrong things, but then the financial system failed to collapse...which frankly was all it was intended to do.
Now, if the Bush tax cuts were allowed to expire, that would almost cover the projected deficits. Hmmm....The American people like their entitlements. I think Congress should properly recognize this and see to it that they pay for it. Once the budgets are balanced, then the American people should choose which entitlements to axe to give them x amount of tax relief.
"Only last month the story about Indians having small cocks, and condoms being too large, made the list for a week." They seem to replay that story about every 6-8 months. I just figured the BBC just liked to tweaks the Indians out of boredom.
Damn it, you caught us. Now we'll have to move the White House's We Hate the Brits tea parties into some other quarters. Sheesh, a government can't even enjoy a bit of incomprehensible silly hi-jinks any more.
"Say, Barack, d'ya see what we did to that kid with the "prick" email."
"Hehehehe, that one never gets old. Hey, about we find some visiting Russian scientist and prevent him from returning without a visa for Russia. I can't get enough of that."
"Snicker, good one, Barack. Let's make him go to the British Embassy for that visa too, he'll spend the next year in bureaucratic limbo."
See poster above, apparently the Canadian gov. isn't stopping peer reviewed publication, just gov. scientists pimping their asses to the popular media. In a way, there's a certain logic to that; why should a scientist get media coverage (with enough points it can be turned into real money) on the government dime. On the other hand, there should be wider dissemination for scientific results even if the public is in general too uneducated or distracted to care.
Bullshit. The War in the Pacific was caused because Imperial Japan thought they were superior humans and decided to start by raping Manchuria. Then they started in on Indochina. The U.S. did enforce an embargo which the Japanese took umbrage over and decided they needed the whole damn Pacific to show everyone how superior they were. The War in the Pacific was caused by the Japanese and their notions of superior race.
"but it was a working country", as long as you weren't an Iraqi Shi'ite or Kurd...about 80% of the population.
BTW: the U.S. did attempt to kill off Al-Qaeda first off. It didn't work because they ran with their tails between their legs to their buddies the Pakistani Taliban....you know, the ones who will be the first to use a nuke on India...or the U.S....or Iran...or Russia...they aren't particular.
Yeah, and let's not forget about the fluoride in the water. What a sweet deal government has with that one. First, the aliens land at Roswell, then the fluoride, now this. It all fits together now.
Did you actually read that (don't forget, wikipedia never lies). I'll reprint the most salient blurb here:
"According to documents Posada stopped being a CIA asset in 1974, but that there remained "occasional contact" until June 1976, a few months before the bombing. CIA had concrete advance intelligence, as early as June 1976, on possible plans by Cuban exile terrorist groups to bomb a Cubana airliner, and the FBI's attache in Caracas had multiple contacts with one of the Venezuelans who placed the bomb on the plane, and provided him with a visa to the U.S. five days before the bombing, despite suspicions that he was engaged in terrorist activities at the direction of Luis Posada Carriles."
That hardly constitutes proof. It sounds like someone went off on a plot of his own.
Yes, however, let's talk recent history, say, after the Sen. Church and President Carter cut the balls off the CIA. The only ones I can think of the current drone strikes in Pakistan. But since the Taliban have declared war on everyone, I think the CIA ought to be commended for taking them seriously.
"a lot of people have pissed off the CIA and had tragic airplane accidents shortly thereafter" Have you got references?
Probably has more to do with our alleged Euro friends not wanting the U.S. to poach their talent, whereas countries that treat their women like cattle generally treat all their people like cattle and getting rid of the few troublemakers who have a brain to think for themselves isn't a bad deal. Or, if they treat their people decently but are a poor country, they decide training some of their people in the U.S. for a time and then luring them back to start homegrown companies is a great way to jump start their own techno-base. I know a few Indians who did that.
Wow, try the little yellow pills next time. The red ones aren't doing it for you.
Plus the guy is desperate? How so, he left with a golden parachute. He could not work a day longer in his life and still have millions to play with.
Well, databases are exactly a hot innovation area any longer. Oracle has been squeezing profits out by hook and crook for years. Maybe Hurd is just the guy to carry on that fine tradition. He knows how to run a tight ship as long as the ship is not going anywhere in particular.
I use Google for Apple's site. Apple's search is obnoxious. I want to find Apple gadget that does x with a spec sheet and a price. Instead I get a list of mostly irrelevant links and any relevant ones are to white papers or some other useless pile of crap. It's as though there were a politician in charge of their search and he was asked to state his policy on x so he rummages around in his brain for anything but x.
Reminds me of a joke. Three Business School Product were sitting down at lunch and all were trying to show how technologically advanced their companies were. One guy starts tapping his fingers and then puts his thumb near his ear and his pinkie by his mouth and starts talking. Then he says goodbye and explains to his amazed buddies that his company had installed phones in their hands and their fingers do the dialing. One of the others, not to be outdone, starts touching various teeth with his tongue, looking very odd. Then he starts talking, says goodbye, and explains his company has installed phones in their teeth. The third fellow, feeling a bit behind the times, lets out a rip-roaring fart that wakes the dead. He quickly takes his leave to go the bathroom because a fax has just come in.
The real issue is not so much what science does, it is the outlook of politicians. They see everything as a political game. Science, in their minds, is simply something to be used for political ends. Being a suspicious lot, they assume a scientific view at odds with their political view must have been promulgated by the opposition to their political view.
Writ large, people in general are reluctant to give up their beliefs in response to contravening evidence. What makes things worse is that science, in typical fashion, is rarely 100% unequivocal about any one issue. It is in the core of what it means to be a scientist to always question and include the known assumptions. When those assumptions get violated, few recall the original assumptions. All they have heard is that science got something wrong.
In addition, politicians work on a time scale much shorter than science. This has a tendency to whipsaw science; politician make nonsense claim, science shows years later precisely why that is a stupid claim, public policy has already been made in the intervening time.
This is why an uneducated populace and an uneducated, or an educated but corrupt political class, will doom a society to always being in the position of reacting to forces they don't understand or willfully ignore until it is too late.
A whole trillion, eh? So if the U.S. government took it all this year, they'd still be $400 Billion in the hole...and $1.4 Trillion next year. Me thinks that's not an enormous amount of money in the relative scheme of things.