It sounds as though he's snorting the same Drano as some I could name here.
Yeah, one time some Heritage dudes said something semi-fungible, so I guess that lets the No-Talent Rodeo Clown off the hook for what's among the more expensive cock-ups in human history. Or something.
A cleaner non-argument would be that Republicans use the Roman alphabet, and all five reams of the PooPoo-cACA itself* were composed in the Roman alphabet**.
The broader point is that this country is an experiment in self-government, and the time has arrived to admit that Hayek is correct, and the Progressive Project (both Republican and Democrat flavors) just needs to be scuttled in favor of simpler systems empowering individuals in their liberty. You either support that, or I oppose you.

*To say nothing of the ensuing reams of regulation--would that they were reduced to nothing!
**For all it could have as well been a simple Klingon translation, for all anyone who cast a vote to hang this albatross about our necks actually read the Mike Foxtrot.

He already signed a law that gets as close to abolition of public-sector unions as any that has ever passed in this country. He has already gone back on his word to not be interested in attacking private-sector unions, in voicing his support for a similar bill for private-sector unions. He has also shown big support for "right to work" laws.

But none of that is really good enough for the Kevlar Kandidate, at least not when he's running for president. He has to out-conservative the likes of Rick Perry, so he has to really show he's willing to screw the working class as hard as possible for maximum enjoyment of as few as possible.

Well, this might do it: Could Wisconsin's Scott Walker now abolish the weekend?

Going on...

Things that were not explained adequately upon conversion from CW to ICE.

1. Bonuses- it was thought by my management that QPB applied to all blue badge employees including ICE. If I had known I wasn't going to get bonuses, I would have asked for higher base pay.
2. Vacation Time- MUST be taken while still an employee, and unlike what the recruiter who wrote my job offer told me, cannot be used to extend your final week. Any unused vacation time will be lost at end of contract, by policy. In addition, apparently you lose it at the end of the year, I really should have taken WW52 off, then the sting would not be so bad now.
3. ICE as a stepping stone to full employment at Intel is a lie. I couldn't get anybody, despite spending many hours on networking, to give my resume a second look. I even learned a new tool in this contract that is internal and can only be used at Intel and is completely worthless outside of Intel. No matter, I've had many interviews outside of Intel, and will land well, but I'll keep this in mind the next time I am tempted to take a short term contract at Intel.
4. Being a blue badge, if you are ICE, still means you're treated more like a resource than like a human by human resources. Many policies are used to reverse decisions that your manager, who is working more closely with you, has made.
    

Software Project Management At Intel in non-software divisions

1. Brooks Law is almost unheard of at Intel. Hardware Managers think that all software projects can be completed in less than six months, and therefore throw contingent workers at the project. Since software estimates, in general, are 75% engineering and 25% new science, they are wildly inaccurate. When the project inevitably fails to be complete in the first six months, the temptation is to break Brook's Law by adding more contingent workers. The time to ramp up CWs on the project of course exceeds the time to complete the project if you kept software engineers working for more than 18 months at a time.
2. Agile or Waterfall- Pick one and stick to it. This crazy combination used on software projects in hardware divisions is ridiculous, as is the general lack of written requirements.
3. It's hard to hit a moving target- input data integrity must be respected. If you don't have input data integrity, then there will be bugs. Bugs add complexity. Bugs make software estimates inaccurate. Lather, rinse, repeat.

On the new diversity initiative

1. There is no link between surface appearance and how a person thinks, or how capable they are. None at all. While this makes the apparent racism of the past a mistake, this also makes modern affirmative action programs equally racist and invalid.
2. There is no link between religion, sexual orientation, or disability and how a person thinks, or how capable they are. Such factors should not enter into hiring or promotion decisions at all, and when they do, that is what Intel needs to eliminate from the system.
3. There IS a link between certain forms of mental illness and the ability to innovate. Since mental illness affects the brain directly, having somebody with a well controlled mental illness on your team increases diversity of thought, which leads to innovation.
4. I believe that the uncertainty surrounding the diversity initiative was a part of my failure to convert to FTE. Not necessarily outright discrimination against a white male, and due to my autism I fall into one of the protected groups anyway and HR is well aware of that. But I believe the way the diversity initiative was announced, and the weeks of confusion surrounding it before BK finally clarified his position, coming at the same time I was trying to convert to FTE, meant that I had a harder time of trying to get my resume noticed and find open, externally advertised jobs for my skillset.

