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Comment Re:Those Were the Days (Score 1) 215

That's easy for you to say if you're not in a class of people who are routinely ridiculed, opinions discounted, sexually harassed, or receiving death and rape threats. Why should being technically adept give anyone a free ride to be an asshole?

Comment Re:Work not necessarily "made for hire" everywhere (Score 1) 113

Since this article is about US copyright, and because Disney died in 1966 before the US switched to life+50, later extended to life+70, the public domain status in the US for no Disney movie created during his lifetime is affected by his death date, only the publication date. They will only stay in copyright longer if Congress extends the term again. It may well be that in Canada (still life+50), some or all of his movies are already in the public domain, or in the EU, they will be PD in 18 years, depending on their definition of authorship, and who else are also considered authors of those films.

Comment Re:SCOTUS knows of "legislative misbehavior" (Score 2) 113

Disney's death has nothing to do with it. All of the Disney movies are works for hire, and have a 95 year copyright term. Unless the term is extended. early Disney cartoon shorts will enter the public domain next year, and the first Mickey Mouse cartoons will be public domain in 2024. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, his first full-length movie will be public domain in 2033. Even if they were not works for hire, the life+70 term limit is only valid for works created after 1975. Anything currently in copyright created between 1923 and 1975 all have a 95 year fixed term limit. Some items created between 1923 and 1963 had their copyright lapse because they were not renewed within 28 years, but that's probably not the case for any of the Disney works.

Comment Re:The key is not getting caught (Score 1) 665

No, you've only claimed that I'm a liar because the items I sourced don't confirm your claims, and then you make up excuses why the point I made that the Clinton Foundation is a legitimate charitable foundation was false. But it's not worth attempting to refute you, because you're willing to make claims and not back them up with sources.

Comment Re:The key is not getting caught (Score 1) 665

You don't need to cherry pick data because you're obviously starting with the conclusion and not bothering to even look at the data.

I don't know why India is building more power plants, but I suspect part of the motivation is politics. Toshiba filed for bankruptcy after buying Westinghouse because of cost overruns in Georgia and SC. The US Department of Energy says that for new energy generation before subsidies wind energy is comparable to natural gas production, solar is about 20% more expensive, and new nuclear and coal plants are about 80% more expensive than wind and natural gas. https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.eia.gov%2Foutlooks%2Faeo%2Fpdf%2Felectricity_generation.pdf (note: had to go to 2015 to get coal).

Comment Re:The key is not getting caught (Score 1) 665

No, you've been listening to the right wing media, because the mainstream media hasn't been making these claims. Take a look at the Clinton Foundations tax filings, like I did, or factcheck.org did, and you'll see that your claim is bullshit. Yes, the Clintons made a boatload of money with speaking engagements, but they take no salary from the foundation, maybe just travel expenses. BTW, by your token, I'm no leftwind wingnut, I voted for Bush in 2000.

From Factcheck.org http://www.factcheck.org/2015/06/where-does-clinton-foundation-money-go/

Asked for some examples of the work it performs itself, the Clinton Foundation listed these:

  • Clinton Development Initiative staff in Africa train rural farmers and help them get access to seeds, equipment and markets for their crops.
  • Clinton Climate Initiative staff help governments in Africa and the Caribbean region with reforestation efforts, and in island nations to help develop renewable energy projects.
  • Staff at the Clinton Health Access Initiative, an independent, affiliated entity, work in dozens of nations to lower the cost of HIV/AIDS medicine, scale up pediatric AIDS treatment and promote treatment of diarrhea through life-saving Zinc/ORS treatment.
  • Clinton Health Matters staff work with local governments and businesses in the United States to develop wellness and physical activity plans.

To bolster its case, CARLY for America noted that the Clinton Foundation spent 12 percent of its revenue on travel and conferences and 20 percent of its revenue on salaries. That’s true. But the Form 990 specifically breaks out those travel, conference and salary expenses that are used for “program service expenses” versus those that are used for management or fundraising purposes.

For example, nearly 77 percent of the $8.4 million spent on travel in 2013 went toward program services; 3.4 percent went to “management and general expenses”; and about 20 percent went to fundraising.

As for conferences, nearly 98 percent of money spent was tabbed as a programming expense. And when it comes to salaries — which includes pension plan contributions, benefits and payroll taxes — about 73 percent went to program service expenses.

The point is that some foundations actually do the charitable activities themselves instead of paying other charities to do that work for them, and the Clinton Foundation is one of them. If you hadn't been listening to the right wing lies, you would have known that instead of propagating the lies. Is it a good, effective charity? I really don't know, but by repeating this nonsense, you're doing a disservice to the 2,000 CF foundation employees who are trying to make a difference.

