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Crissa
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Post by Crissa » Tue May 04, 2010 11:26 pm

Apparently, BP could have installed a $500,000 device which would have prevented the current oil spill. Norway and Brazil, for instance, require them. The spill, aside from doing irreparable damage to the Gulf, is costing five million dollars per day to attempt to stop it. The rig itself cost $590 million. The company had $16.578 billion dollars in profit last year.
And word on the street is that US VP Cheney may have interceded when the feds decided these should be required of such platforms in 2001.
-Crissa
Last edited by Crissa on Tue May 04, 2010 11:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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RobbyPants
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Post by RobbyPants » Wed May 05, 2010 11:24 am

I could try to say hindsight is 20-20 and all, but given the fact that the rig cost 590 million, a less than 1% investment seems like a pretty good insurance policy.
Wow.
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Murtak
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Post by Murtak » Wed May 05, 2010 11:55 am

> RobbyPants wrote:I could try to say hindsight is 20-20 and all, but given the fact that the rig cost 590 million, a less than 1% investment seems like a pretty good insurance policy.
> Wow.

I'd wager the issue is not how much the gadget costs, but how much oil you can not pump up while installation is underway. Of course they should still have installed it, but I suspect the cost is rather higher when thinking in these terms.
Murtak
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RobbyPants
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Post by RobbyPants » Wed May 05, 2010 1:51 pm

Ah. So rather than just a cost up front, it potentially means less revenue down the road...
Rolled the dice and lost! Too bad for the people on the coast who wouldn't have seen much benefit for that gamble.
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CatharzGodfoot
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Post by CatharzGodfoot » Wed May 05, 2010 6:00 pm

> RobbyPants wrote:Ah. So rather than just a cost up front, it potentially means less revenue down the road...
> Rolled the dice and lost! Too bad for the people on the coast who wouldn't have seen much benefit for that gamble.

Well, in the end BP is going to pay for their mess, right? It's not like we're going to have to Superfund it. Right?
The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor from stealing bread, begging and sleeping under bridges.
-Anatole France
Mount Flamethrower on rear
Drive in reverse
Win Game.
-Josh Kablack
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mean_liar
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Post by mean_liar » Wed May 05, 2010 6:03 pm

I think the upper bound on payment expectations is capped at $75M. If costs run over that, then it'll have to come out of government pockets.
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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Wed May 05, 2010 6:20 pm

> CatharzGodfoot wrote:

> > RobbyPants wrote:Ah. So rather than just a cost up front, it potentially means less revenue down the road...
> > Rolled the dice and lost! Too bad for the people on the coast who wouldn't have seen much benefit for that gamble.

> Well, in the end BP is going to pay for their mess, right? It's not like we're going to have to Superfund it. Right?

Well, BP says that they will pay all "lawful" damage claims. Which as I understand it means that they will wait for people to fucking sue them and then pay whatever they are forced at gun point to pay by the courts of the United States after they are dragged kicking and screaming through the halls of justice.
-Username17
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Maxus
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Post by Maxus » Wed May 05, 2010 6:22 pm

> mean_liar wrote:I think the upper bound on payment expectations is capped at $75M. If costs run over that, then it'll have to come out of government pockets.

On Monday, someone introduced a bill to raise that to $10 Billion
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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Crissa
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Post by Crissa » Wed May 05, 2010 6:32 pm

And even then, Exxon hasn't paid the people injured or killed by the Valdez spill, though it is estimated they've spent about a billion dollars on it.
They're still in court today saying why they shouldn't pay the fines that were levied.
-Crissa
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Gelare
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Post by Gelare » Wed May 05, 2010 6:46 pm

> FrankTrollman wrote:Well, BP says that they will pay all "lawful" damage claims. Which as I understand it means that they will wait for people to fucking sue them and then pay whatever they are forced at gun point to pay by the courts of the United States after they are dragged kicking and screaming through the halls of justice.
> -Username17

Well, obviously. But it wouldn't be any more just for them to pay a slab of money to anyone who comes knocking. I'd hit them up for money if I could, but I have no claim, so clearly I don't deserve their money, and the legal system is how we determine who has a good claim. Although I wouldn't be surprised if there was some non-court, third party arbitration that happens, maybe with the government's involvement.

> Crissa wrote:Apparently, BP could have installed a $500,000 device which would have prevented the current oil spill. Norway and Brazil, for instance, require them.

They did have a failsafe device. It didn't work, obviously, but the one you're talking about could have malfunctioned just as well. At some point there's a limit to how many redundancies it's worth to install in a system, and when all those fail anyway, it's not really fair to say they didn't install enough.
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Crissa
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Post by Crissa » Wed May 05, 2010 9:16 pm

They didn't install the one required of them by the feds in 2001. That one is enough to say they didn't.
-Crissa
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Psychic Robot
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Post by Psychic Robot » Wed May 05, 2010 9:43 pm

P.S. Big business is bad business.
Last edited by Psychic Robot on Wed May 05, 2010 9:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

> Count Arioch wrote:I'm not sure how discussions on whether PR is a terrible person or not is on-topic.

> Ant wrote:

> > Chamomile wrote:Ant, what do we do about Psychic Robot?

> You do not seem to do anything.

