Yes and no. Yes that picture is another reference to the joke, no that isn't specifically what I was referring to. I like my Windows CEMENT XPeriance, turning PCs into paperweights one desktop at a time better:) But pride of authorship or something I suppose:)
Mostly just a jab that their real strength is in marketing, not technical competition, yet they still allowe Win CEMENT XP and WINce to happen, nevermind the name of their company sounds like Bill is in desparate need of a penis pump and viagra. I maintain that Microsoft, based on their behavior and their OS of malware infestation they really had a different goal in mind. They WANTED the internet to be clogged with penis pump and viagra adds, Bill wanted them delivered anonymously to his mailbox where he could order...so they flooded the market with an OS that would provide a platform to send tons of spam and whatnot. Why else would they name the company Microsoft... At least Neversoft got its name right.
This is the same team that gave us Windows CEMENT XP, the Windows Cement Experience, turning PCs into paperweights one desktop at a time. Let us not also forget WinCE because when its what you will do when you find out your latest project must run on it.
Exactly. Which is why all of these super spy laws coming are just a BAD thing period no questions asked no "protecting the citizens" crap. Because even assuming you DO trust the current administration with this power, you cannot trust all future administrations with it.
It has worked in the past. "HYPERTHREADING!!!" sold a ton of chips to people that have no concept of what it means. That is the sole function of a marketing department. It doesn't matter what it is your selling, just make it sound flashy, more impressive, and create a desire to have it. You are right 'Advanced BIOS' (not to mention Advanced Basic I/O System doesn't sound right..advanced and basic at the same time?) probably wouldn't sell much but something like '*NEW* HyperDrive IO Chip' would probably go a much longer ways to creating hype and demand, add on a snazzy sticker and the masses of Best Buy computer shoppers will all add it to their must have list.
I believe it was George Carlin who explained it best talking about the difference between "pre-owned car" and "used car" and how its the same damned thing, and its stupid to be fooled by the marketing gimmiks. "Would you want a 'pre-fucked wife'?"
If you were the "decider" and had a nasty problem of finding dissenters what would you do? Make it difficult to be a dissenter and rely on spying programs to try and root them out at great cost and effort? Or maybe make it easy, let them out themselves, build up a nice hefty database of potential leads, hunt them all down, expose them for the 'traitors' that they are and a threat to the good people,then destroy them to serve as a warning to any others.
Not that I'm really saying that this is what they are doing. But it is certainly a valid possibility. So many decry this type of thing as paranoid and conspiracy, but the fact of the matter is people with power and control will do anything they can to remain in power and control. This has been proven countless times in human history. It really irritates me when people fail to admit that this type of thing could happen at home or abroad...America had to fight a war to remove ourselves from tyranny. Do people think that you really only have to do that once?
Pssh, you still read books? I threw my books out in 1984 and haven't looked back. I have a world of billboards to tell me what to think and I can read them any time I go outside for FREE. The printed word is suck drek. Resist your printing press overlords!
I think you are in desperate need to see what the "For profit" schools have done. Go look up Apollo group for example. The fine owners and operators of University of Phoenix. Go look at what they have been doing for the past few years. Low quality of education, high grades for everyone = more students, more return students, and most importantly more money. Now what they do to you as a student is simple, they get you to fill out all kinds of federal aid forms, or military tuition assistance forms. Now they are golden, they don't give a rats ass about your education, they just want you to have good grades and keep coming back, because if your grades fall they get no money, so its in their best interests to give you As and Bs. If you get below a C in the military for example, the military refuses to pay, and they know that its easier to take the money from the government than to get anyone to pay their insane prices out of pocket. Now on top of all of this, they want money fast, and at the best margin, so the less time you spend with their teaching staff the better, the more classes they can run etc, so they have frequently gone WELL below the Dept of Education standards for what is required to be awarded credit (number of hours of instruction) AND they have been repeatedly busted for their recruiting tactics. DoE says you can't pay commissions among other things when recruiting students...oops UoP pays commissions and has quotas! So once again they are back in court for False Claims Act violations. But hey in this rosey free market world of yours...maybe it will work out. If UoP is found guilty they will owe the government 3x what they fraudulently took through federal aid and tuition assistance. So maybe it will work out well for the rest of us.
A school cannot and will not serve two masters. It can serve the goals of profit, or the goals of education, but it simply will not do both. I refuse to even talk to a for profit college. They are worthless, slimey, greedy, and their quality of education sucks at best. I know quite a few HR people who toss resumes with degree's from those places aside because they are such degree mills.
