Marketing - by - Insult
-
@tster said:
2. Car insurance is not mandated by federal law.
3. Car insurance is not mandated by any law. If you don't want insurance you are free to not have it, you just can't drive on the roads.
4. Home owners insurance is not mandated by federal (or any other level) law either. I honestly have no idea what you are talking about, but perhaps if you have an FHA loan then the government actually requires you to have insurance. Then again, FHA loans are basically the government loaning you money, so they are just acting as most banks do when they require you to have home owners insurance for the duration of the mortgage.
You are absolutely right, I said federal law when it is actually mandated by the local states. I should have just said government (which could imply local governments instead of federal).
Stating that there is no law that requires you to have insurance is a folly though. If you own a vehicle (in New Mexico, Texas and Florida, I don't know about the other 47 states), whether it is on the road or not, you have to have insurance. You must have home owners insurance in the state of Florida (once again, I don't know about the other states on this issue). Therefore, since there is no mass transport reaching where I live, and I like having a house, I have to drive to work. Don't get all stupid and say "you could ride a bike... heheheh" because I'm not riding 20 fucking miles to work. Therefore, it Florida state law that I have both home owners insurance, since I do own a house, and car insurance. Therefore, since the state government is mandating that I carry this insurance, they should ensure that the companies are not completely ripping us off and taking advantage of us. Which they are doing a fairly good job of here.
@tster said:
5. I would never force someone to move from anywhere to anywhere else (unless they have broken the law in some way in which case I would move them to prison). That violates their human rights I believe.
But you're saying that people shouldn't live in Florida, or anywhere natural distasters can occur, otherwise we should be subject to insurance companies charging way more than is reasonable.
@tster said:
6. Here is basically what you are arguing. Person A offers to sell their product/service for a given price ($X). Events change and that product service drastically increases in price for person A to produce. So person A changes his price to $Y. Now there are a whole bunch of people offering similar services, and a fuckton of people buying those services. Those people could tell person A to fuck himself and his service and go use a competitor. Instead those people use the force of government (people with guns and prisons) to tell person A, "you can't sell the fruits of your labor for the price you want, you have to sell it at the price we want you to. If you don't we will take you from your family and put you in prison." How do you not see that as a violation of the most basic human right (the ownership of self and your own labor)?
How can you not see that local governments are making insurance manditory, and the insurance companies are trying to take advantage of that by charging outrageous prices? Should we get into the whole 'loan shark' concept here as well? The government realized that allowing people to charge 300% interest was wrong and placed regulations on that, don't you see a corolation?
@tster said:
7. I never said any kind of insurance should be mandated by government. You seem to assume that I think it should, but I don't.
I never said you did, I am saying that it should be. Try reading my post again.
@tster said:
8. I have no idea what you are talking about the insurance industry is raking in huge profits. AIG alone lost $100 billion last year. Lots of other insurance companies posted loses (Allstate, Progressive, CNA, Fidelity). I am completely dumbfounded by your assertion that insurance is the most profitable sector of the economy. The only one hit harder was probably investment banking. The technology, energy and healthcare sectors are all posting pretty good profits. Perhaps you better do some actual research before blindly lashing out at companies you hate.
Ahh yes, you are confusing the auto insurance industry with the banking industry. A common mistake for somebody who doesn't read any newspapers. AIG didn't lose 100 Billion in auto insurance, they lost it in the Credit Default Swap, which was an insurance designed to help cover losses on Subprime mortgages.
Allstate recorded losses? Really? From their quarterly earnings press release:
"“We generated $297 million of operating income and $389 million of net income despite a 17 percent increase in catastrophe losses compared to the second quarter of last year. In combination with strong investment results, this increased book value by $5.22 per share, or 23 percent, from the first quarter,” said Wilson. “Customer loyalty improved, reflecting increases in customer satisfaction, likelihood to renew and willingness to recommend Allstate. Our reinvention efforts are further improving our competitive position with Your Choice Auto® and Allstate Blue® raising auto new business sales.”"
So, they had an increase of 17% catastrophe losses and still posted profits. Doesn't sound like a loss to me.
-
@amischiefr said:
If you own a vehicle (in New Mexico, Texas and Florida, I don't know about the other 47 states), whether it is on the road or not, you have to have insurance.
Not in Virginia.
-
@morbiuswilters said:
@tster said:
@amischiefr said:
I hate Government intervention as much as the next guy, but I wish they would put a cap on these increases. At least here in florida the governor told Allstate to fuck off when they wanted to nearly double their home owners insurance premiums.
A) Your a fuckin' commie.B) If you don't want to pay high home owners insurance, don't live where hurricanes come through every year.
+1, Obvious.
Really, fuck Floridians who somehow think they are entitled to having the rest of us pay to rebuild their house every 3 years because they're too fucking stupid to move out of a place where God and Nature are doing their best to murder them.
I can't speak for Florida, but I'm in south Louisiana and I often hear the same complaint directed at us. It's completely misguided to say that we should just leave. Your complaints about economic fairness are incorrect as well.
