No, around 265K

I built a brand new 1850sqft house with all the bells and whistles (granite/hardwood floors) for less than 300K. I live in Hampton Roads, Virginia. My house isn't unusually cheap or expensive for what I got either, it's about middle of the road in price.

I don't think the issue at first is the 5 cents of power. It's the danger that might have been caused by him plugging in something in a circuit he knows nothing about without asking first. It could have caused damage to school equipment or caused an electrical fire. He could have damaged his car and tried to sue. For me the amount of power he took isn't really any concern, it's the risk he might have caused.

I don't however, agree that putting him in jail overnight was reasonable. This should have been handled by a simple fine.

Wasn't it found that there was someone with a gun on the other side who fired first? I remember reading (or seeing in a documentary) that there was someone who was intentionally trying to start the shooting.

Thanks for this post. Now it makes sense when I see Tom Hanks as Jim Lovell get in to a jet to fly before the Apollo 13 mission. I thought at first it was just part of his regular duty to stay up on flying jets. That's a pretty impressive way to travel to your launch.

I have a 65" LG plasma and was shocked when I took it out of the box to find out how thin it really is. I was also shocked to find out that it wasn't the heavy monster they once were and it actually runs quite cool. In contract I bought a 50" LED LCD to hang in my bedroom and not only is it twice as thick but it's quite a bit heavier. The picture on my plasma is wonderful too. My only complaint with it is the glossy screen since it sometimes reflects light in the evenings.

The processes and hoops you have to jump through in order to respond to their requests for proposal are ridiculously complicated. Way too often companies who are not qualified get the contract merely because they knew how to play the system.

The government has programs to support small businesses like 8a for disadvantaged, one for businesses owned by disabled Vets, one for women owned. This does help some, but more often than not those companies are just paid so that bigger companies can bid for work and use them as the vehicle to get it. In my experience as a government contractor for most of my career I've seen countless scenarios of companies bidding for 8 resources on a task but really only using 2. I've seen them work on contracts for over a decade, and despite horrible execution of the project they continue to win the re-compete because they'll purposely squirrel away anyone who can help a new contract winner. They'll eat the cost and give people useless jobs at their corporate offices just to attempt to make the new contracting company fail.

There is also a terrible history of nepotism involved. The entire system is abused. Officers have even set up companies and awarded contracts to themselves right before retirement. When they leave they have a ready made contracting company complete with an ongoing contract and perhaps one or two for their past performance record already. By the time they're caught, they are fined a million or so which at that point is small price to pay for them. They just had the world's best interest free business startup loan. Yes, I have first-hand knowledge of one such instance of this and I know it is definitely not an isolated incident.

Here is an example of waste: When I was on one of my last contracts I spent months doing nothing of real consequence. Through some weird situation I was left with no project manager and no tasks. I informed all of the management who would listen, and requested work. I began to worry I'd be cut, along with the worry that if I sat idle my hard-earned skills would dull. I found another job and quit. I received a call from the vice president of the company telling me she was hearing what a great job I was doing and that they wanted to offer me a substantial raise to stay. It was then I realized they didn't care what I did. They could bill for me. By showing up I was doing a "good job". I couldn't take it and left.

I would look forward to a system where someone doesn't have to be a millionaire or have millionaire friends to get in to office. There are plenty of people who would do an excellent job but don't even attempt to run for office anywhere because they don't have money to spend on commercials and big websites. It would be simpler if there were controlled places to announce a candidacy, and a ban on all of the ads these people put everywhere for election. Everyone gets equal time and opportunity to state their positions and goals. I know, it's not reasonable to expect this would come to fruition.

It's not as simple as that. It is true that there are a certain portion of contracts set aside for small businesses (with further specialization for Woman Owned, Disadvantaged, Native American, Veteran Owned (at least for disabled vets), but they all still fall under the small business category. Once they reach a certain dollar threshold they are no longer considered small business and those benefits are not applicable to them anymore.

It was created to foster small businesses and give a leg up so that they can compete with the giant contracting companies that would otherwise dominate. There is just a plain "Small Business" category but the more you can claim in your business registry the smaller the competition pool gets and the greater your chances of winning are. There are some for say "8a" where you might very well be the only bidder and you'll win pretty much by default unless your proposal was completely off the mark.

I don't disagree with your point, but I have an honest question. I do believe that currently alcohol and tobacco currently cause more problems than drugs and both are unhealthy. My question is, how much of that is due to the fact that they are both legal and easily accessible? I know prohibition created underground markets and crime rose due to that. The flip side of the coin is whether general alcoholism was as common then as it is now? Does the scale get tipped in another direction rather than actually improve the situation? Many like the famous crime families in Chicago and New York rose to power from prohibition but was there also a dip in public intoxication, driving under the influence etc?

If we legalize certain drugs is there then a repeat where instead of people coming from a smoke filled bar drunk, they're on one of the legalized drugs and we've simply shifted the problem from illegal drug sales and gang crime to an increase in average people getting involved in risky situations? I have read about prohibition but never saw much mentioned on the other effects.

I agree... whenever people mention the size of the brain being an indicator of intelligence I bring out primordial dwarves who are the smallest dwarves yet the majority go to regular schools and in some cases are on the honor roll. If brain size were truly an indicator, then these people shouldn't be able to function modern society like they do.

These posts always happen when a story like this gets posted. Someone always asks what it has to do with /. or "news for nerds". Slashdot however, has always had stories like this, and most people enjoy discussing these things with other slashdotters. I personally prefer to hear the insight and information from other people in discussions such as this than from commentators from random news sites. Usually the facts I find out from other posters here are very good and at the very least give cause to think things over.

My mother is a bank teller. At no bank she has worked at, have they ever refused a cash deposit. There is a magic number (10K) at which they notify some authority in case it was gained through nefarious means (so they claim), but those people already know the magic number and instead stick to deposits of 9K or less at a time.

Since there is a company that duplicates keys from pictures you can try it for yourself.