Y2HH

QUOTE (juddling @ Jan 24, 2011 -> 06:46 AM) Last week's Fringe was awesome. i really hope this switch to Fridays doesn't kill the show. It's nice to see AI rating down from last year. I enjoyed the return episode of Fringe, I hope they tie up a lot this season because I have little faith that show will last much longer after it's move to Friday (the death knell of tv shows)...despite it being my favorite show on TV right now.

I think he was fired by Comcast for a few reasons, as this happened right after the NBC buyout by Comcast was approved. Comcast is notorious for not paying people high salaries for what they feel are easily replaceable ratings, and frankly, for what Olbermann made, his ratings were far too low to quantify it. Comcast also plays hardball and loves to send messages to companies that they buy out -- if you think you're safe, think again -- we have no qualms of firing you or anyone for that matter.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jan 22, 2011 -> 09:47 PM) Me neither. This is just tinkerers wanting to tinker. That's all it is, just people seeing if they can.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 21, 2011 -> 05:05 PM) IF they don't hold to a 2% year over year increase, then it sure won't. You mean WHEN, not IF.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 21, 2011 -> 04:30 PM) I know their mission was technically different...but frankly, it shouldn't have been. If you're going to propose a "Deficit commission", that's exactly what it ought to do. I think everyone agrees here...but the politicians put these people in the commission...meaning they failed, once again, to do the job we continue to elect them to fail doing. Meaning the people are failing. And in the end, it will all fail...we will probably get to live to see it, too, considering even the people on a message board cannot agree on cutting waste...and if you don't think there is waste, well...there is no other way for me to word this...that means you're an I.D. 10 T.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 21, 2011 -> 02:47 PM) The real kicker is that effectively holding spending growth at 2% a year IS actually a spending cut in a growing economy. The real REAL kicker is that you believe they're only holding spending growth at 2% per year. You have to consider all the things they left out of that fuzzy math when the calculated what constitutes that spending growth...not that they'll ever let you see the equation they used or why they used it. No, wait...that's not a kicker, it's something else entirely. It's the naivety they rely on. And you aren't naive from what I know of you...so what is it exactly that makes you continue to believe these people? The saying used to be, fool me once, shame on you...fool me twice, shame on me. What is it then when it comes to the government telling us the same repeated lies, fool me 500,000 times, shame on me? Now, that said, if what you said about this supposed "kicker" of yours is true, we should see drastic deficit decreases beginning next year AND in the years to come, in addition to outstanding debts being paid off. So now, how much would you like to bet neither happen?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 21, 2011 -> 02:44 PM) Meh, overrated IMO. Good, but not outstanding. Poor character development. I watched it a second time last week and really grew to hate all of the Mal/Cobb parts. Still don't understand how his sub-conscious can infect other peoples dreams. I enjoyed the South Park spin on it - just because you have a complex/confusing idea masked by really cool visuals (and music - ba ba ba ba ba baaaaaaa) doesn't make the movie great. Also, finally got to see The Town. I'd give it a B. Kept me entertained, but just a story without much impact. The Boston accents were fawkin brutal brah. Affleck's were weak in some scenes and fawkin ovah that tawp in othahs. Same with Blake Lively's character. Hamm had the best line when he was in the interrogation room and he mimicked Affleck's accent. Also did not care for the ending. Not much of a payoff for a jagbag character with little to no redeeming qualities. We disagree on Inception, and that you don't understand how his sub-conscious can "infect", shows you missed a key understanding of the idea behind the movie. I don't mean it was good in some "it delivers a powerful message" sort of way...but it was great/spectaular to me because it was a new idea brought to the big screen which is nearly VOID of new ideas these days. Just because the run of the mill remark garbage seems to work for most people, doesn't make Inception overrated at all. I'm glad they made the movie on the scale it was made on, it was a huge risk, and I enjoyed it...and I welcome more like it. Better than 99% of the already been done remake garbage out there.

