In the US, fuel pumps meant for regular sized cars (not trucks, boats, planes, etc) are limited to 10 gallons/minute. If that pump really was that fast, then it really was (among) the fastest legal pump(s) in the area.
As other posters pointed out, there are obviously competitors in the space (as I'm sure you were already aware).
In my experience, buying SSL certs can be a little confusing since there are so many providers and different types of certs. I did the research to figure out what product I needed, but I can imagine a sizable niche of customers who just want someone to tell them what they need.
" The US government is increadably well run when compared to just about every government throughout history"
Do you have anything to back that claim up? I have quite a few friends who go on rants about government inefficiency and would be nice to have some hard data.
I always just resort to asking: what's a more laissez faire country that you'd actually want to live in? is their approach scalable and sustainable?
The United States' State Department recognizes 195 independent countries around the world. People rant about how terrable the US education system is but the United States places 17th in the developed world for education, according to a global report by education firm Pearson. That's well into the 90th percentile.
The US is often in the top 20 for metrics like CORRUPTION PERCEPTIONS INDEX 2012 http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2012/results/ and historically corruption was even more of an issue. Just think back to things like the Magna Carta http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta. Rome, was considered the height of civilization in there day and yet corruption was rampant and rulers would have people killed on a whim etc. Not to mention extremes like the Inca civilization practiced mass ritual human sacrifice.
Even our somewhat tarnished free speech is worlds better than most areas.
Not to mention having the #1 most powerful military of all time. People look down on the space program as we have not landed on the moon in a while, but we still send more probes than anyone else. Ditto for infrastructure, there is little point to replacing infrastructure early so while Japan spends more on infrastructure that's not a good sign.
PS: I think people really have the mindset that we should be #1 in all things forgetting that there are almost 200 other countries out there.
> The United States' State Department recognizes 195 independent countries around the world. People rant about how terrable the US education system is but the United States places 17th in the developed world for education, according to a global report by education firm Pearson. That's well into the 90th percentile.
Uh, no. The U.S. placed 17th out of 50 countries in the developed world. As the other 145 countries in the world weren't part of the study, there's no saying where the US would have placed if the whole world were studied. Among the studied countries, the US wasn't in the 90th percentile, or even the top third.
As to the non industrialized countries yes we beat zimbabwe etc. Often studies only compare industrialized nations as doing otherwise is a waste of time.
Am I the only one annoyed by the whole A player, B player, C player mini-meme?
It's really, really hard to tell the difference between an A player and a B player unless you've worked with them or have known them a long-time. Even then, their contribution can be highly distorted by situation, perception, and personal bias (e.g. Moneyball).
So the advice only works in those few situations where you know someone is a B-player... in which case the advice really reduces down to the obvious: don't hire shitty people.
Agreed - i call it Inches vs seven league boots - it's easy to tell the difference between someone who makes regular marginal improvements (inches forwards) and someone who adds nothing, but impossible to tell the difference between a loser and a game changed until they change the game.