I think there was some underlying confusion here, possibly in the semantics. When I say lawyers write laws to keep lawyers employed, I don't mean the average lawyer. I am referring to the fact that the Legislative end of our government frequently has a rather large number of lawyers/law grads running about. I am directly refering to the exact problem that you are talking about. My issue with lawyers goes beyond that, in that a great number of the ones I have had the 'pleasure' of dealing with are little more than carrion feeding on a rotting corpse of justice. I have known a few good people who are lawyers, but the same problem applies, because they were unable to give me anything other than very vague advice because of differences in law based on where you are practicing and the typical fickle ways of judges. (You think I don't like lawyers, I REALLY don't like judges...was even assaulted by a judge at 15 at my sisters school at parent teacher conferences for looking suspicious...drug me outside by the arm too shout about drugs... I apparently just looked too hoodlumish to be standing outside HIS school.)
In fact there is a lawyer that I have been talking to (free of cost even) that has been helping me fight a fraud thing for my wife. Has been a great help, and is exactly the type you are talking about, class action/false claims act stuff. But this is 1 out of something like 8 that hasn't been an expensive pain to deal with.
Well my opinion of lawyers only has to deal with the lawyers that I have dealt with or friends and family have dealt with, and while I absolutely agree there are good ones and bad ones, the vast majority I have ever had any contact with have been questionable at best. This has nothing to do with corporate anything, it has to do with a string of really shitty lawyers, and lawyers that cannot or will not give solid answers or work for what they are charging me for. If mechanics gave such vague answers all the time, you can bet there would be lawsuits over their charges (surprise more lawyers). Now aside from this attack, I actually defended the good lawyers because the system is so jacked up, the good lawyers really can't give any solid answers because so much goofy crap can happen. Some areas of the country are worse than others as well. Back home I can do most of my basic legal interaction with the court myself, filling out forms, singing stuff, etc...out east here, I can't do crap without a lawyer, I can't file anything without paying a lawyer $500 to draw it up because "the judges are picky".
Well this nonsense has me and my wife in a situation where we can be extorted by the grandparents due to them having a larger bank account ("our offer is we wont force you to pick him up after our minimum visitation, we will just keep him until you can afford it"). So we rightfully said no you cant have him. They aren't in the custody agreement themselves, their son (my step son's father) is currently in jail. They seem to be under the impression that because we agreed they could see him in court (however, again its not in the final court order signed by her ex husband and the judge) that they can take us back to court over this. Her ex also apparently believes that a power of attorney allows his parents to take his visitation in his place. They have already tried this PoA nonsense and the grandmother tried to refuse to turn the child over to us. Now in about a month they are going to call the cops because we are going to not allow them to take the child, we are going to be going back to court, paying another lawyer $200/hr or so, and guess what...we don't have the money to keep up that kind of fight, but deep pockets grandparents do. Hooray for our legal system protecting the parents and the kids.
That doesn't even begin to touch the legal battle involved in Phoenix of University fraud. I hope they are found guilty as sin on their reopened False Claims Act case...I want to see heads roll in that place.
You cannot defend yourself in any manner (aside from criminal where you get a nice free public defender) without spending a fortune on a lawyer. This has made the situation very nice in the US for the people with deep pockets to just attack you until you can't pay and have to default. And either way all the lawyers involved will get their $ before you are forced to fold when you run out of cash.
I don't really disagree with the not dealing with professionals part. My traffic record is insane, filled with things like "Curtsey" tickets. I am assuming that a "Curtsey" ticket is a Courtesy ticket, but maybe I really was observed giving polite little bows in a skirt or something. Then there is the fact that everything on there was doubled, because they dismissed whatever insane charge they put on my ticket, and put in some meaningless charge so they could still collect their money from the ticket.
You really can't compare Engineering (which has a large set of knowns and a relatively small set of unknowns) and Medicine (Which has a moderate number of knowns and a relatively large set of unknowns) and Law (Which has virtually no knowns and an growing set of unknowns). Unfortunately that is how law works, there is no concrete answer. If you do this you get that. Go look at how sentencing widely varies for any given charge. Technically they are still professionals, because without them you would be totally screwed in case of court action. If the other party gets a lawyer , and you try to go alone without an intricate knowledge of the little court games, you are pretty much doomed. All parties have made this system worse. Uneducated judges with weird personal opinions governing their job makes lawyers engage in stupid little dances and cops can't just do their job because they know the legal theater will likely destroy anything they actually would get done.