People have to live here because of the oil business. If we had to stage the offshore oil business out of Baton Rouge, this would completely change the economics of domestic oil production. We would become even more dependent on foreign oil, and even less technically skilled. Our manufacturing and industrial base would erode even further. To a lesser extent, the same argument can be made about the fishing industry as well.
And yes, we are "entitled" to more than we've gotten. The majority of hurricane damage in Louisiana over the last 40 years or so occured due to a single levee failure. This resulted from documented fraud and incompetence by employees of the federal government, i.e. we bought dirt and engineering services from YOUR government and were defrauded as to their quality.
Besides that, the federal government takes a percentage of the gross oil revenue attributable to drilling of the coast of Lousiana. The state government gets $0, per federal law, because there's nothing left after dealing with the needs of the majority of the country.
I can't speak for Florida. I'm not sure they even allow offshore drilling. But when people complain about how Louisiana or New Orleans is getting undeserved money, it makes me cringe. And in a way, you included us in your comment. Certainly, this is a place "where God and Nature are doing their best to murder" us.
What I'm saying is that this doesn't necessarily mean that it makes sense to leave, or that we're idiots, or expect a handout. All we really need is for some dirt to be piled up in strategically chosen locations, and your damn Yankee Army can't seem to figure it out. I wish my job (as an ignorant Southerner) were as easy as collecting money and piling up dirt.
By the way, it's been 4 years since Katrina, and this place (outside the Yankee tourist parts) looks about like Sarajevo on a bad day. The poverty down here is incredible: the bombed out buildings, the rat attacks, etc. Enjoy your bratwurst and hope the tables never turn.
-
@amischiefr said:
@tster said:
8. I have no idea what you are talking about the insurance industry is raking in huge profits. AIG alone lost $100 billion last year. Lots of other insurance companies posted loses (Allstate, Progressive, CNA, Fidelity). I am completely dumbfounded by your assertion that insurance is the most profitable sector of the economy. The only one hit harder was probably investment banking. The technology, energy and healthcare sectors are all posting pretty good profits. Perhaps you better do some actual research before blindly lashing out at companies you hate.
Ahh yes, you are confusing the auto insurance industry with the banking industry. A common mistake for somebody who doesn't read any newspapers. AIG didn't lose 100 Billion in auto insurance, they lost it in the Credit Default Swap, which was an insurance designed to help cover losses on Subprime mortgages.
Allstate recorded losses? Really? From their quarterly earnings press release:
"“We generated $297 million of operating income and $389 million of net income despite a 17 percent increase in catastrophe losses compared to the second quarter of last year. In combination with strong investment results, this increased book value by $5.22 per share, or 23 percent, from the first quarter,” said Wilson. “Customer loyalty improved, reflecting increases in customer satisfaction, likelihood to renew and willingness to recommend Allstate. Our reinvention efforts are further improving our competitive position with Your Choice Auto® and Allstate Blue® raising auto new business sales.”"
So, they had an increase of 17% catastrophe losses and still posted profits. Doesn't sound like a loss to me.
I was talking about their annual profit/loss from 2008 (specified by the words "last year").
Here is some data:
Allstate Corp (ALL) Stock Price & News - Google Finance
Get the latest Allstate Corp (ALL) real-time quote, historical performance, charts, and other financial information to help you make more informed trading and investment decisions.
Note that yes, last quarter they made a profit, but that follows 4 quarters of losses (one of them 4 times greater than the profit posted in Q2 2009). Are you just against companies making money? Do you agree with Obama that profit is evil?
-
@bstorer said:
My favorite is the one for Education Connection, mostly because at about 24 seconds in, they have a blue-screen fail and you can see the background text through the polka dots on her shorts.
Too bad we couldn't see more than just background text through her shorts.
-
@beau29 said:
People have to live here because of the oil business. If we had to stage the offshore oil business out of Baton Rouge, this would completely change the economics of domestic oil production. We would become even more dependent on foreign oil, and even less technically skilled. Our manufacturing and industrial base would erode even further. To a lesser extent, the same argument can be made about the fishing industry as well.
Then pay for it yourself. If the oil business is at all profitable (and it will be) it can offset the costs of having to rebuild every time the city floods. If the cost of rebuilding is more than what the oil market will bear, the industry will move elsewhere, there's no need to tax the rest of us just to keep rebuilding your crappy city.
@beau29 said:
And yes, we are "entitled" to more than we've gotten. The majority of hurricane damage in Louisiana over the last 40 years or so occured due to a single levee failure. This resulted from documented fraud and incompetence by employees of the federal government, i.e. we bought dirt and engineering services from YOUR government and were defrauded as to their quality.
1) It's your government as well. If you are stupid enough to buy your levees from the Feds then I have a public healthcare option and a bridge to sell you. Mind you, it's one of the thousands of Federally-maintained bridges that are in imminent need of repair lest they collapse, but that hasn't stopped you in the past
2) I completely agree that the Feds did a crap job of handling the levees and shouldn't have anything to do with them in the first place, but the only reason they took over was because the damn things collapsed in the 60s when you were in charge of them. What's more, you ignore the billions in Federal money that was spent to "repair" the levees. Blaming the Army Corps of Engineers is pretty lame, though, the budget cuts to the reconstruction project came from Washington. Still, when it was clear the project that was supposed to be completed in a couple of years still wasn't done 40 years later did anyone in New Orleans think "Hmm, I better move out of this shithole before I drown!"? And it's going to happen again: the current rebuilding project will drag on forever and use low-quality materials and a decade from now you will be demanding even more money when you are shocked--shocked--that the fucking thing fell apart, yet again.
