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Not sure if he's thinking of ELO, Boston had a lot of UFOs on their album covers, too.

But surely this dude should already know the real truth.
Because teh intarwebs tell me that that the Space People communicate to the great unwashed through the medium of Rock n Roll. David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix and dozens of other examples have met the Space Brothers.

It's actually better than that. Not to support Hillary--she takes opposing stances depending on venue (i.e. lying)--but multiple positions based on audience are actually valid.

As you may well be aware, I am an advocate of a Universal Social Security as a sensible, well-engineered remediation for our welfare system. The Universal Social Security, as I have defined it, has numerous features: It immediately remediates many defects in the current Public Aid model, ensuring aid reaches many more households in need; it carries the capacity to eliminate homelessness and hunger in the United States; it puts a final end to growing Welfare costs; it puts an end to Minimum Wage raises by more-efficiently accomplishing the goals of a Minimum Wage, setting a minimum standard-of-living and supplementing not only the employed, but the underemployed and unemployed; it stabilizes jobs, reducing unemployment spikes and more-quickly recovering from recessions; and it reduces the effective tax burden on Americans by over $1 trillion, allowing us to implement this system without raising taxes on any class--and even with lowered business income and payroll taxes.

These impacts range from providing for the poor to increasing the spendable money--and actual purchasing power--in the pockets of the upper-middle-class. This system improves worker security; decreases taxes on businesses; and immediately provides the 75% of HUD-qualified families who will remain on a waiting list and *never* receive benefits with a supplemental income. It avoids raising taxes on high-income earners, while tangibly improving the welfare of the lower-income earners.

You will select a different narrative when pitching this system to a crowd in Baltimore City than to a crowd in New York City. The upper-middle-class don't want to hear about supplementing minimum wage, raising the minimum standard of living, and protecting welfare families; they want to know they're not going to get squeezed for even more taxes, that minimum wage increases aren't going to jack up product prices, and that their jobs are more-secure. The upper-upper-class will be happy to hear their businesses will experience lower employment costs (reduced payroll tax) and income taxes; that consumers will bring more money to spend, increasing revenues and profits; and that their personal income won't be tapped to make all this happen.

The many different positions you can take, the emphasis on what is and is not important, can change without becoming internally-inconsistent. Granted, that's patently-impossible with a compromise plan or a politically-driven policy; it works well when you've developed a well-engineered plan to cover an issue more-efficiently than current methods, including transitional plans to get from here to there, with a full analysis of risks and robust controls. If you have that, you can make wildly-different arguments about the issue, all of which are in the same direction, and all of which are correct.

Extrinsic rewards destroy intrinsic motivation. I first heard that in the context of achievements in games, but it applies even more obviously here.

Wow! that's dumb. How many people "deny climate change" ? no one denies the climate changes. What is debated is the proportion of man-made change (from our piddling 5% contribution to the CO2 budget) to the natural change (which started over 150 years ago at the end of the Little Ice Age and did not magically stop in 1950 as the alarmists claim).

The natural warming trend didn't "magically stop", it stopped because the natural factors driving the warming trend ended, but you are free to ignore inconvenient truths like the fact that the sun has had a small cooling trend over the last 35 years.

Quoting skeptical science's ignorant opinion is not how the Scientific Method is done.

Really? Didn't you just direct me the ignorant opinion of a series of elder crackpot scientists with little expertise in the field of climate change? Were you being unscientific then? The article I directed you on Skeptical Science isn't opinion, it's an explanatory article that links to the sources for they're providing you can, if you chose to, verify everything they've stated from the sources provided.

The IPCC made specific predictions that the Lower Tropical Troposphere would show a specific warming pattern if AGW was the correct hypothesis. The RSS and UAH satellites, backed up by thousands of balloons, have not observed this signature. So we have hypothesis, prediction, observation, and the observation does NOT match the prediction.

The failure to detect the signal was most likely measurement error, according to this article co-authored by John Christy (who is definitely not a global warming proponent). There is also a stratospheric cooling trend that biases the results on the cold side because the microwave signal is travelling through a cooling band of atmosphere above the warming band and the balloon data actually shows warming.

Furthermore the specific nature of the the AGW models predict a TCS whose most probable value is greater than 3 (after revision downward from failure after failure of earlier predictions). The observed value is currently between 1 and 2 and looks like will converge lower than that.

According to this article on the history of climate sensitivity there hasn't actually been much revision to the estimate, it was established as in the range of 1.5 to 4.5 in 1979, and the most recent IPCC report (5th) has the range as 1.5 to 4.5.

In short, the specific predictions of AGW have been falsified by observed reality.

The main problem here is that the specific predictions of AGW have not been proven accurate by observed reality. There are some people claiming that if you cherry-pick the data, squint and tilt your head then the data doesn't look as good. But they are going to great lengths to create data that doesn't match the predictions. In the particular case you cite, they use one particular measurement, use an old, outdated copy of the data, ignore the inherent problems in the measurement, splicing, and orbital decay adjustments due to indirect nature of the measurements, and then cherry-pick a time segment for minimal warming. Just to get one piece of data that doesn't look like it matches the predictions, but it's all deliberate framing to cover up the underlying truth.

Who cares what the psychologists are skepticalscience have to say, what matters is that the AGW predictions do not match REALITY. Hence the skeptics were right and the Scienti

When TFA relates to another post (like in this case to Guccifer's "leak"), it would be good to have a direct link to that too.
Specially if TFA is clearly trying to steer people away from information that it is talking about.

So does the law. If his lawyers claim that secondary infringement is not a criminal offense in the US is true, why is he being extradited to the US?

Money laundering. They tacked that on in hopes that Polish authorities don't really think too much about how receiving money isn't a crime if you weren't committing a crime. And he wasn't.

But...

... the alleged owner is charged with conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and two counts of criminal copyright infringement.

