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Showing content with the highest reputation on 06/13/2013 in all areas
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I would like to be on the sidelines or standing directly over "the bottom" watching him take a "HUGE" finger or fingers. I'd break down and lick a hot hole {if clean and sweet smelling} prior to the insertions of the finger/s! {And no, I'm not sick; I have developed a keen interest in a hot ass to titillate; I like to hear the recipient squirm and pant and moan!}3 points
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A few months ago I've heard Rio's sauna 117 raised their admission price from R$ 35 to R$ 45 AT ONCE! That's nearly 30% in a country where the inflation rate is around 6% a year. I was very curious to find out how this steep raise played with the customers. Nobody in this forum that reported on 117 in the last few months mentioned any big change at least regarding attendance so I assumed that it didn't have much of an effect. Tonight I managed to go there for the first time since the admission went up and I was in shock. Less than half the number of customers, same with the number of boys. Tuesdays are their biggest night (free suites) and the waiting time for a suite at peak hour (8 to 9 PM) that used to be around an hour or even 90 minutes on specially crowded nights was no more than 10 to 15 minutes tonight. Before or after the peak time no waiting at all. They also raised the price they charge the boys to work there from R$ 10 to R$ 20. The effect was so dramatic that they had to lower back to R$10 on the weakest nights (Wed, Thursd and Sun) and kept at R$ 20 on the other nights. The outcome: The boys that do less business don't go on the R$ 20 nights anymore. The quality of the boys remains unchanged but the number is noticeable lower. Monik (the owner) the most savvy person in this business apparently made a huge mistake raising the prices all over at once. Thursdays Wednesday and Sundays that used to be hit or miss nights are now totally miss, Tuesday still a hit boywise, but the house is no longer alive as it use to be, the dressing area looked particularly depressing. She is definitely making less money with the new higher prices. It would be interesting if the members that go on a regular basis would keep this forum informed on this situation, after all quite a few members will travel to Brazil in the next few months. In additional news on the same subject, despite Monik opening her flanks, Junior (owner of Point 202) did not take any advantage of the situation, immediatelly raised the prices by the same amount, and the higher prices probably will be substantially harder on him. A boy at 117 told me that he was at Point last week and there were more people on stage than in the audience. Junior makes all the mistakes he possibly can. Let's see how long the position of also-run is a sustainable one. Meio-Mundo seemed to play smart and kept the old prices (R$ 35). Hard to know the outcome cause not many people that goes to 117 also goes to MM. Hopefully they will come out winners and make the facilities improvements they badly need. Also regarding the subject of price increase: the timing could not be worse. Brazilian economy is not doing so well anymore. The numbers go from bad to horrible, finally catching up with the rest of the world. The dollar is very favorable to tourist: $2.15 on the official market, $2.30 on the black. O Globo newspaper had as a headline just a couple days ago: "Personal Consumption Way Down- The End of an Era"1 point
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I liked the Royal Rio Copacabana back in 2006 or 07; I stayed in a large room on an upper floor and thought the price was equal to the services rendered. To date I use apartments which are less pricey and more private because I DO NOT like what the hotels are charging visitors now {Thanks for checking; I did this earlier when I thought I would be in Brasil next month and the next. I checked hotel rates; then I went to two sites which has apartments for rent; there is a special thread to post and use for apartments, plus TomCal and a few others have given us heads up regarding the rental agencies.}1 point
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If you can write Brasilian Portuguese and have email access, why not write Monik an email or hand a nice note to her or have someone slip it to her the next time you're there. ...appreciate your information on the price change. ...had planned to be in Rio during the latter days of next month and the first week or two of the next, but because of health reasons, I did not pursue the trip any farther than getting my lodging together in Salvador {Bahia}, Brazil the first city of my visit to Brasil.1 point