Lawyers write the laws to keep lawyers employed. There is a specific reason law is difficult. If law was simple lawyers and lawmakers wouldn't have much of a job now would they? Again technical stuff and even medical stuff isn't anywhere remotely the same as Law. Go deal with a custody case sometime. "The child's best interest" is the biggest factor, and there is NOTHING ANYWHERE that defines that in any meaningful tangible sense. So its just a bunch of nonsense getting tossed about with lawyers and judges getting paid. Go try to deal with a fraud case, its a mess of legal technicalities that can be interpreted dozens of ways. As a lawyer once told me "Interpreting court orders and the like is more of an art than a science" How the hell can that make sense in any other profession? Something like a contract our court order should be pretty cut and dry and not require "artful interpretation" to make it work right.
THANK YOU! I hate that "I've never had a problem" crap. Its like saying "I never had a problem with AIDS" after years of sleeping around without protection. Just because you don't know are infected doesn't mean your not infected. The era of user irritating viruses is all but gone. Most of the noticable stuff is from the few that are overzealous about spreading. Infections have become profitable, and its not just about laughing at an irritated user, its about spam, its about blackmail, its about DDoS attacks.
Having been dealing with lawyers lately on a variety of subjects. You certainly seem to have never really dealt with a lawyer. Our complex systems and their complex systems don't even begin to compare. At least in our complex systems there are right and wrong answers. In law there really isnt. Law simply is not cut and dry. The laws are vaguely worded and complex and left to the interpretation of judges (whose opinions, methods, and backgrounds in relavent fields all vary greatly). The lawyers job is to take your money, take the law, and make a best attempt at convincing the judge that the law reads in your favor, in the mean time, the other lawyers job is to take the oppositions money and try to convince the judge that THEIR interpretation is the correct one. In the meantime there are a bunch of lawyers in the legislative end of government deliberately writing vague and confusing law to ensure lawyers remain employed and that law will never be cut and dry and comprehendable by the common man. That anytime anything comes up you will be forced to get a lawyer to talk to a judge, because anything else is courtroom suicide due to the complexity and vagueness of the law. If you have a lawyer telling you things are cut and dry and its a no brainer, then you probably have an inexperienced lawyer or a dishonest one (well they are all basically dishonest, but you want them to be honest with you at least). Do you honestly believe that if law was so cut and dry easy lawyers would get paid $200+/hr to do terribly little? Do you honestly believe that if it was so simple there would be so many stupid cases constantly clogging up our legal system?
In the meantime you should start charging a $2500 retainer before fixing anyones computer. See how far that goes.
I say it is posturing just due to timing, because he has to save face with the new Democrat controlled Legislative if he wants any more of his pet projects to go through
Voter fraud is the voters cheating, Election fraud (the rampant problem we are starting to see) is people mucking with the election. You are absolutely right about people not voting, but its not so cut and dry. I have a friend that wants to vote but can't due to felon status...for driving w/o a license 3x because she had to go to work and they refused to do a restricted license. Voter intimidation tactics have been showing up lately as well. You also have the problem of lots of people disenfranchised due to things like election fraud, or the fact that both candidates running are scum. Then there is my personal reason for not voting frequently, I won't vote for a candidate I don't support, and when its lying bought scum running vs lying bought scum I just don't vote for either of them.
You are right on the voting age thing, except you can't really blame the people that voted against it, or chose not to vote (chosing not to vote is different from apathetically not voting).
It is ENTIRELY too late for a pullout. We just need to change how we deal with that part of the world in a big way. They don't trust us and with very good reason. Anyone in that area seen as supporting us is going to catch alot of hate and hostility from their neighbors. Osama's original major gripe with us was that the Saudis asked us to fight the gulf war and told Osama to leave. Osama being of a muslim variety persecuted by Saddam he believed it was HIS war, and his countrymen asked infadels to come fight instead of him, it was a huge insult to him
It was the Iraq Iran war, not Cold War. Granted I'm sure ties can be drawn, but to follow the long chain you can trace parts of the Cold War all the way back to the War of 1812. We supported that insane dictator killing Iranians, no real reason for Iran to be inclined to deal with us.
No, its great that we won that. My point is we shouldn't have bailed out on a war torn nation afterwards. We should have been a good ally and helped them recover rather than leaving them to the inevitable warlords taking power and forming the Taliban. And then we shouldn't have been dealing with the Taliban for pipeline deals and the like. Had we helped them recover they would be in infinetly better shape, we probably wouldn't have the state sponsored terrorism problem in that area, and guess what, we probably would have been much better off economically in the long run since Russia wanted that area to build a giant oil pipeline to a warm water port. Granted it would have taken a bit of forsight to realize "hey, we won't be at war with Russia forever, and I bet if we have a good ally here WE can jointly build that pipeline and profit" rather than "Hey look, Russia sells oil now, lets go back to that shithole and try to deal with those lunatics to see if we can't bleed them on an oil pipeline"
Who should do the beating, now if that isn't the question of the century. Unfortunately there are too many conflicting political and economic, mostly economic interest in that area to get the rest of the world to agree to punish all of them equally. Entangling Alliances and all that all over again.