I haven't read Title 17 in a while, but last I checked, there's no such thing as "conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement." I'm sure Slashdot's legion of not-lawyers will correct me if I misremember. Mostly they're going to try to swing this on proving that he personally violated copyright in such a way as to fall afoul of the criminal provisions of US law for which Poland has an equivalent criminal offense, per the terms of the US/Polish extradition treaty of 1996. That treaty stipulates that only offenses which carry a maximum of penalty of more than a year in prison in both jurisdictions are extraditable. There is no US copyright infringement criminal penalty that includes jail time of any term. Remedies include injunction, impounding of infringing material (when it's physical), statutory fines, and/or actual monetary damages. That's it.

Addendum: Ok, I've read 17 U.S. Code 506 again. There's no such thing as conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement. And Artem Vaulin is not extraditable.

Now we'll see just how anxious Polish authorities are to please the US, and just how much the law matters. Or not.

considering he is NOT the first person to be charged and successfully prosecuted for "conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement" I find it strange if there is no such law? quick search finds multiple people prosecuted for it and this https://www.law.cornell.edu/us... .

So does the law. If his lawyers claim that secondary infringement is not a criminal offense in the US is true, why is he being extradited to the US?

Money laundering. They tacked that on in hopes that Polish authorities don't really think too much about how receiving money isn't a crime if you weren't committing a crime. And he wasn't.

But...

... the alleged owner is charged with conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and two counts of criminal copyright infringement.

I haven't read Title 17 in a while, but last I checked, there's no such thing as "conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement." I'm sure Slashdot's legion of not-lawyers will correct me if I misremember. Mostly they're going to try to swing this on proving that he personally violated copyright in such a way as to fall afoul of the criminal provisions of US law for which Poland has an equivalent criminal offense, per the terms of the US/Polish extradition treaty of 1996. That treaty stipulates that only offenses which carry a maximum of penalty of more than a year in prison in both jurisdictions are extraditable. There is no US copyright infringement criminal penalty that includes jail time of any term. Remedies include injunction, impounding of infringing material (when it's physical), statutory fines, and/or actual monetary damages. That's it.

Addendum: Ok, I've read 17 U.S. Code 506 again. There's no such thing as conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement. And Artem Vaulin is not extraditable.

Now we'll see just how anxious Polish authorities are to please the US, and just how much the law matters. Or not.

No you can't. That's why some users forked Debian and created Devuan (https://devuan.org/).

You can't what?

http://without-systemd.org/wik...

https://debiantalk.wordpress.c...

That Universal Social Security is based on the United States's $1.7 trillion (2013) spending on welfare, including Social Security old-age pensions, Social Security disability insurance, unemployment insurance, food security (SNAP, WIC), and housing assistance (HUD). There are some transitional considerations (grandfathering of Old-age pensions; continuation or reduction of state programs; etc.) to avoid disrupting the financial situation of households receiving current benefits; none of this causes a bump in taxes, although I keep the payroll OASDI tax (reduced a little) initially to support grandfathered recipients.

It's based heavily on the U.S. government spending and tax policy, as well as retail costs of goods, risk cost, and theoretical models to supply services. The most important risk cost is landlord risk renting to low-incomes; this cost is reduced by making those incomes stable (fewer evictions, fewer empty units, thus rent per tenant doesn't have to cover as much of those costs), and there are other possible ways to reduce that more. The total amount of money in play is less than the current cost of welfare; no taxes are raised; and, when you consider displacement (i.e. the amount of money taken and given to someone else--if you pay $7,000 and get $5,000 back, that's $2,000 displaced to someone else), it's $1 trillion USD cheaper.

So, it's heavily-engineered for the U.S. The U.K. might be able to pull off similar; you'd have to start over, but you can follow the same development process I used and adjust it.

The whole thing is based on national wealth--that is, GDP per capita. In 1900, the median-income U.S. household spent 40% of its income on food; thanks to technical progress reducing the labor involved in making food, the median-income household now spends around 11% on food. Globalization has allowed us to purchase goods from countries whose industry can produce said goods cheaper, which has increased our local retailing and shipping jobs; we've shifted agricultural jobs to manufacture jobs, and now to doctors and IT workers. If the U.S. tried to implement my plan in 1950--when welfare cost 1.28% of all income (it costs 17% now)--they'd have had to levy an ADDITIONAL 35% flat tax on all income; incomes in 1950 went up to 91%, so we'd have essentially made everyone very poor, possibly eliminated the income gap entirely, and collapsed before the USSR.

Today, the U.S. can do it without actually raising the effective taxes on anyone.

As for the meat of the thing? It's a form of Universal Basic Income.

My Universal Social Security plan eliminates OASDI and adds a 17% USS tax on all income (business and personal). This actually lowers the business income tax by roughly 4.5% marginal (from 40% to around 35.5%), and eliminates the OASDI payroll tax (6.2% of wages paid--that is: we currently penalize businesses for employing workers rather than machines, and I put a stop to that). The top tax brackets don't increase; and everyone along the way from the bottom up ends up with more spendable income (thus, effectively, less taxes). It replaces HUD housing assistance, unemployment, and food stamps; however, assistance programs remain in effect for children of low-income households.

Every adult (age 18+; in the future, I would make this 16+) receives an equal share of that income. It's collected out of normal withholding, which is taken every two weeks or twice per month (the IRS allows businesses to select from either of two schedules) and stored in the Social Security Trust Fund. Each year, the prior year's totals are used to calculate the new payment. Over time, the buying power of this payout per-adult actually increases (see above discussion about 1900 vs 2015 food cost, and 1950 vs 2015 required tax funding); in recessions with high unemployment, it would decrease, and so the initial conditions have been tuned to survive a new 200

Relevant comic: https://biblioklept.files.word...

Here is another perspective based on non smoothed data.

Nights and windless days are very much reality. It is a fact that wind and solar are not economical, else subsidies wouldn't be necessary to get them built. You speak of a threshold; well, Germany stepped over it years ago. It didn't work out, and they are stepping back. Might be we want to rethink, and make decisions based on facts and reality.

