Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

Very nice. That costs $120 a month in Houston but it's only 50 megabits per second and there's a 250 gig data cap.

But there is no competition in Houston and hasn't been for decades.

My only option is DSL which is much slower (6mps "elite" is the best available).

Your date is well chosen. Things went south starting in the 1880s.

So we got the sherman anti-trust acts in the 1920s thru the 1930s and things started going badly again in the 1980s when many of the protections were bypassed or repealed.

Companies would still be making huge profits if they shared the wealth with their workers and the economy would be more robust. It's sort a tragedy of the commons. When one company cuts salaries, it does well. When most companies cut salaries, then things are just miserable and the companies get no competitive advantage.

Walmart's raise won't really give a raise (it's about .3% of their profits- affects a tiny percentage of their workforce). But a real raise by walmart ($5 for every employee) would still leave them with enormous profits and their workers would have more money to spend (which would largely be spent at walmart-- raising walmart's sales and increasing it's profits).

The actual figures are-- annual profit of Walmart $19 billion. Cost of $5 raise, 7.5 billion. Leaving Walmart with a profit of 19 billion.
But wait... they spent 7.6 billion buying back stock to raise stock prices (which is a very expensive way of increasing pay to the executives). And they gave $12 billion to investors in dividends. So they could have a net profit of 20 billion, give everyone a $5 raise (or a $4 raise and put staffing levels back where they were in 2012 before they cut staff too far with disastrous results), still give 12 billion to shareholders in dividends (executives and walton family have a lot of stock so they are getting a nice chunk here) and cut the 7.6 billion stock buy back.

"[one] of the main causes of warming is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting from our burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal and natural gas." - Freeman Dyson

But sure, I love elections! Great shows with lots and lots of entertainment value. Only thing that bugs me about them is that I'm asked to choose without having a choice.

Zoom right in on the bits that you think are white, so that they fill your entire monitor. They're obviously blue. For a lot of us, that's the colour that we see when we look at it in context as well. I can see how you'd interpret it as being white by overcompensating for the colour in the bottom right, but that doesn't stop you from being wrong. The gold bits are gold when you zoom in (mostly, some are black), but a shiny black often looks yellow-gold in overexposed photos.

More evidence for Dunning-Kruger.

Ever see a rabbit /mouse plague?

I don't see colors, I see the electro-magnetic spectrum in the range of 380nm-740nm.

Colors are for artists.

And this is where the whole deal breaks down, because there will never be such a thing. Nobody will be forced.

The only ones that could enforce something like this are the politicians, leaders of states that can create laws. Such laws will not come into existence, though, since that would require a global consensus because one country doing such a move alone will invariably cripple its economy. Global treaties that are supposed to be more than a stack of paper with letters, i.e. treaties that will be enforced and heeded on the other hand require the backing of industries that have an interest in such treaties coming into existence.

And industries have no interest in such a treaty. Quite the opposite. So if anything, we'll see a lot of resistance for such an international treaty taking place. Hence ... well, it's nice that we might know the world is fucked, but nobody who could give a shit gives a half of one.

I'm generally detached about things I'm powerless to influence. I'm usually the only calm person in a plane flying through a hurricane. Is there anything I can do? No. Why bother getting worked up about it?

Believe me, if I had to fly that plane, I'd be nervous as hell, but in the passenger seat... lean back and enjoy the roller coaster ride.

Wasn't that Senator Obama?!?!?!

Not in JAN 2014 it wasn't. Or did you think he was elected President late last year?

Well, that all depends on whether they are right and whether your property is close to a coast line.

In 50 years, NONE of the current heads of state will still be alive, let alone in power. Yes, they will pay lip service to the problem. No, they won't do jack shit about it.

Shitty potatophone camera fucks up picture, the internet loses its fucking mind over colors.

If they paid more taxes I would pay less

No, if they paid more taxes, the government would increase its spending to match the increased revenues.