@beau29 said:Besides that, the federal government takes a percentage of the gross oil revenue attributable to drilling of the coast of Lousiana. The state government gets $0, per federal law, because there's nothing left after dealing with the needs of the majority of the country.
So the solution, clearly, is to keep living there and letting the same government run things into the ground and just whine about how you don't get enough money on an Internet forum. This is why your city keeps drowning. Also, I'm fairly sure Louisiana is still a sinkhole for Federal cash; it takes in more than it generates in revenue. The rest of us have to deal with the Feds taking a cut of everything and then slowly distributing a portion of it back to us in the form of mediocre services. And yet, I'm not stupid enough to work and play in the shadows of a half-finished government project that is the only thing separating me, my loved ones and all of our belongings from billions of gallons of brackish, polluted water.
@beau29 said:
What I'm saying is that this doesn't necessarily mean that it makes sense to leave, or that we're idiots, or expect a handout. All we really need is for some dirt to be piled up in strategically chosen locations, and your damn Yankee Army can't seem to figure it out.
But you are expecting a handout. You're expecting us to pay our Army to pile up dirt for you when there are better things they could be doing. What's more, it's not because the Army can't "figure it out", but because the funding keeps getting cut by Congress, which is precisely what happened in the 40 years leading up to Katrina. And you know why it got cut? Because the Democrats who ran Congress realized that nobody was going to give a shit if New Orleans had good levees or not until it was too late and by then they would be retired or, at worst, they would just have to make a few speeches about how compassionate they are and the majority of dumbfucks in New Orleans would still vote them back into office until the day they died and would then mourn their death while the media kissed their deceased asses and made grand pronouncements about the "legacy" of their "dynasty" and completely whitewashed history in favor of pathetic hero worship.
@beau29 said:
I wish my job (as an ignorant Southerner) were as easy as collecting money and piling up dirt.
Well, I'm glad you at least realize you are ignorant. The funny thing is, you could have made money "piling up dirt" but when left to your own (meaning Louisiana) devices you did the same thing the Feds did and let the fucking levees go unmaintained until they failed. It takes a special level of corruption and incompetence to do no better than the Feds but New Orleans has that down pat.
@beau29 said:
By the way, it's been 4 years since Katrina, and this place (outside the Yankee tourist parts) looks about like Sarajevo on a bad day. The poverty down here is incredible: the bombed out buildings, the rat attacks, etc.
I'm well aware of how shitty New Orleans is, thank you. I was there about a month after Katrina and then a few months after that. Blaming your problems on everyone else is so very mature, though. It's not like any other city has ever had to deal with crime, poverty, corruption and natural disaster. No, it's best to just sit around whining about how the Federal government isn't doing enough to care for you until the next time the city floods. Then, while your police are looting the stores or running away pissing themselves and your mayor is running around acting like a jabbering idiot and your governor is completely stunned that a city below sea level might need some kind of disaster preparedness and your fellow citizens are shooting at rescue workers or looting everything in sight you can go on CNN and tell everyone how the Federal government should have been there to protect you from your own stupid self. And even when the other 49 states show compassion and send in food and troops and evacuate you and help rebuild parts of the city you can still bitch about how nobody is doing enough to help you and how this is the fault of everyone except for you.
@beau29 said:
Enjoy your bratwurst and hope the tables never turn.
WTF?
The sad thing is, I actually like New Orleans. I think it's a shame that the citizens of one of America's most unique and historical cities repeatedly elected shysters and frauds who lined their pockets and did little to maintain a functioning government and who were so inept that their "Plan B" was to rely on the fucking Congress. However, that's the fault of the citizens and leaders of Louisiana and New Orleans and none of the blame lies on the rest of us. If New Orleans was invaded and flattened by a foreign army, then I can see blaming the Feds because national defense is one of their fundamental duties (although states, cities and individuals should be prepared to defend themselves should it come down to it--this country won its freedom via the sacrifices of citizen militias).
-
Could be worse, could be California which asks for federal funding every time they have a fire-- that is Every. Freakin'. Year. For decades. Wildfires are not emergencies when they've happened every year for 20 years, figure it the hell out already, CA!
To be fair, though, Katrina was so expensive that it was probably worth at least a dozen California wildfires.
What pisses me off most is living in a responsible, self-reliant, state that only asks for federal emergency funds when we have actual emergencies. States that abuse the federal government for constant influxes of disaster funds for easily-predicted "disasters" drive me crazy. Sure, Washington State sucks in many fundamental ways, but at least we can manage our own problems without crying to daddy the vast majority of the time. And we do this crazy thing called "disaster planning."
-
Actually some dutch dyke experts made quite a good profit piling up your dirt again, after katrina.
