"Without defense, we'll be overrun by the COMMUNISTS"
If I believed that spending hundreds of billions of dollars on a new strategic bomber was necessary to deter a foreign invasion or would in any way diminish the threat of communism taking hold in the USA, I'd be inclined to support it. The only people overrunning the USA are immigrants and the government won't even deploy a few infantry divisions to stop that invasion. The greatest danger of communism taking hold comes from misguided leftists who are already in this country.
"Fat is OK... just not animal fat... vegetable fat is fine."
Completely backwards. Homo Sapiens evolved on a diet containing animal fat. The vegetable oils and especially the hydrogenated vegetable oils are heavily processed and totally unnatural. Factors such as shelf life, not human health drove the development of these substances. The fats that you actually find in nature such as animal fats and unsaturated fats from various seeds and nuts are much healthier than the processed stuff.
Agreed that the FDA has serious flaws, but I want to go off on a tangent here
"...compounds that later turn out to be dangerous (Vioxx) "
Vioxx is a case study in USA ignorance. This drug was an extremely effective treatment for arthritis and other chronic pain. All of a sudden it's found to increase the risk of heart attack and stroke and in typical knee-jerk USA fashion, it's promptly banned. "Vioxx == bad". What a shame. We're not talking about something that's inherently dangerous, only something that increases risks of certain health events.
It should be up to the individual to decide if they are willing to trade off the risks for the reward of pain relief. The idea of "increased risk" for an overweight chain smoker with arthritis is entirely different than "increased risk" for a 50 y/o marathon runner with chronic joint pain. For a healthy non-smoker with an extremely low risk of stroke or heart attack, even a 50% increase in their risk might be trivial. A compound like Vioxx has the potential to significantly increase the quality of life of millions of people. The fact that it's unavailable because of certain risks associated with using it is demonstrative of the stupidity of our society.
Considering the fact that the POTUS, the media, MIT and executives in some big name companies were gushing over the boy genius, the "invention" aspect of the story is a completely relevant topic. There are thousands of genuine electronics whiz-kids out there whose creativity and inventions go unrecognized and un(der)appreciated. It was incredibly disappointing to see this kid lauded as some techno-genius for removing a few screws when there are kids who actually do "invent" things worthy of praise but receive none.
Yes, the school's response seems absurd, but we live in times where "gun-shaped" things made out of cardboard and pop tarts can draw discipline under "zero tolerance" policies. In that albeit ridiculous context, is the school's response really so surprising? You could try this at 100 different schools and get dozens of similar "freak out" responses.
For sure. After Obama invited him to the White House I was wondering how the boy genius was going to get his "invention" through the TSA checkpoint. Everyone is criticizing the school and the police for the way they handled the incident. I'll bet the TSA would have had a completely similar "freak out" response if he tried to carry disassembled clock components onto a plane.
After that Republican guy brought up the idea that he would have a problem with a Muslim president, NPR reported on a poll which indicated that the only people less popular than Muslims(politically speaking) were atheists.
The company goes through all of the required government bullshit, spends 132M Euros on the project and now the government can just arbitrarily revoke the company's permission to operate the facility? That's bullshit. If the public inquiry process was flawed as the residents' attorney claims, why aren't they suing the government? What were the residents doing while this massive construction project was happening in their neighborhood?
I certainly hope the company wins on appeal. At the very least, the government should be forced to buy the facility and pay to have the equipment moved. Who the hell would start a business there knowing that their investment could be rendered worthless overnight even after they followed all of the applicable laws?
The article states that they had information on 21k people and were offering it up at a price of ~20 cents per unit. Unless they were able to sell the information to 48 different customers, they took a loss. Seems hard to believe that you could sell the same mailing list 48 times.
I'd say that security is weak because it would be difficult to profit from hacking medical devices. Regulation is weak because there have been no headline-grabbing incidents to bring the issue to the attention of regulators. It would take a particular type of psycho to hack medical devices and harm people simply for the sake of harming people. That's probably what it will take before manufacturers improve security or government passes some knee-jerk regulations however.