You are right, but we can thank British Imperialism for a great deal of that. Brutal oppresion and all of that, carving up the land, displacing people. That area of the world has been the envy of everyone for a long time, first it was THE major trade intersection for over half the world, and then oil became important and the stakes got even higher. Everyone wanted to control that little slice of land, so unfortunately the people who kinda started there have been being attacked by EVERYONE trying to steal their wealth and their land. Yeah, they have the oil, but everyone has the products that are made from or use the oil. So if we find an alternate source of power, or just quit sellin
Disturbingly enough you are probably right about both paying Diebold. There are republicans in certain areas that seem to be against the machines with democrats supporting them. The question is who paid more and did they pay to win in the right places.
1. He should have been allowed to leave on the 1st one and not used as some political posturing move
2. Loaded question as hell. But lets point out our democracy has had more than a few problems lately in true representation of the will of the people. Are there Americans at fault, absolutely, are they the general populace...not really, at best you can blame 51% of the populace for the shenannagins going on, but really its our representives doing a piss poor job of representing us.
3. Given his dealings with Saddam and crew, I can kinda understand why there may be some sketchy feelings about this guy in that part of the world. Is he making them fight...not exactly. But did the Rodney King verdict MAKE people go out rioting and looting? Not really, just the reaction to the stimulus happened to go that way. I think the key here is there would probably be much less fighting over there if America's involvement in the middle east didn't have so much dirty dealing going on. Unless you forget almost all of the problems we have over there are largley our own doing. Kerry gets nailed for flipflopping (I don't like Kerry either, just making a point) but it was Rummy who "Supported Saddam before I didn't support Saddam", it was the US that bailed in Afghanistan after the Russians were defeated leaving the Taliban to fill a void in a wartorn country, it was the US that mucked in Irans government and got caught leading to the anti-US regime being able to take power. There are a whole gang of people and groups over there that need to be beaten with a large stick and hard for being worthless pricks, but we need to have alot more integrity ourselves in our dealings with that for it to ever mean anything other than continued bloodshed and constant replacments of new evil dictator types.
Or that when you set the initial count to -500 Democrat +500 Republican that you didn't use big enough numbers and you still lost by not cheating enough. Or a caluclated response to get this reaction of "see we aren't cheating". Or maybe the Dems paid dieblod to cheat for them this time, since people willing to do that kind of thing generally don't care where the money comes from.
I would say IBM or Intel probably qualify. IBM has been around much longer and is still going strong, and love em or hate em (both IBM and MS), I think IBM has a much much more solid future. MS has been terribly inflationary and that is why a real alternative product is a huge threat to them. They would have to compete on price and technical merit rather than strong arm tactics and marketing fluff n FUD. IBM invented FUD and eventually had to abandon it because it just doesn't make for a sustainable business. Intel pretty much owns the processor market. Sure there are a handfull of other players in different markets, but for server, laptop, workstation, and many more Intel pretty much is it. Even Apple switched. Now there is AMD, and they were some fast paced innovators for a while, but they developed their chips based on the Intel standard.
That having been said, your Henry Ford comment is a little lopsided. MS is no Ford...at all. They don't even compare, they pretty much stole all their initial ideas and products from others. Did we forget the story of DOS, or maybe the Apple vs MS debacle. Lets not forget that Xerox and friends had more in the creation of the GUI than MS did. Ford found a way to mass produce something and make it common and affordable, MS found a way to market proprietary goods at a premium price. More like the japanese car manufactures, except without the associated quality.
Microsoft didn't enable business to do anything except for IBM to sell more machines than Apple, and once again that is more of a score for IBM than it is for MS. If the IBM PC wasn't so much cheaper than the Apple then guess who wouldn't be selling much.
MS isn't exactly evil, but they don't do anything good by design, its pretty much been a side effect, accident, or just default outcome because they crushed, bought out, or stole from anyone else who could have done better. They aren't innovators, they are marketeers and software bundlers, and are very very popular with the PHBs because obviously nothing cheap or free can be worth anything.