Spouting the same old same old. Was your great-grandpappy all pissed off when we switched over from whale oil to kerosene? Or changed over from those bright carbon arc lamps to delicate little filament lamps?

Do you fly into a rage when you see an LED lightbulb? https://banledlighting.wordpre...

Load leveling is the issue, and it's an issue for every form of power generation. And without a milliwatt of solar or wind, it's heavily involved in power generation right now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Power is stored when it is available, and drained when it is not. While there are differences, in power availability, the principle is the same.

Right now, battery storage makes local storage quite feasible, and there are new introductions on the way. But there are so many other factors. Ever build a house in an area where there isn't power yet? Just wait until you get the bill for running a couple miles of powerline. Solar or wind is not only cheaper at that point, it is much cheaper.

As well, a lot of us are looking for ways to remove ourselves form the power grid. At which point a whole different powering paradigm comes into play. It is really easy for me to figure out my hotel loading, and come up with the powering and storage needs to provide myself with electricity. Its a work in progress, but I've reduced my electrical bill to around 55 dollars a month, and that's with all my computers, and a spa tub. I have a small solar install as a testbed, powering my radio equipment. At the moment solar hits a good price point, I'm off grid.

By the way, Using subsidies as a reason that solar or wind isn't viable is not a good tack to take. Oil gets huge subsidies. And just try building a nuc plant without immense subsidies, and even tail end subsidies - where the plant is given liability immunity. Anyhow, I've got some plans for a carbon arc lamp if you want to go back to the old ways.

The drone does not pose a privacy risk that isn't already posed by aircraft, when operated legally.

I see you went to the Pete Hoekstra school of analogies. Where to even begin? You have to have a pilots license to fly the lowliest crop duster - which can't be purchased for a few hundred dollars (or less) from Wal-Mart. Aircraft take off and land from airports or airstrips, not in the middle of residential areas. And yeah, it would be a violation of your privacy if a helicopter pilot decided to hover over your property at low altitude.

You shoot it with a camera, show that its camera was or at least could have been facing your daughter, and go to the DA. If they're doing their job, after consulting an expert they can file suit on your behalf and subpoena any camera footage if there is a legitimate privacy concern.

Pete. Pete. Pete. Up here, Pete. And how is the property owner going to know which house the drone came from, much less who the pilot was? You think the county sheriff is going to serve a warrant on a neighborhood and search house by house for a drone?

You're also an asshole if you shoot a drone out of the air with a shotgun where it may pose a significant fire hazard. There's assholes all around in this story.

Wrong. There's only one asshole in the story, the pilot who got an $1800 lesson in common courtesy.

https://teachingbattleground.w...

You can see some Muslim robots here.

Why are you referring to her as "him"?

Oh dear Goddess, you're not a man-hating lesbian separatist radfem are you? ... No of course not, it's just the horseshoe effect.

by "rape" you mean "had sex with two women, who found out that he had sex with both of them, and then after the fact decided that if you had sex with another woman, then I take away my consent to have sex with me"?

We don't get to decide what constitutes "rape" (or any other sexual offence) at Swedish law. Also that early morning uninvited and condom-less rutting might possibly count as rape in most jurisdiction.

And anyway he did put his dick in. ;p

My point was that unemployment is temporary, and that new employment doesn't magically materialize. The processes of each take time; and if the rate of technical progress causes unemployment *much* faster, then the percent of the population unemployed at any given time increases. Slower-paced technical progress gives the economy time to adjust--through inflation, new spending habits, trade optimization, and the like--creating new jobs to replace those lost, thus controlling the unemployment rate.

As for technical progress in general, it makes the life of people with income easier. The unemployed need welfare; that's a SECONDARY effect.

In a fairly-poor society (e.g. low-agricultural), people have about enough production to get by. Food, water, the like. Maybe you have to walk 9 miles to the nearest fresh water source every day (Uganda); that's four hours per day spent fetching a pail of water AND NOT making food or clothing or shelter. Maybe agriculture is 90% of your workforce (1790 America), and your middle-class supplement food by hunting and homesteading (more farming). In such societies, welfare isn't a thing; the cost of unemployment insurance, food stamps, and the like is a bigger proportion of income than what's spent on luxuries and thus possible to take without collapsing the economy.

In a more-wealthy society, a lot of money goes to luxuries. If the middle-class spends 70% of its income on food, shelter, clothing, and modern social needs (e.g. transportation), they can afford some taxing; likewise, if roughly 50% of your society's income is spent on non-necessities, you've got some room. For reference, in the United States, the top 10% (people making over $152k) receive 48% of the gross income, and the average middle-class family spends almost 50% of its income on entertainment and luxuries--not counting the luxury of living in larger houses and nicer communities. Such societies are capable of unemployment insurance, food security, and other forms of welfare.

In these societies, productivity gains make the lives of the employed easier. Policy makes the lives of the unemployed easier: a society is now able to implement welfare policy, and does so. Unemployment insurance pays an amount based on your income; food stamps and SNAP buy food; HUD targets housing. These services theoretically should get more efficient, as they require a smaller percentage of income to provide benefits per person; over time, they've become LESS efficient, and are now a huge cost in the United States. Either way, the unemployed get what they are given, rather than a portion of income.

My proposed Universal Social Security (USS) system leaves much more income in taxpayer hands and completely-remediates our welfare system, and provides the unemployed with a buying-power income which increases with productivity. It is a form of Universal Basic Income (UBI) which collects its funding as a separate flat-tax on all income, and is supplemented by a minimally-scoped general-fund (progressive tax sourced) public aid system targeting children of low-income families. That type of system *does* make the life of the unemployed easier as productivity increases.

