They won't do anything until the Olympics are done, let alone acknowledge it. They won't do anything if it affects how much money the IOC gets.
The irony being that there's huge kerfluffles if someone ends up testing positive for weed after winning a medal, but in this case, where the rules violation actually gives the athlete an advantage, it'll get swept under the rug.
I'm waiting for the charges of bribery to the judges. They've got the judging now so that anyone who has a player in the event does not have someone from that country judging things. Sounds good. But something is up because the Chinese have scored consistently higher even with major stumbles in their routine while Americans (and other countries) perform practically flawless routines and consistently get scored just below the Chinese. And these are routines with the same or close difficulty levels. The other day an American tied with the Chinese on the uneven parallel and instead of both getting a gold medal, the "computer" automatically ranked the American second.
I got a better one for ya. The boxing competitions are clearly fixed or improperly scored. There wasn't a single boxing match I watched over the last two weeks where the commentators weren't incredulous that very obvious strikes repeatedly went unscored.
And to top it off, there was a tie score that required the judges to vote via their scoring clicker-device. Turned out, one of the judges' devices wasn't even working. Wanna guess the chance of them redoing the match because of that little "problem"?
Oh, and I should point out that this problem was noted for matches where there were no US competitors. Notably, there was a French/Chinese match where the French guy was clearly the more active, aggressive, and skilled man in the fight. But it came down to a "tie" in points and the "star" Chinese boxer won.
I don't have any misconceptions that the Olympics is in any way fair or objective, but man, these games the problems with scoring are very obvious.
(increasingly so when Russia and China start to get low on oil)
Russia has impressive reserves, and they are leveraging them to become a world leading energy producer. China is already oil-poor, and their need is one of the big factors driving demand (and therefore price) way up. They are also looking into lots more nuclear power, and they are chewing into their coal reserves quickly.
It would probably be helpful if China would stop setting their coal mines on fire.
And really, the best possible outcome would be for the US to not even need Russia's oil reserves. If it came down to just needing oil for manufacturing purposes (not for internal combustion engines), we really do have all the resources we need for a LONG time, if we're willing to pay a bit more for that tupperware container.
There's been at least one proposal in the Senate to prohibit speculation on certain types of commodities, including crude oil futures.
There's plenty of oil for the time being, but the equities markets blew up about a year ago and so hedging was happening in the commodity markets. As you can see lately, the commodities speculation has gone down as those investors put money elsewhere again.
It is very complex - my accountant hands me a book (a very expensive book, by the way) each year that is my taxes. To be honest, I really only know the bottom line - I have to pay half my money to the government (state and federal), and Obama has decided that I don't pay enough.
I'm just sick of it - when did I become his slave?
Cap gains right now is ~15%. The proposal is to move it back to the 1990's level, which iirc was in the low 30's. Seems reasonable to me as that is roughly in the same area as income tax brackets.
Your 50% you're giving to the IRS doesn't have a ton to do with Obama's plan, and if you're turning over businesses every few years for that much profit, you won't see much empathy from most of the electorate.
Actually all of them except Sarah Jessica Parker look pretty attractive. SJP's problem is that she looks pretty attractive from about 2 angles, and from every other existing angle, she has a face like a foot.
Yes. As I said in an earlier post in this thread, a goodly portion of the American public has been convinced by network television that pedophiles lurk behind every rock, tree, and corner. It's the Satanism of the 00's.
However, your friend seems kind of dumb. Does she really think that Google has some sort of magic device that has real-time pictures of street-level views across the entire country?
Why would you walk around in public in attire that you don't want to be photographed in? That's silly. There's already enough people who, thanks to shows like SVU and Dateline: NBC, believe that every 3rd male is likely to be a pedophile rapist. It's like the 80's and Satanism/Repressed Memory Recovery all over again. Pointing a camera in a direction that seems to be "scary" these days evokes all sort of mindless, kneejerk reactions like yours.
