Are you really that narrow-minded?? First of all, everyone else in this thread has been talking about commercial viability (stuff you can sell) and now all of a sudden you use the word benefit - are you for real? Do you really hear "commercial viability" and morph that into "benefit" inside you brain?? Come on!
First of all, for a product to be commercially viable the product needs to provide a benefit (or at least a percieved benefit). You can argue all you want on that point, but it is a basic principle of economics.
All research and all knowledge benefits society as a whole. Just because you can't immediately sell it, that doesn't mean there is no benefit. Do I really need to list thousands upon thousands of examples of research that couldn't be sold, that later led to enormous benefits to every human being on the planet?
Sure, basic research leads to more research which may lead to a commercially viable product. Heck, knowledge is good just for for the sake of knowing. But think of the average Jane and Joe sitting at home. What good does a research paper on the latest dicovery really provide them? If that research leads to something tangible, whatever it is, that they can use in their life then it is providing them a benefit. If they read scientific journals for enjoyment then yes, it does, but most people (most people also don't read/.) don't sit around reading journals for the heck of it. In most cases, for that research to get from a university lab to the average joe requires commercialization, which usually means patenting and licensing. Hence, commercial viable and benefit are tied together.
Countless examples of basic research turning into a commercially viable product way down the line do exist, but until the become commecially viable it provides little to no benefit to the average joe. Your examples are actually perfect examples of what I am talking about. Sure, the microscope led to many great discoveries that have saved countless lives, but until someone made something practical (ie antibiotics) society as a whole didn't benefit. Did the discovery of germs help anyone? No, the development of antibiotics and sanitation practices did.
I never said that universities should focus all of their research on commercially viable topics. Basic research is a good thing. I only implied that patents help foster research making it from the lab to the end users and until that end product/practice is out the research is of little use to most of society. The real benefit comes from practical applications, not the research itself or some journal article. Sure the research and journals are needed in order to get to the end, and I never said that these steps aren't needed.
Maybe you should look into the Bayh-Dole act a little. The premise behind it was to get government funded research from the lab to the people that paid for it (ie the tax payers). Almost anyone that has done any subsiquent research on the outcome of the act has said that it has been a success, although many hoped that more would be commercialized out of it because there are countless commercial applications for basic research that have yet to be commercialized for the benefit of society.
*Lots* of things are produced with no "intellectual property" protection. Cars, food, sneakers, bubble-gum, houses, aspirin, and bad comedians are just a few of things produced without protectionism.
Cars? Look up Ford, its subsidiaries, and suppliers on the USPTO, I am sure that you will find a pretty big list. Sure, the overall concept is no longer covered, but they get a design patent for every new model, they patent all of the new gadgets, and the list goes on and on.
I will agree that many products are produced without patents, but bubble gum is covered by trade secrets much like Coke. Asperin is a great example of a marketable item with no IP protection at all. Good marketing can incent a company to produce a product without protection, but for a new product that has not met the market test it is difficult to get the ball rolling within an organization (or if a new company to get funding) if you can't protect your intelectual property. I have met with lot's of VC's (as much as people hate them they do serve a useful purpose) and if you are trying to get money to start a company based on a new technology they won't even talk to you if you don't have some type of protection for the technology (usually a patent or two, but sometimes they might agree that keeping it secret is better).
Innovation would occur without patents, but I would not agree that more innovation would. Patents actually force disclosure of the technology in question which allows others to build off of that idea. Trade secrets (the other main form of protection) make this much more difficult. Sometimes patents do get in the way of progress when the holder refuses to license it to others trying to build off of that idea. I don't really have a solution to this problem, but some middle ground needs to be found.
I would _not_ ever allow _anyone_ to hold _any_ patent in _any_ way related to human health and cure. Yes, I know what that would mean to "health" and drug companies.
While I do understand the ethical side of your argument (the greedy health care companies), it would never work. If no patents could be held in health care, no companies would research new technologies, and healthcare would become stagnant. Who do you propose handles making new health care technolgies, or are you suggesting that we don't need any new treatments?
Research funding is already slanted towards research that can be turned into something marketable some day. Is there anything wrong with that bias?
In my opinion, absolutely not. What good is research to those not involved in academia if it provides no benifit to them? Public universities are there to serve the public and by providing something that can turn into something marketable they, in theory, are adding to the quality of life of those taxpayers funding the unviersity. One can argue all day long about consumerisim hurting people, but I doubt anyone that recieves a medical implant/procedure or drug that saves their life based on research that started in a university would be complaining.
Public funding of research should belong to THE PUBLIC!