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Drones for Christ by David Swanson | July 2013 How Jerry Falwell's Liberty U.—the world's largest Christian university—became an evangelist for drone warfare. LIBERTY UNIVERSITY in Lynchburg, Va., was founded by televangelist Jerry Falwell. Its publications carry the slogan “Training Champions for Christ since 1971.” Some of those champions are now being trained to pilot armed drones, and others to pilot more traditional aircraft, in U.S. wars. For Christ. Liberty bills itself as “one of America’s top military-friendly schools.” It trains chaplains for the various branches of the military. And it trains pilots in its School of Aeronautics (SOA)—pilots who go up in planes and drone pilots who sit behind desks wearing pilot suits. The SOA, with more than 600 students, is not seen on campus, as it has recently moved to a building adjacent to Lynchburg Regional Airport. Liberty’s campus looks new and attractive, large enough for some 12,000 students, swarming with blue campus buses, and heavy on sports facilities for the Liberty Flames. A campus bookstore prominently displays Resilient Warriors, a book by Associate Vice President for Military Outreach Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Robert F. Dees. There’s new construction everywhere you look: a $50 million library, a baseball stadium, new dorms, a tiny year-round artificial ski slope on the top of a hill. In fact, Liberty is sitting on more than $1 billion in net assets. The major source of Liberty’s money is online education. There are some 60,000 Liberty students you don’t see on campus, because they study via the internet. They also make Liberty the largest university in Virginia, the fourth largest online university anywhere, and the largest Christian university in the world. More than 23,000 online students are in the military—twice as many as students who live on campus. Liberty offers extra financial support to veterans and those on active duty, allowing them to be credited for knowledge learned in the military and to study online from a war zone. Liberty has been turning out “Christ-centered aviators” for a decade. In fall 2011, Liberty added a concentration in Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS, aka drones), making it one of the first handful of schools to do this. Now at least 14 universities and colleges in the U.S. have permits from the Federal Aviation Administration to fly drones, and many institutions, including community colleges, offer drone training. If one chooses to concentrate studies on piloting drones, the load will include a half dozen courses on “intelligence.” Liberty students can also pick up a minor in strategic intelligence and take courses in terrorism and counterterrorism. (Liberty’s school of government brags that Newt Gingrich helped develop its course on “American exceptionalism.”) Currently, the vast percentage of drone pilots are training for war, but that is widely expected to change in the next few years. Congress has instructed the FAA to integrate drones into U.S. domestic airspace by September 2015. Liberty’s School of Aeronautics has six faculty members, five of whom have spent 15 to 30 years in the military—four in the Air Force, one in the Navy. Dave Young, dean of the SOA, spent 29 years in the Air Force and retired as a brigadier general. Last summer, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell appointed Young to serve on the Virginia Aviation Board. “[Drones] are going to be a viable part of the aviation industry,” Young said in a Liberty Journal article last summer. “It offers a grand opportunity for employment during a time when college graduates are entering a highly competitive job market.” He also acknowledged that the technology could be misused. “Our mission is to produce graduates who are not only skilled, but who are going to go out in the world as strong Christians,” Young said. John Marselus, SOA associate dean, concurred. “We want to have graduates serving the Lord in this area of aviation,” he said. I exchanged emails with Young about Liberty’s drone program. He described it as a four-year degree program in Unmanned Aerial Systems and said that it includes “flying UAS vehicles in an authorized and controlled environment.” But, he added, “the focus on the program is not only on actual drone operations, but the command and control aspect, management of resources, and the various missions that UAS are capable of supporting.” The Virginia legislature recently became the first in the nation to impose a moratorium on drone use—lasting two years. That might have been a concern for Liberty. But before he would sign the bill, Gov. McDonnell made some exceptions to the drone ban, including emphasizing quite strongly that educational drone programs, including Liberty’s, would not be affected. “We very much appreciate the governor’s continuing support of the development of the Unmanned Aerial Systems presence in the Commonwealth,” Young wrote to me. “Particularly as it is a rather contentious issue due to the lack of understanding concerning the missions UAS can perform that aid the public at a much reduced cost.” I asked Young about drones’ most common use today, namely war fighting. “Is that kind of drone use Christian?” I asked. “I can only offer my perspective as a Christian,” he replied. “UAS are like any other aerial vehicle that can be used for a variety of missions including law enforcement, aerial surveillance, search and rescue, and crop spraying as well as for military reasons. As a former military combat aviator, I believe that UAS can be employed just like a manned aircraft and that there should not be a distinction between the two.” A brochure promoting the Liberty School of Aeronautics features a photo of Dan McCready, First Lieutenant USAF, who is quoted, “Since I was very young, I’ve dreamed about becoming a pilot in the U.S. Air Force. Liberty’s aviation program gave me the opportunity to make my dream a reality, helping me to realize that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Tim Carentz obtained his undergraduate degree from Liberty, works for the Air Force now, and is pursuing a master’s in divinity from Liberty. Carentz told me he could not speak for the Air Force, but as a Liberty student and a pastor he believes “it’s biblical to have a national pride.” “I