Myself living below sea level. I and everyone else here pays about ~50 euro a year to a government agencie that makes sure our dykes actually keep the water out.I know it sounds dodgy, giving your government money, but it beats the shit out of drowning.
-
@morbiuswilters said:
You can also see the website through her shorts later in the commercial, but it isn't very easy to spot, especially on YouTube.@bstorer said:
My favorite is the one for Education Connection, mostly because at about 24 seconds in, they have a blue-screen fail and you can see the background text through the polka dots on her shorts.
Too bad we couldn't see more than just background text through her shorts.
-
@morbiuswilters said:
If New Orleans was invaded and flattened by a foreign army, then I can see blaming the Feds because national defense is one of their fundamental duties (although states, cities and individuals should be prepared to defend themselves should it come down to it--this country won its freedom via the sacrifices of citizen militias).
I wouldn't worry too much, there are plenty of cajuns and rednecks around. If anybody attacked, they'd be plenty of pickup trucks, deer rifles and shotguns coming out of all the cracks, even pouring in from neighboring states.
-
@amischiefr said:
Stating that there is no law that requires you to have insurance is a folly though. If you own a vehicle (in New Mexico, Texas and Florida, I don't know about the other 47 states), whether it is on the road or not, you have to have insurance. You must have home owners insurance in the state of Florida (once again, I don't know about the other states on this issue). Therefore, since there is no mass transport reaching where I live, and I like having a house, I have to drive to work. Don't get all stupid and say "you could ride a bike... heheheh" because I'm not riding 20 fucking miles to work. Therefore, it Florida state law that I have both home owners insurance, since I do own a house, and car insurance. Therefore, since the state government is mandating that I carry this insurance, they should ensure that the companies are not completely ripping us off and taking advantage of us. Which they are doing a fairly good job of here.
Actually, whenever auto insurance is mandatory it's also heavily regulated, and in those areas (like here, in Ontario), insurance companies do not make a cent on auto insurance. They make profits on the whole, yes - but you don't know where those profits come from. I know several people in the business, at different companies, in different divisions, and they all say the same thing: auto insurance is written at a loss, it has to be paid for either by investment (risky, obviously) or by the "profits" from other areas.
In addition to the losses, the high rates themselves can usually be traced back to some kind of government regulation - for example, not allowing the underwriters to limit liability and forcing absurdly high payouts in cases where there shouldn't be any payout at all. You should read your policy sometime; if you slip on a patch of ice while you are getting into your car, or in some cases ANY car, you can claim thousands of dollars in damages. It's people like you who want something for nothing (or at least for cheap) and pandering vote-hungry politicians that make the rates so high in the first place.
Oh, and insurance companies aren't really all that different from banks. They are effectively holding your premiums in trust and trying to invest that money for a higher return. Their investment returns are their profits. Some mutual-fund type insurers actually refund any excess in collections, but there rarely is an excess. Those huge profits you see are from buying dump trucks full of distressed stock in March.
-
@stratos said:
Actually some dutch dyke experts made quite a good profit piling up your dirt again, after katrina.
Hmm, I hadn't heard of that, but it was probably more for show than anything. The Army Corps of Engineers is still in the process of rebuilding the levees and they're once again stuck where they were in the 40 years leading up to Katrina: the levees hold the water out but aren't durable to survive much stress but since nobody is dying right now it's become a low priority. Oh, and the Army Corps of Engineers got caught using newspaper to stuff in between supports of the levees instead of the foam they were supposed to.
@stratos said:
Myself living below sea level. I and everyone else here pays about ~50 euro a year to a government agencie that makes sure our dykes actually keep the water out.I know it sounds dodgy, giving your government money, but it beats the shit out of drowning.
There's a pretty significant difference between here and there, though. For one, the Dutch system was completely rebuilt from scratch in the 50s after you had a major disaster of your own. From the get-go it was engineered to survive a 1-in-10,000 year storm. By comparison, the levees of New Orleans were estimated to survive a 1-in-100 year storm. Both systems comprise approximately 350 miles although there are clearly differences between environment: it's unlikely the North Sea is going to spawn a Category 5 hurricane any time soon. There's also the economic aspect: the Netherlands has 16.5 million people and a GDP of $870 billion whereas all of Louisiana has a mere 4.4 million people and around $170 billion in economic production.
Most of the problem, though, was just inept government. The government of New Orleans has always been corrupt-as-hell and over the last century the local governments simply let the levees fall into a sad state. The Federal government took over some of the system in the 60s after a major hurricane destroyed parts of the levees and flooded New Orleans. However, a government hundreds of miles away that has hundreds of millions of other citizens to look after simply isn't going to be effective at getting the job done. The Framers of the US Constitution realized that, which is why they kept the role of the Federal government small, well-defined and limited to things which affected all states. Common sense used to dictate the same thing, essentially that the city, county/parish and state governments were responsible for maintaining local infrastructure and for handling disaster-preparedness and recovery. The local governments failed catastrophically and the Feds eventually stepped in but anyone who blames them for not doing enough is blind to the fact that if New Orleans and Louisiana weren't run by idiots then the Feds never would have had to help out at all.
