GOP debate .. winners ... losers
 

On Thu, 29 Oct 2015 20:40:46 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

I suspect the made in China outlet strips you saw at Lowe's are probably
fine, quality-wise, and I'll bet they are UL approved.

The problem with China is not quality, it is quality control. A lot of
items get loose that are defective, whether they are copies of good
products or just factory rejects that get mixed back into the supply
chain along the way.

"Listing marks" are quite frequently counterfeited too.

A big company like Lowes might be more careful than mom and pop but it
still happens. If you see something at a flea market on a mom and pop
dollar store, the U/L label is almost always bogus.

GOP debate .. winners ... losers
 

On Thu, 29 Oct 2015 21:37:50 -0400,
wrote:

On Thu, 29 Oct 2015 20:19:02 -0400, wrote:

If we had not broken up the phone company we would not have an
internet and if that shot was not fired across IBM's bow we would not
have the PC as we know it.

===

The old Bell System phone companies fought successfull for years to
keep other devices from attaching to their wires. Those were the days
when a 1200 baud modem was considered high speed and cost over a
thousand dollars. Only the most visionary could concieve of an
internet like structure even though a lot of the technology came out
of Bell Labs.

The problem was that without the breaking up of Ma Bell, Hayes would
have never been able to sell a cheap modem to the public.


IBM was not forced into the PC business by the threat of anti trust
however.

The anti trust threat assured the PC was open architecture hardware
and unbundled software. Without everything would be like Apple and
innovation would have stopped with the Lisa.

That threat had far more impact on mainframe hardware and
software. IBM's PC was more of a response to the possible loss of
account control posed by the Apple II computer and the VisiCalc
spreadsheet application.

You are right
Visicalc was on the PC-1 (1980) and was the first killer app for
business PCs. It did not take long to push Apple out of the way in
offices because the open architecture hardware and software made
innovation blossom

IBM marketing reps were walking into
customer offices, seeing the proliferation of Apple 2s, spreadsheets,
word processors, etc., and recognizing the threat to their business
model and customer relationships. In the end they lost that segment
of the business anyway but not before the Intel/Microsoft platform had
become an industry standard.

The big difference was IBM was selling integrated systems where your
desktop PC was connected to your mainframe.

And Hilliary Clinton is a proven liar and she has blood on her hands over her refusal to increase security in Benghazi.

GOP debate .. winners ... losers
 

On 10/30/15 2:05 AM, RGrew176 wrote:
And Hilliary Clinton is a proven liar and she has blood on her hands
over her refusal to increase security in Benghazi.





Eight Congressional hearings, including mostly adversarial,
prosecutorial ones, such as the one in which Mrs. Clinton just
testified, brought forth no evidence of that, but, hey, when you live in
the right-wing bubble, facts don't matter, eh?

GOP debate .. winners ... losers
 

On Friday, October 30, 2015 at 6:47:26 AM UTC-4, Keyser Söze wrote:
On 10/30/15 2:05 AM, RGrew176 wrote:
And Hilliary Clinton is a proven liar and she has blood on her hands
over her refusal to increase security in Benghazi.





Eight Congressional hearings, including mostly adversarial,
prosecutorial ones, such as the one in which Mrs. Clinton just
testified, brought forth no evidence of that, but, hey, when you live in
the right-wing bubble, facts don't matter, eh?

"There are disagreements about whether State acted reasonably, but that it didn't honor requests for additional security is established fact," said Georgetown University adjunct assistant professor Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, who is also a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which focuses on foreign policy and national security.

The State Department has acknowledged it rejected requests to provide more security personnel in Libya. It also acknowledged rejecting a request to erect guard towers at the Benghazi mission, but notes that a number of physical security upgrades, such as the installation of concrete barriers to block unused gates, were made during 2012.

The State Department's own Accountability Review Board concluded that the number of diplomatic security staff in Benghazi in the months leading up to the attacks was inadequate "despite repeated requests" from the Benghazi mission and the embassy in Tripoli for additional staffing.

The Benghazi facility had been projected to have five security agents and there had been multiple requests that five be placed there. But in the nine months before the attacks, the facility had a full complement of five agents on only 23 days.

After the State Department's security staff in Washington rejected the repeated requests, the post became resigned to not having the full complement of five agents and stopped making the requests, the review board found.

A bipartisan report by the Senate Intelligence Committee also found that the State Department headquarters did not grant Stevens' requests for more security personnel.

-------------

On. Her. Watch. Eh?