In essence it does. The public "owns" the university, therefore when the university owns a patent the public owns it as well. The problem with not patenting research is that if it can't be protected it usually never makes into practical use. Whaat good is research to joe public when he doesn't ever see a practical use for it? Sure, some research does fall out of this scope (climate change for example), but for something that can become a tangible product that suits a market need it doesn't do any good to just publish a paper on it if there is no way I can get my hands on it as a potential users. A great example is medical devices. Universites do tons of research on these, but there is no incentive for the makers of these products to go through the trouble of getting FDA approvial if everyone else can build the same device. Hence most research ends up being just that... just research with no practical device, drug, or other tangible product comming out of it.
You can argue about our patent system all you want and how it needs modifications and I will not object, but intelectual property rights still need to exist and currently the only legal method to protect a technology is through patents or secrecy. I would rather the universities patent something than keep their research secret.
Should universities (or groups within universities) be allowed to hold patents and intellectual property while at the same time gaining donations and grants as an educational institution -- or for that matter government funds?
If non-profits (particularly universities) hold patents that are funded by donantions and grants they can, in theory, reduce their need for these sources of funds. The Bayh-Dole Act provided an avenue for this and actually encourages universities to license their technologies.
I am currently a research assitant for the Technology Commercialization Lab (a group that works closely with the Office of Technology Commercialization which governs patent rights for research conducted at the university) at my university and this is part of what we are supposed to do. We try to help professors in either starting a new company based on their research in order to develop a commercial product or to license it to a third party. The university gets 33% of the proceeds, the department gets 33%, and the professor gets 33% of any licensing fees paid to the university. In a research orinted university these proceeds have the ability to add up to a lot of cash to help fund further research, new facilities, and pay salaries. At my university we haven't produced many "killer techs" that have turned into large sums of money, but it can happen. Stanford and MIT (along with others) have both recieved significant sums of money from licensing patents.
That guy sounds like a bafoon and I am suprised he passed (I attent a rival MBA program... no wonder we always beat them in the rankings). I am currently pursing an MBA and in our intro communications class they teach us the exact opposite. Use the 6X6 rule (no more than 6 bullets with no more than 6 words/bullet), no fancy graphics, and use handouts for things like spreadsheets or where more concrete detail is needed for the audience. If you need powerpoint to do a presentaion you shouldn't be presenting in the first place. A whiteboard should be sufficient. Powerpoint is a good tool that is usually misused.
I use powerpoint to keep the audience on-track with where I am going, not to convey complex information. The complex info comes from my speaking and/or supplimential handouts such as reports and spreadsheets. Graphs work really well in helping convey information through powerpoint but I also seem them abused.
all the paper teaches you is the skill (yes it is a skill) of bullshitting. Useful if you want to climb that social ladder, but ultimately corrosive to society.
Bullshitting, as you call it, is one of the most essential skills in the professional world. A good paper should be convincing to the reader, and that is exactly what professional communication is all about. You need to lay out data, turn that data into information, draw a conclusion, and convince the reader to agree with your conclusion. You will never lead a project if you can't put those pieces together. You call this "climbing that social ladder" but it is much more than that. Most managers get their jobs because they can communicate effectively, whether it is through oral or written communications (usually both). Both written and oral arguments require the same things, abeit in slightly differnt forms. Salesmenship is applicable to ALL professions, not just salesmen. Have you ever been in an interview?
I will agree that most term-papers in academia are not really graded properly and become busy work, but that is a problem with many professors, not the term-paper itself. Educators live in their ivory-tower worlds and don't always understand what is usefull beyond their class-rooms. The idea of assigning papers with minimum word requirements is really counter productive to everyone involved. If you can fulfill the requirements of a paper in one page why shouldn't that be enough? When I was in undergrad I felt much like you, that I wrote a lot of papers without much substance just because I had to fulfill a requirement. As I moved into the real world I had to write "papers" in order to communicate with clients, coworkers, bosses, and everyone else. Without the exercises presenting an argument I wouldn't have gotten very far. Yes, a term-paper can be busywork, but it shouldn't be.
Like it or not, the real world requires social skills to be anything more than a programmer/engineer sitting in isolation. You can't be part of a team if you can't communicate. The "best" engineer may be quite a burden on a company if they don't have the ability to communicate. The "social ladder" is not really such a bad thing. People who climb it do so for a reason, they have both the drive and the skills to do so. Yes, it isn't always merit based, but that is another topic all together. Good "sales" skills apply to all parts of ones life. Hopefully, some day you will realize that the social ladder isn't really what you think it is. People are promoted for their ability to "sell" their ideas even if they are inferior to other ideas. Here in reality, if an idea can't be "sold" it is useless.
2. Type of production. Certain types of work demand organization -- such as information handling, accounting, etc. Messiness in those positions will be less efficient and productive than orderliness. Creative positions, on the other hand, may benefit from disorder.