I liked it enough so that I'll watch it again sometime, but what really pissed me off was that they went the cheap route by completely ignoring the suits/uniforms the troopers were supposed to have. As you probably know, they were supposed to have some sort of super combat suits. Instead, the "mobile infantry" in the film is only "mobile" because they're able to friggin walk around! Lame, lame, lame! If they want to make a parody of the society in the book, fine, but they shouldn't have stolen that title if they were just going to leave out the sci-fi technology that was fundamental to the story.
P.S. I wouldn't attribute the POV in that book and the society therein as a reflection of Heinlein's personal views. He was all over the map in his fiction and to an extent, in his real life political views.
I don't disagree that people are idiots, but I find it hard to believe that people are going to enjoy a movie, then log in to a web site and rate it a '1' because they hate a certain actor/actress. Looking at IMDB ratings, I think the idiots are much more inclined to go see a movie, say "Wow! That was awesome!" and give it an instant '10'. Check out "The Martian" for example. It's only been out a few weeks, but it's now #129 in the Top 250 and has received a '10' rating from 19,500 users/idiots. A perfect '10' as if the movie was flawless and could not be improved upon in any way whatsoever? Yes, idiots they are, but that doesn't mean the rating is "meaningless". I'm actually surprised at the wisdom of the crowd on IMDB. Even now, their "Top 250" is a fairly decent list of good movies.
"You decided to check out 'Fantastic Four'... Fandango users thought it was good! Over 7,000 people had reviewed it, and it had an average of 3 out of 5 stars. This is going to be a decent movie."
This article must be targeted at people who would see a 3/5 rating for a movie and conclude that the users "thought it was good". I would interpret a 3/5 from 7000 users (or a 6/10 on IMDB) as an indication that the movie probably sucks. No way would I pay theater prices to go see it based on a 3/5.
A big budget Hollywood action flick like FF is likely going to earn 3 stars just for the special effects. It will get a few high ratings from people who went to see it simply for that purpose. People would generally know what to expect in such a film and those that would rate it '0' or '1' probably wouldn't go see it in the first place. You therefore need to expect a little ratings inflation because you're dealing with people who paid to see it, not a random sample. On a side note, the 5 star system really doesn't have enough granularity. How can any movies earn '0's or '5's? That's like saying a movie couldn't possibly be any worse or any better and no other movie could possibly be worse/better. That makes no sense. Even if the acting was lame and the plot was full of holes, I might give a movie a 2/5 for a few bright spots, but I would consider that a very bad rating.
I can see the argument for refrigeration and it's interesting to contemplate, but the transistor takes the prize for "most disruptive technology" hands down. It's nice to go home and have fresh milk, veggies and leftovers in the fridge as opposed to opening a bag of flour and having a winter squash with some smoked meat, but transistors changed absolutely everything. If medicine is considered "technology", the other major contender is antibiotics. For 100s of years, injuries and diseases which are now easily treatable were very often deadly because of bacteria. Antibiotics changed all that. You could also make an argument for plastics if you group them all together as a single technology. After all, what would we do without the salad shooter and clamshell packaging?
What if other people have my info in their phone and THEY granted Facebook access to their contacts? Facebook could then target both of us in an attempt to get us to connect. In that case, my only fault would be that I gave someone my contact info. I have a FB-specific e-mail address that nobody else knows and I don't use phone apps that demand too much access to my info.
"Amassing arms to overthrow the government is treason and now is ultimately futile."
Incorrect on both counts. "Patriotism" is not about blindly following your government, it's about following principles. Many people accuse Edward Snowden of "treason" when the real traitors are the government employees who violate the Rights of the citizens.
You totally underestimate the capabilities of lightly armed guerrilla fighters. Look no further than Afghanistan. All the USA government's advanced technology and even after 14 years, they've been unable to defeat an Afghan insurgency equipped with small arms and improvised explosives. What makes you think the same government would be any more successful fighting a similar insurgency in a country with 10x the population and 12x the land area(lower 48)?