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Yes and no. Yes that picture is another reference to the joke, no that isn't specifically what I was referring to. I like my Windows CEMENT XPeriance, turning PCs into paperweights one desktop at a time better :) But pride of authorship or something I suppose :)
Mostly just a jab that their real strength is in marketing, not technical competition, yet they still allowe Win CEMENT XP and WINce to happen, nevermind the name of their company sounds like Bill is in desparate need of a penis pump and viagra. I maintain that Microsoft, based on their behavior and their OS of malware infestation they really had a different goal in mind. They WANTED the internet to be clogged with penis pump and viagra adds, Bill wanted them delivered anonymously to his mailbox where he could order...so they flooded the market with an OS that would provide a platform to send tons of spam and whatnot. Why else would they name the company Microsoft... At least Neversoft got its name right.
This is the same team that gave us Windows CEMENT XP, the Windows Cement Experience, turning PCs into paperweights one desktop at a time. Let us not also forget WinCE because when its what you will do when you find out your latest project must run on it.
That is what that is for?! Forget TV, books, billboards, deer, and even the internet...well except for maybe that 1%...
Exactly. Which is why all of these super spy laws coming are just a BAD thing period no questions asked no "protecting the citizens" crap. Because even assuming you DO trust the current administration with this power, you cannot trust all future administrations with it.
It has worked in the past. "HYPERTHREADING!!!" sold a ton of chips to people that have no concept of what it means. That is the sole function of a marketing department. It doesn't matter what it is your selling, just make it sound flashy, more impressive, and create a desire to have it. You are right 'Advanced BIOS' (not to mention Advanced Basic I/O System doesn't sound right..advanced and basic at the same time?) probably wouldn't sell much but something like '*NEW* HyperDrive IO Chip' would probably go a much longer ways to creating hype and demand, add on a snazzy sticker and the masses of Best Buy computer shoppers will all add it to their must have list.
I believe it was George Carlin who explained it best talking about the difference between "pre-owned car" and "used car" and how its the same damned thing, and its stupid to be fooled by the marketing gimmiks. "Would you want a 'pre-fucked wife'?"
If you were the "decider" and had a nasty problem of finding dissenters what would you do? Make it difficult to be a dissenter and rely on spying programs to try and root them out at great cost and effort? Or maybe make it easy, let them out themselves, build up a nice hefty database of potential leads, hunt them all down, expose them for the 'traitors' that they are and a threat to the good people,then destroy them to serve as a warning to any others.
Not that I'm really saying that this is what they are doing. But it is certainly a valid possibility. So many decry this type of thing as paranoid and conspiracy, but the fact of the matter is people with power and control will do anything they can to remain in power and control. This has been proven countless times in human history. It really irritates me when people fail to admit that this type of thing could happen at home or abroad...America had to fight a war to remove ourselves from tyranny. Do people think that you really only have to do that once?
Pssh, you still read books? I threw my books out in 1984 and haven't looked back. I have a world of billboards to tell me what to think and I can read them any time I go outside for FREE. The printed word is suck drek. Resist your printing press overlords!
Doh, accidentally removed the 5 line end instead of the draft middle ;(
Which browser to use
Red fox globe or big blue E
so long thanks for all the phish
I think you are in desperate need to see what the "For profit" schools have done. Go look up Apollo group for example. The fine owners and operators of University of Phoenix. Go look at what they have been doing for the past few years. Low quality of education, high grades for everyone = more students, more return students, and most importantly more money. Now what they do to you as a student is simple, they get you to fill out all kinds of federal aid forms, or military tuition assistance forms. Now they are golden, they don't give a rats ass about your education, they just want you to have good grades and keep coming back, because if your grades fall they get no money, so its in their best interests to give you As and Bs. If you get below a C in the military for example, the military refuses to pay, and they know that its easier to take the money from the government than to get anyone to pay their insane prices out of pocket. Now on top of all of this, they want money fast, and at the best margin, so the less time you spend with their teaching staff the better, the more classes they can run etc, so they have frequently gone WELL below the Dept of Education standards for what is required to be awarded credit (number of hours of instruction) AND they have been repeatedly busted for their recruiting tactics. DoE says you can't pay commissions among other things when recruiting students...oops UoP pays commissions and has quotas! So once again they are back in court for False Claims Act violations. But hey in this rosey free market world of yours...maybe it will work out. If UoP is found guilty they will owe the government 3x what they fraudulently took through federal aid and tuition assistance. So maybe it will work out well for the rest of us.
A school cannot and will not serve two masters. It can serve the goals of profit, or the goals of education, but it simply will not do both. I refuse to even talk to a for profit college. They are worthless, slimey, greedy, and their quality of education sucks at best. I know quite a few HR people who toss resumes with degree's from those places aside because they are such degree mills.
