Yeah, but when a corporation is charged with a crime, why are they not tried and why does no one go to jail?
Worse -- when a bank defrauds the american people out of billions of dollars, it gets trillions in "stimulus" money... paid for by the same patsys who were defrauded in the first place.
Why?
Because we allow it.
How come all the oil and gas companies keep expanding like this and all the solar companies keep going bankrupt? Wasn't it supposed to be the other way around? Damned hippies lied to me again.
Maybe you should try listening to something beyond fox "news" since the solar industry has been growing, and not that many of the companies in the industry have gone belly-up.
That said, the hydrocarbon industry is spending a lot of money to get politicians to continue giving them subsidies while seeking to prevent renewable energy developer from succeeding...
Well said, and also the earth's rotation and the underlying topography affect where the water flows, and hence where it piles up so to speak. The world rotates eastward, so the ocean water tends to pile up westward, that is to say into the eastern seaboard.
We're both simplifying drastically, but there's a lot of variance to account for. Even sea floor topography can have an affect, both in how currents flow around the topography and in local gravity when there are high ridges vs deep troughs, thin areas in the crust, and even the material comprising the crust. After all, we all know (hopefully) that more dense material has higher gravity than less dense material, since it packs more mass into the same volume as a less dense material.
"Then they should stop confiscating the cell phones and cameras of protesters if they have nothing to worry about."
That's the big thing that this article fails to address.
If the police won't let citizens film the police, then the police's own videos cannot and will not be trusted. They can't have it both ways, though obviously they're trying to pretend that they're the aggrieved party here.
And when they are working all they have to do is stand and smile, and they think they have it hard and that they are doing real work.
They are doing "real work" - by comparison I'd say that the vast majority of the developers I've worked with have not, because they were hiding their lack of skill & talent behind brown-nosing.
That's actually quite a bit harder to do as a model; you can't outsource actually being there, so you HAVE to do the job in order to get paid for it.
No, absolutely not. If they don't like it, they should get another job -- probably one in a field other than modeling, because if they don't like wearing heels and showing skin, modeling is really not the ideal career.
You actually just described a relatively small segment of what models do. It's a bit like saying that software engineers make computers do stuff by writing machine code. Sure, there are people who do it, but they're not the entire developer industry.
It *is* true that most of what people think of when they think of "model" is hot chicks in heels with scanty clothing, but if you look around it won't take long to see how much advertising involves people who aren't so different from everyone else, and aren't wearing anything particularly unusual.
"If anybody knows of any good candidates, speak up. I do not want a lawyer to represent me. I do not want a manager to represent me. I want an engineer, a man (or woman) who solves problems, because we have a lot of problems that need solving."
This is the land of bought elections. All we need is a big enough budget to back a candidate and he's in.
In other words, all we have to do is pick a candidate based on actual qualifications, and get Bill Gates to buy the election.
"No, it devalues all human life. It would be better to prevent that individual from killing others and then bring them to justice, hopefully leading to their eventual reform."
I agree. The catch is that the TSA isn't doing anything that will help to prevent that one individual kill anyone else.
One could argue that the TSA is accomplishing something to prevent terrorists from attacking US citizens, however. By trashing the civil rights of US citizens, the TSA is doing exactly what the terrorists want to do to us, so why would any terrorist want to do anything to get in the way? They'd be much better off just laughing out our gargantuan stupidity, and then blowing up a bridge or a shopping mall or sending someone infected with a particularly virulent virus that we're not ready for into JFK to stand in that security line for an hour infecting everyone around.
In the end, under the pretense of protecting us from terrorists, the TSA is playing right into their hands, we as a nation are letting it happen.
"That money is not being diverted, it's just that it's been allocated to funding innovation."
In the US, it's rarely funding innovation.
"What does it change for the taxpayer whether that money goes to a start-up or an established company? Not much. "
Potentially a lot. One example is the massive subsidies that the big oil companies receive, and they mostly spend their "R&D" budgets trying to stifle renewable energy startups and spew propaganda. They are actively and blatantly attempting to prevent rather than support innovation.
