It is also better to be a "B" economics major than an "A+" English major.

Laszlo Bock needs to take a course in paying attention to what is said.

Cycling is a lot more expensive than golf, and seems to be the new wealthy middle-class beer belly sport.

I've been riding a bike for more than 30 years, and I can't tell how how different it looks at the parking lot today - middle-aged men, 20lbs or more overweight, showing up in $100,000 cars with $25,000 bikes that they haven't ridden since last week's group ride, and every kind of electronic bike gadget you can imagine dangling off of them. They're there to show off their affluence and to compete with each other over who has the most expensive bike.

They never ride except at the weekly ride. They suck wheels like a baby at its mother's teat. They refuse to do the work when it is their turn - because they can't. Their solution to not being committed enough to the sport to be good at it is to buy a more expensive bike, because a more expensive bike will make them a better rider. Nevermind the fact that these people are DANGEROUS because they have no idea how to ride alone let alone in groups.

A couple of times a year I get up the courage to show up at one of these things in a distant hope that things have changed. But, it only seems to get worse.

Horseback riding and flying are also both more expensive than cycling. Golf is actually pretty cheap to get into. You can get a decent used set of clubs pretty cheap, usually from someone who took up the sport thinking they could be Tiger Woods after a week, bought he most expensive clubs out there, and then discovered that becoming proficient in a skill take a lot of hard work and effort, and gave up to do something easier.

In my lifetime alone, I've seen so many cases of "loweing the bar" to compensate for society's general lack of interest in becoming proficient at things.

In the 1990's and 2000's, the FCC seriously dumbed-down the Amateur Radio licensing material and requirements, eventually completely eliminating the morse code requirement - and an Extra exam today is nothing like the Extra exam I took in 1998.

Not long after that, the FAA created the "sport pilot" class that does not even require a medical exam, so people on life support can fly around in 2000 pound, high-velocity projectiles and put them into random peoples' houses when they have their in-flight hypoxia-induced heart attack.

Now we're going to FIFTEEN INCH golf holes? Are they serious? Let's go down to six bowling pins while we're at it, and drop the 1st down requirement in football to 7 1/2 yards. Oh wait, we can't do fractions anymore, so just make it 5 yards.

While they're add it they may as well add a stroke to each par as well, just to attract more mediocre players and discourage them getting any better at the skill.

People need to stop being such fucking assholes and try to be good at things. Everyone wants a goddamn trophy for simply showing up. This, right here, is why America is failing. The rest of the world is BETTER than us at shit because most Americans are lazy assholes who just want to consume and don't give a damn about proficiency, skill, or ambition. Yes, everyone wants to be rich, but they want to do it by simply taking it from people who ARE good at things, and who have earned their wealth by using those skills.

Fuck you all. Every last goddamn one of you entitled little brats.

Do you even realize the irony of equating Anarchy with **ORGANIZED** crime?

Most people realize that you can't offshore everything.

But, IT is not one of those things you can't offshore.

I would venture a guess that nobody was ever charged with recklessly endangering 100 square blocks of New York, or destruction of property, or vandalism, or criminal mischief, or anything else...

This isn't Mann's critics pursuing him. This is part of a lawsuit that Mann filed against a journalist who criticized his work.

Mann filed the lawsuit, and the person he sued filed for subpoenas to get at Mann's emails because he believed that would reveal information he could use to defend the lawsuit.

This is a terrible decision, because it means you can be sued for libel (which is saying something abot someone that is alleged to be untrue) and then be prohibited from obtaining material to defend yourself (by showing that what you said is, in fact, true).

It is made worse by the fact that Mann is a government employee, because if this becomes the precedent, it will open the flood gates for government oppression via the civil court system, which has a lower standard of proof than the criminal system. If you criticize the government or its political employees, they can sue you, and you will be prohibited from obtaining evidence to defend yourself with.

"Shut up and swallow what we tell you" is basically what the court signed off on in this case.

CTIA is not the government. If you don't want the kill switch, all you have to do is uninstall the app.

This is a 100% voluntary thing, and you don't have to keep it or use it if you don't want to.

From CTIA's site, it appears to be an addon software tool, NOT part of the O/S or hardware:

Each device manufacturer and operating system signatory of Part I of this "Smartphone Anti-Theft Voluntary Commitment" agrees that new models of smartphones first manufactured after July 2015 for retail sale in the United States will offer, at no cost to consumers, a baseline anti-theft tool that is preloaded or downloadable on wireless smartphones that provides the connected capability to:

Remote wipe the authorized user's data (i.e., erase personal info that is added after purchase such as contacts, photos, emails, etc.) that is on the smartphone in the event it is lost or stolen.
Render the smartphone inoperable to an unauthorized user (e.g., locking the smartphone so it cannot be used without a password or PIN), except in accordance with FCC rules for 911 emergency communications, and if available, emergency numbers programmed by the authorized user (e.g., "phone home").
Prevent reactivation without authorized user's permission (including unauthorized factory reset attempts) to the extent technologically feasible (e.g., locking the smartphone as in 2 above).
Reverse the inoperability if the smartphone is recovered by the authorized user and restore user data on the smartphone to the extent feasible (e.g., restored from the cloud).
In addition to this baseline anti-theft tool, consumers may use other technological solutions, if available for their smartphones.

Source: http://www.ctia.org/policy-ini...

Yep. Intelligent, educated, gainfully-employed people are breeding much less because they cannot afford to do so. So much of their money is being confiscated and given to unintelligent, uneducated, unemployed, unproductive people to breed like bunny rabbits and create an overwhelming population of voters who will keep the power mongers in power.

I wish I had some mod points to give you, because this is spot on.

In a past life, I worked for a company that developed control hardware. I loved designing hardware and software, and I could focus on it. When the time came to build prototypes and manage BOMs and shop vendors for parts and all the niggly crap that surrounds actually building something, there were people who did that.

One day, all of those people were laid off, and we engineers had to start doing all of that work ourselves. Suddenly I was spending 20% of my time doing my job, and 80% on my time doing the jobs of all of the support people who got canned.

I didn't stay too long after that, and neither did any other engineer who was good enough to get a job during a recession.

I have one in my car and it's awesome.