I think there was some underlying confusion here, possibly in the semantics. When I say lawyers write laws to keep lawyers employed, I don't mean the average lawyer. I am referring to the fact that the Legislative end of our government frequently has a rather large number of lawyers/law grads running about. I am directly refering to the exact problem that you are talking about. My issue with lawyers goes beyond that, in that a great number of the ones I have had the 'pleasure' of dealing with are little more than carrion feeding on a rotting corpse of justice. I have known a few good people who are lawyers, but the same problem applies, because they were unable to give me anything other than very vague advice because of differences in law based on where you are practicing and the typical fickle ways of judges. (You think I don't like lawyers, I REALLY don't like judges...was even assaulted by a judge at 15 at my sisters school at parent teacher conferences for looking suspicious...drug me outside by the arm too shout about drugs... I apparently just looked too hoodlumish to be standing outside HIS school.)
In fact there is a lawyer that I have been talking to (free of cost even) that has been helping me fight a fraud thing for my wife. Has been a great help, and is exactly the type you are talking about, class action/false claims act stuff. But this is 1 out of something like 8 that hasn't been an expensive pain to deal with.
Well my opinion of lawyers only has to deal with the lawyers that I have dealt with or friends and family have dealt with, and while I absolutely agree there are good ones and bad ones, the vast majority I have ever had any contact with have been questionable at best. This has nothing to do with corporate anything, it has to do with a string of really shitty lawyers, and lawyers that cannot or will not give solid answers or work for what they are charging me for. If mechanics gave such vague answers all the time, you can bet there would be lawsuits over their charges (surprise more lawyers). Now aside from this attack, I actually defended the good lawyers because the system is so jacked up, the good lawyers really can't give any solid answers because so much goofy crap can happen. Some areas of the country are worse than others as well. Back home I can do most of my basic legal interaction with the court myself, filling out forms, singing stuff, etc...out east here, I can't do crap without a lawyer, I can't file anything without paying a lawyer $500 to draw it up because "the judges are picky".
Well this nonsense has me and my wife in a situation where we can be extorted by the grandparents due to them having a larger bank account ("our offer is we wont force you to pick him up after our minimum visitation, we will just keep him until you can afford it"). So we rightfully said no you cant have him. They aren't in the custody agreement themselves, their son (my step son's father) is currently in jail. They seem to be under the impression that because we agreed they could see him in court (however, again its not in the final court order signed by her ex husband and the judge) that they can take us back to court over this. Her ex also apparently believes that a power of attorney allows his parents to take his visitation in his place. They have already tried this PoA nonsense and the grandmother tried to refuse to turn the child over to us. Now in about a month they are going to call the cops because we are going to not allow them to take the child, we are going to be going back to court, paying another lawyer $200/hr or so, and guess what...we don't have the money to keep up that kind of fight, but deep pockets grandparents do. Hooray for our legal system protecting the parents and the kids.
That doesn't even begin to touch the legal battle involved in Phoenix of University fraud. I hope they are found guilty as sin on their reopened False Claims Act case...I want to see heads roll in that place.
You cannot defend yourself in any manner (aside from criminal where you get a nice free public defender) without spending a fortune on a lawyer. This has made the situation very nice in the US for the people with deep pockets to just attack you until you can't pay and have to default. And either way all the lawyers involved will get their $ before you are forced to fold when you run out of cash.
I don't really disagree with the not dealing with professionals part. My traffic record is insane, filled with things like "Curtsey" tickets. I am assuming that a "Curtsey" ticket is a Courtesy ticket, but maybe I really was observed giving polite little bows in a skirt or something. Then there is the fact that everything on there was doubled, because they dismissed whatever insane charge they put on my ticket, and put in some meaningless charge so they could still collect their money from the ticket.
You really can't compare Engineering (which has a large set of knowns and a relatively small set of unknowns) and Medicine (Which has a moderate number of knowns and a relatively large set of unknowns) and Law (Which has virtually no knowns and an growing set of unknowns). Unfortunately that is how law works, there is no concrete answer. If you do this you get that. Go look at how sentencing widely varies for any given charge. Technically they are still professionals, because without them you would be totally screwed in case of court action. If the other party gets a lawyer , and you try to go alone without an intricate knowledge of the little court games, you are pretty much doomed. All parties have made this system worse. Uneducated judges with weird personal opinions governing their job makes lawyers engage in stupid little dances and cops can't just do their job because they know the legal theater will likely destroy anything they actually would get done.