We don't need more people thinking that its their god given right not to be photographed in public when they don't want to be. If you're concerned about being observed and recorded in public, you've got two choices: 1) don't go in public, or 2) prepare for public excursions by adjusting your appearance in a way that pleases you
It's the mark of a free society that sometimes people are free to do things that you don't personally like. Taking photographs of people in public is one of them (which should apply to buildings, etc).
As said many times earlier in the thread, even in our metropolitan areas the broadband doesn't match that of Japan or South Korea, and the average speed for countries with much lower population densities still beat us.
Basically we suck because the telcos are greedy, inefficient pigs.
Because more bandwidth to the end nodes means more companies can do more interesting things. 2-way interactive high-def video, etc. You have to look to the future, not what is needed right this second.
Yeah that's great. The point, however, is that even when you compare metropolis to metropolis, the US still suck ass in this regard. Tokyo is ~1.5x larger than New York but has 1/5th the population density, and it still blows NYC connectivity out of the water.
What I thought was the most amusing was an article I was reading yesterday on this, where bigwig in question stated they had spent $_hugeAmount of dollars to determine that it just couldn't be done. That it was "impossible" to make the system behave in the ways that they wanted it to behave. The whole thing is much more political than technological, anyway. A big pissing match in government.
Anyway, COBOL wasn't so bad when I had to learn it. FORTRASH was more fun, though.
Slashdot Mirror
*whine*
They won't do anything until the Olympics are done, let alone acknowledge it. They won't do anything if it affects how much money the IOC gets.
The irony being that there's huge kerfluffles if someone ends up testing positive for weed after winning a medal, but in this case, where the rules violation actually gives the athlete an advantage, it'll get swept under the rug.
I'm waiting for the charges of bribery to the judges. They've got the judging now so that anyone who has a player in the event does not have someone from that country judging things. Sounds good. But something is up because the Chinese have scored consistently higher even with major stumbles in their routine while Americans (and other countries) perform practically flawless routines and consistently get scored just below the Chinese. And these are routines with the same or close difficulty levels. The other day an American tied with the Chinese on the uneven parallel and instead of both getting a gold medal, the "computer" automatically ranked the American second.
I got a better one for ya. The boxing competitions are clearly fixed or improperly scored. There wasn't a single boxing match I watched over the last two weeks where the commentators weren't incredulous that very obvious strikes repeatedly went unscored.
And to top it off, there was a tie score that required the judges to vote via their scoring clicker-device. Turned out, one of the judges' devices wasn't even working. Wanna guess the chance of them redoing the match because of that little "problem"?
Oh, and I should point out that this problem was noted for matches where there were no US competitors. Notably, there was a French/Chinese match where the French guy was clearly the more active, aggressive, and skilled man in the fight. But it came down to a "tie" in points and the "star" Chinese boxer won.
I don't have any misconceptions that the Olympics is in any way fair or objective, but man, these games the problems with scoring are very obvious.
Yes, but a bear doesn't need weeks to prepare a paw swing. The analogy doesn't hold.
Remember Carters "give up the hostages or die" speech to Iran?
While I disagree with you about Obama, I often think back and wonder what would have happened politically to the US had the rescue mission to Iran not run into those sandstorms.
I'm thinking things may have been wildly different today.
(increasingly so when Russia and China start to get low on oil)
Russia has impressive reserves, and they are leveraging them to become a world leading energy producer. China is already oil-poor, and their need is one of the big factors driving demand (and therefore price) way up. They are also looking into lots more nuclear power, and they are chewing into their coal reserves quickly.
It would probably be helpful if China would stop setting their coal mines on fire.
And really, the best possible outcome would be for the US to not even need Russia's oil reserves. If it came down to just needing oil for manufacturing purposes (not for internal combustion engines), we really do have all the resources we need for a LONG time, if we're willing to pay a bit more for that tupperware container.
There's been at least one proposal in the Senate to prohibit speculation on certain types of commodities, including crude oil futures.
