Balta1701

Just to note...assuming he doesn't miraculously get his papers processed before the deadline, Baseball's new rule creates a $3 million total yearly cap level for international signings, with a heavy luxury tax of 75% on either the total overage or on any single contract over $2.9 million. So the Sox could easily offer $2.9 million if they wanted to spend all that money on one player. They could then still supplement that with smaller signings, with up to 6 bonuses of $50k and as many bonuses under $10k as they want to give out.

QUOTE (bucket-of-suck @ Jun 19, 2012 -> 02:40 PM) IMO, he'll be the long man. Humber will stay as a starter. (not that I remotely agree with this)I don't know where the line will be drawn, but they won't stay with Humber if he keeps being this bad.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jun 19, 2012 -> 02:30 PM) Terry Doyle, Deunte Heath, Veal and Bruney say hello as well. There's more than numbers in judging prospects vs. suspects. The usual rule of thumb, and the one the Sox scouts have repeated, is that in the end, the hitters will tell you.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jun 19, 2012 -> 02:10 PM) http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/j...-up-crime-down/ This of course is why the ways to compare whether those laws do antyhign good is not to look at the overall trend, because the first order trend is very poorly correlated with firearm ownership or usage (it's a second order effect in the states that choose to have it). Crime rates have been dramatically trending down since the early 1990's, and while there are probably a number of other things that play into it (increased police presence/funding, better training, etc.), my personal favorite is lead exposure. The people who were exposed to the most lead as children wound up producing the highest crime rates when they reached ~ age 20, and then as you've gotten the lead out, crime rates have plummeted. Of course, correlation isn't causation, but man this one is a tempting explanation.

Courtney Hawkins's day with the Chicago White Sox:

QUOTE (greg775 @ Jun 19, 2012 -> 01:43 PM) I was saying that it was a slap in the face of all ticket holders to basically concede that game before it started. Pitch anybody but Zach Stewart. How can they not just release the guy? Cooper cannot fix everybody. Enough of Stewart already! And Humber despite the perfect game is on the same path. I feel your pain watching that crap for 54 bucks a ticket. Because releasing young pitchers who throw > 90 mph, have options left, and effectively skipped AAA on the way up is criminally insane?

QUOTE (chw42 @ Jun 19, 2012 -> 01:16 PM) It appears that Serge Ibaka is trolling the Heat by calling LeBron a bad defender. Well done Serge. Hopefully the Thunder can back the talk up.

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels will reportedly move on to take the only position I can imagine which would carry less respect than Mitt Romney's running mate.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 19, 2012 -> 10:40 AM) It is also terminology that no else one here is using. Exactly. Instead, people are happy to stand behind the comfortable, easy euphemism of "they need to follow the law". When in reality, they're saying the same thing, except it's so much more uncomfortable when someone points out that the addendum to "they need to follow the law" is "That we wrote to keep the dirty group x out of the country".

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 19, 2012 -> 10:29 AM) No one else here is using racism as a motivator. Because it's very convenient to hide behind the law if no one points out that the law itself is racist.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jun 19, 2012 -> 10:21 AM) Microsoft has a few hurdles to jump with this...and they need to begin by realizing the hurdles exist. Just ask Google how easy it is to enter the tablet arena. They need this product to succeed on a mass level, and I hope it does...their fans (like the people who bought the Zune), aren't going to make this a success. To begin, they shouldn't pretend the iPad isn't a productivity tablet like I see a LOT of Microsoft fans pretending right now...it is. I see articles riddled with, "Finally a productivity tablet!". The iPad already is and MS would be doing themselves a disservice by pretending otherwise. They WILL be competing with Apple's products with this release. If you need proof of that (the iPad being used for productivity), check out all the business execs sporting them. My entire company, for example, has every executive using them. 1) As you mentioned, the Pro version needs battery life very near or on par with the Macbook Air, and the RT version needs battery life on par with the iPad. I don't see Microsoft having a problem with this...when MS does make hardware themselves, it tends to be VERY good. 2) It needs to be priced BELOW Apples offerings. Not the same...below. The RT model needs to be cheaper than an equivalent iPad, and the pro model needs to be cheaper than the MacBook Air. 3) Microsoft needs to get tons and tons of applications ready/tested and available for this. Their current offerings aren't going to cut it, especially on the RT model that has no backwards compatibility and a massive Windows app catalog. 4) MS cannot afford to overestimate peoples wish for a Windows based tablet. Most people don't care what operating system they use these days...so long as it works for what they want to get done. This goes hand in hand with #2...they need to price very very aggressively. I can't tell if I'd be the market for this or not. One thing that would really get me interested in a tablet is a really solid implementation of MS Office, because that's 1/2 the reason why I would turn a tablet on after I head home...giving me a chance to work on a paper or a talk. I haven't been impressed enough with the implementations of office on the iPad to really go out and spend the kind of money it would take to just try it out on that platform.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Jun 19, 2012 -> 10:24 AM) No, I'm serious. He was trying to use IE and open a gaming app and it locked up and he had to go grab another one to continue his presentation. Well then...good to know 15 years isn't enough time to learn a lesson.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Jun 19, 2012 -> 10:17 AM) It's pretty impressive. But I had to laugh that during the web browsing, gaming, and app demonstration the guys tablet froze and he had to swap it out. Is this serious or are you making a joke reference to the Windows 98 unveiling when Bill Gates said it would freeze less and then had it freeze on him?