I couldn't agree more. I have managed the bookkeeping department before and know how bad it can be for a bookkeeper to be disporganized. One of the last people we let go was let go for that reason alone. We couldn't follow the paper trail on several occasions and it always amounted to the poor organization of the bookkeeper. On the other hand I was the senior accountant and IT guy and had a very messy desk at all times with no problems. Since I only reviewed financials and fixed problems I didn't keep the bookkeeping documents on my desk. When I needed a file I used it an put it back ASAP so it idn't end up at the bottom of my pile in the "unimportant" section.
If the bookkeepers maintained a system like mine all hell would have broke loose. We actually got most of our business because other firms were unable to maintain books in an orderly fashion. When we took over management (we managed homeowner and condo associations as wll as maintained their books... we maintained about 100 sets of financials on a monthly basis) we had to go through everything and essentially perform an audit just to get stuff in some logical order (preferably our sense of order). For the most part our office was well organized and full of "neat freaks", but most of the office was support staff that needed effective group communication and collective organization in order to perform their duties. The property managers and people like myself that had their hands in a lot of things often developed their own organizaion (or disorganization from an outside perspective) systems, but their work is much more independent and requires much less colloboration with others.
The article summary is definately lacking in a solid justification for its conclusion. Some jobs, particularly highly collaborative or dealing with sensitive data that must be accurate, require high levels of organization and tidyness in order to maximize productivity. Other jobs, particularly creative jobs or ones that require little collaboration require much less organization. I would like to agree with the article since I am usually the one being pressed to clean up my desk, but I don't really belive that it can be used in all situations, or even a majority of them.
While auto land is not done with regularity, it is possiblle and has gone through extensive testing. Supposedly it tends to give a smoother landing than a tranditional pilot most of the time. I personally think it isn't used becuase it is takes the pilots out of the loop essentially and pilots don't like that idea and lobby very hard against it. They do want something to do other than sit in the cockpit and flip a few switches until something major happens. Essentially pilots are really only a backup anyway since modern planes are able to take-off, navigate, and land all on their own. They are also the only current way for aircraft control to have any control over an airplane but that will probably change as technology progresses, although the security implications of using a computerized air trafic control system to automate aircraft patterns is also a major hurdle. If the planes could do it on their own and just rely on plane-to-plane communication backed up with radar data it could be relatively secure but there are still problems if a terrorist got into the system and could send signals say hey, I'm plane X and going at 250 knots heading 220, and at 10K feet when in reality there is no plane even there or the plane is actually at 8K feet or something.
Everyone is entiled to their own opinion. Most of what he has done ahs been done by his predicessors. Yes, he may have used things like the NSA wiretap program more extensively (a program in existance for decades and used extensively by Clinton as well), and tried to execute more power than most, but it is more of a symptom of people in the position than particular person. Obviously you hate Bush, and probably attribute anything that congress has done to him even though his working relationship with them has been tenious at best even when the Republicans were in power.
I am personally not a big Bush supporter myself, but the other options have been even more disturbing (they haven't been willing to stick to their guns on even minor issues, and this includes people in both parties). I am not for taking away liberties, but I amslo not for things like redistribution of wealth and having the government protect me from my own stupidity (both parties do this, Democrats think we can't shot an armed burgaler in our own homes and Republicans don't think they have the right to push their morals on me). I personally lean libertarian and don't really like much of what any president since Reagan has done, and even he did a lot that distrubed me. All of the politicans in Washington are corrupt with a few exceptions. One of those I have the most respect for is Liberman and his party has almost excommunicated him. He doesn't follow a party line and uses reason when making decisions rather than listening to the idiot figureheads with extremist views like most politicians on both sides.
Rather than just spouting off what you think others believe when trying to attack them, maybe, just maybe you should ask them what they think. Maybe you should use some facts to back up your statements rather than try and attack someone whom you know nothing about and haven't even bothered to dig into. In my opinion you smide remark makes you seem like a tool, but I will only atack your remark and not try to make implications about what you are trying to say that are not evident in your comments. Try doing some historical research if you really think the Bush is much much worse than a proven sexual preditor (I'm not talking about Monica, she was willing, but the trial where Monica came up where he haid to pay 100's of thousands in a civil judgement) named Clinton who was only the second President ever to be impeached for lying under oath, an incompetent Carter that couldn't handle a hostage crisis and made our already suffering economy worse, a Bush Sr. that trashed our economy and let himself be tricked into passing a tax hike by the Democrats just for them to use it against him in an election, a Nixon that was impeached for a cover up, etc, etc, etc. All of these Presidents have been bad in reality, some have just had better PR people or were more personable, or had inside connections in the major press outlets. I can go on and on about all of the mistakes that all of these Presidents made if you would like just to make it clear that there s really nothing new here. And as I said, Bush is not really much, much worse, he is just as bad as the rest of them.
When Congress and the President are from different parties this type of thing can be kept under control.
