Facebook’s friend predictor thing, meaning the box that “suggests” people you may know, is a really disturbing predictor of people you are around all the time (or used to be around all the time) but kind of creep you out.
I mean, it may have lead to a friend-ing event once or twice for me, but really, if they’re not already on the list, might there be a good reason? The odds are against them on this endeavor.
Has anyone ever refreshed the page just to get a new set? Maybe I’m alone on this one…
Glad to see we’re planning on robbing the poor to fund the health care system. “Only harms 1.2% of taxpayers” … only the ones who make a crapload of money and give it all away? No biggie.
Do they really think the rich are this net-income inelastic? The media and government are dealing too much in relative percentages and deciles. This is real money, not a percentage! We’re going to need better ideas than taking away liberal-minded tax deductions like the charitable writeoff. Doesn’t the AMT do that, already?
As expensive as it is to ship English books from amazon.co.uk, you would think we could do better than this tracking information:
It’s especially unsettling because there is really no such thing as an official street address here. People actually give their addresses using nearby intersections in some cases. I’ve given our full address to people, and they don’t get it until they figure out it’s next to a grocery store they know about.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Joe Martinez, the citizen, the scholar, the patriot, the legend.
Joe is just a regular Joe, who bought a house at twice his city’s median home selling price. At the stated average $130/sqft., it is probably safe to assume the $600,000 house is likely over 4,500 square feet.
Joe can afford his mortgage but has his panties in a wad because his current estimated property value sunk 25% off irrational pre-recession levels. He feels as though he is throwing his money away funding an investment that could not be sold immediately for profit.
I would assume, getting a better feeling for dipsticks like this, this means he is mad he can’t pull on a home equity line during the crisis.
Get this: he wants federal aid, to compensate his dumb ass for investing in something that is off 25% from its peak value. He stopped paying his mortgage so he would look poor enough to claim aid!
The stock market is off over 50% over the same period! The whole world is down 50% on their savings and this idiot is mad he’s investing into a 25% loser. Maybe at the bottom! And he gets a sniffle and snob on CNN for this! Joesy-Posey is getting screwed by the government because his attempt to defraud an already hopelessly ridiculous aid system failed!
This man has cash, doesn’t seem to need additional leverage, and he feels like he needs an influx of government equity (read: handout) to compensate him for his temporary losses. Temporary!
If what you’re feeling is temporary (meaning, you’re liquid but don’t feel solvent at present), you need to crack open a Bud, flick on the tube, and ride this sucker out. If you’re about to put your kids under a bridge because your company folded up, let’s talk.
Please, let’s talk.
But, no matter what you feel about the concept or efficacy of various bailouts, do not ever, ever, ever allow a worthless piece of scum like this to become the spokesperson for the American spirit.
He’s not even worth the food he would be given for free in prison.
Move, Joe, move far away. I’m sure someone will take you, appreciate you, but get the hell out of my country. Don’t look back, and if you have any like-thinking friends take them with you.
That is all. Now to get my blood pressure back down.
This is a bit of a boutique application, but I have to pass along a recommendation for Virtual CloneDrive. It could definitely save your bacon at some point, especially in this age of drive-less netbooks.
Which, given that I have traded down to the old VAIO notebook, may be an imminent purchase for me. (They’re definitely hot in Turkey, but with the 50%-100% tekno-markup here and the clumsy/terrible localized Turkish keyboard, it’s a smarter call to wait and get one domestically.)
It’s Windows freeware (loopback mounting in the Linux world doesn’t require external software, just some console-foo, and it’s kind of built into every aspect of Mac’s .DMG and .ISO treatment), and it won’t get in your way much.
To summarize its function, if you have or make an ISO disc image of like, say, a DVD or a program install CD, you can make the image file itself look like a physical disc in a drive without having to burn it. This might allow for installing programs off a USB hard drive, especially when the target machine doesn’t have a drive to use.
“Virtual Sheep” just means to make the drive icon in Explorer a cartoon sheep so that the virtual drive doesn’t get mixed up with real drives. Simple and solid, and it allows a maximum of eight drives mounted virtually at once. Very fast.
The installer also didn’t offer me a fun Swahili translator toolbar or a download of OpenOffice, so definitely a plus there.
Sometimes you wonder if the public will eventually cry out for whistleblowers when an insider knows the company is following a strategy that ultimately leads to the toilet.
In the end, we’re just trying to build our big amusement park where stocks return a steady 6% a year and the government guarantees all your loans.
We’re so inured (I have to keep my vocabulary up, since most of our communication these days is restricted to top-500 English words) to these atrocious dollar figures. Billions written down! That means they were on the balance sheet until just now! As assets!
The information economy struggles to put dollar signs on valuable things that aren’t for sale.
From what I know about these hybrid securities, it’s going to be hard to apply regulations to them.
