Y2HH

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 12, 2011 -> 09:41 AM) The $800B stimulus bill did not do nothing, let's not go down this road of silliness again. It created and saved jobs, millions of them, and kept the UE rates significantly lower than they would have otherwise been. This has been proven out time and again by not only bipartisan analysis, but even Republican-generated studies. Of course, it is ALSO true that the stimulus bill failed to do as much as it was supposed to... failed to spur a significant recovery... and was poorly designed and executed. The right-leaning views of this (like yours) that it did nothing, and the left-leaning view that it was a success, are both inaccurate. Let's deal in reality. It created/saved jobs those temporarily. The money is gone now, and so are the majority of the jobs you claim it saved. So yea, let's go down this road again since you love to discuss reality so much. Did it do something? Yes. It would be silly of me to say otherwise. But did it do 800 billion dollars worth of something? I know this is just my opinion, but no. Not even close. To be fair to the conversation, I did say it did nothing -- this is simply wrong of me -- it did do something. Just not nearly as much as it could have/should have. It's not of my opinion that the original stimulus did nothing...but it is of my opinion that we we paid 800 dollars for 10 dollars worth of return. So to reattempt the same, only on a miniscule scale in comparison...well, that makes this new bill is a joke by size of scale when it comes to realized returns.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Oct 12, 2011 -> 09:35 AM) But we knew this was getting blocked before they submitted it...so they purposefully wasted everyone's time/money. From what I know, even some Democrats don't like it. All this was was another mini-stimulus, to call it anything else is disingenuous at best. Let's see, 800+ billion in such money amounted to nothing, so this will surely fix the issue! Oh, and I'm not saying "do nothing" is the solution, either. But I am saying, attempting a mini-version of what you already tried, only to see it fail, is akin to banging your head off the wall, saying wow...that hurts...and then proceeding to do the same thing again. We love to talk about learning from the past...but we apparently do nothing more than talk about it. They need to come up with something new instead of retrying what hasn't worked already. The other problem with this type of "job creation" is it's holiday jobs...it's all temporary work, and the money drains so quickly that all you end up having to do is repeat the process until the end of time. Only problem with that is, reality dictates that there isn't unlimited amounts of money you can keep borrowing to do this. In addition, it totally destroys the original reasoning behind the "tax the rich" campaign. While I agree the rich can pay more in taxes, the problem with that isn't that it won't pay for this new program (it would), it's that the "tax the rich" mantra was originally used to help pay for OTHER stuff we've already borrowed/spent money on...not this. So if we take that tax the rich money and use it on this, we haven't made any progress on our current deficits/debts, despite the rich being taxed. It's another one step forward/two steps back issue...something our government is really good at. No matter how much money they raise, no matter how many fees they create, and no matter how much they do get taxes raised, we still seem to find a way to dig the debt hold deeper.

QUOTE (Rex Kicka** @ Oct 12, 2011 -> 09:10 AM) So the Republicans blocked the American Jobs Act in the Senate yesterday. I would make a joke about needing that debate time to consider Michelle Bachmann's "Save the Incandecent Lightbulb Bill," but that would either be too A) Accurate or B) too much work for them to consider. But we knew this was getting blocked before they submitted it...so they purposefully wasted everyone's time/money. From what I know, even some Democrats don't like it. All this was was another mini-stimulus, to call it anything else is disingenuous at best. Let's see, 800+ billion in such money amounted to nothing, so this will surely fix the issue!

QUOTE (Rex Kicka** @ Oct 12, 2011 -> 09:05 AM) For a lot of people, it should be said, what you learn in college doesn't really factor much into what you do. My degree is in French. I have had almost (but not quite) 0 use for my degree in my professional world. The subject matter of your degree matters less in the professional world than you would think. I agree, I've never once used my actual degree. It's in the IT field, which I'm in, but my degree is in programming, and I've never once programmed professionally. That said, my core knowledge is still in IT, and marketable.