I REALLY loved Inception. LOVED. LOVED. LOVED. That is all.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jan 21, 2011 -> 01:47 PM) Thank you. Y2HH, I don't care if your company's management took the generally lazy, less-effective route instead of using this as an opportunity to cut inefficiencies and redundancies in the best possible way. Sure, when you make atb cuts, department heads are going to look to cut the waste out, so you may do some good. But you can also cut too much from departments, turning them non-functional or reducing their profitability. Or maybe Department X has 50% that can be cut (old methods, old technology, shrinking markets, etc.) while Department Y only really has 10% (newer tech, needs R&D money) they can cut without undermining their capabilities. Again, you choose to see the color red where it simply doesn't exist. You can take any method of cuts and implement it...but DO IT. I repeat, you don't have to actually do 20% across the board...but it's a start, which they're not even doing (starting). Fine...cut REALLY wasteful departments by 50% and cut departments that are running perfectly and within budget by 0%...wow, that was HARD!@#$@! Point I'm making, and you are somehow missing, is that after 50 years of almost NO cuts at all, but continual growth and spending increases, there is NO WAY THAT A 100% EFFICIENT DEPARTMENT EVEN EXISTS. They can EASILY find things to fix...and these savings don't necessarily have to come from "cuts", but from more efficient methods of doing a job. Example, instead of printing out and snail mailing 5000000 documents to the state of IL, email them, fax them, etc. Point is, money is saved via a more efficient manner.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jan 21, 2011 -> 01:37 PM) That voids the EULA and any sort of warranties, though. Who cares about the EULA, and it only voids the warranty if you break it, but if you open any technology from any manufacturer and break it, it would void the warranty just the same. I've brought jail broken iPhones into apple for warranty repair and just played the "I don't know what your talking about" card...and they replaced it.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Jan 21, 2011 -> 01:15 PM) Indeed. For instance, Motorola is not unlike Apple when it comes to being hacker-friendly. HTC is probably the way to go if you want less hardware restrictions. Doesn't hurt that they make fantastic hardware. I agree here, of all the Android devices I've played with, I found the HTC devices the best in hardware build/quality. As a matter of fact, I'd say they're the only ones close to Apple in terms of making awesome phones. Though I think the iPhone 4 build quality is far superior to their previous iterations, it's fragile (as it's mostly glass), but that's neither here nor there...most devices made of glass are fragile, even if it's gorilla glass.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Jan 21, 2011 -> 01:14 PM) I meant more about Apple's absolute dictatorship style control over everything. That "control" is a mirage. They only have as much control as you give them. If you want to do something with your Apple stuff, DO IT. It's not that hard. You can jailbreak their software, you can open up their phones, computers, pads and anything else they make and hack that, too.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jan 21, 2011 -> 01:11 PM) Maybe significant cuts to domestic quality of life programs isn't a great idea during a substantial recession? Raising the IL taxes by 70% during a recession isn't a good idea either, but they did that...while telling us they're actually INCREASING spending.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Jan 21, 2011 -> 01:11 PM) that is so stupid and pointless. Yet another reason why I am going Android Not all Android devices are the same, not all use the same screws, either. You do realize that it's all manufacturer, right, and has nothing to do with software? Android is software, it's not hardware. People have installed Android on iPhone4's.

Must have been a while ago, they're available now. http://www.ifixit.com/iPhone-Parts/iPhone-...nt=product_link

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Jan 21, 2011 -> 01:03 PM) Problem is only Apple has this one. It's not available for purchase. I think you can already buy them from iFixit.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jan 21, 2011 -> 12:54 PM) In good times, do companies perform "Across the board" investments? That would make no more sense than across the board cuts. It might not make sense to cut every single department by 20%--maybe some can really only afford a 15% without it significantly impacting functionality, but another could absorb 25%. "Dumb" cuts still just pass the responsibility of detailed analysis and may hurt the company more than analytical cuts. Having to cut 20% doesn't mean you have to make "dumb" cuts at all. Especially after 10 straight years of NO cuts at all. After such a span of time of no cutting, it's EASY to come up with a mere 20%, anyone that cannot do so should fire themselves for being too stupid to run that section of a company. And let's not even get into the government spending since they've never cut anything in their history...they should easily be able to come up with 20% across the board without even trying. And yes, like an above poster said, the 20% figure isn't necessarily set in stone, it's just an example, but an example my company happened to implement.

Read huffingtonpost.com in the link and stopped reading.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jan 21, 2011 -> 12:43 PM) Seems like a way for upper management to pass the buck of making hard decisions without actually examining if some departments are over-performing or under-performing. No, what it seems like is how the real world operates. As for "upper management" not wanting to make "hard decisions", they laid off about 12 executives. So, so much for that as an excuse, eh?

I can tell you this, my company went through a spending cut this last year, and every department was REQUIRED to cut spending by 20%, which included quite a few hard decisions as well as some re-educating people on more efficient methods of doing their daily jobs. It's funny private industry can do this whenever necessary, but the government cannot...

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Jan 21, 2011 -> 12:09 PM) Apple turns another screw on iPhone 4 owners This practice has been going on in the tech industry for decades, nothing new here. Just buy the new screwdriver. Hex. Torx. I have them all, because different computer manufacturers use them for the same reason. A phillips head is what they "should" all be using, but they don't... People pretending this is some new Apple practice, however, is summarily debunked.

The tax hike is too much. That's around another 1500 dollars I don't have for my family now, and for a person that doesn't make 180k+ per year, like the politicians that passed it, that's a lot of money considering my we have a single income. And don't get me wrong, I'm not against tax hikes...what I am against is tax hikes that resolve nothing. They will raise taxes, fees, and whatever else to get more money and be just as broke as they were before...and that's where the disconnect between the government and the people supporting the government comes in. I would have NO problem with them raising taxes if they said, this not only balances the budget but creates a budget surplus in the future (and guaranteed it, versus merely claiming it). The issue is, they'll raise taxes by 70%, and spend 170% more than they raised them by, WHILE claiming they're cutting spending. In the end, we are in the SAME place as we were, but it's just costing me way more.

NM, re-read this a few times... Meh. Talk about a stretch to make it "the same", when its not.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Jan 19, 2011 -> 06:45 PM) I did get the dividends, it just didn't go b/c of the holiday. I'm not gambling, I know what I'm doing. I treat it the same way I treat my credit cards, I buy something before I have all of the cash, then I replace that money as soon as I get it a month or two later. It's not something I do habitually. It's a bad BAD idea.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 19, 2011 -> 08:47 AM) Calculated margin risk at an institutional level is an entirely different ballgame than an individual, part-time investor taking out a loan (which is what buying on margin is). If you don't have the money, you shouldn't be investing it. But yes, institutional level is completely different, I'm talking about individuals. Investments should be made with money that is yours, free and clear...individuals should never toy with margin accounts...it's gambling with an uncertain future.