They're receiving subsidies because they're bribing politicians with those subsidies.
"It not going to Apple doesn't mean it would be going to save the children or the needy. And if it were going to a start-up, no one would be shocked of it."
Both are true, and people would be much less annoyed with Apple if Apple weren't also evading taxes while simultaneously collecting taxpayer subsidies.
"R&D is extremely costly and a long-term investment, regardless of company size. Subsidies exist to reduce the risks associated with R&D, so as to encourage more companies to do R&D."
That is true, yet rarely does any large corporation in the US do significant R&D...
"Even if a company has a lot of money, why would they choose to invest it in something risky rather than in things with guaranteed returns? It's because government subsidies make those less risky and tolerable."
There's this thing called "the future" to consider...
"Being European myself, I don't know the details in the US, but I'm pretty sure start-ups have access to a lot more things and tax cuts than corporations,"
No, not in reality. There are subsidies for small startup, but for the most part, they're loans and they aren't government provided.
"this doesn't mean corporations shouldn't get anything at all when they're willing to take on risky projects."
It those came corporations don't pay their own taxes, then yes it does.
Most established companies don't, but if you pay attention you'll see that it's also besides the point.
Subsidizing an established company building a plant with taxpayer money at the expense of education, infrastructure, health care, and supporting a start-up that's doing R&D is obviously working against innovation. First, by misusing the subsidy system in the first place, because the established company shouldn't need it if it's well run, and second by preventing the new company from doing the R&D. Third by compromising the education and standard of living. Fourth by not returning the tax payers' investment in the now-established company.
Any way you look at it, whether or not the established company is doing anything innovative or not is immaterial.
That said, most established corporations in the US prefer to dedicate their resources to buying politicians and evading taxes rather than doing R&D, because the corporate culture stifles change and innovation because they're risky, and corporations are designed to be risk-averse, even though a well-run corporation could handle risk a lot better than a start up. That's precisely the reason that a start up with a good plan should be a candidate for subsidies, and an established company should be paying taxes to repay the taxpayers for helping it get started.
"Those programs exist because the government wants to develop new technologies, invest in specific sectors, or create a new economical hub in a certain area."
Then why are the subsidies going to companies that are already established, rather than to companies that are starting up and endeavoring to create new and actually innovative products and technologies?
The government is mostly giving money to companies that don't need it at the expense of education, health care, and transit, but it's not to support innovation. It's stifling innovation and lining the pockets of the government instead.
"Although Java is technically free because it was released under the GPL"
That's also false. Sun only released ONE VERSION of Java under the GPL, not Java.
"I've never heard of anyone being charged for a Java runtime or compiler, so in the sense of beer, it's free. "
Sun DID charge a license fee for the VM specs, so the compiler developers had to pay for it. It's not much different from the h.264 thing; someone IS paying for it, even though we don't have to pay for the version running in our browsers.
"If people understood that evolution does not actually work that way, "Intelligent Design" would be a completely moot point."
Agreed.
The first problem is that people think that evolution is an intelligent process rather than random, and fail to understand how slow and inefficient it really is.
The second is that our current society is definitive proof against intelligent design; if an intelligence designed us we wouldn't be going out of our way to destroy everything we need to live.
"Wouldn't that be Apple in this case? (at least it makes less of its money on ads)"
Apple is largely a consumer electronics company whose entire product line is based primarily on selling music and such though iTunes. So instead of selling ads, Apple sells toys. Except for that it's not actually all that different from Google, though the toys are much more useful and fun than ads.
" The problem for Heartland is that they're acting like dicks toward a lot of people, when they should be upending heaven and hell to find the memo forger and crucifying him for libel."
The most likely reason that they're being so aggressive is that this approach is that in order to prove that the document is libelous, they'd run the risk of having the rest of the documents verified in the process.
