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:

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.

Both of these assertions are such complete bullshit and make it obvious that your entire knowledge of unions is based on no real-world experience with them.

Let's start with your "like teachers' unions" analogy. Right there you've equated a union in a public service job (government paycheck) with all unions, which is ridiculous. Yes, it's true that it's tougher to fire a teacher than it is to fire a McDonald's employee. It's also true that you have no clue about how private sector unions are formed, or why they're formed. Their primary purpose is not protectionism, it's to get paid more. You can't just lump all unions into one box and declare they're all evil. Are some corrupt? Yes, of course. Do people like you then erroneously believe they're all corrupt, just because you've got some right-wing dogma implanted in your Archie-Bunker-like skull? Yes, you do.

When the people with 99% of the money dictate what you should be paid, and their decrees have nothing to do with your fair market value, because they're a near-monopoly that believes in getting workers for the absolute minimum amount possible, the only way to push back is with a union. You can't do it yourself, period. I'm in a union of freelancers (not programming or IT related, but I am a technician) and before the union was formed, the people in charge of setting the rates for freelancers had a "take it or leave it" attitude, even though their profits was very very comfortable - that didn't matter, they wanted more. Well, guess what? Us freelancers wanted more too. We got the union formed, and my day rate went up about 30% almost overnight. And was there less work as a result? Not at all. The execs and shareholders making the money are still making money, they're just making a little bit less profit than they were before. It's not like they were going to say, "Oh we were getting .26 on the dollar before, and now we're only getting .23 on the dollar.... fuck it! let's shut the whole operation down."

Everyone wants to make more money. Unions are the only way for the workers to push back - if workers don't push back, they'll just make less and less and less over time. Take your anti-union rhetoric and toss it back to Fox News where it belongs. The real world is much more complex than the simple cliches you've trotted out.

"I love what you've done with the people on your mission! So fancy."
"oh, that's fine, but YOUR mission is so much cleaner and free of human interference, it's great!"

The only problem with your logic is that no one said "Yahoo is cool again", except for the original poster, who, despite his use of a question mark, was the first to introduce the idea of "Yahoo is cool again", so I was wondering how he even got to that thought, interrogative or not.

Yes, you're right. What do you propose to do about it?

Sure, anyone can just "cite" a reason. That doesn't mean it's going to work.

Anyway, I was only addressing the previous poster who made that blanket statement about "When you are playing fast and loose with your customers" - they aren't.

Doesn't matter much, as the number of people using Firefox has been steadily dropping for the past couple of years. It's not like this change will affect that; however, it does seem that Yahoo is a little late with this strategy, if they're trying to use to boost numbers.

There's always a slight chance that if a user that's used to using Google suddenly sees Yahoo is the default search engine, they'll get annoyed and switch browsers. But I suspect most people in that situation would either figure out how to change back to Google, or just shrug and say "oh well", as you said.

Either way, at this point, I don't see this helping Yahoo at all, and it could potentially slightly accelerate Firefox's fall. A lose-lose.

Not sure how you got from your first 4 points to "Yahoo is cool again"; it's pretty clear that Yahoo is so uncool at this point that they're making a desperate effort to get cool again by paying Mozilla. I have my doubts about this strategy working.

It's a stretch to say that Uber is doing even half of these, if that's what you're inferring. I'm an Uber customer and I have exactly zero complaints about Uber playing "fast and loose" with me.

Do I wish that one senior VP wasn't a total douchebag? yes, that'd be great. But if I refused to use the products and services of every company that had a douchebag senior VP in their ranks, I'd probably have to move to Alaska and start learning how to build everything myself.

I addressed the fact that you conveniently switched from "guns" to just "rifles." Nice job avoiding that giant hole in your argument yet again.

Of course, it's highly unlike Trayvon Martin would have ended up killing Zimmerman by slamming his head into the sidewalk. Meanwhile, one gunshot did kill Martin.

I'm not debating whether Martin or Zimmerman were right/wrong. But it's interesting that you bring up a case that actually illustrates the point that guns are the most dangerous weapon, and enable killing where there probably wouldn't be any without guns, or at least, there wouldn't be any in the vast majority of cases. If Zimmerman didn't have a gun on him, it's likely that no one would be dead, because he probably would never have gotten out of his car.

And enough with your phony "rifles kill less people" stat. I think I addressed that enough above. Only an idiot would not see through your cherry-picking.

I can see this "rifles rifles rifles" mantra is something that's being driven home to you guys reading the pro-gun blogs. I'd like to thank you for making me aware of this bogus cherry-picking statistic. (Rifles, of course, are a small subset of firearms) You don't want to debate why guns are more dangerous than knives. You just want to first claim "oh people will just kill with knives instead of guns" and then do a quick bait-and-switch from "guns" to "rifles" when trying to support the first point.

Does that kind of tactic work when debating people who are actually paying attention? Or do you try to avoid that kind of debate entirely?

Your assumption that I'd like to see rifles or shotguns taken away from people is completely wrong, and based on your wish to cite the above statistics. The argument is about the lethality of knives vs. guns in general - and then you go and cherry-pick a "rifles vs. knives" statistic that obviously has been regurgitated on pro-gun websites ad nauseum, in order to prove a point that no one was even arguing.

If for one minute I thought you were looking to really debate, I'd engage further, but you're obviously just interested in being dishonest about what the debate even is.

Conveniently, of course, that's "rifle" killings, not killing with guns in general. Nice cherry-pick. It's like someone saying that far more people die in Volvos than in Lamborghinis. While technically true, it means nothing regarding the safety of either car.

Your contribution to the conversation is based on a total lie. At least mine was honest.