UBI-type systems are delicate and complex. A lot of people propose blunt solutions such as giving everyone $10,000, carbon cap-and-dividend, or a negative income tax with no specified funding source (sometimes, "Just tax the rich more"); my USS proposal comes from examining retail prices, current tax rates, and Federal spending, and identifying and controlling the risks inherent in such a proposal. As such, I'm quite convinced my system is better than ill-considered and idealistic proposals which don't even account for inflation; but of course I trust my own judgment.

In all cases, a UBI-type system relies on moving around a lot of money. The actual displacement may be small--my USS moves some $1.8 trillion m

This entire discussion is rubbish. The Matrix is just recent bad Science Fiction. It has no Scientific, Philosophical or Theological foundation. Anybody who takes any of it the least bit seriously needs psychological... adjustments.
A good start would be the Ethics of Aristotle. Once one _gets_ the difference between man-made Ethics, and dispensed Morality, one can see that the last is always fictional, and thus The Matrix, or any variation thereof that invokes some kind of Predestination by a higher or greater Force, is Balderdash.

Or, one could actually read the works of Aristotle's teacher, Plato, specifically The Allegory of the Cave:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

which fortunately has its own wikipedia page and is freely available online, being a bit out of even the DMCA copyright range at this point. The Matrix is clearly (and correctly) listed as being one of several works derivative from some very serious philosophical foundation -- very nearly all of Idealism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

is also fundamental to The Matrix, noting that in the final Matrix movie, they discover that the "reality" they broke out into is itself a supersimulation at a still higher order. The Matrix isn't even the first, or the best, SciFi work to explore the theme of the Cave. James Gunn wrote a triplet of novellas released as "The Joy Makers":

https://www.goodreads.com/book...
https://sciencefictionruminati...

which would have been an even better prequel to The Matrix than the half-baked idea that one can generate more "power" by feeding people IV nutrients than one can get directly from those nutrients used as a power source. That's the really stupid thing about The Matrix that makes it bad SF -- the physics is laughably wrong on the very first page, so to speak. Gunn's Hedonic principle -- straight out of Aristotle and Utilitarianism, BTW -- makes a much better foundation and even corresponds to having a computational overlord whose responsibility it is to keep those in the simulation "happy", as opposed to "alive".

Or, if you prefer, there is Descartes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

or the entire contemporary range of:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

argumentation. Note well that the philosophical underpinnings of this aren't even exclusively western:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

In both Hinduism and Buddhism, the Maya principle is that this world we appear to see with our eyes and smell with our nose and hear with our ears and taste with our tongue and feel with our skin is not the real world. The real world is Atman joined with Brahman, and is the master of the illusions presented by the senses: From the Kena Upanishad:

Not that which the eye can see, but that whereby the eye can see: know that to be Brahman the eternal, and not what people here adore;

Not that which the ear can hear, but that whereby the ear can hear: know that to be Brahman the eternal, and not what people here adore;

Not that which speech can illuminate, but that by which speech can be illuminated: know that to be Brahman the eternal, and not what people here adore;

Not that which the mind can think, but that whereby the mind can think: know that to be Brahman the eternal, and not what people here adore.

Idealism is truly ancient, and The Matrix a

Given that I (and noone else discussing this here) has actually read the contract, there's no way to say for certain

There's a link to the contract in the summary, reposted here. (That copy doesn't include the appendices, which are here.)

That said, I infer that the contract reduces that performance bond when certain milestones are met.

Correct. The bond reduction schedule is on page 42 of the contract, and references performance benchmarks in Appendix F.

Interestingly, it says the bond was to be reduced to $15 million after meeting the 2011 performance numbers. It lists three more step-downs after that ($10 million, $5 million, and $1 million) that Verizon apparently didn't claim.

So a few things: First, this has been brewing for several years, and probably just boils down to whether Verizon met the 2011 benchmarks, not any of the earlier step-downs. Thus, if they didn't meet the 2011 benchmarks, the bond theoretically would only go back up to the 2010 level, $25 million, not the full $50 million. And the letter only claims 38k addresses in NYC are without service. That's a vanishingly low percentage, and according to Appendix F they only had to provide 66% coverage across NYC in 2011.

Given all that, this default letter strikes me as more of a media ploy than a reasonable expectation of legal recourse.

Oh the irony! A consensus of scientists agreed that fat was the culprit for heart disease and obesity. The consensus scientists, led by Ancel Keys, verified time and again through peer-reviewed experiments and studies (albeit with falsified data) that fat was the problem. They destroyed the life and work of John Yudkin, the lone scientist who disagreed with the consensus and had the research and data to prove that sugar, not fat, was the culprit. And now you're here in slashdot posting about another consensus of scientists who must be believed because they've verified time and again that their theory is valid.
http://thedogatemydata.blogspo...
http://www.climate-skeptic.com...
https://notalotofpeopleknowtha...
https://stevengoddard.wordpres...
https://stevengoddard.wordpres...
I look forward to the dozens of responses my post will generate in which all of these links are denounced and dismissed because the authors are hacks, frauds, not real scientists, or whatever else in order to justify ignoring the actual data.

Oh the irony! A consensus of scientists agreed that fat was the culprit for heart disease and obesity. The consensus scientists, led by Ancel Keys, verified time and again through peer-reviewed experiments and studies (albeit with falsified data) that fat was the problem. They destroyed the life and work of John Yudkin, the lone scientist who disagreed with the consensus and had the research and data to prove that sugar, not fat, was the culprit. And now you're here in slashdot posting about another consensus of scientists who must be believed because they've verified time and again that their theory is valid.
http://thedogatemydata.blogspo...
http://www.climate-skeptic.com...
https://notalotofpeopleknowtha...
https://stevengoddard.wordpres...
https://stevengoddard.wordpres...
I look forward to the dozens of responses my post will generate in which all of these links are denounced and dismissed because the authors are hacks, frauds, not real scientists, or whatever else in order to justify ignoring the actual data.

