Comment Re:of course it wasn't NK (Score 1) 236
If you'd like to place a bet on whether the US's retaliation will be limited to a strongly-worded letter, I'd very much like to take that action.
Almost nobody had heard about the movie, now everyone has. I'm not sure that's good for North Korea.
You think North Korea is more internet-savvy than Barbara Streisand?
What a dopey comparison - when Target, Home Depot, and Chase were hit, they didn't CLOSE THEIR FUCKING STORES based on groundless threats from hackers half a world away. Sony did exactly that - they took a $42 million movie and decided to take a complete loss on it, at least for now. That's why it's big news.
As for Sony being based in Japan, what's that got to do with anything when you're talking about a multi-national corporation? What country do you think Sony makes the lion's share of its profits in? I'll give you a hint, it's the one that the most tickets were going to be sold for this movie, by far.
Bluntly, if NK had the power to pull something like this off, they would not have to fear retaliation.
What??? They're facing retaliation now and they're still claiming they didn't do it. What kind of logic were you just using?
Americans are brilliant at deceiving about half of their own citizens; the rest of the planet, not so much.
FTFY
No, ask all the questions you want. Just realize, when you assure people that it "must" be a ruse to provide an excuse to attack North Korea, you sound as loony as the NK leadership.
I'm not saying NK definitely did plan a cyberattack against Sony; it's an open question at this point. But when you smugly assert that you know it's our own government, with your only proof being your own paranoid crazy logic, you're really not advancing the conversation any.
Depending on where you are, yes, broadband can get that high, because of "bundling." Cable companies in the US offer the "triple play" of internet, TV and phone in a bundle that costs you well over $100 for even the slowest internet connection they offer. Then when you ask "how much for just internet?" the price often turns out to be as high, or, inexplicably, even higher if you refuse the other two services. because, capitalism free markets MURICA.
I don't know the details anymore, because I'm lucky enough to live in an area serviced by Verizon FIOS, and haven't had cable internet in a while. For me, I get 6MB and I pay about $120/month for internet, cable and phone. Hoever, most people don't live in a area where they have a choice of more than one service, so I imagine that drives the price up for them.
there should have been some people who would wait an extra 20 minutes to save $20
According to who? Maybe there weren't any, or the amount of people was small enough to where it didn't matter. "Should've been" is pretty arbitrary.
The other problem is that you still need drivers who are willing to take less for making the same trip. If drivers are making more with Uber, and there's plenty of passengers available, you have a chicken-and-egg problem: Drivers won't move to Sidecar because it pays less, and passengers won't move to Sidecar because there aren't any drivers. If Sidecar had come first, and established a critical mass, they might have become a sustainable business. They were late.
This assumes that passengers are willing to put up with waiting a lot longer for a Sidecar driver (of which there were always fewer) instead of paying a little bit extra and getting an Uber driver very quickly. They're not; Uber wins this one every single time. There's more drivers (in the four cities I've used it, I've never waited more than 5 minutes for a ride), and contrary to the drivel in this blog entry - "UberX and Lyft are about the same price as a taxi" - bullshit. Uber, at least, is waaay cheaper than a taxi (i haven't used Lyft yet).
The added incentive of being able to save a few dimes on a Sidecar ride was not enough to move passengers from Uber to Sidecar. Uber's just plenty cheap already.
You're right, I should've stuck with my real-world example of when unions work, and work well - which I notice you conveniently ignored.
I'm so tired of hearing the same "squawking parroting of talking points" from anti-union types such as yourself that I let me emotions get the better of me, and sank to your level. For that, I apologize, it was the wrong road.
However, the fact remains that a few bad unions are constantly cited by assholes as being the rule, rather than the exception, and it's just not true. You do most Americans a disservice by attempting to paint all unions with that same brush. My family and I are better off because I'm in a union. If I wasn't, you know who would be better off? Rupert Murdoch, Disney shareholders, Viacom shareholders... the list goes on. I care about their pockets exactly the same amount as they care about mine - zero. The question is, why do YOU do care that they should be making more money than they already are? Why don't I and my fellow union members, in your view, have the right to seek more profit, just like they do?
Another over-simplified common argument from someone that doesn't know anything about unions, just knows that they don't like them, because, uh... Ayn Rand! or something.
Steelworker jobs disappeared as a result of automation. One quick example that you can find in 5 seconds of googling:
“When I joined the company, it had 28,000 employees,” said George Ranney, a former executive at Inland Steel, an Indiana mill that was bought out by ArcelorMittal in 1998. “When I left, it had between 5,000 and 6,000. We were making the same amount of steel, 5 million tons a year, with higher quality and lower cost.”
But keep spreading that myth of "unions=job loss". They're lapping it up in the red states. Amazing how so many middle-class people will vote against their own self-interests.
All great discoveries are made by mistake. -- Young