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jun 19, 2012 -> 10:15 AM) Maybe, but I doubt Hudson can be nearly as good at making the play on the bunt or the slow dribbler down the line where he has to throw towards 1B across his body with all of his moment going away from the field as he comes in to field it. That's the toughest play for a 3B. If Orlando Hudson can't make the toughest plays, that's still ok. He might make one every now and again by luck, and finding a really great defensive 3b who can make the toughest plays reliably won't be cheap.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jun 19, 2012 -> 10:10 AM) Little reason except proximity i.e. it's a lot easier for a Tijuanan to immigrate than a Malawian. If you were actually constructing a system from scratch that really shouldn't matter, because it's not like there are real legit barriers to transit around the globe these days. If you did it right...there's x demand for part time or migrant workers, there's y number of people willing to apply globally, y is going to be greater than x as long as the U.S. is a major economic power, so y number of people apply to fill x number of jobs, and once those are filled, the only driving force for illegal immigration is people who want to truly get around labor laws (i.e. running textile sweatshops), and then you can actually direct your enforcement on to shutting down those businesses. But again, if getting to that situation requires the 10 million+ people who are already here to pick up and leave happily...then arguing for a setup like that is just a way to protect the status quo, because that won't happen.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jun 19, 2012 -> 10:04 AM) Don't we offer political assylum separate from our immigration quota system now? And how does this address the millions of Mexicans, Guatemalans, Hondurans, Costa Ricans, etc. who will want to come here to escape poverty, would prefer to do so legally but will do so illegally if there is no other choice, literally risking life and limb in many cases to do so? How is this much different from arguments that were used in favor of excluding southern and eastern Europeans that claimed they were poor, sickly, unskilled and unable to adapt or contribute to American society? The sad thing is, I actually agree with him that there's little reason to give preference to Latin American immigrants over the rest of the world, and a world-wide guest worker program with an eventual path to citizenship would be the most fair system you could construct. The problem is, when you advocate that and at the same time insist that we can't do anything that would be unfair to deal with the mess that we've created by insisting on the importance of following the current racially-based quota system...then you're just using the perfect setup to make sure nothing ever changes, and blaming the people who come here for the flaws in the racist law.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 19, 2012 -> 09:59 AM) Except no one here is doing that, but OK. So I can't go back and find 15 posts saying that the current 10 million+ illegal immigrants who are here are breaking the law?

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jun 19, 2012 -> 09:53 AM) Right, that's exactly what those laws did when they establish quotas. They used racist and inflammatory terminology to degrade and dehumanize immigrant groups. I'm glad we can all agree on that. It's much easier to insist "They're breaking the law, we can't support that!" when you don't have to confront the racist past and present of the law.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 19, 2012 -> 09:47 AM) Did I miss someone else using yellow, or something similar, to describe immigrants? Yeah, the United States government, because that's why we have immigration laws and quotas for certain countries in the first place.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 19, 2012 -> 09:42 AM) Of course I noticed you throwing around racist terminology. It seems to be a favorite tactic. And of course you object when the racist thread running through the current quota system gets pointed out, because then the heroic stand of "How dare they not follow the laws!" suddenly gets that nasty, dirty connection to defending where those laws came from.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jun 19, 2012 -> 09:37 AM) He's describing what those laws were and why they were enacted. They were racist laws to keep out undesirables. The only reason why it makes any sense to have the system be a "Quota" number, with no connection at all to availability of work or desirability of skills, is that you can't let too many from a certain "group" get in. If you designed a system without regard to keeping out the undesirables, you'd tie it to employment, like we do at some level with the high-skilled immigrant Visas. Instead we put quotas on it and then insist on how terrible it is for people to be violating the laws when they exceed those quotas.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 19, 2012 -> 09:36 AM) I'm glad you get to throw around racist terms. It really helps the discussion. The quota system you're defending exists solely because of race. The reason why we have quotas on immigration that are too low to satisfy demand for immigrants in the first place is race. At least I got you to notice it.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 19, 2012 -> 09:31 AM) LEGAL immigrant. But nice spin to something irrelevant. Carnegie immigrated to the U.S. when the U.S. immigration laws required: The first quota based immigration law didn't appear until the 1880's when the U.S. realized too many yellow Chinese people were coming in to the country and we had to do something about that. If he didn't already have family here, there's a decent chance Carnegie would have been unable to immigrate to the U.S. under current law, or if he did, he'd have a 10 year waiting period.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 19, 2012 -> 09:28 AM) You are exactly right there. There is no incentive to follow the law, which is the whole problem here. That is why you have to actually have a law that works. Amnesty is just making sure the laws don't work. And it's been 25 years since the last major amnesty, which is why the laws are working great right now.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Jun 19, 2012 -> 12:32 AM) Perhaps the govt will cut other programs that I dont think are worthwhile. But the US budget spends a lot of money on border patrol, etc. Maybe they take that money and put it into healthcare. It's gone from $5 billion a year to about $20 billion a year over the last decade, and that doesn't count money spent in the U.S. on prisons and arrests. But then that money is like money spent blowing people up. It doesn't count. Only money spent on hippie things like education counts. If its spent on real, important things, like drones and guns, we don't have to count it, so cutting that money produces no savings.