I'm not an anti-government reactionary, far from it. Maintenance of the levee system and preparation for the worst were government duties, just not of the Federal government. If one of the bridges I cross everyday collapses tomorrow (and I survive) I'm not going to start screaming that Obama and Pelosi failed to adequately protect me or that they "don't care about white people" or anything retarded like that. That's because I actually paid attention in school and I know that the responsibility for maintaining local infrastructure lies with the local governments, in this case most likely the highway department of Massachusetts.
-
@morbiuswilters said:
@stratos said:
Actually some dutch dyke experts made quite a good profit piling up your dirt again, after katrina.
Hmm, I hadn't heard of that, but it was probably more for show than anything. The Army Corps of Engineers is still in the process of rebuilding the levees and they're once again stuck where they were in the 40 years leading up to Katrina: the levees hold the water out but aren't durable to survive much stress but since nobody is dying right now it's become a low priority. Oh, and the Army Corps of Engineers got caught using newspaper to stuff in between supports of the levees instead of the foam they were supposed to.
While I congratulate the stupidity of those or that engineer that though newspaper would be good enough to stop a flood. It's pretty much a given that if something is built or repaired that has to do with water either the dutch or the japanese will be involved. We simply have specialist companies that deal with that kind of stuff.
The dutch company was of course hired by the army corps of eng.
http://www.infrasite.net/news/news_article.php?ID_nieuwsberichten=4062&language=en
@morbiuswilters said:
..sensible reply..
Well I was actually just trolling a bit, our system did cost a few billion, and is, I believe, considered to be one of the world wonders in engineering. So quite the unfair comparison. Even worse, like you already noted, we had our own little flood, which made lousianna look like peanuts. (something about building cities below sea level, kind of helps the flooding)
However, ironicly enough, after that flood we actually went to lousianna to study how they handled the water.
Also, what you say about local government is sort of the same here. While most mayor infrastructure is handled on a national level (AFAIK), waterworks are an exception to that rule. The organisation called waterschap (Water board), is a provincial deal, so the upkeep of dykes and I believe also the delta works are paid and executed on a regional level. This is mostly because of history though, because sort of similair to the USA, the netherlands before it became the netherlands was made up out of self-governed provinces/city states. (as was most of europe really)
Which means, that I, living in zeeland (the province that houses the delta works and basically has the most water really), pay a hell of a lot more then someone who lives in the east of our lands. Which is fair, and besides the upkeep isn't that bad in terms of money.
However, I do think the aftermath of lousianna could have been handled better. I am sure that the local government dropped the ball, but it is rather shamefull that the most powerful nation on earth has had 4 years and apparently large parts of lousianna still look like the flood happened yesterday. It's just a bit silly.
-
@stratos said:
Turns out that most people in the United States could give two fucks about what happens to that area. The most common thing I hear when I talk about it with people is, "stupid fucks should have learned not to live in a bowl below sea level."However, I do think the aftermath of lousianna could have been handled better. I am sure that the local government dropped the ball, but it is rather shamefull that the most powerful nation on earth has had 4 years and apparently large parts of lousianna still look like the flood happened yesterday. It's just a bit silly.
Anyways, the governments here are now run on votes purchased with pork. That's why here in Massachusetts they just repaved 495 less than a year after they had last repaved it, yet if you go out to Worcester the roads are barely drivable. The powerful people in the state congress live within the 495 belt and they know that the people that vote work in the high tech industries along 495 and 95, while the poor people who don't vote live in the shit hole Worcester.
Same thing at the federal level. One of Ted Kennedy's legacies is that he brought home ridiculous amounts of bacon. While he has been one of the most damaging senators in this country's history, I can see why people would vote him back in. His seniority, name, and political skill were unrivaled in getting federal money flowing to his state.
-
@tster said:
Turns out that most people in the United States could give two fucks about what happens to that area. The most common thing I hear when I talk about it with people is, "stupid fucks should have learned not to live in a bowl below sea level."
Well to be honest, it is a bit silly if you think about it. But heck, people tend to do silly things like that. Beats living next to a volcano anyway.
@tster said:
Anyways, the governments here are now run on votes purchased with pork. That's why here in Massachusetts they just repaved 495 less than a year after they had last repaved it, yet if you go out to Worcester the roads are barely drivable. The powerful people in the state congress live within the 495 belt and they know that the people that vote work in the high tech industries along 495 and 95, while the poor people who don't vote live in the shit hole Worcester.
I'm reasonably sure there is some kind of life lesson in there somewhere. Like, that voting matters or something.
-
@tster said:
I was talking about their annual profit/loss from 2008 (specified by the words "last year").
Here is some data:
Allstate Corp (ALL) Stock Price & News - Google Finance
Get the latest Allstate Corp (ALL) real-time quote, historical performance, charts, and other financial information to help you make more informed trading and investment decisions.
Note that yes, last quarter they made a profit, but that follows 4 quarters of losses (one of them 4 times greater than the profit posted in Q2 2009). Are you just against companies making money? Do you agree with Obama that profit is evil?