Oh the irony! A consensus of scientists agreed that fat was the culprit for heart disease and obesity. The consensus scientists, led by Ancel Keys, verified time and again through peer-reviewed experiments and studies (albeit with falsified data) that fat was the problem. They destroyed the life and work of John Yudkin, the lone scientist who disagreed with the consensus and had the research and data to prove that sugar, not fat, was the culprit. And now you're here in slashdot posting about another consensus of scientists who must be believed because they've verified time and again that their theory is valid.
http://thedogatemydata.blogspo...
http://www.climate-skeptic.com...
https://notalotofpeopleknowtha...
https://stevengoddard.wordpres...
https://stevengoddard.wordpres...
I look forward to the dozens of responses my post will generate in which all of these links are denounced and dismissed because the authors are hacks, frauds, not real scientists, or whatever else in order to justify ignoring the actual data.

The whole thing is essentially political, and not very useful. There's something to be said economically here; and everyone is more-interested in a moral-political ideal, in truth.

Let's first look at the economics. Ireland's unemployment rate is about 9%, and this judgement is equivalent to around $850 billion per year--these are taxes back to 1991. Everyone is salivating over the big, one-time, $21 billion number; the truth is, long-term, this is $15/month for every Irish citizen, or like $30 per household. Not going to pay for your college. If we assume only $10/hr wage jobs, continuous additional tax revenue as such will drop Irish unemployment by 0.9%, which is salient.

What about the politics, the behavior, the social issue?

People are mad about Apple tax sheltering. In the U.S., Apple would pay 40% corporate taxes; in Ireland, the corporate tax rate was 12.5% until the end of 2015, and is now 6.5%. This judgement only pulls more money from a global economy--from Apple U.S., Asia, and Europe--into Ireland, rather than changing the behavior of Apple. To be clear: Apple's behavior of redirecting its income to Ireland is still the most-advantageous, and now Ireland is getting a bigger cut in this partnership.

All of the above sets the reader up for an argument I can quickly and effectively demolish.

Assuming you believe high corporate taxes are moral, Apple *should* move its tax reporting to the U.S.; as I've demonstrated above, this Ireland judgment is an example of a corrupt state making a profit from the same amoral corporate tax sheltering the European judgment purports to combat, if you were to argue that such sheltering is amoral.

There's where the whole thing falls down.

Corporate income is, in truth, about 10% of American income. Corporations draw revenue, which is then distributed as wages (including buying from other corporations, which then behave the same way, up to the origin supplier) or retained as corporate profits. That means actual income is reflected as profit (corporate income) plus wages (individual income). In total, corporate profits are only a small portion of total income.

Capturing that income in taxes doesn't provide a great deal of benefit. It's significant, but it's not important--in the same way $100 is significant but not important when you have $2,000 of discretionary spending per month. Importantly, correcting whatever tax system defects exist won't solve any socio-economic problems such as welfare system defects, unemployment, homelessness, or hunger in America. It won't have a stabilizing effect on our economy. It won't set us up for long-term prosperity.

That means you have two possible arguments: this EU ruling is simple corruption on the part of the EU, trying to grab for money that isn't theirs and belongs to America; or this EU ruling is useless and is chasing a perceived problem that's not impacting us in any meaningful way.

I often argue about Universal Basic Incomes (UBI), having proposed a Universal Social Security (USS) in the United States. In terms of money displaced from one taxpayer's hands into another's (or to the government to be spent), a USS is one trillion dollars cheaper than our modern Welfare system. I've defined that plan including an analysis of risks, transitional considerations, and long-term finances, rather than simple idealism.

There are a few important points here.

Firstly, the USS as defined has domain over more than $1.7 trillion. Every adult is paid an equal income each month out of that $1.7 trillion, meaning the taxes paid to support it are *partially* returned. The lowest income earners get more than they pay in; and compared to current taxes, almost all taxpayers end up with more after-tax money than they do now. The highest income earners pay *slightly* more in my taxes; that can be eliminated (even *their* taxes can be low

"bwayno dee-us"! https://thenexttobestblogever....

Isn't it a little disingenuous to call a tablet that's only capable of 1280x800 "HD"? The TV people get away with calling low-res 720p televisions "HD"

1280x720 is still higher than what came before it (704x360 NTSC, 704x480 anamorphic NTSC, 704x432 PAL, or 704x576 anamorphic PAL).

It's just that as technology marches on, the definition of "high" changes. It's like "HIGH DEFINITION GRAPHICS" above the cartridge slot on the 1989 Sega Genesis when its VDP was just 240p. The Genesis was higher definition than what came before it: two 320x224 pixel scrolling planes with 100% sprite coverage and 61 of 512 colors, as opposed to one 256x224 pixel scrolling plane with 25% sprite coverage and 25-31 of 52-64 colors on the NES or Master System. In fact, the Genesis had a 480i mode (320x448 pixels) that only Sonic 2 ever really used due to video memory concerns.

much the same way the USB people managed to pull the wool over people's eyes with their "Full Speed" vs "High Speed" nonsense

In USB 1, 12 Mbps was the full speed of the interface. High speed (480 Mbps theoretical, 280 Mbps usable) didn't come until USB 2.

but reality is most people know 1080p as "HD".

The marketing terms to distinguish the two are "basic HD" (720p-class) and "full HD" (1080p).

"In 2010, Iceland only contributed about 2% of the worldâ(TM)s aluminium smelting production (780 thousand metric tons)."

https://arcticecon.wordpress.c...

This is the doctor that should examine Hillary:

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

https://heavyeditorial.files.w...

ShenWei, which the press reported as being very similar to the Alpha. https://laotsao.wordpress.com/...