GOP debate .. winners ... losers
 

On Fri, 30 Oct 2015 02:33:01 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

Besides, UL is a safety rating, not a quality rating. An item can be UL approved and still be cheaply made.

Exactly. The NRTL "Listing" only says that it will burn up safely
(fire contained in the enclosure), not that it won't burn up.

GOP debate .. winners ... losers
 

On Fri, 30 Oct 2015 11:20:29 -0500, Boating All Out
wrote:

Sure, blame HRC for UN Resolution 1973.

The UN is the US (and the 4 other super members), Why don't you blame
the UN for Iraq too if you think not. That was the result of a UN
resolution too.

GOP debate .. winners ... losers
 

On Fri, 30 Oct 2015 12:42:55 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

I seem to recall discussions during the hearing of the overthrow of
Gaddafi. I guess I've forgotten what "the plan" was to fill the power
vacuum in Iraq after the Bush/Cheney war.

*That* was the biggest error made by Bush and his administration. They
didn't anticipate a power vacuum. They planned and called for free
elections allowing the people of Iraq to democratically choose their
leadership like the rest of the civilized, free world.

That is the flaw in our thinking. We tend to assume these 3d world
countries are "civilized" and just waiting for a Jeffersonian
democracy to be offered to them.
They are ruled by dictators because that is the only form of
government that can control them. Without that single point of
control, they quickly dissolve into a warring rabble of feuding tribes
and cults with 1000 year old conflicts.

If the west would just leave them alone to kill each other, they would
leave us alone. You notice, we don't see a lot of terrorism here
coming from central Africa. That is because we are not spending a lot
of time there meddling in their civil wars. They are more interested
in "death to that guy down the road" than "death to America".

GOP debate .. winners ... losers
 

On 10/30/2015 1:05 PM, wrote:
On Fri, 30 Oct 2015 12:42:55 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

I seem to recall discussions during the hearing of the overthrow of
Gaddafi. I guess I've forgotten what "the plan" was to fill the power
vacuum in Iraq after the Bush/Cheney war.

*That* was the biggest error made by Bush and his administration. They
didn't anticipate a power vacuum. They planned and called for free
elections allowing the people of Iraq to democratically choose their
leadership like the rest of the civilized, free world.

That is the flaw in our thinking. We tend to assume these 3d world
countries are "civilized" and just waiting for a Jeffersonian
democracy to be offered to them.
They are ruled by dictators because that is the only form of
government that can control them. Without that single point of
control, they quickly dissolve into a warring rabble of feuding tribes
and cults with 1000 year old conflicts.

If the west would just leave them alone to kill each other, they would
leave us alone. You notice, we don't see a lot of terrorism here
coming from central Africa. That is because we are not spending a lot
of time there meddling in their civil wars. They are more interested
in "death to that guy down the road" than "death to America".



Problem is, historically the USA does not tend to "ignore" barbaric
dictatorships that kill hundreds or thousands of their own citizens
in order to maintain power. It's a damned if you do, damned if you
don't situation. It doesn't sit well in people's minds when we ignore
pleas for help by people being systematically exterminated.

GOP debate .. winners ... losers
 

On 10/30/2015 1:17 PM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 10/30/2015 1:05 PM, wrote:
On Fri, 30 Oct 2015 12:42:55 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

I seem to recall discussions during the hearing of the overthrow of
Gaddafi. I guess I've forgotten what "the plan" was to fill the power
vacuum in Iraq after the Bush/Cheney war.

*That* was the biggest error made by Bush and his administration. They
didn't anticipate a power vacuum. They planned and called for free
elections allowing the people of Iraq to democratically choose their
leadership like the rest of the civilized, free world.

That is the flaw in our thinking. We tend to assume these 3d world
countries are "civilized" and just waiting for a Jeffersonian
democracy to be offered to them.
They are ruled by dictators because that is the only form of
government that can control them. Without that single point of
control, they quickly dissolve into a warring rabble of feuding tribes
and cults with 1000 year old conflicts.

If the west would just leave them alone to kill each other, they would
leave us alone. You notice, we don't see a lot of terrorism here
coming from central Africa. That is because we are not spending a lot
of time there meddling in their civil wars. They are more interested
in "death to that guy down the road" than "death to America".



Problem is, historically the USA does not tend to "ignore" barbaric
dictatorships that kill hundreds or thousands of their own citizens
in order to maintain power. It's a damned if you do, damned if you
don't situation. It doesn't sit well in people's minds when we ignore
pleas for help by people being systematically exterminated.


We need to take baby steps. Teach them to use toilet paper first.