QUOTE (GoSox05 @ Oct 12, 2011 -> 08:40 AM) They actually have a whole bunch of these from the viewpoint of different European countries. They are also funny. I agree their funny, I just fear that a lot of people that read these American ones actually believe them. Which, in a paradoxical way, makes them true for that person.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Oct 12, 2011 -> 07:04 AM) I just think that a lot of these people should be pissed at their colleges for selling them useless degrees at ball-breaking prices instead of banks actually expecting them to get paid back on money they lent out. The college isn't forcing those degrees on them, so they shouldn't get pissed at the college, they should get pissed at themselves for paying to learn a useless skill set. I don't feel sorry for people like that. They fall into the "love what you do no matter what the drawbacks are" category of bulls*** that I hear spewed all the time. If you love what you do that much, don't complain about the money...and if you do complain about the money, it means you actually "love" money more than what it is you ended up doing, so maybe you should have thought about that before. People have poor planning skills and no future mindset, and that's their own problem...not societies. Society has created opportunity, a whole bunch of opportunity, just because you chose the wrong one in terms of what they pay, "because you love it", don't then turn around and blame society for creating "too much choice" for you. After all, you could have been lucky enough to have been born in China, where you could work at Foxxconn building iPhones for 2$ a day, instead.

QUOTE (Tex @ Oct 12, 2011 -> 05:29 AM) I wish I could laugh Why can't you? It's funny. But it's also a nonsense discussion/argument, and always has been. You could easily draw up a map like that for any country out there...as every country has more than it's fair share of uneducated people and/or people that don't care that know nothing about the rest of the world aside from what they heard on TV or third hand over the years (since some don't have tv's). The rest of the world just tends to keep people like that off their TV cameras/radio waves, whereas we tend to find them amusing so we put them on the air.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 11, 2011 -> 01:07 PM) He didn't shove the guard but he's claiming responsibility for inciting the aggression. I think the writer of the article is making that claim, but I never saw the person in question make it themselves. At least, he didn't quote him saying anything like that in the article.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Oct 11, 2011 -> 11:15 AM) You guys are on to them! You've figured out the huge conspiracy! I'm onto how hypocritically dumb they sound/are for sure. It's like, "Oohhhhh, they said f*** off! This must be serious!#$@!" Meh. I see that sort of thing at a protest or on behalf of protestors, and I think...morons.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Oct 11, 2011 -> 11:05 AM) Figured the "we are not liberal" covered it but whatever. Not all Democrats are what we've come to know and label "Liberals". Just like Republicans aren't "Neocons". So no.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Oct 11, 2011 -> 09:40 AM) They named every party affiliation except for the one that starts with Demo.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 10, 2011 -> 04:47 PM) Not gonna lie, that's pretty f***ed. I don't get why "conservatives" are annoyed so much by these protests. Yes, it's stupid for some of these guys to be protesting with their ipods/ipads/laptops, crying about how terrible their lives are. But at the end of the day, especially for young graduates out of work, I feel for them. I spent 1.5 years looking for a job and basically lucked into one. So, as far as I'm concerned, preach on. It must suck immensely to be out there right now without a job. At least their doing something instead of playing xbox all day. Let's call it like it is. They're annoyed by the protestors for a few reasons, but mainly, it's because they don't share their opinion(s) and/or ideologies. And that's that. It's also why you're annoyed with conservatives to the point you put the word in air quotes. I consider myself all over the map, and depending on the specific subject at hand, I can either be off the charts liberal, or off the charts ultra conservative. I firmly believe that this is how everyone should be, and if everyone were, this country would be a much better place, with a much wider variety of representatives (not just D or R). This protest annoys me, but not because I'm a "conservative", but because I see them as a waste of time, with no clear message and further, no realistic changes to come of them. Then again, I feel this way about most protests. Everyone they interview gives a different answer as to why they're doing it, so the message gets eroded, and in the mean time, like you said, I have to listen to a bunch of spoiled American youth with their expensive computers, iPods, etc...talking about how hard life is, when 99% of them haven't lived anything near a hard hour, let alone a hard day. Maybe they need to stop at Starbucks for another 5$ drink before they hit the streets again, and start spreading a more unified message...which I still don't understand... Do they want to kill everyone that works on Wall Street? Do they want to force those that do to make 7$ an hour and have to pay the rest in taxes? I don't really know. Either way, neither is going to happen...no matter how ridiculous of a statement I make. Then, since I have a DeLorean complete with a Flux Capacitor, I traveled into the future to see what's become of these "protestors", and just like the hippies in the 60's before them, these same protestors are the very people working on wall street and dining on diamond encrusted plates telling the poor people to shut their faces. It's ironic, I know. In all seriousness, those that helped cause the collapse, in any area, should be paying for it...a message needed to be sent loud and clear, but it wasn't...and why? Because it was Washington that enabled it...and it was Washington that oversaw it, and allowed it to happen, and assured the people everything was fine all the while the house of cards was coming down, so unless congress wants to throw themselves in jail along with the evil bankers and corporations, you'll never see it happen.