Trump is enabled by the government though

We all are. This is not about Trump. Anybody — poor, well off, and super rich alike — can and do sue for defamation. These are all civil suits and have nothing to do with the First Amendment. Your misconception is common — fustakrakich above has posted the same stupidity, for example — but a misconception it is:

This freedom, however, does not immunize them from liability for what they publish. A newspaper that publishes false information about a person, for example, can be sued for libel. A television station similarly can be sued if it broadcasts a story that unlawfully invades a person’s privacy.

allows someone rich to bankrupt people they don't like

The assholes and bitches seeking to ban "hate speech" would not merely bankrupt people they don't like — they'd put them in prison by making such expressions a felony. And the assholes and bitches would not spend their own money on it either — crimes are prosecuted by the government.

even if they don't win

I keep saying, we ought to have the losers of lawsuits being automatically ordered to compensate the winners legal expenses...

"Funny how the Dems were a lot more comfortable w/ the Soviets during the Cold War, than they are w/ the Russians now!!!"

There must be a reason for such behavior. I believe that it's a masterful coverup of their botched Russia policy in 1990s.

"The US deserves at least some of the blame for Russian attitudes. The State Department in particular never got out of its 'The Russians are the enemy' mode. That's why in the 90s, they were supportive of the Chechens"

Conventional wisdom has it wrong. In the 90s the US were openly supportive of Russia's Government, approving or turning a blind eye towards its undemocratic policies while it was seen to fit the US interests. That's why the U.S. criticism of undemocratic policies of Putin's Russia is so — should I say — Hillarious. Actually Putin is clearing the mess created by his predecessor with the US approval. It's especially evident, for example, if you compare the number of journalists killed for their work under Yeltsin and under Putin.

They're demonetizing videos which are "unfriendly" and still running ads on them anyway. This is a filthy corporate cash grab, plain and simple. Proof

That "other motivation" would be recent public outcry about a sense of fairness. Legality is one thing; and the other is timeliness: this is happening *now* because the EU cares *now*, and the EU cares now because of a global political dialogue about economics that keeps going from "look how many poor people" to "OMG THE 1% AND BUSINESSES!"

This kind of thing is interesting to me because it doesn't actually help anything, or at least it doesn't in my part of the world (the United States). Over here, business income (as profits) is legitimately like 10% of the total taxable income; and solutions to our social-economic problems don't demand taxing the rich or businesses more than current.

I've been proposing expanding the Social Security system from a retirement and disability benefit to a Universal Social Security as a form of Universal Basic Income. This is funded by a flat income tax (separate from the progressive income tax which provides the general fund), and comes out to a trillion dollars cheaper than modern welfare by way of assuming money moved to low-income households is a tax--that is to say: I targeted a monetary benefit for the bottom 30%-ish of households, and computed the amount of money that would flow toward them as the cost.

It's kind of hand-waving because it's comparing the current system to a new system, and the new system can be said to be both more-expensive (because some money is still moving from the top to the middle-class) and less-expensive (because *all* of that money goes back into the hands of consumers). Essentially, I created a system that's not a direct analogue to our current system, and causes an increase of spendable income at every income level; the "reduced tax burden" is $1 trillion, and the "money going to households above and beyond their actual income" is the rest. Trying to explain that in terms of costs is... a matter of presentation; the only correct comparison is a full description of each system, not a measure of how much each costs.

Anyway, the long and short of it is Apple's yearly profits (about $10 billion) amount to $58.48 per worker per YEAR, or $82.62 per household per year. The total judgment here is less than $10/month per household, in one big shot. Apple's total holdings, if dumped onto America all at once, leaving them bankrupt, could give everyone about $1,400. One time. Not useful, is it?

Taking 100% of all business profits would destabilize businesses (they'd fail all risk events--loss and opportunity, i.e. no cash on hand with which to cover a bad year, nor to grow) and provide about 10% of all income to be spent somehow. In contrast, my Universal Social Security system reduces business taxes slightly (that was unintentional; I just don't mess with it), reduces middle- and lower-class taxes dramatically, reduces payroll taxes, and puts a large amount of money into the hands of low- and no-income individuals and households. The funding source there is 17%, rather than 10%, of all income; and the practical displacement is around 7%. That puts, currently, $7,000 into the hands of the poorest of poor, per adult; for a 2-adult household it's like $14,000.

I get pushback on this type of plan for reasons including, but not limited to, that I don't tax the super-rich above 40%, that I don't increase business taxes, and that I don't increase wages (as if increasing wages is a thing; but that's a whole different economics argument). That's political: those are complaints about fairness and sentiment, rather than effectiveness. That's a particular hot topic now, which is why 15 years of Apple and Microsoft and Google reign went unchecked until, suddenly, "OMG TAXES, PAY YOUR FAIR SHARE!" If people hadn't turned "pay their fair share" and "the 1%" into a media sensation, this EU court case wouldn't exist; that's getting close to the definition of a kangaroo court, excepting that this case ostensibly has some actual validity.

That's a moral standpoint with no useful impact.

I designed a Universal Social Security plan which reduces the tax burden on Americans by over $1 TRILLION per year. This plan completely remediates the welfare system; establishes a stable minimum income, eliminating many risks in providing goods and services to lower-income markets (currently, their income is unstable and can go away quickly, incurring massive costs for landlords especially); and slows and thus spreads the reduction of jobs by technical progress (including globalization and automation), thus reducing the short-term economic threat of sudden rapid progress (the long-term impact is always an immense increase in standard-of-living; a sudden industrial revolution creates an economic train wreck, while a longer period of growth creates immediate prosperity).

Money bound up in big bank accounts has almost no impact on the economy. Pulling it out and spending it in bulk, suddenly, causes a temporary stimulus, and largely creates inflation. This is because more money is put into play, but not more productivity; after you stop infusing huge piles of cash into the economy, there's no support for any new jobs created, except for what technical progress has occurred during the inflationary period of excess money creation (money idled and not spent is essentially removed; pouring it into the economy is essentially money creation, and differs from printing new money in that it doesn't then increase the fractional reserve basis and lead to more money creation by loaning).