The federal government has 2.2 million active & reserve military personnel spread across the globe and another 2 million civilian employees. If only 2% of the population of the USA was willing to take up arms against the government, that's an army of 6.4 million people, spread over 8 million sq km. If another 20% of the population was willing to lend logistical support, the government would be totally doomed. How do you use an A-10 or a nuclear weapon to fight a war against an insurgent army that wears no uniforms and mingles in with the civilian population? Are you going to nuke Boise Idaho and kill 200,000 people just to get 4,000 armed militants? All that advanced weaponry is practically useless in a guerrilla war because you end up slaughtering civilians which only makes the insurgency stronger.
"I want to allow people to have guns"
Our Rights are not a matter of what government is going to "allow". Our system is supposed to be based on the idea of what We, The People "allow" the government to do.
Further Reading: -"The War of the Flea" -Robert Tabor -"Understanding Fourth Generation War" -William Lind -The Declaration of Independence -The JPFO genocide chart
"there is never an excuse for risking the lives of others by drinking and driving. none. never"
If you think a person is "risking the lives of others" by having a couple of drinks with dinner and then driving home, you better stay off the roads entirely because people are doing much riskier things than that.
Why is having a couple of beers after work and then driving home so inexcusable? Even our ridiculously arbitrary laws make some allowance for degrees of risk. That's why there is a BAC limit of.08 instead of.00. That's why it might be illegal to drive while holding your phone in your hand but legal to drive while talking "hands free". Studies have demonstrated that talking on the phone undermines your ability to pay attention to your driving. Is the sober person doing that "risking the lives of others" any less than someone that drives back to work after having a martini at lunch? What about a person that pulled an all-nighter at work and is driving home after being without sleep for 36 hours? Or maybe someone has the flu and is therefore not functioning at their best? Are those also cases of inexcusable risk?
You can't always be functioning at your healthy, well-rested, caffeine-buzzed, fully attentive optimum. I'd say it's unacceptable to drive when you're significantly impaired and it's up to you to know when that is. Driving with a little alcohol in your blood doesn't create an unacceptably risky situation.
..."small, unmanned, single-use, unpowered air vehicles that can can be dropped from an aircraft to deliver supplies to isolated locations in the event of disasters..."
What's wrong with putting supplies on a wooden pallet and using a parachute to drop them out of a plane?
I think you're misunderstanding the purpose of the Federal Reserve Bank. This institution exists only for the purpose of enriching, protecting and expanding the influence of the global banking cartel. The economic principles are very sound.
1. Create money out of thin air, loan it to a sovereign government and collect interest on the loan. 2. Ensure that member banks can never go bankrupt by serving as a lender of last resort.
The Federal Reserve was created by bankers for the exclusive benefit of bankers. Fed policy only seems insane or unsound if you assume that this monetary system was set up for the purpose of facilitating real economic activity without preference or bias.
They don't care if they ruin the USA economy and cause a crash of the dollar. It's all funny money that they conjured out of thin air anyway. What they really want is to make sure that they end up with all of the tangible assets which do have real value. Look at how much real estate they were able to steal in the wake of the 2008 crash.
Acquisitions that account for more than a small fraction of the acquiring company's overall value are risky and don't have a good track record. Both companies are fairly well, if not very well managed, so Dell execs aren't going to lend value to EMC's operations in that regard. EMC has positive earnings and is paying out dividends, so Dell won't be providing investment capital that EMC could not otherwise access.
Looks like EMC closed with a market cap of ~$53B on Friday. A $67B acquisition is quite a huge premium on that price. Does the merger of their product lines into a more complete offering create significant value and additional revenue potential? Enough value and potential to justify the $14B premium that Dell is paying for the acquisition? I tend to doubt it.
Of course with Dell being a private company, we won't have the detailed financial reports that we would see for a publicly traded company, so it will be harder to tell how it's going until they file for bankruptcy.
This reeks of a desperate attempt to diversify by a company in a declining industry. Probably a good idea in principle, but going about it on this scale is quite the gamble.
Very true. Government regulators routinely fail in their jobs, either through direct criminal complicity with the violators or by gross negligence. Then, when their failures are revealed, they ALWAYS claim that they need more laws, more people and bigger budgets. Nobody in the regulatory agencies is ever investigated, prosecuted or otherwise held accountable no matter how badly they perform.
