Those "Stars" that fired him need to have their arses handed to them. Corruption is something I fear we will never be able to solve, but I live in eternal hope.
Yea, but as long as the size of your budget determines how much staff you get and how important you are, no.
"The Pentagon Wars" by Col. James F Burton. Burton was part of the 1980s "Fighter Mafia" who got the F-16 built, against Pentagon tendencies for every new plane to be twice the weight and twice the cost of the last one. (The F-35 continues the tradition.)
John Boyd was part of those battles, recounted in Comer's excellent biography of him, titled "Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War."
They were the ones who publicized the $400 hammer and $600 toilet seat.
While I like those stories and many pointed out serious problems in government procurement, some also fail to tell the whole story because the headline is what someone wants since it causes outrage.
We used bolts that cost a lot of money and looked the same as a 10 cent one from a hardware store, but ours were designed to perform to an exact spec, traceable to the ore, and tested to ensure they meet specs. You don't want that bolt to fail to performa at a critical moment when you are above, on, or below the ocean. We had bronze tools that cost a lot but looked like ordinary tools because sparks around oxygen tanks can cause issues. My point: There is a lot of wastefull spending and overpriced stuff in government contracting, but sometimes there is more to the story than simply "Military spends $x00 for something that is $10 at Walmart..."
One big problem is how the government budgets. You generally have to spend all you money on an annual basis, and if you give money back that you saved, you risked getting less next year because "you didn't need as much as you said last year..." So, come Q4, you go on a spending spree to spend whatever is left; trying to spend more is better than trying to spend less.
It's not like that's a new exploit. Underagers have been getting people to buy cigarettes and booze for them for as long as there's been age check laws. No laws have perfect compliance, except maybe the law of gravity.
Yup. I know teachers whose districts have all sorts of "safety" controls in place for computers the kids use; all that does is make it harder for teachers to go to sites they use and are approved while the kids access porn and anything else they want. The stupid get caught, like the one that thought it was a good idea to print the porn on the schools printer...
There are sites I like and do not block ads because I want them to be around, and in the end they either need to paywall or run ads to stay in business.
But the company whose ad it is has already paid to be shown on the site, hasn't it? Why should they care whether I choose to block ads via my browser? I'm never going to click on any as anyway.
Clicking on it it is not the goal,seeing it is so that the product registers in your mind. Clicks are just a bonus.
$100 billion invested vs $100 million p.a. income. And that is, by Dirty Altman's own words, their "Last Resort". Goodbye and good riddance.
Yea, 100 billion in Treasury Notes at 3.6 would be 36 billion. That's a high hurdle rate and basically zero risk; I'm guessing their hurdle rate is much higher and will be tough to clear.
For sites like Netflix, with ads + subscription price, I need to decide where the value/cost trade off occurs. For some sites, it's cancel and forget about them, others pay at some level.
Unfortunately, ads are here to stay. The days of Archie, Veronica, Lynx are long gone...
I'm more a freedom type person. If people want to do sex work for a living, why not? So long as it's regulated like every other industry and the workers taxed on the income, what's the problem?
If you just put in the tip there is no income tax.
Apple probably never promised that it would be anonymous to Apple, only that average joe won't get the information.
Apple never promised anonymity, at least not broadly. All they promised is a unique email address that does not expose your real address when used. The official explanation is pretty clear that it is to help you prevent your email from view, not that it protected your identity from being revealed. Frankly, anyone that sends threatening letters to government officials and thinks a provider won't turn over their info is doubling down on stupid.
more free movies & music for the poor I encourage the piracy of movies & music & software, the only people that will bother to pirate that stuff is poor because people with disposable income will just buy it and the poor should not be making the rich richer
I can agree with it. If someone can't afford what I've created and it helps them have a better life, I'm all for it. What does piss me off is where I see people steal my work and make a profit off of it. I'd happily license it for very small fee, but they figure why bother if they can just take it for free? It's not worth going to court over it because the cost likely far outweighs any verdict, and then I'd have to collect.
"Well regulated" is not well defined. It definitely didn't originally mean "government approved"...or at least it didn't mean that to everyone who put their signature to it.
If you want to go back to the times of the founders, many of the colonies and later states had laws regulating ownership, carry and storage of weapons;. some required a regular muster of citizens as well. "Original intent" if you will, might indicate that the 2cd was not intended to prevent any government regulation of weaponry.
Could, in theory. In practice, how do you implement and maintain that given there will be more than one person in the aisle looking at the price tags? Or that if two people see different prices, there are going to be two very angry people yelling at customer service? How will they advertise sales? How will they advertise?
Good points. As always, in theory there is no difference in theory and the real world, in the real world there is.
Right now, it's more of a hypothetical to cause a lot of handwringing, and likely more trouble than it's worth; since in the end I suspect the price difference would be so small that the costs to do it outweigh the benefits. For multiple shoppers they'd probably need to show the lowest, for example, so there would be no advantage to it. Who knows if it will ever happen.
One way to deal with some issues is to get rid of shelf tags and do all pricing in app, but that has its own issues; from people who don't use apps to allowing was price comparisons between shoppers in the aisle.
Personally, I'd rather see them use such data to offer discounts real time in app, since that would give me the ability to decide if I want to use it or not.
And what about Instacart?
That might be easier since they know the customer and buying habits, so targeting would be easier if ordered in app. (I've never used Instacart)
You mean Unreal Tournament 3? That was 19 years ago, and it sold well and got good reviews.
It's pretty depressing what happened, actually, because on paper, it was awesome. The base game was free, and it even had a new game mode called Blitz. The amount of maps it shipped with was pretty meager, but the goal was to have modders sell their maps/mods/skins/etc as IAPs within the game and then they got a cut. The game still allowed for private/dedicated servers, and while it lacked some of the polish of UT3, the framework was there and it really worked well as a de facto tech demo for UE4, and was surprisingly stable for an alpha release.
The problem, of course, was that Fortnite quickly became their money printer, limiting how much effort they put into developing the base game, before they finally canned it.
I'm still really bummed about it; I really liked the pre-alpha version I got to play with some friends for a bit.
How would those bad things work? Individual pricing won't work in stores, everyone would just say that the shelf tag said something lower than what the register has. No way to verify. Besides, big stores don't even care. They want to advertise low prices, and you can't change an advertised price.
Surge pricing could change the price based on purchase data, allowing stores to increase prices when they get a demand signal. Using location tracking in store of shoppers, perhaps using the store’s app, would let them change prices when they sense a buyer is nearby and base pricing on purchase history. Let’s say you often buy something every 3 months like clockwork, and you’re at the 3 month point and by the product, they could up the price based on your buying history.
The program isn't debugged until the last user is dead.