By contrast, a Universal Social Security (or other effective form of Universal Basic Income) increases the amount of take-home pay relative to cost dollars. That is to say: If an employer pays $10,000 to have an employee, then that employee's work is paid for by consumers of the product the employee makes. If the employee makes 10,000 units of said product per year, then $1 of that product's per-unit price represents the employee's pay. Out of this, the employee may take home only $6,000. UBIs such as the USS change the situation such that the employee takes home, for example, $8,000, while the employer still pays only $10,000.

Obviously, such a situation means products don't face a cost increase (you still need $1 of revenue per unit to pay that guy's salary and benefits), yet consumers have more money to spend.

Look back and think about the engineering involved there. Some changes to tax policy reduce the welfare burden by over $1 trillion per year, increasing the amount of take-home pay for all working Americans, lifting low-income households out of poverty, and ensuring even non-working Americans have income sufficient for a hard-bounded minimum (but low) standard of living. Businesses don't pay any additional costs, and particularly don't pay more costs as consequence of hiring an employee; and the employee takes home more dollars per dollar paid by the employer to employ them. That changes the stable set points of the system, increasing the consumer's spending power relative to the cost of production, thus increasing buying power.

What's the engineering involved in grabbing a fistful of cash out of Apple? Hint: Apple's entire profits ($10 billion per year) would amount to $58.48/year more in every single American's paycheck; their entire cash savings is about $1,000 per working American (ONE time, not repeating). Total actual corporate profits in the United States are roughly 10% of all income--that's not small and not insignificant (it's 10%), and it's only unimportant because the economy is so much bigger than all that.

Yup, the future is now.

And after much resistance, I had to open a Facebook account to hand out info to a group. All my fears about it were true. Sucks you in, Oh, look there's an old high school bud. Even old girlfriends, then relatives. Then the existential angst sets in.

I fear many of them would actually like to read about Freddie's Sansung refrigerator reports that Freddie is low on milk, then the thoughts and prayers of Freddie's friends will go out to him in hopes he doesn't have to go without milk, then someone will blame the politician du jour and the fight begins.

Then the Windows Foodie Edition IoT OS borks a few million refrigerators with a refrigerator light update, causing massive spoilage, and Slashdot erupts with the whackadoodles claiming a conspiracy by the major food chains to sell more food, the shills claiming that it was actually a good thing, because people's immune systems are weak because we eat all this processed food, and if your refrigerator was screwed, it was your fault anyway you idiot!

Meanwhile the Linux Refrigerator people will brag about how much better their food is, except for the systemd trolls who are still pissed about the first version of pulseaudio.

And the Hipsters who use the iFoodie app for their vegan only refrigerators (it has an internal scanner to detect any animal products so the vegan Hipster can go annoy whoever sold them the food.

Meanwhile a massive ransomware attack locks everyone's fridge until we each pay 10,000 bitcoin to the Julian Assange, Edward Snowdon, and Jane Fonda and Barack O'blama pizza party fund. And Trump will make it happen, I can tell you that much. Meanwhile, an investigation is mounted to verify the rumors that Hillary killed 50 people by locking them in IoT microwaves.

Wow! that went to a weird place! Did I miss insulting anyone?

From https://snowballschanceonmars....

"Just to clarify, we don’t have cheese powder. To whoever said that we live on tuna and cheese powder we have freeze dried cheese that rehydrates into delicious real cheese. Not to mention our numerous homemade cheese and yogurt cultures (Haans, Phil, Geno) and sourdough starter (Bob). Yes, we have tuna, but it’s wild caught and comes in virgin olive oil. We also have FD chicken (my favorite!), ham, turkey, and many kinds of beef. There is an abundant supply of dehydrated/FD carrots, onions, tomatoes, peas, corn, celery, potato, berries, peaches (mine, mine, mine, mine), bananas, apples, and cherries. We eat the same foods as people who cook their meals and don’t eat takeout"

Yup, the future is now.

You're way in over your head and you don't even know it.

XD

Looks like they're removing stuff now.

What, every single group that does temperature reconstructions is "removing stuff" and just happen to end up with the exact same answer? That's one hell of a conspiracy theory! It's item 4 on the conspiracy theory detector.

In my humble opinion, his successor is lying a lot more. That's why every month this year has been a "record."

So, nothing to do with the El Nino? That's item 10 on the conspiracy theory detector.

Even featured here on slashdot it's so suspicious,

That one's off the chart.

This site has actual photos of newspaper articles.

But isn't discussing global temperatures so is not really relevant to our discussion...

Those stubborn facts again-

Well, yeah :)

Yet another analysis:

Also not discussing global temperatures...

I understand you're not a scientist. However for God sakes, look at the data! Go into the distant past to present! Analyze it! Come up with a theory!

We've already got one, and as I've shown, the data fits quite well!

Another clue is they want to put people in jail that disagree with man made GW.

Yes. Clue #7

What's very frustrating to me is I've predicted this for 20 years that their models wouldn't hold up

Yes. That's got to be frustrating given how well they have!

Wonder why I haven't been responding? I

Because you're losing our bet so badly and because of how cocky and condescending you were when you entered it and because you're not particularly fond of the taste of crow?

There is the fact that the 1930s was the hottest decade of the 20th century

Not even close.

That's what a little knowledge will do to you. You're way in over your head and you don't even know it. Looks like they're removing stuff now. I used to be able to find the paper that Hansen had to admit the 1930s was the hottest decade of the 20th century. He lied about it and got caught, though he claimed it was a Y2K error and not a lie. In my humble opinion, his successor is lying a lot more. That's why every month this year has been a "record." Even featured here on slashdot it's so suspicious, so it's a captain obvious moment. I know true blue cool aid drinking believers believe it.

This site has actual photos of newspaper articles. Those stubborn facts again-
https://stevengoddard.wordpres...

Yet another analysis:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/20...

Did you look at their last graph from 1880 on? That doesn't line up with the CO2 levels worth a damn.

The cyclical variations from PDO/ENSO/etc on top of the secular warming from CO2 explain each peak and valley in the temperature record quite well. It is naive to think that you would have a monotonic rise in temperatures that matched the monotonic rise in CO2. This is certainly not what the models show.