I'm not a Hilary Clinton fan, and she was a crummy candidate who clearly has spent the last 17 years believing that she deserved to be President someday. If the Democratic party wants to win in 2018 and 2020, they need to start pointing out that trickle down economics has never worked, the upcoming "tax reform" is going to increase the deficit, make the rich richer, the companies will use their tax cuts for things like higher dividends and stock buybacks instead of investing in new equipment and better pay for employees who are not top executives like they did with the 2004 tax amnesty, and that Trump's cabinet is doing stupid things like making energy more expensive by pushing coal and nuclear energy, the EPA is allowing more pollution, the Interior Department is basically letting mining and logging go in to national monuments, forests to do things like strip mining, the Republicans voted to limit abortion, but couldn't pass a children's health insurance bill, the HUD secretary grew up getting HUD benefits but wants to dismantle the program. And when the Democrats make these points, they need to also explain how they're going to do a better job. If they can't do that, they'll lose again, because people like you are believing the lies the Republicans keep repeating.

Comment Re:The key is not getting caught (Score 1) 665

85% of the Clinton Foundation was spent on doing charity work, unlike the Trump Foundation, which was illegally paying Trump legal bills, among other things. The right wing media falsely told you idiots that because only 10%-15% of the Clinton Foundation money went to other charities, so the rest must have gone to the Clintons, and you believed it, instead of checking out the Clinton Foundations own tax filings, which showed that they were spending that money running charitable programs themselves instead of giving it to other charities to spend doing the charity work. You're too clueless or lazy to do the research, and besides, since you already hate the Clintons, they must be doing something sleazy with the money. I have news for you. The Trump Foundation is the sleazy one, it's actually had to pay fines for their misuse of Trump Foundation money, and quite a bit of their "donations to other charities" are just tee times at Trump golf courses, booked at full cost, regardless of how much the other charities actually raised with the donations.

Comment Re: The key is not getting caught (Score 0, Flamebait) 665

The Dems constantly try to dismantle charter schools because their outcomes are worse than public schools, and they also siphon funds away from public schools, bringing their results down too. That's what happened in Michigan when DeVos pushed charter schools, and that's what's going to happen now that she can push her agenda nationwide. http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/betsy-devos-michigan-school-experiment-232399 http://www.freep.com/story/news/education/2017/06/18/charter-schools-profit-performance/393071001/

Comment Re:Hangin's too good for 'em (Score 1) 104

In the mean time, everyone should freeze their credit information at all 4 credit reporting companies (Equifax, Experian, Transunion and Innovis which is more for fraud detection), and when they need to unfreeze their credit information, only unfreeze it at the other companies and never unfreeze it at Equifax. Between lawsuits and being unable to provide credit information to lenders, they'll lose money.

Comment Re:H-1B abuse and Trump (Score 1) 813

It's really that people think that Trump is a hypocrite for offshoring manufacturing, using H2B workers, shafting small businesses by refusing to pay them for services/products delivered, and then declaring that he's for American workers and against companies who offshore manufacturing, use foreign workers, etc. I expect him to take deductions and minimize his taxes. I get that real estate developers can more or less never pay taxes by timing depreciation and new development, and it's been in the tax code pretty much forever. But I don't think Trump is a smart businessman because he's managed to keep most of his assets after filing for bankruptcy 6 times. Smart businessman never file for bankruptcy, because they know how to run successful businesses that don't overextend themselves and can pay off their debts.

Comment Re:H-1B abuse and Trump (Score 1) 813

Let me fix that for you:

Meanwhile, Russia is doing its best to antagonize Hillary, Obama, and Kerry, to the point of directly funding their opposition in Syria with weapons and overt personnel/expertise. If Hillary gets elected, I can virtually guarantee that we will end up in a shooting war with Russia...probably via proxy, possibly even directly.

It's a good thing that Putin's fanboi Trump is going to win the election then?

Comment Re:Outsourcing danger (Score 2) 301

My employer outsourced about 200 people to IBM Global Services about 5 years ago, hiring maybe 30 of them to stay for 2-4 years. About 6 months into the program, he had the gall to stand up at an IT wide meeting and admit that they "didn't get the A-team, they didn't even get the B or C-team, but he would fix it". Two years later, he was gone. We still have IBM and Cognizant at our shop, and they're still not the A-team. Don't get me wrong, some of them are excellent, and most of them are the on-shore team, the off-shore team is always hit-or-miss. I only know of one personal that we've ever managed to "fire" for cluelessness, most of them disappear because they got a better job across the street back in India. The Cognizant folks actually have tried to bring in some modern practices, unlike the IBM group, who couldn't even be bothered to learn to use a newer version of an IBM product (with practically zero differences). When either company brought in "experts" in technologies we are using, they never knew more than our own people did, and often less.

Maybe it's our contracts, but I know of plenty of cases where we've asked for statement of work to do stuff, and the internal folks report that something that ought to take a couple of hours gets padded out to several weeks. If I were a CIO, I'd build my own internal contractor pool before outsourcing to India. With an internal pool, there's more stability and accountability, and you can salt it with people from your company who actually understand the business.

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