Final Thought and contact info

While my search to convert to FTE at Intel has failed, my external search has succeeded. I have at least one, maybe two job offers in hand; I will likely be back to work sometime between March 25 to March 30. This posting will be crossposted to Inside Blue before I leave Intel. Comments section below is open.

 

Jeb Bush is the candidate for Republican Primary Voters who want to vote for a less masculine version of Hillary Clinton.

Speaking of Hillary... KFC has a new "Ready For Hillary For Lunch!" promo - you get a box containing two huge thighs, two small breasts, and a left wing. You have to bring your own server though.

Barack Obama completed his NCAA bracket. Joe Biden completed the NIT bracket. In it, he has the Dallas Cowboys beating Manchester United in the Final game.

As many of you know, I'm an avid reader - books, blogs, even the cesspool that is comments on news stories.

One thing that I've seen a lot of lately is the typical canard that "the Spirit of God left the Catholic Church centuries ago".

If that were true, my dear protestant brethren (and I'm not being sarcastic, you guys are dear to me, I just want you to come home to the Catholic Church), then please explain to me how:

The Episcopal Church, The Anglican Church, and now the Presbyterian USA church, along with some Lutheran Churches and some Methodist churches are coming out and blessing same sex "marriage".

This completely flies against Scripture.

It's a little ironic to me that the "Sola Scriptura" crowd is ignoring wholesale chunks of Scripture to be politically correct.

The Great Apostasy has begun.

This is great news! I'm totally serial. No, really, I'm super serial you guys.
I know he needs to keep looking for Manbearpig, but c'mon, he's already tried and failed to illegally overthrow the Government once, why not again? I'm super-duper serial.

EXCELSIOR!

http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=7116021&cid=49280403

Someone just introduced themselves in one of my journal entries, and the way he writes you could be brothers separated at birth. I thought you were quick to move the goal posts, but if you two teamed up I'd never even see them!

Take a look at the humor starting here. To make it even better he has a much higher UID than my own and over 5,000 comments to his credit, so I would bet the hits just keep rolling!

You know who you are, peddler of filth. And if I'm incorrect, I won't know short of Eternity, for this is pretty much what I think of you: a dirty diaper that, despite the best efforts, continues to spew crap in all directions, contaminating everything.
I think you false, diabolical, and unworthy of dialogue. Return to your pit.

The supposed Benghazi "investigations" touted by some of the tools in these parts were as useless as suspected.

As an aside, I'd like to forgive fustakrakich for raping my quotation a couple weeks back. I realize it was a troll, but, as with false accusations from other corners, that sort of thing just destroys my interest in engaging on here.
So there's that.

Would that mean that my health insurance company would no longer have an excuse to not offer the plan I was on last year? The greedy bastards used the Health Insurance Industry Bailout Act of 2010 as an excuse to stop offering a plan that cost me less from every angle than the one I have through them now.

However, for the court to force them to do so, after repealing the greatest corporate handout in the history of government, would be unprecedented. Even more so, it would be counter to the other great handouts that the SCOTUS has given to corporations in the past several years.

Special achievement unlocked - avalanche of moderation and tidal wave of replies on the same comment. I count around 27 moderations on just the first comment there, and the reply count to it is over 20 now as well. The wave of people who were excited to show their support for the conservative wars on education and literacy was staggering as well.

... an Ayn Rand (or Ron Paul) follower and a Scientologist?

Well, one read a shitty piece of fiction by an author with a shady past, and used it as the base of almost all of their critical life decisions - including those regarding mental, physical, and financial health. The other would like to tell you all about your theta level. In other words, not much.

We had a pretty interesting front page article today on preventing suicide by making it harder to pull off. I noticed that one suggestion in the summary would be particularly hard to pull off in this country as too many people here defend the "right" to be irresponsible with weapons.

This angered two different conservative camps here on slashdot. The first was not surprising, being the people who defend irresponsible gun ownership. The second was a little more surprising, though, being the Randians. It didn't take long for them to come out in droves and proclaim their pro-suicide stance.

The pro-suicide stance probably shouldn't surprise me much, considering how much people still expend great amounts of time and energy into discrediting mental health treatment at every opportunity. What does surprise me though is how proudly people will come out in favor of suicide, and how proudly they will show how little they understand about mental health. It leaves me to wonder what they would say if their idols were themselves diagnosed with mental health issues; I would wager they would suddenly start singing a different tune.