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Crissa
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Post by Crissa » Wed May 05, 2010 9:58 pm

Candidate from Florida for Congressional seat advocates racial profiling in television ad for himself. He says in the ad, "I'd have no problem being pulled out of line at the airport" if someone looking like him flew an airplane into a building.
-Crissa
Last edited by Crissa on Wed May 05, 2010 10:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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angelfromanotherpin
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Post by angelfromanotherpin » Wed May 05, 2010 11:08 pm

> Crissa wrote:Candidate from Florida for Congressional seat advocates racial profiling in television ad for himself. He says in the ad, "I'd have no problem being pulled out of line at the airport" if someone looking like him flew an airplane into a building.
> -Crissa

So... did he forget Joseph Stack, or just hope we did? I don't know if he's ignorant or disingenuous, but he's one or the other.
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Maxus
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Post by Maxus » Thu May 06, 2010 5:26 pm

The True Facts about Bottled Water
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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Crissa
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Post by Crissa » Thu May 06, 2010 6:44 pm

That's not news, that's just entertainment.
-Crissa
Last edited by Crissa on Thu May 06, 2010 7:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Crissa
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Post by Crissa » Thu May 06, 2010 11:06 pm

Hey, House Republican Leader John Boehner (Ohio) is against something. It's hardly news, though the news that the FCC will regulate broadband for fair access is pretty heartening. They declined to regulate prices or content, however, saying it's different in those ways from telecommunications.
Next, RNC lies in campaign against Obama and the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent out a blank report card asking voters to rate how they've done on several issues they've done terribly on. Of course, they don't actually tell their constituents what has actually happened in the Senate on those issues.
I know, big surprises all. Actually, I kinda was surprised by the FCC decision. However, I'm a bit confused at how telling broadband providers they can't be throttling programs and users willy-nilly is the same as stopping freedom of speech, but then again, I don't live in winger-world.
-Crissa
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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik » Thu May 06, 2010 11:18 pm

> Crissa wrote:However, I'm a bit confused at how telling broadband providers they can't be throttling programs and users willy-nilly is the same as stopping freedom of speech, but then again, I don't live in winger-world.

The short version is that in crazy right winger world, speech is free iff there are no laws about it whatsoever (unless it's like obscene or something, in which case, you should totally ban it.)
Whereas in sane people land, the point of free speech is to allow everyone to have their say. So when you have a limited commodity, like say, radio bandwidth ranges. Right wingers think that any law effecting what you can say on your radio program or who you have to let talk on your radio program is restricting their speech.
Whereas in the land of the other five supreme court justices, the entire purpose of the FCC is to make sure that the limited commodity of radio waves is not entirely owned by one really rich guy who doesn't let anyone else talk.
Since in point of fact, the entire radio spectrum is owned by one really rich guy, it's easier to make laws so that he has to let other people use parts of it than make laws about who can own what. Because crazy right wingers actually make less of a fuss about laws that say "You have to let your arch nemesis call you an asshat on your own radio station." than ones that say "You have to let your arch nemesis own one half of the radio stations."

> DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.
That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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Crissa
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Post by Crissa » Thu May 06, 2010 11:43 pm

Yeah, the comments conflating free speech with the ability to have an ISP block unsolicited advertisements or saying the FCC will now fine people for cussing like they do to people on TV or the FCC will shut down right-wing websites...
Like, dude, Net Neutrality is about the FCC telling ISPs they're not allowed to shut down right wing web sites. And spam isn't bandwidth allocation.
Ugh.
-Crissa
Also, it was funnier when I had my spouse telling right-wingers to just shut the fuck up. You being all sensible about it is less funny o-o
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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik » Fri May 07, 2010 1:32 am

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.p ... %20luggage

> DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.
That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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CatharzGodfoot
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Post by CatharzGodfoot » Fri May 07, 2010 2:41 am

Many humans are descended from Neanderthals. Keep your eye out for the subtly racist graph.
The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor from stealing bread, begging and sleeping under bridges.
-Anatole France
Mount Flamethrower on rear
Drive in reverse
Win Game.
-Josh Kablack
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Maxus
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Post by Maxus » Fri May 07, 2010 2:43 am

> Crissa wrote:That's not news, that's just entertainment.
> -Crissa

What, no one heard?
A town or two have banned bottled water from being sold inside the towns.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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Surgo
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Post by Surgo » Fri May 07, 2010 2:55 am

> Crissa wrote: It's hardly news, though the news that the FCC will regulate broadband for fair access is pretty heartening. They declined to regulate prices or content, however, saying it's different in those ways from telecommunications.

I'm really afraid of giving the FCC more powers. I'm glad they lost their first court case with Comcast, because it amounted to them telling the public "trust us that we won't do evil with these powers over the internet". Just because they're being good guys now doesn't mean they won't revert to the 1970s again later.
Any powers they're given need to be really, really restricted.
http://www.dnd-wiki.org -- the wiki
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Maxus
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Post by Maxus » Fri May 07, 2010 3:09 am

So, thanks to computer and human error, the stock market finished with a 300-point drop, after recovering six or seven hundred points.
Highlights:
-The Boston Beer Company was worth nothing for a little bit there.
-An online auction house went from $33 a share to $100,000 a share, making it worth more than the US and China put together.
-Wall Street nulled all trades done in about a twenty-minute span.
It's suspected that a guy put $16 billion into a computer, rather than $16 million like he should have. Whoops.
Last edited by Maxus on Fri May 07, 2010 3:17 am, edited 1 time in total.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
Top

K
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Post by K » Fri May 07, 2010 4:35 am

> FrankTrollman wrote:

> > CatharzGodfoot wrote:

> > > RobbyPants wrote:Ah. So rather than just a cost up front, it potentially means less revenue down the road...
> > > Rolled the dice and lost! Too bad for the people on the coast who wouldn't have seen much benefit for that gamble.

> > Well, in the end BP is going to pay for their mess, right? It's not like we're going to have to Superfund it. Right?

> Well, BP says that they will pay all "lawful" damage claims. Which as I understand it means that they will wait for people to fucking sue them and then pay whatever they are forced at gun point to pay by the courts of the United States after they are dragged kicking and screaming through the halls of justice.
> -Username17

After ten years of litigation. Don't forget that part.
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