Ron Karkovice

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Oct 7, 2011 -> 02:50 AM) I have a Mac and an iPod. I hate using the Mac though. I mean I can get by, but for me, my PC makes life easier. iPod I can't hate on. It's an classic, because I just use it for music. At the same time, Jobs helped innovate. Plus, anytime someone dies of something other than old age, it's sad. But Wozniak's tweet was gold. So then format your mac, and install Windows on it. Problem solved.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 6, 2011 -> 02:39 PM) That's what you get for listening to the Vegetarian media. It's really not their fault, he was quite the vegetable eater and outspoken about it. My friend, who worked for Apple in Cupertino for years, used to see him eating salads and fruit based stuff *all* the time, and he often spoke about green vegetables, so a lot of media figured he was a vegan or vegetarian. I probably wouldn't know what news story to believe, since so many reported different things about this over the years, if my friend didn't see him eating fish once in a while at the Apple campus cafe. I think he later told people he eats dairy/fish, but like the HuffPo article, a lot of organizations try to run with whatever story furthers their cause. And anything PETA related...well, I dislike.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Oct 6, 2011 -> 11:17 AM) Honoring the Legacy of Steve Jobs /vegan plug Jobs was a pescetarian (neither vegetarian nor vegan as is often reported).

QUOTE (Tex @ Oct 6, 2011 -> 05:58 AM) And who made a greater impact on getting computers into homes, Apple and closed source, expensive hardware and software that was incompatible with anything else, or open source IBM which allowed computers at half the price? Apple isn't fully closed source, and IBM isn't fully open sourced, it depends on the specific product(s) you are talking about. And you obviously don't recall the early days of home computers when a really REALLY piss poor IBM models cost upwards of 5 grand (FAR more than any available Apple computer at the time). So...like I said... Not to mention, back then, it was Commodore that drove the cost of computers down with their 64/128 and Amiga products, which for base home models usually cost less than 800$, where comparable Apple machines would cost 3 grand, and comparable IBM clones cost 5. There is and was a LOT more to this industry than just Apple/IBM and Microsoft that drove innovation, invention and price, but along the way history was rewritten by the victors and under-informed magazine writers that had a vested interest in specific companies succeeding so they could continue writing articles and such.

May he rest in peace. Some of you are really petty, considering most of you know close to nothing about the in's and out's of what went down in the computer tech world the last 20-30 years, aside from what you heard repeated (incorrectly) and/or read about from some misinformed magazine article (also incorrectly). Stick to the things you're good at, but repeating nonsense only makes you look stupid to those of us who actually know what we're talking about.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Oct 5, 2011 -> 09:17 AM) Why I oughta!! And to think I was going to invite you & your family for a weekend excursion to Seattle for some hiking, biking, canoeing, and Sox baseball next summer. Sheesh. Do you mean when the Sox play your new team, the M's?!

