More likely a case of somebody lying to get around a FOIA request,...
I agree. Telling porkies is their specialty.
... for which there will be consequences. All government agencies have very strict regulations concerning record keeping and FOIA, with jail time possible for anyone who fails to abide by those regulations.
Now you're dreaming in Technicolor. The liar might get a promotion for their behavior, but there certainly won't be any negative consequences.
The advice I've replied to is exactly right. In my case, I fly almost every week on business, and I buy my own laptop. By the end of the second year, I almost always experience some type of failure in my laptop--either failure of a component or an accident (liquid into the keyboard). I always buy the all-perils warranty for my laptop and I always come out ahead. I am out at the extreme upper end of the bell curve, and so I benefit at the expense of the insurance company.
One of the benefits of the warranty (on my HP laptop) is that I buy the onsite, next business day service. So, no matter where in the world I am working--and I work in the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia--an HP tech shows up and fixes my laptop without the need for me to visit a service centre or return my laptop to depot by courier. This is part of the business value to me.
However, I do not buy any other extended warranties; because in all the other situations I am not out at the extreme end of the risk curve and so I will always lose.
It can also be used to prevent the spread of "engineered" genes to wild plants and crops in nearby fields, and it can eliminate many plant-patent lawsuits.
This assertion flies in the face of common sense; pollen from this seed will float through the air and contaminate non-engineered fields and now those farmers will also have a percentage of their crop that produces sterile seed. This time, lawsuits will flow in the opposite direction: farmers who replant seed will sue Monsanto due to reduced germination rates and reduced yields in future years.
Negative: If the gene causing infertility is transmitted via pollen, then farmers that try to produce an heirloom seed crop near a field planted with a Monsanto variety would be screwed since their seed crop could end up infertile.
This is exactly what will happen, and so Monsanto will put and end to many farmers' current practice of saving part of this years crop as next year's seed--since their seed yield will be reduced they negatively impact their future yield due to a percentage of the seed being sterile.
Just treat everyone fairly, how hard is that?
. . . but you have to treat some more fairly than others . .
Exactly... "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others".
I concur with your list of complaints about pens, and have personally settled on using the Uni Ball Vision Elite (fine), which comes in variuos size nibs, as my all purpose pen. That said, in the days before convenient personal computing (I abandoned my paper log book in 1995) I addressed the issues you raise in two ways: 1. Using different pens in different situations; and, 2. Selecting the right paper on which to write.
In many ways, pens and paper are like wines and food: the are good and bad pairings. The right paper with the right pen makes all the differnce. My favourite pen and paper pairing were a technical pen with vellum. Another favourite was an early liquid ink roller ball (not sure what brand) wtih dark blue ink on yellow coated paper.
Thus spake the master programmer: "After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