So yes, you're right; there's a good reason that the only deals you end up seeing on Groupon are bad for the business owners... it's because Groupon doesn't run deals that ARE good for the business owners. They only businesses that could benefit from Groupon deals are really mass-market, volume-orientede business that don't have high margins. Boutique business really shouldn't bother with Groupon.
"Katrina was a big storm, but not ridiculously so. What destroyed New Orleans was flooding made extra destructive by the fact that the city is below sea level."
Don't forget the torn up barrier islands, and the poorly maintained dikes that weren't properly built in the first place.
"No, but at some point the evidence is clear enough and compelling enough to take action on."
Right now in Texas, that action is to continue pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, consume as much of the fresh water available burning up more CO2 during the state's worst drought in over a century, and pray for salvation.
"Fact: if you want to retain employees you have to treat them well and pay them well."
It used to amaze me that so many companies would bring in talented staff and then stifle their efforts to do what they were recruited to do.
Now it's so common that I'm amazed when I find management who place some value in USING the talents that their staff bring in, and those managers tend to have successful teams that get stuff done on time.
"Yeah, so, you can do that in Ruby, too. In both cases you don't have a duck."
Agreed. That was the point: interfaces and static typing can't prevent another programmer's stupidity from screwing up YOUR code, which usually means that in your standard-issue chaotic hackshop, your coworkers will screw something up for you sooner or later, and no language can prevent that.
"How do you find references in Ruby? Search all text files for a string? With static typing (Java), the compiler knows if changing something affects other code or what code is referenced where."
That is something I also agree with, even though I love coding in Ruby. It's caused me no end of trouble tracing Python code, though that can for the most part be attributed to the fact that the people writing said Python code did a miserable job of it, which is another thing that no programming language can't prevent.
"Java interfaces allow you to declare that something is a Duck, so it must be a duck. However, with Java, I can ensure that anything I think I want to call a duck does indeed fulfill the contract of being a duck. "
How? If I have an interface with a method "quack" that is supposed to print a message from a string you pass it, and I write a class implementing it that calculates the factorial of 1,023,342 instead, you can call it, and it will compile and even run, but still violate the contract of being a duck.
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Yeah, but when a corporation is charged with a crime, why are they not tried and why does no one go to jail?
Worse -- when a bank defrauds the american people out of billions of dollars, it gets trillions in "stimulus" money... paid for by the same patsys who were defrauded in the first place. Why? Because we allow it.
How come all the oil and gas companies keep expanding like this and all the solar companies keep going bankrupt? Wasn't it supposed to be the other way around? Damned hippies lied to me again.
Maybe you should try listening to something beyond fox "news" since the solar industry has been growing, and not that many of the companies in the industry have gone belly-up. That said, the hydrocarbon industry is spending a lot of money to get politicians to continue giving them subsidies while seeking to prevent renewable energy developer from succeeding...
Well said, and also the earth's rotation and the underlying topography affect where the water flows, and hence where it piles up so to speak. The world rotates eastward, so the ocean water tends to pile up westward, that is to say into the eastern seaboard. We're both simplifying drastically, but there's a lot of variance to account for. Even sea floor topography can have an affect, both in how currents flow around the topography and in local gravity when there are high ridges vs deep troughs, thin areas in the crust, and even the material comprising the crust. After all, we all know (hopefully) that more dense material has higher gravity than less dense material, since it packs more mass into the same volume as a less dense material.
"Then they should stop confiscating the cell phones and cameras of protesters if they have nothing to worry about." That's the big thing that this article fails to address. If the police won't let citizens film the police, then the police's own videos cannot and will not be trusted. They can't have it both ways, though obviously they're trying to pretend that they're the aggrieved party here.
And when they are working all they have to do is stand and smile, and they think they have it hard and that they are doing real work.
They are doing "real work" - by comparison I'd say that the vast majority of the developers I've worked with have not, because they were hiding their lack of skill & talent behind brown-nosing. That's actually quite a bit harder to do as a model; you can't outsource actually being there, so you HAVE to do the job in order to get paid for it.
No, absolutely not. If they don't like it, they should get another job -- probably one in a field other than modeling, because if they don't like wearing heels and showing skin, modeling is really not the ideal career.
