“According to the RIAA, the Pirate Bay has stolen about 46 times more dollars than actually exist on Earth.”

If you can't beat a dead horse, join him.

flynn23 wrote:
Jesus Fucking Christ. How many times do we have to go through this? They don't make crummy cars! For 2008, JD Power ranked Chrysler, Jeep, and Dodge 2 out of 5 stars for OVERALL INITIAL QUALITY (that's quality off of the line, not durability or resale value). You know who else ranked the same? Saab (GM), Mini (BMW), and Scion (Toyota). Hardly "crummy" brands. You know who ranked higher by one? BMW, Mercury (dead), Hummer (dead), Jaguar (dead), and Volkswagon, the marque that every "kill Detroit!" mofo likes to cite as the type of cars we should build in the US. The only brand to get 5/5 was Porsche. The next closest were all luxury brands like MB, Lexus, and even Acura didn't make 4/5.

I hate to break it to you, but JD Power means absolutely jack. Getting paid by the companies you review is bullshit, and even Consumer Reports won't allow reference to them. Which means Detroit couldn't even buy their way into JD Power they're so bad. So, let's veer around bogus rating standards and get some objective information.

Speaking of CR, they do a lovely review of the ACTUAL quality of American cars.

"a quarter of GM models are still well below average in reliability"

"Chrysler trails the pack. Almost two-thirds of its products rate below average for reliability. The redesigned 2008 Chrysler Town & Country and Dodge Grand Caravan minivans earned low scores, as did the Chrysler Sebring V6 and Dodge Avenger sedans and the Jeep Liberty SUV. The Sebring Convertible has the worst score: 283 percent worse than average. The only above-average models are the Dodge Caliber hatchback and Jeep Patriot SUV.

But, suppose you said to hell with getting your money's worth, and saunter over to The Insurance Institute of Highway Safety to check out the safest cars. You'd find that your Sebring from just last year is a veritable death trap.

One thing those unreliable, unsafe American cars have going for them is their mileage. Almost all of their tiny cars get decent ratings, which is too bad since long before the wheels fall off at 50,000 miles you've probably died in a fiery wreck.

Finally, brand loyalty is strong with American cars, but instead of capitalizing on that to innovate and be market leaders, they resist any improvements in fuel economy for large cars and safety and emissions standards for all cars. Despite evidence to the contrary in Japan, Europe, and even the ... [ Read More (0.1k in body) ]

RE: Chrysler shuts down all production - Dec. 17, 2008

Read this. Start at page 11.

Some excerpts:

NOURIEL ROUBINI: ...essentially, regulators were asleep at the wheel. You know, the ideology in Washington for the last few years has been one of self-regulation of financial market, it means no regulation, of relying on market discipline, but when there is euphoria, mania, and irrational exuberance, there is really no market discipline, overreliance on these internal risk management models, but as the previous CEO of Citigroup, Chuck Prince, said, “When the music is playing you’ve got to dance,” and nobody is listening to the internal risk managers and everybody is taking too much risk and then reliance on rating agencies that had major conflicts of interests because they were being paid by those people they were supposed to be rating.

India, China, Brazil, Russia, emerging markets, not just those, those in Asia, in Latin America, in Africa, in emerging Europe. And the trouble is when there is a severe recession in the United States, it’s painful in U.S., people lose jobs, but you have unemployment benefit, you have a welfare net, but if there is a severe recession in Africa, that’s a difference between being able to live and starve...

JEFFREY SACHS: But we had general view, leave things alone, we don’t have to pay taxes, we don’t have to look after our infrastructure, we don’t have to look after our poor, we don’t have to look after our health system, so it’s not completely a coincidence that we face big problems in so many areas, not only the financial markets.

All of this pessimism is building my optimism, I have to say. I think that two things are important to emphasize. One is we remain, by far, the most productive and flexible and technologically advanced economy in the world. This housing bubble didn’t end that. The mismanagement of this miserable administration didn’t end that. The lack of focus of what we ought to be doing on climate change and all the rest. We invented hybrid technology; Japan capitalized on it. We invented so many of the technologies that will be needed for the future that we’re not deploying right now because we have no strategy.

And I think it’s important for also of us to understand, this city there’s no doubt about it, but in our country there is a lot of mistake—we’ve been told such nonsense for so long in this country about what happens if you charge taxes or if you have public health care or if you do other things…the terrible truth is that, because of this slide, the U.S. now ranks twenty-fifth in the world in life expectancy and infant mortality rates. Can you imagine what we have allowed to happen here, this kind of slide, whereas countries like Sweden or Norway or Denmark…have vibrant market economies, but they take care of their babies so they don’t die. And that’s very straightforward to do, because the technologies are quite wonderful if people are protected and have a way to do that.

I think the issue for the extreme poor is really when we’re going to realize that their fate and our fate are intertwined, not through a financial crisis but through our common security and this is going to require a different vision of how the world fits together that I think can come soon and quickly and is absolutely vital.

It's an exciting and terrifying time to be alive.

-janelane

Can The Economy Be Saved?

It's not so much that there's something special about founders as that there's something missing in the lives of employees.

An obstacle downstream propagates upstream. If you're not allowed to implement new ideas, you stop having them. And vice versa: when you can do whatever you want, you have more ideas about what to do. So working for yourself makes your brain more powerful in the same way a low-restriction exhaust system makes an engine more powerful.

This is why grad school was so much better than work is now. Then, I get to pick projects, manage and engineer them myself, and do my own marketing. Now, I do one little piece of nothing on a project which will probably get re-engineered by my manager next week.

And, of course, there was more drinking then. :-)

-janelane, working stiff

You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - The Bush administration announced new fuel economy rules Tuesday that require improved mileage for the sport/utility vehicles and other light trucks that have captured a majority of U.S. auto sales.

Speaking from Atlanta, Department of Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta and Jeffrey Runge, the current administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said that under the new plan, the light truck segment will be broken into six different categories based on weight and vehicle type, with the smallest vehicles forced to get better mileage than larger ones.

ARRGGGG!!!! This only encourages them to make LARGER FUCKING VEHICLES!!!! {head explodes}

-janelane, big business asshole

CNN.com - New mileage rules require only slight improvement - Aug 23, 2005