Anyone who was proud of america before was just drinking the coolaid. There are things america did that were worth being proud of individually, but soo many more not to. It’s the same idea as idolizing a person. The vast majority of the time they are really a bad person overall. Instead focus on the event or achievement and not the person.

Hypo is does not mean they don’t trigger allergies. Just less.

Sure, but do the odds change constantly with each person buying in? And if so, does that mean somone who bought in at 10 to 1, could end up getting 2 to 1 by the time it pays out?

The thing I struggle with, is how do they manage ensuring thier is a bet on the other side to balance. I mean someone has to make the first bet. I assume you can offer, but if no one or not enough people take the offer then your offer doesn’t conver to a real bet or something? And if that is how it works, say someone puts up money on a significant underdog. There would likely be a lot of interest, probably more than needed to balance the bet. How do they decide who gets the action and who doesn’t?

There are two parts. First, they aren’t as underpaid as most people think in most cases. The union isn’t dumb. When they negotiate they look at the long term. A career teacher (30 to 35 years) can retire at about 55 give or take depending on the district. And they will get something like 80% of thier salary for the rest of thier life. They will also get subsidized health insurance. And in some states, all of that is tax free. That is a ton of money and a ton of security. And for many, they can retire, collect pension, and go get another job at the same time if they want. I make more than double what teachers make best case, and my wife works too for a 6 figure salary. I can’t possibly retire at 55, let alone feel secure doing so. I also have been laid off twice over the last 30 years, where as most teacher don’t have to worry about that after 10 years. Now, I get to take vacation anytime of the year, I can change jobs or move and not mess up my future benefits. I don’t have to deal with parents. Lots of intangible benefits to not being a teacher. But the point is the union ensures those less obvious benefits, which keeps the current salary low. This keeps the optics of drastically underpaid teachers so that the union can still negotiate for more with public sentiment on thier side. So while they are still underpaid, it isn’t as drastic as it would appear.

The other reason is simple. There are a lot of teachers. Like a lot a lot. And schools are generally built to a higher standard of saftey, so they are much more expensive than other building types. All of this adds up to a very high cost. Education is typically one of the largest expenditures for a state budget. Poloticians could dump more money into it, but it isn’t likely to be enough to make a difference that will get them reelected. So they put money other places that will get them votes.

That’s your reasons why.

At this point, many of us are numb to the impending whatever. There is always 6 things happening that shouldn’t be happening (that we know about) and that could upend our lives. And usually there is very little we can do besides yell on the internet.

Lol. Unless you know where to smash, the data is still recoverable. And she is paranoid.

Yeah, it’s a very old one. Iphone 4. It’s been collecting dust for years.

Any idea how to do that if it was say your mother in laws, and she doesn’t remeber any of the related passwords including icloud?

Coed recreational sports team. Lots of them are mostly social with a little bit of sports tossed in. And almost all of them are looking for more players.

Only if they have any interest in people’s long term well being. Which if they really had, they would send them to war.

The vast majority of lawyers don’t work that way. They get paid as they go. The ones who do… aren’t going after your average private person because they don’t have enough money to be worth it. Even 100% probably wouldn’t be enough in these cases. How much do you think they could win from Joe public per case?

I’m not sure you are following my logic. For them to take every person who shares a plex server with people to court would cost an exorbitant amount of money. First they have to find them all, which is non-trivial. We are talking hundreds of thousands here. Then they have to get proof according to local laws. That already requires them to employ experts in each jurisdiction. Then they can send the letters, which have to be tailored based on the jurisdiction, which probably isn’t much, but they have to be sure it is legal to even send it. Some places (though few) it will open them to being sued if not worded correctly. Then to take it to court they will need licensed lawyers in every jurisdiction. The cost would be crazy. And for the cases they win, they won’t get much money because they aren’t sueing companies, they are sueing people.
It’s not that a person would necessarily win in court, they may or may not. But the scale of the expense is soo much higher than the revenue as to make it a very bad financial undertaking.

You don’t have to respond to the letter at all. That’s my point. It has virtually no meaning other then to allow them to say “I told you so” in court. And for that to have any meaning, they would have to show that you knew the letter came from the legit rights owner. Since the name is likely something none of us have actually heard of, you could argue you didn’t think it was legit. But to even get to that point they have to file a suit and pay lawyers and all that. I can send you a cease and desist letter claiming the right to tell you to stop doing anything I want. It’s just a scare tactic. Plenty of companies have been caught sending them when they had no legal right to make the demand. Most pirates know this, and will just ignore it.

You can trick people into paying… but if you are talking people who pirate media, your sucess rate will be pretty low. Legally, cease and desist letters do nothing on thier own other than prove you notified them. Any free defense lawyer would argue that thier client didn’t believe the sender had any right to make the request, and the send provided no legal proof. But again, even ifnthey could get say 100k from each person running one of these. It wouldn’t pay they law firm bills, not even close. It would be a major expense.

Well for starters, those 100k would be spread all over legal jurisdictions, like even different countries. So you would need a representative certified to practice law in each of those jurisdictions. And of course the laws are different, so each case would be different. And the people you are suing have relatively little money to pay in compensation. The number of people needed to pull that off would be so high that the cost would be drastically larger than the potential financial gains. And since the board of directors have a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders, they would have to put a stop to it. The shareholders care little for the long term potential gains of such an enormous expense.

Isn’t that what grad students are for… lol. It’s been a few decades since I wnet to college (in the US). We rarely spoke to our professors. They had grad students as TAs handle most of the student interaction and managment of software tools and such.

Seems like a good way to implement massively distributed piracy. The comapnies can’t possibly make a case against all of them, there are too many. I like it.

This was exactly my first thought. He should be disqualified for many reasons, but that ain’t one of them. Thinking that way is why we have him.

Got any links, they would be interesting to read. I’m not personally sure how to filter my search for credible analysts and what not. But seems like a good thing to learn.