believe authorities are put in place with the approval of God,” Carentz assured me. “If he didn’t want them there, he could easily remove them.” He also discussed how good members of the military can be and how there are opportunities for evangelism. “If there were no Christians in the military, how would they instill love and discipline?” he said. “There are people pulled right from the ghetto who have nothing and who come into the military. And maybe their first supervisor is a Christian, and he takes them to the foot of the cross and leads them to Christianity, and they share that with their family, and you save generations.” At Liberty, the military is considered a tool for Christian missionaries. But what, I asked, about killing people with drones? “I can understand why some support [them], and I can understand why others don’t support [them]. Our job is to pray,” said Carentz, “and to understand that things will continue to get worse until Christ returns.” Richard Emery obtained a bachelor’s in finance from Liberty and went to Afghanistan with the Air Force. But Emery left the military in 2010. He told me he was troubled by what he saw as a pursuit of vengeance rather than justice. “I’ve thought about this a lot, how we’re supposed to be forgiving and yet fight wars against enemies,” he said. “We blame Osama bin Laden for what happened on Sept. 11; one time I was in Japan, and they had a picture of him in a urinal. You were supposed to pee on his face. I thought, ‘I don’t feel right about this.’ I’m not going after some kind of vendetta. I just want to bring justice. You’re supposed to be forgiving, but you’re supposed to do your job. I’m not going over there holding a grudge against Osama bin Laden. All the people we’re killing, you know, I’d like to see them get saved.” “I have no problem taking another person’s life,” said Emery, “if it would promote peace and liberty and the interest of the country we’re in. I have no problem giving my life for it. I’d end up going to heaven, so it doesn’t really bother me. But it becomes a problem when I start to doubt what we’re there for.” Emery proposed the nuclear bombing of Japan as a model for how Afghanistan should be handled. “It was painful, but we dropped a couple of atomic weapons and they quit fighting, and now Japan is one of our closest allies.” Emery expressed general disagreement with President Obama on “moral issues” until I asked about drones, and then he praised him. “They’re cheaper. They’re effective. They’re tiny,” he said. “The difference between an F-15 and a drone is just the cost. If a baby is killed by a drone or an F-15 or a gun, the problem is with the intelligence, not with the drone.” Emery, however, was clear on one thing. He doesn’t want drones patrolling our own skies or listening in on our cell phone conversations. In the view of this graduate, and others at Liberty, that wouldn’t be a godly thing to do. David Swanson, host of Talk Nation Radio, is the author of War is a Lie and When the World Outlawed War. http://sojo.net/magazine/2013/07/drones-christ1 point
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Your secret is safe with me. Chances are I didn't understand it either. Best regards, RA11 point
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Gatekeepers of Cable TV Try to Stop Intel
lookin reacted to TampaYankee for a topic
Gatekeepers of Cable TV Try to Stop Intel By BRIAN STELTER Published: June 12, 2013 WASHINGTON — As Intel tries something audacious — the creation of a virtual cable service that would sell a bundle of television channels to subscribers over the Internet — it is running up against a multibillion-dollar barricade. That barricade is guarded by Time Warner Cable and other cable and satellite distributors, which are trying to make it difficult — if not impossible — for Intel to go through with its plan. The distributors are using a variety of methods to pressure the owners of cable channels, with whom they have lucrative long-term contracts, not to sign contracts with upstarts like Intel, that way preserving the status quo. Intel, however, is undeterred, and its executives intend to begin its TV service by the end of the year. They are ready and willing to pay more than existing distributors do for channels. But to date the company has not announced any deals with channel owners. To Intel, and to some analysts, the behavior by the existing distributors — in some cases giving financial incentives to friendly channel owners, in other cases including punitive measures in contracts — has an anticompetitive whiff. The antitrust division of the Justice Department is looking into the issue as part of a broad investigation into cable and satellite company practices, according to people contacted by the department, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. A department spokeswoman declined to comment. Public attention about the issue, which gained new life this week during the cable industry’s annual conference here, might also spur the Federal Communications Commission to afford would-be Internet distributors like Intel the same legal protections as those that already exist. The commission has been considering such a change for more than a year. “The government has to step up and protect these companies, or the incumbents are going to kill them in their cradles,” said Gigi B. Sohn, the president of the public interest group Public Knowledge. Prospective products like Intel TV, delivered through the broadband Internet infrastructure of Comcast, Time Warner Cable or another provider and sometimes called “over