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Oct 5, 2011 -> 09:14 AM) I guess we were raised differently. I was raised to be loyal to my teams no matter what. I see that you change your allegiance to your geographic location. Wrong, because I'm so loyal to the Sox, I'd never change my geographic location. While you can try to be one of those fake fans that tries to remain loyal to a team you get to see once a decade, you're a M's fan now. Enjoy sucking even more than we currently suck! OHHHH NO, WE SUCK AGAIN!

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Oct 5, 2011 -> 08:54 AM) I'm sorry, BS, you must have been misdirected here somehow. The website you are actually looking for is here: http://www.marinersforum.com/ Good riddance.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 4, 2011 -> 10:15 AM) I guess I don't get what your point here is. Hank Williams Jr. said something pretty offensive and was pulled from a very public promotional spot. Why does it matter if some people on the other team said the same thing about Bush? It matters if they were treated any differently by the media and/or given a pass for equally poor behavior. If not, then it doesn't matter. I think these entertainers need to do their job and entertain, and shut the f*** up about politics, because they often give vulnerable and impressionable youngsters very bad ideas by saying something outlandish, stupid or otherwise, whether they believe it or not.

QUOTE (Rex Kicka** @ Oct 4, 2011 -> 08:49 AM) A friend of mine was arrested this weekend on the Brooklyn Bridge protest. Protesters were given the choice of walking on the pedestrian causeway, or walking on the roadway. Protesters were also told that they were closing the Brooklyn Bridge to traffic FOR the protest, but they were also told that they risked arrest by walking on the roadway. It was termed "a different action." Most of those protesters knew that they risked arrest. I don't know how I feel about the Occupy Wall Street protests. I see the validity, but I am concerned by the lack of a message or goal. I guess you could call me mildly sympathetic, but wary. This. This is my problem with these so called protests -- what are they protesting, exactly -- regular people working regular jobs? This is often the problem with such mass protests, in that they fail to actually acquire their intended targets, and instead interrupt the lives of regular people, which merely infuriates the people they're not meaning to infuriate. I know quite a few people who work at the Chicago Board of Trade, and absolutely ZERO of them are rich. Instead, like many others, they struggle to make ends meet. They're the people who's lives get interrupted during these protests...as the billionaires simply don't go to work in their diamond encrusted helicopters until the protests end...because they have like 5000 vacation days they can use, not to mention they can work remotely and continue making millions uninterrupted by people yelling in the streets making getting too/from work a hassle for regular people like myself. Such protests annoy me, and make me detest protesters since I've had to walk through such a crowd a few times at Blue Cross (where I work). Because, you know, it's awesome getting yelled at by anti-health insurance people simply because I have a job here...only I'm not some rich health care jerk that pockets your premiums, just a regular person.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Oct 3, 2011 -> 07:14 PM) I agree... I beta test IOS for Apple so I've been using IOS 5 for a few months now, it's quite nice. The new notification system and the quick pulldown is nice, as is backing up to iCloud to the point that you can get a new iPhone and do a complete restore over the air, all your apps, settings, emails, songs, etc...

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 30, 2011 -> 10:59 AM) Let's make a key point here...no one has lost "Hundreds of billions of dollars" on any greentech investment. The Solyndra "corrupt loan" (which, at least based on my reading, was a reasonable investment at the time, although it seems like Dec of last year was the time to cut and run from that one) was $500 million. That is, for example, a factor of 18 less than the amount of money that the Inspector General said utterly vanished in Iraq. I didn't mean to equate what I said only to the Solyndra case, I meant as an aggregate cost of all the failed programs, whether they be green energy or anything else, such as what you mentioned, the money that vanished in Iraq. We didn't lose hundreds of billions on Solyndra, no, but we have lost hundreds of billions over the past decade from various endeavors with nothing to show for it. Solyndra is just scratching the surface of this sort of thing.