From time to time, a gas station here or there realizes that by checking under the hood, they sell enough oil alone to pay for the wages of the gas-pumper, and cheerfully offers full-serve at the same price as the self-serve across the street.

hawk

And then there's your retirement income when you move out of state.

Nevada has dealt with this by making all property within the state exempt when the judgment is for state income tax on retirement income.

sure, your *judgment* gets full faith and credit . . .

hawk, esq.

Yes, I can come up with a thousand free market answers. And yes, that pretty much answers your question.

Would you buy a vehicle from any company whatsoever if you knew that parts were difficult to acquire? A manufacturer can play a game with parts availability only if they don't plan to stay in business.

Maybe we should go back to renting our phones from ATT as well.

I'm not a lawyer either, but FYI even if the judge had agreed to dismiss the charges, that would not be binding on other courts either. It would not have become binding unless one side or the other appealed and the circuit court and got a decision there. That decision would then become binding on *only* that circuit.

I think I see why you're confused. The curse was an effective way to kick off the revolt, yes. Not any way to start an earthquake, though. Reality doesn't work that way.

OK, let's squash some of this nonsense right now.

I never believed the 2010 Haiti Erthquake was caused by a voodoo curse, and I'm astonished that anyone interpreted that post in that way. What I found anthropologically interesting is that something like Robertson's "satanic" invocation seems actually to have taken place. Not actually "satanic", but within Robertson's impoverished terms of reference that's about the only way he could describe an invocation of the loa.

I believe, and have repeatedly said, that the supposed "scientific consensus" on CAGW is not a conspiracy but an error cascade. I think most scientists are honestly trying to do right, but have been overly credulous about data and models that have been (and continue to be) fraudulently manipulated by a tiny minority of them. Those of you who think this makes me some sort of nut are going to have some explaining to do when measured GAT drops out of the bottom of the IPCC's 95% confidence band, which looks set to happen before the end of 2014.

I might reply to some of these other questions at more length, but these two deserved to be dispatched immediately

>Your forgetting the grinding of the fresh beans to put in that press.

*Shrug.*

And you forgot the part about roasting the coffee.

Although recently I've been lazy, and bought it both ground *and* roasted . . .

Agreed - it's a POS.

I installed Pitivi .15.2 from from the repos. It literally took me less than 2 minutes to crash it. It died as soon as I imported an mp3 to use as audio. (NOTE: Their website says not to report .15.2 bugs. They are evidently not supporting it anymore)

Then, following the suggestions posted here, I grabbed the latest version from source (which through trial and error, I found required adding a source repo and installing build dependencies before attempting to install from source). I configured it, built it, and tried to run it. It immediately errored out, complaining that I need to install yet more missing dependencies (GES this time). I googled the problem, saw lots of people complaing about this, and found some vague instructions on the pitivi wiki (http://wiki.pitivi.org/wiki/Building_with_GES) explaining how to install it.

At this point, I threw in the towel.

gosh, that's why I never switched from the original Master of Orion, which is what I still paly on a MacBook retina.

And, of course, nethack, the only game that *matters*

hawk

Executive options were actually a reform, to align the interests of executives with those of stockholders. They worked in one direction (up), but not the other--once the options were "under water", the executives had no reason *not* to "swing for the bleachers", risking whole company.

The solution is to align in *both* directions, so that the executives lose when the company loses, not just wins when winning.

This could be accommodated with a couple of changes in the tax code. Require a large part (majority) of high compensation to be in the form of stock: if your pay for the month is $100k, you get $60k of that as stock at current market prices. We need a (politically unpopular) tweak: this would currently create taxes on $60k. Instead, give the stock at a 0 basis, so there is no tax now, but the entire amount is taxed when sold--and require that the shares be held for a minimum number of years.

At this point, when the shares go down, so do the executives' worths. with options, stock going down merely increases the incentive for risky behavior seeking high gains.

But what do I know--I just have a Ph.D. in economics.

(doc)hawk

No.

It would be labeled GNU/RTOS, and everyone who objected would be accused of ignoring RMS' contribution . . . :)

hawk

Metal detector.

No electronics allowed.

hawk

What I find problematic with that mode of argument is that it tends to turn McCarthyite very quickly. Castro attempted to cut a deal with the US before going to the Soviets, he is rather less committed to communism than either his supporters or his opponents believe. He also gave the CIA the location of Che Guavera when he decided he was a liability. So there has been a basis for cooperation for a long time.

The list of crimes committed by US Presidents panicking about communism is very long. Snuffing out a democracy in Iran to replace it with a bloodthirsty dictator, supporting the Khumer Rouge after Vietnam ejected them, installing Pinochet, a mass murderer in Chile. George W Bush just managed to cause the deaths of a half million Iraqis and wonders why he isn't being praised for his efforts.

The problem isn't capitalism of communism, the problem is authoritarianism and elites who believe that brute force is the solution to every problem. Castro is a thug and a murderer but its the US who set up a torture chamber in Cuba.

Since the US government has been spending a large amount of money to get the Internet into Cuba, giving them a pipe and letting them rip with it seems like the best way forward. They will try to control it but everyone knows that Cuba is going to liberalize in the near future.

The logical way forward would be for the US to lift the blockade and let the commerce flood in. The communist system would collapse pretty quickly when there was money to be made. But the problem is that there is a faction that is less interested in bringing democracy to cuba as returning their assets that were nationalized. Since they stole the assets under the corrupt Batista regime, there aren't going to be many interested in that happening.