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Comment: Re:Does anyone oppose this? (Score 1) 94

by drinkypoo (#47444311) Attached to: Fighting Climate Change With Trade

Since when have protective tariffs been "efficient"?

If we required accounting of emissions, and not simply of currency units, then there would be no need for tariffs to address the issue of the hidden environmental costs. They can eventually be translated into economic costs, but they also affect quality of life — you can assign economic costs to that as well, but you'll hardly tell the whole story.

When you buy goods made somewhere with inadequate pollution controls, many others have to pay part of your bill. My only problem with the whole idea is that any tariffs should be used specifically for bioremediation, and my prediction is that they largely won't be.

Comment: Re:Silly season much (Score 1) 86

by drinkypoo (#47444245) Attached to: Chinese Couple Sells Children To Support Online Game Addiction

My favorite thing about free to pay games is that so many games (FtP or otherwise) are only really fun during the buildup phase, and then they get a bit samey. You can go through all that without actually spending any money. You lose the time either way. Then you move on to the next game. Along the way, if you're feeling generous, you might file some bug reports. That is an awful lot like actual work, however.

Comment: Did not view images, but you only need a skirt (Score 1, Offtopic) 151

by drinkypoo (#47442935) Attached to: Rocket Scientist Designs "Flare" Pot That Cooks Food 40% Faster



+ - Utility wants $17,500 refund after failure to scrub negative search results-> 2

Submitted by mpicpp
mpicpp (3454017) writes "Seattle City Light worked really hard to quash 2008 article, may sue Brand.com.

Seattle’s publicly-owned electrical utility, City Light, is now demanding a refund for the $17,500 that it paid to Brand.com in a botched effort to boost the online reputation of its highly-paid chief executive, Jorge Carrasco.

Brand.com "enhances online branding and clears negatives by blanketing search results with positive content" in an attempt to counteract unwanted search engine results. City Light signed a contract with the company in October 2013 and extended it in February 2014. The contracts authorized payments of up to $47,500.

Hamilton said that he first raised the issue of the utility’s online reputation when he was interviewing for the chief of staff job in early 2013.

“All I saw were negative stories about storms, outages and pay increases and I raised it as a concern during that interview,” he said. “And then after I started, [CEO Jorge Carrasco] and I discussed what we could do to more accurately represent the utility and what the utility is all about, because we didn't feel it was well represented online.”

Thus, the Brand.com contract. City Light says that it only ever thought Brand.com would help it place legitimate material in legitimate outlets—talking up some of the positive changes that have taken place at City Light during Carrasco's tenure. Instead, it appears to have received mostly bogus blog posts."

Link to Original Source

Comment: Re: Not France vs US (Score 1) 244

Yes, competition is good for the consumer, which is why France wants to protect competition in the marketplace.

But that's not what they're doing. They're trying to suppress the competition. The competition is online, which is more efficient than having many unrelated bookstores. France wants to pretend to live in the past, while using modern technology against its people. French SWAT members (well, the equivalent) wear masks so they cannot be recognized. Yeah, it's a democracy. Right.

Comment: Re:There are better than Apple's (Score 1, Funny) 110

I find it annoying that despite the existence of common devices which are "better" that the "best" is still considered to be Apple's.

Congratulations, you have just lived down to your nickname, and it has led you to whine about Apple's popularity — the only reason why everything is compared to Apple.

Comment: Re:Why are the number of cabs [artificially] limit (Score 1) 86

by drinkypoo (#47440129) Attached to: Lyft's New York Launch Halted By Restraining Order

Strictly speaking, I don't need a PC to stay alive and capable of working. That means the PC is a luxury; I have one because at some point of my life, I had spare income. That, in turn, is an inefficiency - I could had undercut other workers by asking for less.

Sure, if your only goal is efficiency. But if it is, you're boring.

Comment: Re:that's not the FAA's job (Score 1) 186

by drinkypoo (#47438015) Attached to: FAA Pressures Coldwell, Other Realtors To Stop Using Drone Footage

That means that if you want to shoot down low-flying Amazon delivery drones, you should be able to do that.

Well, no. Not unless you can account for ballistics, and the drop zone for your projectiles. But perhaps you should be permitted to use a tethered net launcher.

Likewise, if you want to fly your own drone to take pictures of your own property, you should be able to do that too as long as you stay below 1000ft.

Or any public property. Whether the restrictions on line-of-sight are reasonable is a whole other discussion (my thought is "maybe") but public lands belong to all of us. As always, the thing must be operated in a manner which does not represent a realistic risk to others.

Comment: Re:New York has commissions for everything (Score 0, Offtopic) 86

by drinkypoo (#47437233) Attached to: Lyft's New York Launch Halted By Restraining Order

ahhhh so *thats* why Texans are so fucking fat.

No. No it is not. It's because they have amazing food down there. In California, 9/10ths of all restaurants are total fucking shit food with total fucking shit service. I can outcook them any and every day of the week, and I do, and I have no formal training whatsoever. In Texas, 9/10ths of all restaurants are at least basically competent. I think it's because Texans will tell you just what they think of you, and all the incompetents have fled for California, or committed suicide.

It's also because it's stupid hot, and you can't go outside.

Put the two together and you have a lot of driving from restaurant to restaurant with precious little fat-burning in between. That's what happened to me, anyway. Gained 100 lbs in a year and a half. The weight's off now, but ugh.

If you couldn't step outside without tripping over a chicken fried steak, you'd be fat, too.

Comment: Re:Why are the number of cabs [artificially] limit (Score 2) 86

by drinkypoo (#47437221) Attached to: Lyft's New York Launch Halted By Restraining Order

1) Do you really want two-ton land missiles driven by desperate people who are driven to cut corners to stay competitive?

You mean like taxicab drivers? No. We should do away with them immediately.

More generally, as you noted, a competitive market is a swim-or-sink situation. That means profit margins will get razor-thin. That sounds awesome until you realize that wages are also a form of profits.

So your argument against permitting people to hire their services is that it will threaten others' wages? Congratulations, you just cast your vote for no progress ever. Please move back into a cave, and give up your PC.