There's plenty of oil for the time being, but the equities markets blew up about a year ago and so hedging was happening in the commodity markets. As you can see lately, the commodities speculation has gone down as those investors put money elsewhere again.
It is very complex - my accountant hands me a book (a very expensive book, by the way) each year that is my taxes. To be honest, I really only know the bottom line - I have to pay half my money to the government (state and federal), and Obama has decided that I don't pay enough.
I'm just sick of it - when did I become his slave?
Cap gains right now is ~15%. The proposal is to move it back to the 1990's level, which iirc was in the low 30's. Seems reasonable to me as that is roughly in the same area as income tax brackets.
Your 50% you're giving to the IRS doesn't have a ton to do with Obama's plan, and if you're turning over businesses every few years for that much profit, you won't see much empathy from most of the electorate.
Too late there, bud. Talk to Hormel about their "spam" trademark.
Actually all of them except Sarah Jessica Parker look pretty attractive. SJP's problem is that she looks pretty attractive from about 2 angles, and from every other existing angle, she has a face like a foot.
No, the world needs us as one of the largest consumers of the goods they're producing.
I know its trendy to believe that the US is shootin' for a downfall of epic proportions, but that's very, very unlikely to happen.
Yes. As I said in an earlier post in this thread, a goodly portion of the American public has been convinced by network television that pedophiles lurk behind every rock, tree, and corner. It's the Satanism of the 00's.
However, your friend seems kind of dumb. Does she really think that Google has some sort of magic device that has real-time pictures of street-level views across the entire country?
Why would you walk around in public in attire that you don't want to be photographed in? That's silly. There's already enough people who, thanks to shows like SVU and Dateline: NBC, believe that every 3rd male is likely to be a pedophile rapist. It's like the 80's and Satanism/Repressed Memory Recovery all over again. Pointing a camera in a direction that seems to be "scary" these days evokes all sort of mindless, kneejerk reactions like yours.
We don't need more people thinking that its their god given right not to be photographed in public when they don't want to be. If you're concerned about being observed and recorded in public, you've got two choices: 1) don't go in public, or 2) prepare for public excursions by adjusting your appearance in a way that pleases you
It's the mark of a free society that sometimes people are free to do things that you don't personally like. Taking photographs of people in public is one of them (which should apply to buildings, etc).
Take a look at the asian stock markets to date in 2008 and let me know what you think then.
The idea that the rest of the world is decoupled from the US economy is silly.
I'm not sure why Apple is considered a "rising star". More like "The Aerosmith Comeback" of the computer world.
A single firefox plugin makes just about every streaming video on the internet savable.
So, your lack of imagination is justification for the retaining of status quo, eh?
As said many times earlier in the thread, even in our metropolitan areas the broadband doesn't match that of Japan or South Korea, and the average speed for countries with much lower population densities still beat us.
Basically we suck because the telcos are greedy, inefficient pigs.
Because more bandwidth to the end nodes means more companies can do more interesting things. 2-way interactive high-def video, etc. You have to look to the future, not what is needed right this second.
Maybe so, but that's still insane.
I mean, take it from me. I'm up here in Canada, where the average internet connection is
It depends on who is defining "high speed".
Youtube is basically unusable over the speeds that the FCC defines as broadband, for example.
Yeah that's great. The point, however, is that even when you compare metropolis to metropolis, the US still suck ass in this regard. Tokyo is ~1.5x larger than New York but has 1/5th the population density, and it still blows NYC connectivity out of the water.
Just a note: Frequently, using Visa Debit cards does not give you the same transactional protection as using a "real" credit card.
What I thought was the most amusing was an article I was reading yesterday on this, where bigwig in question stated they had spent $_hugeAmount of dollars to determine that it just couldn't be done. That it was "impossible" to make the system behave in the ways that they wanted it to behave. The whole thing is much more political than technological, anyway. A big pissing match in government.
Anyway, COBOL wasn't so bad when I had to learn it. FORTRASH was more fun, though.