Allstate tried to increase their rates in 2006, before the market crashed. EVERYBODY (well not everybody, but almost) lost money last year, duh.
What is with your "i'ld like to suck George Bush's dick" type of questions? <sarcasm> Oh yes, I absolutely HATE it when companies turn a profit. I mean, everybody should just be giving everything they have to those less fortunate, then God would accept us in his holey grace</sarcasm>
Get your head out of your ass. I didn't vote for the dick. I have no problem with a company turning a profit, but I do have a problem with companies that try to rape their customers.
-
@Zagyg said:
I have to say I'm a little surprised by these replies. Admittedly "blackmail" is extreme and semantically inaccurate (but possibly just used for exaggerative comic effect), but surely you do agree that effectively saying "Hello, unless you use our service very soon whether you need to or not, we are going to make it harder for you to use us in the future by removing details that cost us virtually nothing to maintain." is pretty fucking stupid? It wouldn't endear them to me to be sure.
If the account isn't active then keeping personal data related to it may be a violation of UK law (the Data Protection Act 1998, to be specific).
@tster said:
Point being, you can make random unrelated comparrisons all day, but in the end it probably was an online startup desperate to generate some extra revenue.
Truprint were definitely around in the 1980s. I remember posting off Kodak 110 films to them for processing.
-
@amischiefr said:
EVERYBODY (well not everybody, but almost) lost money last year, duh.
The technology, energy, and healthcare industries did pretty well. Seriously, do I have to post everything twice?
As far as your sarcasm about profits, I can only go by what you say, and it sounds like you are saying insurance companies are wrong to have a profit.
-
Also the storage industry did a lot better then normal. A lot of base resource companies overproduced.
-
@bstorer said:
They have their long-term drawbacks, too: they're more difficult to heat and cool
Stone and brick transfer heat more slowly than wood; they are cheaper to heat and cool (assuming that's what you meant by "difficult").
-
@Aaron said:
Actually, whenever auto insurance is mandatory it's also heavily regulated, and in those areas (like here, in Ontario), insurance companies do not make a cent on auto insurance. They make profits on the whole, yes - but you don't know where those profits come from. I know several people in the business, at different companies, in different divisions, and they all say the same thing: auto insurance is written at a loss, it has to be paid for either by investment (risky, obviously) or by the "profits" from other areas.
Canada might be different, but here in the USA it's clearly not the case because the insurance companies spend millions on advertising for their car insurance. Why try to get customers for a losing venture?
-
@operagost said:
Masonry has an extremely low R-value: approximately 0.8 for brick, 1.1 for CMU. A fairly standard exterior wood-framed wall, on the other hand, has an R-value over 12.@bstorer said:
They have their long-term drawbacks, too: they're more difficult to heat and cool
Stone and brick transfer heat more slowly than wood; they are cheaper to heat and cool (assuming that's what you meant by "difficult").
-
@bstorer said:
R-value is not what is important when talking about heating brick & mortar ("B&M") houses.@operagost said:
Masonry has an extremely low R-value: approximately 0.8 for brick, 1.1 for CMU. A fairly standard exterior wood-framed wall, on the other hand, has an R-value over 12.@bstorer said:
They have their long-term drawbacks, too: they're more difficult to heat and cool
Stone and brick transfer heat more slowly than wood; they are cheaper to heat and cool (assuming that's what you meant by "difficult").
The main advantage of B&M is that it has a high heat capacity. This means that the first time you have to heat your house (at the beginning of the fall), it takes some time and effort to heat up your house because the walls absorbs the heat. But once the walls are at room temperature, you just need to replace the heat that has escaped through the outside walls. This loss of heat is usually solved by putting a layer of insulation on the outside of the walls which supplies the desired high R-value, allowing you to keep the heat inside the walls and thus inside your house.
In winter your house doesn't easily cool down, in summer your house doesn't easily overheat. B&M walls act as a buffer that softens the cold and warm peaks of the day.
-
@bjolling said:
In winter your house doesn't easily cool down, in summer your house doesn't easily overheat. B&M walls act as a buffer that softens the cold and warm peaks of the day.
This might be good if you have mild summers and winters. But if you live in a place where it stays below 20 degrees (F) or above 90 degrees (F) for a long time it means jack shit.
The other problem with this is that it means your programmable thermostats are less useful. Turning off the A/C during the day while your gone and at night while you are asleep will allow the stones to store up heat up then when you are home your A/C is fighting the bricks to keep cool. In the end wooden houses I think allow for more insulation to be used which will be more effective. Then again, I'm not a home builder, so I'm basing all this on what I've read (which isn't much) so don't listen to me.
-
@bjolling said:
For a thermal mass to have the proper effect in the summer, there must be a significant period where the temperature outside the home falls low enough to allow the heat to flow out of the masonry. This isn't applicable in the hurricane alleys of the U.S. After the initial heating period (which people in Louisiana probably call "April"), a masonry wall will provide a steady flow of heat into the home, which has to be combatted.@bstorer said:
R-value is not what is important when talking about heating brick & mortar ("B&M") houses.@operagost said:
Masonry has an extremely low R-value: approximately 0.8 for brick, 1.1 for CMU. A fairly standard exterior wood-framed wall, on the other hand, has an R-value over 12.@bstorer said:
They have their long-term drawbacks, too: they're more difficult to heat and cool
Stone and brick transfer heat more slowly than wood; they are cheaper to heat and cool (assuming that's what you meant by "difficult").