Lawyers write the laws to keep lawyers employed. There is a specific reason law is difficult. If law was simple lawyers and lawmakers wouldn't have much of a job now would they? Again technical stuff and even medical stuff isn't anywhere remotely the same as Law. Go deal with a custody case sometime. "The child's best interest" is the biggest factor, and there is NOTHING ANYWHERE that defines that in any meaningful tangible sense. So its just a bunch of nonsense getting tossed about with lawyers and judges getting paid. Go try to deal with a fraud case, its a mess of legal technicalities that can be interpreted dozens of ways. As a lawyer once told me "Interpreting court orders and the like is more of an art than a science" How the hell can that make sense in any other profession? Something like a contract our court order should be pretty cut and dry and not require "artful interpretation" to make it work right.
THANK YOU! I hate that "I've never had a problem" crap. Its like saying "I never had a problem with AIDS" after years of sleeping around without protection. Just because you don't know are infected doesn't mean your not infected. The era of user irritating viruses is all but gone. Most of the noticable stuff is from the few that are overzealous about spreading. Infections have become profitable, and its not just about laughing at an irritated user, its about spam, its about blackmail, its about DDoS attacks.
Having been dealing with lawyers lately on a variety of subjects. You certainly seem to have never really dealt with a lawyer. Our complex systems and their complex systems don't even begin to compare. At least in our complex systems there are right and wrong answers. In law there really isnt. Law simply is not cut and dry. The laws are vaguely worded and complex and left to the interpretation of judges (whose opinions, methods, and backgrounds in relavent fields all vary greatly). The lawyers job is to take your money, take the law, and make a best attempt at convincing the judge that the law reads in your favor, in the mean time, the other lawyers job is to take the oppositions money and try to convince the judge that THEIR interpretation is the correct one. In the meantime there are a bunch of lawyers in the legislative end of government deliberately writing vague and confusing law to ensure lawyers remain employed and that law will never be cut and dry and comprehendable by the common man. That anytime anything comes up you will be forced to get a lawyer to talk to a judge, because anything else is courtroom suicide due to the complexity and vagueness of the law. If you have a lawyer telling you things are cut and dry and its a no brainer, then you probably have an inexperienced lawyer or a dishonest one (well they are all basically dishonest, but you want them to be honest with you at least). Do you honestly believe that if law was so cut and dry easy lawyers would get paid $200+/hr to do terribly little? Do you honestly believe that if it was so simple there would be so many stupid cases constantly clogging up our legal system?
In the meantime you should start charging a $2500 retainer before fixing anyones computer. See how far that goes.
I say it is posturing just due to timing, because he has to save face with the new Democrat controlled Legislative if he wants any more of his pet projects to go through
Voter fraud is the voters cheating, Election fraud (the rampant problem we are starting to see) is people mucking with the election. You are absolutely right about people not voting, but its not so cut and dry. I have a friend that wants to vote but can't due to felon status...for driving w/o a license 3x because she had to go to work and they refused to do a restricted license. Voter intimidation tactics have been showing up lately as well. You also have the problem of lots of people disenfranchised due to things like election fraud, or the fact that both candidates running are scum. Then there is my personal reason for not voting frequently, I won't vote for a candidate I don't support, and when its lying bought scum running vs lying bought scum I just don't vote for either of them.
You are right on the voting age thing, except you can't really blame the people that voted against it, or chose not to vote (chosing not to vote is different from apathetically not voting).
It is ENTIRELY too late for a pullout. We just need to change how we deal with that part of the world in a big way. They don't trust us and with very good reason. Anyone in that area seen as supporting us is going to catch alot of hate and hostility from their neighbors. Osama's original major gripe with us was that the Saudis asked us to fight the gulf war and told Osama to leave. Osama being of a muslim variety persecuted by Saddam he believed it was HIS war, and his countrymen asked infadels to come fight instead of him, it was a huge insult to him
It was the Iraq Iran war, not Cold War. Granted I'm sure ties can be drawn, but to follow the long chain you can trace parts of the Cold War all the way back to the War of 1812. We supported that insane dictator killing Iranians, no real reason for Iran to be inclined to deal with us.
No, its great that we won that. My point is we shouldn't have bailed out on a war torn nation afterwards. We should have been a good ally and helped them recover rather than leaving them to the inevitable warlords taking power and forming the Taliban. And then we shouldn't have been dealing with the Taliban for pipeline deals and the like. Had we helped them recover they would be in infinetly better shape, we probably wouldn't have the state sponsored terrorism problem in that area, and guess what, we probably would have been much better off economically in the long run since Russia wanted that area to build a giant oil pipeline to a warm water port. Granted it would have taken a bit of forsight to realize "hey, we won't be at war with Russia forever, and I bet if we have a good ally here WE can jointly build that pipeline and profit" rather than "Hey look, Russia sells oil now, lets go back to that shithole and try to deal with those lunatics to see if we can't bleed them on an oil pipeline"
Who should do the beating, now if that isn't the question of the century. Unfortunately there are too many conflicting political and economic, mostly economic interest in that area to get the rest of the world to agree to punish all of them equally. Entangling Alliances and all that all over again.