It is also worth adding that this has been another opportunity for slashdot conservatives to proudly display their participation in the conservative war on literacy, which they did not let slip by.

Bill's last set of answers, and my answers to his answers
 
>>1. The only reason to run the gas engine under 25 miles an hour [â Typical residential speed limit] should be for recharging and generating, period. EV mode only at low speed.

>And Toyota may have started out planning on along those lines, but may have gotten focus group research that indicated people preferred a little more acceleration.

Which is weird, because when you put the two electric motors working together, you have MORE acceleration than the gas engine alone. 104 HP vs 70 HP.

>>2. An expert mode should be available wherein "creep ahead at stop" is disabled

>Having switched to owning only manual transmission cars, I only miss that on a metered freeway onramp, that's uphill. I imagine it's added behavior when in electric-only mode, to simulate a slush box, so not sure how it could be universally defeatable. There's no "neutral" on those smug little cars?

There is, it just doesn't auto-engage. The default is creep ahead (and yes, it's electric- it is quite obvious that your gas engine has stopped and it's in stealth mode- which makes it even more dangerous for say, a pedestrian in the cross walk in front of you, no warning roar of the engine as the car speeds up to 8mph slowly).

>>3. Cruise control should also be able to be set by a numeric keypad, and should be able to handle values lower than 23.

>That's an awesome idea, rather than having to bring the car up to the desired speed manually. But I wouldn't be surprised if it's the government disallowing the latter.

It certainly gets them more speeding ticket revenue in 20mph and 15 mph zones. That, and thanks to the "delayed reaction" in the CAN of the prius, I can never seem to hit the correct speed. Always 1mph off, either above or below. And why does slowing down below 23 erase the register, forcing a manual reset, instead of disengaging alone?

>>4. Sport mode should be available that disengages the traction control and enables all three motors for acceleration (you can get the second half of this in a gen2 by angrily stomping on the accelerator, it takes a second to engage, but you suddenly go from 34 HP to 174 HP as the second electric and the gas motor kick in).

>Why would a Prius owner want this?

Ice, sand, and mud. Thanks to the traction control the way it is, and the standard modes, it is impossible to get more than 34hp to the wheels in the first second of travel; and in addition to that, if there is any wheelspin at all, that 34 goes to 0 hp real quick and a little light blinks on to tell you that your transmission is disengaged. A sport mode would enable both drag racing and off road abilities that the prius currently lacks.

>>5. Finer resolution than 5 minutes on the average MPG consumption graph.

>>6. Ability to download trip data onto an SD card.

>Likely never, directly. Companies want your personal info to go to "the cloud" first, so that they can mine it and monetize you further.

I'd even accept an upload to the cloud if I could get fine resolution consumption and the ability to diagnose my driving habits after the fact. The big change in driving a prius isn't so much the technology, it's the feedback given about your fuel consumption, and it occurs to me more feedback is better.

>>7. If gas tank 20% full and battery 20% full, hibernate mode on computer if accidentally left on and wheels are not moving. Right now if you tried to use a Gen2 prius as a backup house generator, you run the risk of bricking the system, unable to boot computer, unable to add more gas, must drag onto a flatbed and tow to Toyota to use their fancy charging system to bring the car back to life.

>I guess you're saying these cars have no under-hood starter battery like ICE vehicles, that's user-swappable with a replacement from any auto parts shop. And I guess neither can these cars be jump-started, simply by using another vehicle (with a battery of equal or greater cold cranking amps). Wow.

More of an in-the-trunk starter battery that is only good for booting the computer system. If you run out of gas *and* the high voltage battery goes totally flat the most you will be able to do is boot the computer, the high voltage battery is needed to spin M1 to be the starter motor (M1 does triple duty- it's a 34 HP electric motor that does the initial acceleration, serves as a generator, and also serves as the starter motor for the gas engine- and it runs off the high voltage battery; M2 is a 70 HP electric engine that can also double as a generator, and then E1 is the gas engine that can send power to the wheels, to M1, to M2, or to all three- quite a complex computerized transmission runs it all). So there would be good reason to provide a hibernate mode that would allow a Prius to be parked for more than three weeks.
I suspect that a plug-in conversion and/or a Gen4 plug in prius is the answer to that last problem- if you're feeding off the grid regularly, there's no need for the gas engine to generate power to begin with.