the top TV,” have the potential to radically alter the media marketplace in the United States. Unlike Netflix, which sells a library of TV episodes and mainly supplements cable, a service like Intel’s — with dozens of channels, big and small, streaming through a modern interface — could cause more consumers to cancel their cable subscriptions. (They would have to keep a broadband subscription, however, unless or until wireless capacity improves.) It could also stir further innovation within the industry. If Intel’s service ever goes on sale, industry executives predict that others will quickly follow — either because they want to, or they feel they have no choice. Apple, Microsoft and Sony are often mentioned as possibilities, but the more immediate competition might come from Comcast, Time Warner Cable and other major distributors, which could suddenly compete directly in markets all across the country. Comcast has quietly been working on an “over the top” service for well over a year. “Suddenly there’d be a whole new world of competition,” said one of the executives, who declined to express support for the “over the top” option for fear of angering the existing distributors. Most of those companies declined to comment on the record, but some representatives said privately that they are taking common-sense steps to protect their businesses. Each confidential contract between a distributor and a channel owner is different, they said. Some contracts include clauses that expressly prohibit the channels to be sold to an Internet distributor like Intel, while other contracts merely discourage such competition by including financial incentives or penalties. So-called most favored nation clauses, which are common, exist to ensure that if another distributor receives a cheaper rate for a channel later, that rate applies across the board. Some of these provisions have been in place for years. But critics said that the contractual language makes it much harder for new companies to enter the marketplace. A Justice Department official said in a presentation last year that “contracts that reference rivals” have the potential to harm competition. Within the cable industry, the practice of discouraging new Internet distributors has been suspected but not widely documented. The issue attracted new attention on Tuesday during the cable industry’s conference when Richard Greenfield, an analyst at BTIG Research, wrote in a blog post that at least one unnamed distributor had prevented a channel owner from selling to a service like Intel. Whether illegal or not, “it most certainly is bad for consumers, as it limits competition and prevents the emergence of distributors who can provide revolutionary new ways of experiencing” TV, he wrote. Mr. Greenfield did not name any names, but several channel owners and smaller distributors said Time Warner Cable, the nation’s second-largest cable company after Comcast, had been by far the most aggressive in its dealings with channels. When Comcast acquired NBCUniversal in 2011, it signed a consent decree with the government that prohibited it from trying to block budding Internet distributors. Time Warner Cable declined to elaborate on its practices on Wednesday, but said in a statement that “it is absurd to suggest that, in today’s highly competitive video marketplace, obtaining some level of exclusivity is anticompetitive. Exclusivities and windows are extremely common in the entertainment industry; that’s exactly how entertainment companies compete.” It cited the N.F.L. deal with DirecTV and the Netflix distribution of the former cable show “Arrested Development,” among other examples. Mr. Greenfield rejected that explanation. “They are not paying for exclusivity,” he said. “They are saying you can sell to X, to Y and Z, but you are forbidden from selling to this new class, called A.” A spokesman for Intel declined to comment. But this week the company had a suite at a hotel, one block from the cable conference site, and held demonstrations of its service for potential partners. What Intel needs, according to people briefed on their plans, is the support of a critical mass of channels — not the entire universe that Comcast or DirecTV has, but enough to have a viable service. Intel will not introduce the service without that. See original article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/13/business/media/gatekeepers-of-cable-tv-try-to-stop-intel.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0&partner=yahoofinance1 point -
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Past NSA whistleblower Drake on how bad it really is
lookin reacted to TampaYankee for a topic
This laundry has needed airing since the Patriot Act was re-upped. It should have taken place then much more robustly. Fortunately, it has finally gotten the attention of more than just the few. Half the Congress wants to bury the topic, the other half open it up. I hope interest doesn't wane before we really find out what is going on. I suspect it will take a court case challenging the Constitutionality before much if any of this gets rolled back. Nobody wants to be blamed for the next attack due to killing any these programs whether it could be proven or not. Easy to make charges. Difficult to prove a negative. That Court challenge will take some miracle getting the Court to hear it above the Executive's objection that no one has standing since anyone can't argue damage done to them, because the programs are secret. That has already killed some suits.1 point -
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