The 2008 financial crisis is the absolute perfect example. The government has the SEC, OTS, OCC, CFTC, FDIC, FBI, etc. all with regulatory power in the financial industry. Yet this army of bureaucrats utterly and completely failed to carry out their most basic responsibilities AND neglected to enforce the laws even when the criminal practices of the big financial firms was openly exposed. Government solution? More regulations and more bureaucrats in a new CFPB.
EPA agents must have been too busy (or too incompetent) to actually test a few vehicles for compliance with emissions laws. They were probably off threatening and harassing some small business owners who can't afford full time lawyers and compliance officers.
A special place in hell should be reserved for government bureaucrats who never designed or built anything, never ran a business and never had to actually provide value in excess of their exorbitant cost. It's easy to sit in a taxpayer-funded air conditioned office and dream up new rules which you can justify your existence by enforcing. Much harder to be the person that has to deal with them. Every business is probably breaking some number of rules, knowingly or unknowingly.
"... the only people the government can force to get vaccinated are soldiers."
Nonsense. Coercion by threat of consequences is exactly the same as force. Requiring injections for kids as a precondition of their enrollment in taxpayer funded public schools is coercing people to make decisions which they might not otherwise make. That "do what we say or there will be consequences" approach is a perfect example of the way government uses force against The People. The threat of having their kids banned from taxpayer funded schools is "forcing" people to get their kids vaccinated because home schooling or private schooling requires resources many people don't have.
The only "trend" in this country is the trend of media sensationalism, mass marketing of fear and public ignorance. The truth is that firearms-related homicide is on a twenty year downward trend. Thanks to the media however, you and millions of others live in a false reality where things are getting worse.
How about backing up your claim by providing proof that the NRA advocates that people under 18 should have access to firearms? Their website has a detailed description of their stance on the issue and there are plenty of YouTube vids of NRA spokespeople.
Slashdot Mirror
"Without defense, we'll be overrun by the COMMUNISTS"
If I believed that spending hundreds of billions of dollars on a new strategic bomber was necessary to deter a foreign invasion or would in any way diminish the threat of communism taking hold in the USA, I'd be inclined to support it.
The only people overrunning the USA are immigrants and the government won't even deploy a few infantry divisions to stop that invasion. The greatest danger of communism taking hold comes from misguided leftists who are already in this country.
"Fat is OK... just not animal fat... vegetable fat is fine."
Completely backwards. Homo Sapiens evolved on a diet containing animal fat. The vegetable oils and especially the hydrogenated vegetable oils are heavily processed and totally unnatural. Factors such as shelf life, not human health drove the development of these substances. The fats that you actually find in nature such as animal fats and unsaturated fats from various seeds and nuts are much healthier than the processed stuff.
Agreed that the FDA has serious flaws, but I want to go off on a tangent here
"...compounds that later turn out to be dangerous (Vioxx) "
Vioxx is a case study in USA ignorance. This drug was an extremely effective treatment for arthritis and other chronic pain. All of a sudden it's found to increase the risk of heart attack and stroke and in typical knee-jerk USA fashion, it's promptly banned. "Vioxx == bad". What a shame. We're not talking about something that's inherently dangerous, only something that increases risks of certain health events.
It should be up to the individual to decide if they are willing to trade off the risks for the reward of pain relief. The idea of "increased risk" for an overweight chain smoker with arthritis is entirely different than "increased risk" for a 50 y/o marathon runner with chronic joint pain. For a healthy non-smoker with an extremely low risk of stroke or heart attack, even a 50% increase in their risk might be trivial. A compound like Vioxx has the potential to significantly increase the quality of life of millions of people. The fact that it's unavailable because of certain risks associated with using it is demonstrative of the stupidity of our society.
Considering the fact that the POTUS, the media, MIT and executives in some big name companies were gushing over the boy genius, the "invention" aspect of the story is a completely relevant topic.
There are thousands of genuine electronics whiz-kids out there whose creativity and inventions go unrecognized and un(der)appreciated. It was incredibly disappointing to see this kid lauded as some techno-genius for removing a few screws when there are kids who actually do "invent"
things worthy of praise but receive none.