The main advantage of B&M is that it has a high heat capacity. This means that the first time you have to heat your house (at the beginning of the fall), it takes some time and effort to heat up your house because the walls absorbs the heat. But once the walls are at room temperature, you just need to replace the heat that has escaped through the outside walls.
@bjolling said:
This loss of heat is usually solved by putting a layer of insulation on the outside of the walls which supplies the desired high R-value, allowing you to keep the heat inside the walls and thus inside your house.
I would love to know where you see this sort of construction on masonry residential buildings. Frankly, most masonry homes I've seen don't have any sort of insulation, inside or out. Modern homes are likely to have faced batt insulation in the furring gap, but no exterior insulation.
-
@bstorer said:
After the initial heating period (which people in Louisiana probably call "April")...
Try "March". I remember it being 90+ and hellishly humid in mid-April some years ago.
And having lived in a place with cold winters and hot summers, I can tell you brick-only construction doesn't hold back heat for shit. It wasn't insulated (but as you point out, most aren't) and even with the furnace running non-stop we a bevy of space heaters pointed directly at us just to keep from freezing. Of course, the floor was poured concrete with a thin subfloor and that crap carpet that has no pile, so that didn't help. Running the A/C non-stop made it no cooler than just sticking a fan in the window. Luckily I moved out at the end of May so I never had to endure the real summer months.
-
~99% of the houses here are made of stone, and all modern houses have insulation layers between the walls. I think they might even be putting in special air nowadays, but i'm not sure about that.
However since ~99% of the houses here are made of stone. Stone rules! wood sucks!
-
@stratos said:
~99% of the houses here are made of stone, and all modern houses have insulation layers between the walls. I think they might even be putting in special air nowadays, but i'm not sure about that.
However since ~99% of the houses here are made of stone. Stone rules! wood sucks!
The Netherlands don't get as hot as the southern United States (highs from 100 to 110 F) or as cold as the northern United States (lows from -10 to 10 F)
-
@bstorer said:
@bjolling said:
I was talking about cavity walls which are quite common in the UK, Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany and the north of France. I used to have a map indicating where they are commonly used but it got lost somewhere with the rest of my notes from university. I'd say it is a useful construction in our climate where usual temperatures are ranging from a minimum of -5°C in winter to a maximum of 40°C in summer. Inside there are the load-bearing walls, wrapped in insulation, protected from rain by a thin wall of bricks or just by exterior plaster.This loss of heat is usually solved by putting a layer of insulation on the outside of the walls which supplies the desired high R-value, allowing you to keep the heat inside the walls and thus inside your house.
I would love to know where you see this sort of construction on masonry residential buildings. Frankly, most maat sonry homes I've seen don't have any sort of insulation, inside or out. Modern homes are likely to have faced batt insulation in the furring gap, but no exterior insulation.In a properly executed and insulated cavity wall, there is very little heat flow. In summer the heat can't enter the house, because it cannot get easily past the insulation on the outside of the loadbearing wall. The heat that does pass, is first absorbed by the masonry and only released into the house hours later. The thermal mass of the walls ensures that the peak of heat transfer is more gently distributed. Instead of having a high 1-hour peak of heating up fast to 28°C, you'll have a 4-hour peak of heating up slowly to 24°C. The amount of heat that enters the house obviously is the same in both cases, but the latter is buffered.
To reduce the amount of heat transfer, you need to increase the insulation inside the cavity. The "passive" houses that are getting popular over here, have up to 30cm of PUR in the cavity. Friends of mine with such a house pay next to nothing for heating and don't even have AC.
-
@morbiuswilters said:
@bstorer said:
After the initial heating period (which people in Louisiana probably call "April")...
Try "March". I remember it being 90+ and hellishly humid in mid-April some years ago.And having lived in a place with cold winters and hot summers, I can tell you brick-only construction doesn't hold back heat for shit. It wasn't insulated (but as you point out, most aren't) and even with the furnace running non-stop we a bevy of space heaters pointed directly at us just to keep from freezing. Of course, the floor was poured concrete with a thin subfloor and that crap carpet that has no pile, so that didn't help. Running the A/C non-stop made it no cooler than just sticking a fan in the window. Luckily I moved out at the end of May so I never had to endure the real summer months.
I'm currently renovating such a house. We've put insulation in the roof (biggest bang for buck as the roof is a big surface pointing directly to coldest area of the sky), replaced the windows with highly insulated glass panes, poured new concrete floors on top of 7cm of PUR insulation, installed a ventilation system that recuperates heat by warming-up incoming cold air using the heat of the extracted warm air. Already our heating bill has gone down by 35% to 40%. This summer I never needed my AC as opposed to the summers before... and we all know about global warming :-)
The only thing left to do is put insulation on the outside of the exterior walls and finish it off with a nicely colored exterior plaster. I could still make a small gain by installing blinds on the outside of the windows. It'll be good as good as new and I will have halved our energy bill and doubled the value of the house.
