I'm sorry that you lost Sue. That was a very touching memorial for her.

> Within a few months of Google opening with free food for their employees, the bottom of the building was vacant

I'm a bit skeptical...The restaurants were doing fine *before* Google opened up, and then suddenly all of their existing customers went away?

How can you respond to a comment titled "more leeches in the middle" and still misspell it "leaches" in your own?

0.1% of $5.83 Billion is actually $5.83 Million. Closer to chump change in a nearly-$6 Billion budget.

... and neither will Uber drivers once they've had enough bad experiences.

They pass out in cabs.
They vomit in cabs.
They become belligerent and refuse to pay or they don't have enough money.
They forget where they're going.

The SEC is going after them for things they did to the investment market.

Exactly. The SEC couldn't care less about the students. But if enough investors make sufficient noise, they act. Next we'll hear how ITT was an isolated example.

There's plenty more scam schools where ITT came from.

The purpose of 'Booth Babes' is to attract customers, presumably men to the booth. Whether this is an effective strategy is a separate discussion.
It's human nature, and attempts to circumvent it are trivially overcome.

Exhibitors that are currently using this approach can hire the same models and dress them in 'Business-appropriate' attire. The end result is you will still have beautiful women (who may know nothing about the product) staffing a booth and bringing in men.

If anything, this will provide more plausible deniability for more image-conscious men who don't wish to be seen chatting up some lyra- and latex- clad contractor at a booth.

I suppose if that become too troublesome, they can always ban makeup or attractive staffers (of both sexes). Or require that contractors be able to talk knowledgeably about the product.

I'm not criticizing their approach, per se, but I suspect even after these changes there will be continued outrage about the disproportionally attractive women staffing some booths and being paid to be chatty or even flirty.

I'm amused by those who think they will just punch someone out and that'll be the end of it. It depends on who you punch. It might just be the start of it. Today, there's right many people who can fight. Punch one of them and you can expect quite a few punches in return.

Why does anyone other than nosy companies think this is a good idea?

"It's not hard to earn at least Bs on basic high-school materials; having all Cs shows a lack of ability to do the hard work or a difficulty with or lack of commitment to basic academics."

And it might also show that the kid in question partied through high school, which I suppose is a lack of commitment. But we're talking about teenagers. Some will succeed in academics later on if given a chance.

I was a late bloomer. I partied and had a damn good time in high school, doing the minimum I could to get by. I showed up. That was 80%. After graduating from high school, I worked, played in bands, dated women and continued to party for the rest of that year. My parents then read me the riot act.

Back in the 70s, some of the large land grant universities had less stringent admissions requirements than they do today. I was admitted to one. It was just as difficult to do well there back then as it is now but they'd let you try. And lots of students did flunk out. I knew it was for real. I either had to work or go to school. Having already worked a series of shit jobs for asshole bosses, I was motivated. I made the dean's list for 5 consecutive semesters and was admitted to engineering school, eventually graduating with honors. I've been doing technical work for 33 years.

Today, that would be way more difficult. The admissions requirements are so stringent today, late bloomers would not be admitted. They would have to prove themselves in a community college first and then maybe they would be admitted. They would then have to meet the requirements of the engineering school which is now highly selective. Assuming they were admitted and completed the degree, it would probably have taken about 7 or 8 years to get that degree. Most who enter engineering school today straight from high school take 5 years to finish.

I understand why they tightened the admissions requirements at my alma mater. Too many students were flunking out and it looked bad. The board of governors pressured the university into adopting the same requirements other universities used. The way I see it, the exclusion of late bloomers was a kind of collateral damage.

Maybe blown out of proportion but Ebola is far more lethal virus than H1N1.

Amen. I like my chances of surviving H1N1 a lot better than my chances of surviving Ebola.

In my entire life I've never seen an LED burn out unless it was in my own circuit.

The LED itself is very reliable. The problem is the driver circuit, which may include a regulator. That's what fails, not the LED.

Many light fixtures are not ventilated and get very hot. This wasn't much of a problem for incandescent bulbs. But it is for LED and CFL, despite the lower dissipation. The Sylvania CFL 13W (60W equiv) has a warning on it's base saying not to use it in an enclosed space. At work, the restrooms were renovated and new LED light fixtures were put in. Half of them failed. The manufacturer replaced them with ventilated types. Those all worked.

It's not uncommon to see traffic signals with portions of the LED cluster flickering. This failure is likely due to an intermittent connection, perhaps on the printed circuit board.

As for CFLs, I've had mixed results. The 13W (60W equiv) have acceptable reliability. But higher wattage CFLs I've used in the garage don't last very long. I've replaced those with 4 ft florescent tube fixtures. I will not use CFLs or LEDs in hard to reach flood lamps outside. In one fixture, I have incandescent floods that have been in service for more than 27 years.