We'll need an agency to deliver on these promises of massive subsidies to get the panels out into the hands of customers.

We should call it Solyndra, I hear that's available now?

I thought about that, but what I'm terming the Streisand Effect here isn't so much "something bad happened that I don't want people to know about but my complaints publicize it" as a parallel "this is my joke and I don't want people repeating it, but now everyone is going to" and a second-order "I don't want anyone to find out that I purport to be a 'comic writer' but push this astonishingly un-funny joke and ultimately will regret it being associated with me, as well as the general douchiness thing...".

So yeah, I'm still going with Streisand in the sense of "your inordinate attention-whoring will get you publicity you really DON'T want".

And, for what it's worth, I think it's amusing that someone complaining about IP plagiarism has a twitter handle of runolgarun, I wonder if she's appropriately crediting the writers of Run Lola Run with every tweet?

Well the US bailed out the US by just printing shit-tons of money, and nobody seemed to care.

So maybe the economic laws of gravity have truly been suspended. If you have debt that the political class feels you shouldn't (say, hypothetically, you buy a $500,000 home on an income of $24k/year), they just strike it out with a pen and let the taxpayers pay for it. But somehow when they WANT you to carry that debt (say, you're Greece and need to be "punished" for being "lazy") it's sacrosanct and cannot be paid for by the precious tax dollars.

Funny, it's almost like there are two standards.

I don't really even understand the app ecosystem.

It used to be we'd need to run a word-processor program to edit text.
A spreadsheet to manage numeric data.
An encyclopedia program to see images and text together.
Hell we even needed a 'website editor' to do that.

Now, ostensibly, we have a single browser on which I can do basic wordprocessing and spreadsheet work through google docs, edit websites, play fairly sophisticated games....all through the same browser.

Yet, on my phone I have 150 different goddamned apps, each for some teeny little function that someone feels they can 'deliver' better to me than the good old browser (yes, I'm looking at you BBC and NPR apps, for example).

Isn't the POINT of the internet browser and HTML concept a sort of 'Swiss Army Knife' of applications, meaning that it's the website's job to deliver content to the browser so that we don't need a separate "program" for every single stupid thing we're trying to do online? Wouldn't this seem to be a natural point of efficiency that would be especially useful in the power/resource constrained environment of a smartphone?

Now can someone start working on my idea of tortise and turtle shells with anti-vehicle mines embedded in them? Certainly, it will kill the turtle, but it will ALSO have the salutory effect of Darwinistically weeding-out the subhuman assholes that I have occasionally seen VEER TO HIT turtles making their way across an otherwise uncongested street.

The joke is stupid; "Saw someone spill their high end juice cleanse all over the sidewalk and now I know god is on my side". Honestly, why anyone would want to claim that is beyond me.

From digital spy:
Olga Lexell, a freelance writer in LA, is allegedly the first person to publish this joke to Twitter. Tweeting this afternoon, she confirmed that she did file a request to get the messages removed.

Well Olga, your shitty joke will now be an example of the Streisand effect.

It's this before or after the EU collapses from its inherent fiscal contradictions?

"...because autonomous cars are more likely to be shared..."
I can't really understand why I keep hearing this utopian bullshit? The tragedy of the commons, anyone? Have you ever even BEEN in a public restroom?

Or, alternately, maybe we only share cars amongst the Eloi. Is that a better solution?

If you think Chicago pols are just 'coincidentally' Democrats, please, give us an example of an equally fucked-up city plagues by crony politics inhabited forever by Republicans. I'm sure there must be one, right?
Let's just grab the 10 poorest cities in the US:
Detroit, MI (1st on the poverty rate list) no Republican mayor for 54 years.
Buffalo, NY (2nd) no Republican mayor for 65 years.
Cincinnati, OH (3rd)...31 years
Cleveland, OH (4th)...26 years;
Miami, FL (5th) Never had a Republican mayor
St. Louis, MO (6th) ...66 years
El Paso, TX (7th) Never had a Republican mayor
Milwaukee, WI (8th) ...107 years
Philadelphia, PA (9th) ...63 years
Newark, NJ (10th) ...108 years.

All just coincidence, I'm sure.

Re MN: Median household income in MN is nearly 20% higher than WI.
So one COULD interpret that difference as "in MN the rich get richer". Is that what we want?

Extending ridiculous social programs and benefits to everyone with a pulse, regardless of your country's actual wealth, income, or budget is a decidedly Liberal thing to do. Your point?

I like how it's hugging the little furry mammal in the artist's conception. It's representative of the long bond of love and friendship that exists between us and our reptilian friends.

I think you misread the level of hatred between the Obamas and the Clintons.
It's widely recognized within the Beltway.

Now, whether this is just a validation of that, or (wheels within wheels) a prophylactic action by a Democratic president "against" the putative Democratic candidate that's actually intended to protect her by locking the whole story up before the Republicans make it a daily talking point "I'm sorry, nobody can comment on that from the US gov't as it's an 'official' investigation...", well, you be the judge.

As long as we have to live with DMCA, it seems only fair that there be a compensatory mechanism requiring payment for false claims.

You can't keep calling the police or fire dept on spurious emergencies, why can you do it in this context?

I can't find it right now, but there was a quote from a Supreme Court Justice, I believe it was in the 30s-40s, along the lines of how dangerous it is when there are so many laws that the government can pretty much pick what they charge a person with, because everyone is guaranteed to have violated *some* of them at some time.
If someone could find that, it would be pithy here.

What we seem to lump under the blanket moniker of 'age discrimination' is indeed that, but only in the broadest sense. In my experience it's only rarely something as simple as "I don't want an old person, ergo I won't hire them".

- certainly, in the tech field there's a question about relevance of skills and current knowledge; the tools change relatively quickly compared to other industries
- older workers are likely used to a higher level of compensation (due to time-served in previous employment) or at the very least know the market as well as - or better than - their manager
- older workers are likely to have families or other commitments; more importantly, they are UNlikely to prioritize "company uber alles" which 20-somethings are more easily pressured/gullible enough to do. Of course, the oldest workers are likely not to have a young family that they need to get home to either, but then we run into...
- the young boss/old worker issues: older workers are unlikely to put up with the sort of epeen/BSD authority crap that (poor) managers seem to resort to. "Do it because I tell you to and I'm the boss": if you have to 'remind' me that you're the boss, then both of us know that's not really very true. It's the same reason (aside from general fitness) that older recruits can be a challenge for drill sergeants, because the "yell in my face" crap is as likely to get a laugh as anything. Then again, older recruits are far less reactively rebellious, more likely to respect the rules and organizations, and understand the larger context of a specific task, even if it seems superficially ridiculous.
- implied challenge to authority: nobody likes to be contradicted, and while they may not mean anything by it, it's almost inevitable that an older employee will know *something* that a younger manager won't be aware of. Some people can handle that, some can't handle the implied threat to their authority. Setting aside age, this is often why long-term employees can be difficult for a shorter-term manager to handle, as the other employees are certainly aware of that person's longer experience and likely will defer to their knowledge on subjects ahead of the manager's.