-
@bjolling said:
Inside there are the load-bearing walls, wrapped in insulation, protected from rain by a thin wall of bricks or just by exterior plaster.
[i]pardon me for the thread-raising[/i]In a properly executed and insulated cavity wall, there is very little heat flow. In summer the heat can't enter the house, because it cannot get easily past the insulation on the outside of the loadbearing wall. The heat that does pass, is first absorbed by the masonry and only released into the house hours later. The thermal mass of the walls ensures that the peak of heat transfer is more gently distributed. Instead of having a high 1-hour peak of heating up fast to 28°C, you'll have a 4-hour peak of heating up slowly to 24°C. The amount of heat that enters the house obviously is the same in both cases, but the latter is buffered.
To reduce the amount of heat transfer, you need to increase the insulation inside the cavity. The "passive" houses that are getting popular over here, have up to 30cm of PUR in the cavity. Friends of mine with such a house pay next to nothing for heating and don't even have AC.
The type of wall you're describing above is actually used here in the US too. I know specifically that it's used for sure in the colloquially named Bible Belt. I can't say about the rest of the country. However, 30cm of insulation is quite a lot, and I doubt we use that much. Of course, I've seen a lot of people using blown insulation now, and I'm told that it's about 40% more compact than more traditional insulation, so perhaps the 6 or so inches I've seen used at the outside is comparable to ... ? 20cm ? (yeah, that's not 40%, my point is that I don't know but I'm discussing what I've seen firsthand in construction).
The house is built as per a standard stick-built house, and then a set of mortar stand-outs are used to anchor the masonry to the house, and the house is built with a gap between the internal and external walls. In retrospect, I think someone earlier in the thread was trying to indicate this concept. I won't arse myself to go back and look at who tho, that wouldn't be TDWTF behaviour. This allows for some of the thermal benefits of masonry, some of the wall-protective benefits of not using "just plywood", and still gives some of the thermal benefits of dead-air heat-buffer systems.
And as someone who lives in Houston, one of those Hurricane cities, I can promise you that temperatures of 45C in summer SUCK.
-
@morbiuswilters said:
Then pay for it yourself. If the oil business is at all profitable (and it will be) it can offset the costs of having to rebuild every time the city floods. If the cost of rebuilding is more than what the oil market will bear, the industry will move elsewhere, there's no need to tax the rest of us just to keep rebuilding your crappy city.
Louisiana is just a staging area for the oil business, not that different from Nigeria. The profits certainly do not get re-invested back into the State.
Besides that, one huge reason were so vulnerable down here is that the oil companies have turned so much of the swamp into open canal. They've been allowed to do this based on the same free market, laissez-faire ideology you seem to espouse. To me it seems obvious that some sort of government intervention into this free market is warranted. This is just basic economics- an example of an "externality" almost as obvious as the canonical pig-farm-next-door story (paraphrasing into WTF-ese, "The pig put foot. Grunt. The pig disgusting. The government move pig. ") Perhaps the oil companies should be taxed to pay for repairing the damage. But ultimately that's not very different in effect from just having the federal government foot the bill.
@morbiuswilters said:
when left to your own (meaning Louisiana) devices you did the same thing the Feds did and let the fucking levees go unmaintained until they failed. It takes a special level of corruption and incompetence to do no better than the Feds but New Orleans has that down pat.
What are you referring to? I am not aware of any other levee failure. Every storm prior to Katrina came, killed some people, caused major wind damage and brief flooding, and then left. The levees always held. If, as you seem to imply, at some point in the past someone other than the Army Corps of Engineers was maintaining the levees, then I think they must have done a fairly good job.
-
@beau29 said:
Louisiana is just a staging area for the oil business, not that different from Nigeria. The profits certainly do not get re-invested back into the State.
Besides that, one huge reason were so vulnerable down here is that the oil companies have turned so much of the swamp into open canal. They've been allowed to do this based on the same free market, laissez-faire ideology you seem to espouse. To me it seems obvious that some sort of government intervention into this free market is warranted. This is just basic economics- an example of an "externality" almost as obvious as the canonical pig-farm-next-door story (paraphrasing into WTF-ese, "The pig put foot. Grunt. The pig disgusting. The government move pig. ") Perhaps the oil companies should be taxed to pay for repairing the damage. But ultimately that's not very different in effect from just having the federal government foot the bill.
Everything you've said is stupid and has nothing to do with the levees not being kept up, which is the core problem here. You also seem to know almost nothing about the oil industry.
@beau29 said:
What are you referring to? I am not aware of any other levee failure. Every storm prior to Katrina came, killed some people, caused major wind damage and brief flooding, and then left. The levees always held. If, as you seem to imply, at some point in the past someone other than the Army Corps of Engineers was maintaining the levees, then I think they must have done a fairly good job.
I left enough clues that it should have been easy for you to find, if you weren't a retarded troll. Hurricane Betsy destroyed the levees. Please try to educate yourself the tiniest bit before you start spewing shit out of your mouth in the presence of adults. Thanks.