Yes, the school's response seems absurd, but we live in times where "gun-shaped" things made out of cardboard and pop tarts can draw discipline under "zero tolerance" policies. In that albeit ridiculous context, is the school's response really so surprising? You could try this at 100 different schools and get dozens of similar "freak out" responses.
For sure. After Obama invited him to the White House I was wondering how the boy genius was going to get his "invention" through the TSA checkpoint.
Everyone is criticizing the school and the police for the way they handled the incident. I'll bet the TSA would have had a completely similar "freak out" response if he tried to carry disassembled clock components onto a plane.
After that Republican guy brought up the idea that he would have a problem with a Muslim president, NPR reported on a poll which indicated that the only people less popular than Muslims(politically speaking) were atheists.
The company goes through all of the required government bullshit, spends 132M Euros on the project and now the government can just arbitrarily revoke the company's permission to operate the facility? That's bullshit. If the public inquiry process was flawed as the residents' attorney claims, why aren't they suing the government? What were the residents doing while this massive construction project was happening in their neighborhood?
I certainly hope the company wins on appeal. At the very least, the government should be forced to buy the facility and pay to have the equipment moved. Who the hell would start a business there knowing that their investment could be rendered worthless overnight even after they followed all of the applicable laws?
The article states that they had information on 21k people and were offering it up at a price of ~20 cents per unit. Unless they were able to sell the information to 48 different customers, they took a loss.
Seems hard to believe that you could sell the same mailing list 48 times.
I'd say that security is weak because it would be difficult to profit from hacking medical devices. Regulation is weak because there have been no headline-grabbing incidents to bring the issue to the attention of regulators.
It would take a particular type of psycho to hack medical devices and harm people simply for the sake of harming people. That's probably what it will take before manufacturers improve security or government passes some knee-jerk regulations however.
I liked it enough so that I'll watch it again sometime, but what really pissed me off was that they went the cheap route by completely ignoring the suits/uniforms the troopers were supposed to have. As you probably know, they were supposed to have some sort of super combat suits. Instead, the "mobile infantry" in the film is only "mobile" because they're able to friggin walk around! Lame, lame, lame!
If they want to make a parody of the society in the book, fine, but they shouldn't have stolen that title if they were just going to leave out the sci-fi technology that was fundamental to the story.
P.S. I wouldn't attribute the POV in that book and the society therein as a reflection of Heinlein's personal views. He was all over the map in his fiction and to an extent, in his real life political views.
I don't disagree that people are idiots, but I find it hard to believe that people are going to enjoy a movie, then log in to a web site and rate it a '1' because they hate a certain actor/actress. Looking at IMDB ratings, I think the idiots are much more inclined to go see a movie, say "Wow! That was awesome!" and give it an instant '10'. Check out "The Martian" for example. It's only been out a few weeks, but it's now #129 in the Top 250 and has received a '10' rating from 19,500 users/idiots. A perfect '10' as if the movie was flawless and could not be improved upon in any way whatsoever? Yes, idiots they are, but that doesn't mean the rating is "meaningless". I'm actually surprised at the wisdom of the crowd on IMDB. Even now, their "Top 250" is a fairly decent list of good movies.
FTA:
"You decided to check out 'Fantastic Four' ... Fandango users thought it was good! Over 7,000 people had reviewed it, and it had an average of 3 out of 5 stars. This is going to be a decent movie."
This article must be targeted at people who would see a 3/5 rating for a movie and conclude that the users "thought it was good". I would interpret a 3/5 from 7000 users (or a 6/10 on IMDB) as an indication that the movie probably sucks. No way would I pay theater prices to go see it based on a 3/5.
A big budget Hollywood action flick like FF is likely going to earn 3 stars just for the special effects. It will get a few high ratings from people who went to see it simply for that purpose. People would generally know what to expect in such a film and those that would rate it '0' or '1' probably wouldn't go see it in the first place. You therefore need to expect a little ratings inflation because you're dealing with people who paid to see it, not a random sample.
On a side note, the 5 star system really doesn't have enough granularity. How can any movies earn '0's or '5's? That's like saying a movie couldn't possibly be any worse or any better and no other movie could possibly be worse/better. That makes no sense.