You are right, but we can thank British Imperialism for a great deal of that. Brutal oppresion and all of that, carving up the land, displacing people. That area of the world has been the envy of everyone for a long time, first it was THE major trade intersection for over half the world, and then oil became important and the stakes got even higher. Everyone wanted to control that little slice of land, so unfortunately the people who kinda started there have been being attacked by EVERYONE trying to steal their wealth and their land. Yeah, they have the oil, but everyone has the products that are made from or use the oil. So if we find an alternate source of power, or just quit sellin
Disturbingly enough you are probably right about both paying Diebold. There are republicans in certain areas that seem to be against the machines with democrats supporting them. The question is who paid more and did they pay to win in the right places.
1. He should have been allowed to leave on the 1st one and not used as some political posturing move
2. Loaded question as hell. But lets point out our democracy has had more than a few problems lately in true representation of the will of the people. Are there Americans at fault, absolutely, are they the general populace...not really, at best you can blame 51% of the populace for the shenannagins going on, but really its our representives doing a piss poor job of representing us. 3. Given his dealings with Saddam and crew, I can kinda understand why there may be some sketchy feelings about this guy in that part of the world. Is he making them fight...not exactly. But did the Rodney King verdict MAKE people go out rioting and looting? Not really, just the reaction to the stimulus happened to go that way. I think the key here is there would probably be much less fighting over there if America's involvement in the middle east didn't have so much dirty dealing going on. Unless you forget almost all of the problems we have over there are largley our own doing. Kerry gets nailed for flipflopping (I don't like Kerry either, just making a point) but it was Rummy who "Supported Saddam before I didn't support Saddam", it was the US that bailed in Afghanistan after the Russians were defeated leaving the Taliban to fill a void in a wartorn country, it was the US that mucked in Irans government and got caught leading to the anti-US regime being able to take power. There are a whole gang of people and groups over there that need to be beaten with a large stick and hard for being worthless pricks, but we need to have alot more integrity ourselves in our dealings with that for it to ever mean anything other than continued bloodshed and constant replacments of new evil dictator types.
Or that when you set the initial count to -500 Democrat +500 Republican that you didn't use big enough numbers and you still lost by not cheating enough. Or a caluclated response to get this reaction of "see we aren't cheating". Or maybe the Dems paid dieblod to cheat for them this time, since people willing to do that kind of thing generally don't care where the money comes from.
Are you trying to say that isn't real?! I mean Kevin Mitnik was able to launch nuclear missiles by whistling into phones.
I would say IBM or Intel probably qualify. IBM has been around much longer and is still going strong, and love em or hate em (both IBM and MS), I think IBM has a much much more solid future. MS has been terribly inflationary and that is why a real alternative product is a huge threat to them. They would have to compete on price and technical merit rather than strong arm tactics and marketing fluff n FUD. IBM invented FUD and eventually had to abandon it because it just doesn't make for a sustainable business. Intel pretty much owns the processor market. Sure there are a handfull of other players in different markets, but for server, laptop, workstation, and many more Intel pretty much is it. Even Apple switched. Now there is AMD, and they were some fast paced innovators for a while, but they developed their chips based on the Intel standard.
That having been said, your Henry Ford comment is a little lopsided. MS is no Ford...at all. They don't even compare, they pretty much stole all their initial ideas and products from others. Did we forget the story of DOS, or maybe the Apple vs MS debacle. Lets not forget that Xerox and friends had more in the creation of the GUI than MS did. Ford found a way to mass produce something and make it common and affordable, MS found a way to market proprietary goods at a premium price. More like the japanese car manufactures, except without the associated quality.
Microsoft didn't enable business to do anything except for IBM to sell more machines than Apple, and once again that is more of a score for IBM than it is for MS. If the IBM PC wasn't so much cheaper than the Apple then guess who wouldn't be selling much.
MS isn't exactly evil, but they don't do anything good by design, its pretty much been a side effect, accident, or just default outcome because they crushed, bought out, or stole from anyone else who could have done better. They aren't innovators, they are marketeers and software bundlers, and are very very popular with the PHBs because obviously nothing cheap or free can be worth anything.
That is why I disable cookies.
the Guide told him?