You actually just described a relatively small segment of what models do. It's a bit like saying that software engineers make computers do stuff by writing machine code. Sure, there are people who do it, but they're not the entire developer industry. It *is* true that most of what people think of when they think of "model" is hot chicks in heels with scanty clothing, but if you look around it won't take long to see how much advertising involves people who aren't so different from everyone else, and aren't wearing anything particularly unusual.
"If anybody knows of any good candidates, speak up. I do not want a lawyer to represent me. I do not want a manager to represent me. I want an engineer, a man (or woman) who solves problems, because we have a lot of problems that need solving." This is the land of bought elections. All we need is a big enough budget to back a candidate and he's in. In other words, all we have to do is pick a candidate based on actual qualifications, and get Bill Gates to buy the election.
"No, it devalues all human life. It would be better to prevent that individual from killing others and then bring them to justice, hopefully leading to their eventual reform." I agree. The catch is that the TSA isn't doing anything that will help to prevent that one individual kill anyone else. One could argue that the TSA is accomplishing something to prevent terrorists from attacking US citizens, however. By trashing the civil rights of US citizens, the TSA is doing exactly what the terrorists want to do to us, so why would any terrorist want to do anything to get in the way? They'd be much better off just laughing out our gargantuan stupidity, and then blowing up a bridge or a shopping mall or sending someone infected with a particularly virulent virus that we're not ready for into JFK to stand in that security line for an hour infecting everyone around. In the end, under the pretense of protecting us from terrorists, the TSA is playing right into their hands, we as a nation are letting it happen.
"That money is not being diverted, it's just that it's been allocated to funding innovation." In the US, it's rarely funding innovation. "What does it change for the taxpayer whether that money goes to a start-up or an established company? Not much. " Potentially a lot. One example is the massive subsidies that the big oil companies receive, and they mostly spend their "R&D" budgets trying to stifle renewable energy startups and spew propaganda. They are actively and blatantly attempting to prevent rather than support innovation. They're receiving subsidies because they're bribing politicians with those subsidies. "It not going to Apple doesn't mean it would be going to save the children or the needy. And if it were going to a start-up, no one would be shocked of it." Both are true, and people would be much less annoyed with Apple if Apple weren't also evading taxes while simultaneously collecting taxpayer subsidies. "R&D is extremely costly and a long-term investment, regardless of company size. Subsidies exist to reduce the risks associated with R&D, so as to encourage more companies to do R&D." That is true, yet rarely does any large corporation in the US do significant R&D... "Even if a company has a lot of money, why would they choose to invest it in something risky rather than in things with guaranteed returns? It's because government subsidies make those less risky and tolerable." There's this thing called "the future" to consider... "Being European myself, I don't know the details in the US, but I'm pretty sure start-ups have access to a lot more things and tax cuts than corporations," No, not in reality. There are subsidies for small startup, but for the most part, they're loans and they aren't government provided. "this doesn't mean corporations shouldn't get anything at all when they're willing to take on risky projects." It those came corporations don't pay their own taxes, then yes it does.
Most established companies don't, but if you pay attention you'll see that it's also besides the point. Subsidizing an established company building a plant with taxpayer money at the expense of education, infrastructure, health care, and supporting a start-up that's doing R&D is obviously working against innovation. First, by misusing the subsidy system in the first place, because the established company shouldn't need it if it's well run, and second by preventing the new company from doing the R&D. Third by compromising the education and standard of living. Fourth by not returning the tax payers' investment in the now-established company. Any way you look at it, whether or not the established company is doing anything innovative or not is immaterial. That said, most established corporations in the US prefer to dedicate their resources to buying politicians and evading taxes rather than doing R&D, because the corporate culture stifles change and innovation because they're risky, and corporations are designed to be risk-averse, even though a well-run corporation could handle risk a lot better than a start up. That's precisely the reason that a start up with a good plan should be a candidate for subsidies, and an established company should be paying taxes to repay the taxpayers for helping it get started.