Even if the acting was lame and the plot was full of holes, I might give a movie a 2/5 for a few bright spots, but I would consider that a very bad rating.
1915-2015?
I can see the argument for refrigeration and it's interesting to contemplate, but the transistor takes the prize for "most disruptive technology" hands down. It's nice to go home and have fresh milk, veggies and leftovers in the fridge as opposed to opening a bag of flour and having a winter squash with some smoked meat, but transistors changed absolutely everything.
If medicine is considered "technology", the other major contender is antibiotics. For 100s of years, injuries and diseases which are now easily treatable were very often deadly because of bacteria. Antibiotics changed all that.
You could also make an argument for plastics if you group them all together as a single technology. After all, what would we do without the salad shooter and clamshell packaging?
"everybody uses the number that suits their own interests."
Very true, and don't forget the media. They always exaggerate or underestimate numbers based on their particular biases.
BLM protest++
Gun rights rally--
etc.
What if other people have my info in their phone and THEY granted Facebook access to their contacts? Facebook could then target both of us in an attempt to get us to connect. In that case, my only fault would be that I gave someone my contact info.
I have a FB-specific e-mail address that nobody else knows and I don't use phone apps that demand too much access to my info.
"Amassing arms to overthrow the government is treason and now is ultimately futile."
Incorrect on both counts. "Patriotism" is not about blindly following your government, it's about following principles. Many people accuse Edward Snowden of "treason" when the real traitors are the government employees who violate the Rights of the citizens.
You totally underestimate the capabilities of lightly armed guerrilla fighters. Look no further than Afghanistan. All the USA government's advanced technology and even after 14 years, they've been unable to defeat an Afghan insurgency equipped with small arms and improvised explosives. What makes you think the same government would be any more successful fighting a similar insurgency in a country with 10x the population and 12x the land area(lower 48)?
The federal government has 2.2 million active & reserve military personnel spread across the globe and another 2 million civilian employees. If only 2% of the population of the USA was willing to take up arms against the government, that's an army of 6.4 million people, spread over 8 million sq km. If another 20% of the population was willing to lend logistical support, the government would be totally doomed. How do you use an A-10 or a nuclear weapon to fight a war against an insurgent army that wears no uniforms and mingles in with the civilian population? Are you going to nuke Boise Idaho and kill 200,000 people just to get 4,000 armed militants? All that advanced weaponry is practically useless in a guerrilla war because you end up slaughtering civilians which only makes the insurgency stronger.
"I want to allow people to have guns"
Our Rights are not a matter of what government is going to "allow". Our system is supposed to be based on the idea of what We, The People "allow" the government to do.
Further Reading:
-"The War of the Flea" -Robert Tabor
-"Understanding Fourth Generation War" -William Lind
-The Declaration of Independence
-The JPFO genocide chart
"there is never an excuse for risking the lives of others by drinking and driving. none. never"
If you think a person is "risking the lives of others" by having a couple of drinks with dinner and then driving home, you better stay off the roads entirely because people are doing much riskier things than that.
Why is having a couple of beers after work and then driving home so inexcusable? Even our ridiculously arbitrary laws make some allowance for degrees of risk. That's why there is a BAC limit of .08 instead of .00. That's why it might be illegal to drive while holding your phone in your hand but legal to drive while talking "hands free". Studies have demonstrated that talking on the phone undermines your ability to pay attention to your driving. Is the sober person doing that "risking the lives of others" any less than someone that drives back to work after having a martini at lunch? What about a person that pulled an all-nighter at work and is driving home after being without sleep for 36 hours? Or maybe someone has the flu and is therefore not functioning at their best? Are those also cases of inexcusable risk?
You can't always be functioning at your healthy, well-rested, caffeine-buzzed, fully attentive optimum. I'd say it's unacceptable to drive when you're significantly impaired and it's up to you to know when that is. Driving with a little alcohol in your blood doesn't create an unacceptably risky situation.
..."small, unmanned, single-use, unpowered air vehicles that can can be dropped from an aircraft to deliver supplies to isolated locations in the event of disasters..."