Here's a neat tool you can use to explore this. Set CO2 to 2.4 and PDO to 0.13 and you already have a pretty good match to the temperature record.

I understand you're not a scientist. However for God sakes, look at the data! Go into the distant past to present! Analyze it! Come up with a theory! You'll see in short order CO2 falls apart as a cause, clearly. Another clue is they want to put people in jail that disagree with man made GW. Classic sign they're wrong and they know it. Otherwise, they'd present real science. You know, using the scientific method. Data, results, you can do it too and come up with the same results.

What's very frustrating to me is I've predicted this for 20 years that their models wouldn't hold up and I've been right. They continue to fail as long as they're based on CO2.

Wonder why I haven't been responding? I have a recipe to save anything from you off to the side. I don't even see it. I came across this one by chance. So I figured I'd try to enlighten you again even though I'm sure I failed. You have a really big problem. You have to overcome those stubborn articles from the past that show MMGW is bullshit. Good luck with that.

All Belgians are Equal.

Incorrect. We are currently in an inter glacial period. They are much shorter than glacial periods (ice ages). We have been in an interglacial period for 8,000 years which is typical for the duration of an inter-glacial. The last Ice ace lasted 100,000 years, and the next one is due at any moment.

See here

Yeah, temperatures did go up at first, since the last ice age - but they've been slowly dropping for the last 8000 years. Until recently.

I think People Ignore Warning Security Software , maybe because they think that it does not contain the risks to the laptop. Thanks for the sharing. Travel Umroh Terbaik I Umroh November 2016 I Paket Umroh Desember I Paket Umroh Januari 2017 I Umroh Januari 2017 I Umroh Januari I Umroh November 2016 I Umroh Desember 2016

I think People Ignore Warning Security Software , maybe because they think that it does not contain the risks to the laptop. Thanks for the sharing. Travel Umroh Terbaik I Umroh November 2016 I Paket Umroh Desember I Paket Umroh Januari 2017 I Umroh Januari 2017 I Umroh Januari I Umroh November 2016 I Umroh Desember 2016

The problem with James Hansen is he has a history of being right.

"See, now if you truly had free speech, nobody would ever be able to question you on this speech, because that would be impairing your free speech."

Wut? Further speech does not impair anyones initial speech.

I wasn't talking about initial, but a reply, namely one that questioned the foregoing.

As it stands, there are many people, who when challenged, object because their precious free speech is all important.

"And that example is actually about the Moral Majority side of things, not the dreaded SJW. At least be correct in your attributions."

Bullshit. It's the moral majority assholes AND the SJW assholes BOTH. They're two sides of the same authoritarian coin.

Authoritarian or whatever, the reasoning is quite different. You could come up with some authoritarian agenda for the SJW bogeyman if you wanted, but there's no reason to falsely attribute a sentiment.

No, in fact, you are wrong. But way to motte and bailey. Try reading some Dworkin to see just how lunatic your lunatic fringe actually is. Or try this radfem blog https://allecto.wordpress.com/ for one of my personal favorite batshit artistes.

I don't see any evidence showing my contention to be wrong. Not even sure why you're even attributing these persons who you find offensive to me, I'd have to work hard to find a connection to them myself. But really, all you seem to be showing is your distress towards a certain group, not disputing my words in any effective manner. I don't consider whatever you're trying to say very coherent, not the least because you linked to two random places, which I would simply say are poorly written themselves, and not directly applicable, so you're not even using your own words. You're just linking without a specific purpose to it, and certainly not disputing my own words.

You just seem to be aggrieved by a certain group of people, and so upset at them, that you're somehow think complaining to me about them is arguing with my words.

That would present something of a difficulty, as while you may think you're saying something important, I think you're babbling, and should probably stop, think about whatever you're trying to say, and realize why you're not effectively presenting yourself to me.

Of course, if you took free speech to a fevered pitch, you might just get irate at me instead, and give no thought to your own expressions. After all, I'm telling you to shut up.

"See, now if you truly had free speech, nobody would ever be able to question you on this speech, because that would be impairing your free speech."

Wut? Further speech does not impair anyones initial speech.

"And that example is actually about the Moral Majority side of things, not the dreaded SJW. At least be correct in your attributions."

Bullshit. It's the moral majority assholes AND the SJW assholes BOTH. They're two sides of the same authoritarian coin.

"The SJW who are against adult material are against the exploitation of individuals in the adult entertainment industry, a similar, but different priority."

No, in fact, you are wrong. But way to motte and bailey. Try reading some Dworkin to see just how lunatic your lunatic fringe actually is. Or try this radfem blog https://allecto.wordpress.com/ for one of my personal favorite batshit artistes.

So you're saying BSD and Linux?

I don't get the last statement. My plan is a tax-driven plan which transitions from current public-aid welfare to a universal social security. The USS returns most of the taxes taken to the people paying them, and pays out on a monthly-or-better (e.g. twice per month?) schedule, thus doesn't interfere with cash flow (you don't get a lump sum back at the end of the year or something crazy; the government isn't holding your money for months). It has nothing to do with bond returns or stocks.

Further, those individual investment options are means to transfer money. Money doesn't grow; someone must lose for someone to gain. While that's true of a tax-driven system, investments are haphazard and tax-benefits systems are controlled.

The only investment consideration I make is in diverting the benefit to retirement savings, as compared to current old-age pensions (Social Security retirement benefits). I compare that to guaranteed-income funds as a baseline, because Vanguard bonds can win 14% in a year, but they can also lose 16% in a year; I can only make definitive statements about 1.2% or 1.7% growth in a guaranteed-income, non-losing option like a savings account or CD.

I did a cost rundown, as well as considerations on long-term retirement impacts. (Note: the married-filing-jointly table on my cost rundown is wrong; I'll have to fix that. The actual computations are correct.)