"Those programs exist because the government wants to develop new technologies, invest in specific sectors, or create a new economical hub in a certain area." Then why are the subsidies going to companies that are already established, rather than to companies that are starting up and endeavoring to create new and actually innovative products and technologies? The government is mostly giving money to companies that don't need it at the expense of education, health care, and transit, but it's not to support innovation. It's stifling innovation and lining the pockets of the government instead.
"Although Java is technically free because it was released under the GPL" That's also false. Sun only released ONE VERSION of Java under the GPL, not Java.
"I've never heard of anyone being charged for a Java runtime or compiler, so in the sense of beer, it's free. "
Sun DID charge a license fee for the VM specs, so the compiler developers had to pay for it. It's not much different from the h.264 thing; someone IS paying for it, even though we don't have to pay for the version running in our browsers.
"If people understood that evolution does not actually work that way, "Intelligent Design" would be a completely moot point." Agreed. The first problem is that people think that evolution is an intelligent process rather than random, and fail to understand how slow and inefficient it really is. The second is that our current society is definitive proof against intelligent design; if an intelligence designed us we wouldn't be going out of our way to destroy everything we need to live.
"Wouldn't that be Apple in this case? (at least it makes less of its money on ads)" Apple is largely a consumer electronics company whose entire product line is based primarily on selling music and such though iTunes. So instead of selling ads, Apple sells toys. Except for that it's not actually all that different from Google, though the toys are much more useful and fun than ads.
He's also full of BS even on the price tag. And probably isn't aware of Tesla's 8 year, unlimited mileage warranty.
" The problem for Heartland is that they're acting like dicks toward a lot of people, when they should be upending heaven and hell to find the memo forger and crucifying him for libel." The most likely reason that they're being so aggressive is that this approach is that in order to prove that the document is libelous, they'd run the risk of having the rest of the documents verified in the process.
So yes, you're right; there's a good reason that the only deals you end up seeing on Groupon are bad for the business owners... it's because Groupon doesn't run deals that ARE good for the business owners. They only businesses that could benefit from Groupon deals are really mass-market, volume-orientede business that don't have high margins. Boutique business really shouldn't bother with Groupon.
"Katrina was a big storm, but not ridiculously so. What destroyed New Orleans was flooding made extra destructive by the fact that the city is below sea level." Don't forget the torn up barrier islands, and the poorly maintained dikes that weren't properly built in the first place.
"No, but at some point the evidence is clear enough and compelling enough to take action on."
Right now in Texas, that action is to continue pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, consume as much of the fresh water available burning up more CO2 during the state's worst drought in over a century, and pray for salvation.
"Fact: if you want to retain employees you have to treat them well and pay them well."
It used to amaze me that so many companies would bring in talented staff and then stifle their efforts to do what they were recruited to do.
Now it's so common that I'm amazed when I find management who place some value in USING the talents that their staff bring in, and those managers tend to have successful teams that get stuff done on time.
"Yeah, so, you can do that in Ruby, too. In both cases you don't have a duck." Agreed. That was the point: interfaces and static typing can't prevent another programmer's stupidity from screwing up YOUR code, which usually means that in your standard-issue chaotic hackshop, your coworkers will screw something up for you sooner or later, and no language can prevent that. "How do you find references in Ruby? Search all text files for a string? With static typing (Java), the compiler knows if changing something affects other code or what code is referenced where." That is something I also agree with, even though I love coding in Ruby. It's caused me no end of trouble tracing Python code, though that can for the most part be attributed to the fact that the people writing said Python code did a miserable job of it, which is another thing that no programming language can't prevent.
"Java interfaces allow you to declare that something is a Duck, so it must be a duck. However, with Java, I can ensure that anything I think I want to call a duck does indeed fulfill the contract of being a duck. "
How? If I have an interface with a method "quack" that is supposed to print a message from a string you pass it, and I write a class implementing it that calculates the factorial of 1,023,342 instead, you can call it, and it will compile and even run, but still violate the contract of being a duck.