What's wrong with putting supplies on a wooden pallet and using a parachute to drop them out of a plane?
I think you're misunderstanding the purpose of the Federal Reserve Bank. This institution exists only for the purpose of enriching, protecting and expanding the influence of the global banking cartel. The economic principles are very sound.
1. Create money out of thin air, loan it to a sovereign government and collect interest on the loan.
2. Ensure that member banks can never go bankrupt by serving as a lender of last resort.
The Federal Reserve was created by bankers for the exclusive benefit of bankers. Fed policy only seems insane or unsound if you assume that this monetary system was set up for the purpose of facilitating real economic activity without preference or bias.
They don't care if they ruin the USA economy and cause a crash of the dollar. It's all funny money that they conjured out of thin air anyway. What they really want is to make sure that they end up with all of the tangible assets which do have real value. Look at how much real estate they were able to steal in the wake of the 2008 crash.
but I doubt it.
Acquisitions that account for more than a small fraction of the acquiring company's overall value are risky and don't have a good track record. Both companies are fairly well, if not very well managed, so Dell execs aren't going to lend value to EMC's operations in that regard. EMC has positive earnings and is paying out dividends, so Dell won't be providing investment capital that EMC could not otherwise access.
Looks like EMC closed with a market cap of ~$53B on Friday. A $67B acquisition is quite a huge premium on that price. Does the merger of their product lines into a more complete offering create significant value and additional revenue potential? Enough value and potential to justify the $14B premium that Dell is paying for the acquisition? I tend to doubt it.
Of course with Dell being a private company, we won't have the detailed financial reports that we would see for a publicly traded company, so it will be harder to tell how it's going until they file for bankruptcy.
This reeks of a desperate attempt to diversify by a company in a declining industry. Probably a good idea in principle, but going about it on this scale is quite the gamble.
Very true. Government regulators routinely fail in their jobs, either through direct criminal complicity with the violators or by gross negligence. Then, when their failures are revealed, they ALWAYS claim that they need more laws, more people and bigger budgets. Nobody in the regulatory agencies is ever investigated, prosecuted or otherwise held accountable no matter how badly they perform.
The 2008 financial crisis is the absolute perfect example. The government has the SEC, OTS, OCC, CFTC, FDIC, FBI, etc. all with regulatory power in the financial industry. Yet this army of bureaucrats utterly and completely failed to carry out their most basic responsibilities AND neglected to enforce the laws even when the criminal practices of the big financial firms was openly exposed. Government solution? More regulations and more bureaucrats in a new CFPB.
EPA agents must have been too busy (or too incompetent) to actually test a few vehicles for compliance with emissions laws. They were probably off threatening and harassing some small business owners who can't afford full time lawyers and compliance officers.
A special place in hell should be reserved for government bureaucrats who never designed or built anything, never ran a business and never had to actually provide value in excess of their exorbitant cost. It's easy to sit in a taxpayer-funded air conditioned office and dream up new rules which you can justify your existence by enforcing. Much harder to be the person that has to deal with them.
Every business is probably breaking some number of rules, knowingly or unknowingly.
"... the only people the government can force to get vaccinated are soldiers."
Nonsense. Coercion by threat of consequences is exactly the same as force. Requiring injections for kids as a precondition of their enrollment in taxpayer funded public schools is coercing people to make decisions which they might not otherwise make. That "do what we say or there will be consequences" approach is a perfect example of the way government uses force against The People. The threat of having their kids banned from taxpayer funded schools is "forcing" people to get their kids vaccinated because home schooling or private schooling requires resources many people don't have.
"the trend of gun violence in this country."
The only "trend" in this country is the trend of media sensationalism, mass marketing of fear and public ignorance. The truth is that firearms-related homicide is on a twenty year downward trend. Thanks to the media however, you and millions of others live in a false reality where things are getting worse.
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org...
How about backing up your claim by providing proof that the NRA advocates that people under 18 should have access to firearms? Their website has a detailed description of their stance on the issue and there are plenty of YouTube vids of NRA spokespeople.
Otherwise, refrain from posting your strawman BS.