I don't think you are correct. Congress doesn't read bills, the Presidnet doesn't read bills, they all essentially look at an abstract written by someone else. When different parties are in charge of different branches or even the senate and house this practice isn't really dimminished. Pork still gets in on almost every bill. No one reads the budget in its entirety. Single lines of law slip past both parties all of the time. The only thing tht gets kept under control by having different parties in power is the main subject of a bill when it is something that is controversial (which is about everything these days except for pay raises for the house and senate). All of the rider amendments usually get through because no one cares to look.
Seriously. Someone explain to me where the President got the Constitutional 'power' to protect this country from enemies?
It's called the commander in chief role. While I will agree that Presidents tend to overstep their bounds, with Bush being no exception. If you want examples of others abusing their power I can probably dig one up for every President to ever sit in office. The country has a history of a power strugle between the branches since before the Constitution was ever even finalized.
The executive branch is there for the purpose of enforcement. Congress passes laws, the Judiciary decides guilt/innocence/punishment, and the excutive enforces laws. Enforcement is the only part that can protect. A law is useless without enforcement, hence the President is the sole individueal with the "power" to protect the country from enemies. The President has the sole authority to declare war, not congress. Congress can keep that power in check by refusing to fund a war. There is a system of checks and balances, but in truth the Constitution gives the power to protect the country from enemies and to decide who those enemies are. No other branch has this power by design.
If you really belive that the Preisdent doesn't have the power to protect the country from enemies you really need to go and read the Constitution. It is quite clear in this matter.
I'd hardly call it english. Legalise really is its own form of code.
Yeah, it's a lot like BASIC. It's full of GOTO statements... "In addition to Title X, Paragraph Y, Line Z, we add the provision to protect W in Title Z, Paragraph Y, Line V."
Is it just me or does the idea of a major legislative body just sitting around, listening to someone read what everyone concerned should already know, seem quite wasteful?
the feds should only worry about military/national security (this would include highways), international trade, and disputes between the states.
YES!!! Isn't this what the constitution says? I never read anything about federal entitlement programs in the constitution, yet every day they want to dole out more money to their own pet projects that they use soley for the purpose of securing votes. They don't get my vote when they pass these crappy bills, they make me look for a new candidate that claims to support the constitution. What ever happened to states rights and the idea that states would garner most of the domestic power and the federal government would handle international affairs and disputes between states? It seems lost to the few of us left that see through the BS the fed tells us they have to due for us. Leave me alone big brother and quite telling me what you can do for me other than take my moeny ion the form of taxes to waste of bridges to nowhere. I welcome the day that little brother steps up to the plate and fights big brother to regain their original levels of power.
The whislteblower act is relatively clear, as well as SOX requirements on data security. Physical security of financial data is part of SOX and this is a clear violation. As an accountant I know these laws fairly well and this case is a no brainer if proper evidence can be provided. Whistleblowers are afforded much protection, but in reality your career is over even if they can't fire you. They can make you want to quite by treating you poorly and refusing to promote you.
If you are labeled a whistleblower your corporate career is over though, you will never have any position of consequence in a large organization. This doesn't really mean that your career is over. Many smaller firms would welcome a whistleblower due to the fact that many of them try to do the right thing. Another possible route for whistleblowers is to become a guest speaker. MBA programs bring them in constantly to teach in ethics courses... hah MBA and ethics... I kid because I am one and the ethics lectures I have had are hardly worth hearing except when they bring in people that have spent time in prison... they usually have good stories and give a good sense of reason as to why relatively honest people end up in bad situations and end up crossing the line at some point.
Whistleblowers also make good investive journalists and writers because of their experiences. I know a guy who was a whistleblower at a finacial firm (I think it was Morgan Stanley, but I can't be sure... it's been a while since I communicated with him). He became set for life because the act povides the whistleblower with 30% of any penalties the corporation has to pay. In his case the settlement was in the 100's of millions so he got a big chuck of change. He got his PhD, teaches ethics as an adjunct on occasion, and writes independantly for the WSJ and other major financial publications as well writes books. Not a bad way to live, being semiretired since his mid-30's.
On another note it seems that the situation at hand has nothing to do with fraud, fraud may be happening, but there is no evidence here of it. This just sounds like sloppy bookkeeping. I have managed a bookkeeping depatment and all of the account and routing numbers we had for our clients were under lock and key. Only the bookkeepers and the owners of the company had keys to the room and the file cabinet they were in. I didn't even have a key even though I wrote the contracts, ran the programs to make the transactions, and managed the AIS which had the data in it. We had no legal requirement for this since we weren't a public company and our contract with our customers didn't state anything about us protecting their data more than it would be held confidential. SOX requires that data security rules be followed (including physical protection of data) so this is a clear breach of SOX.
It is a personal decision to become a whistleblower. It will change your life forever and force a new career path. If you have stong morals and ethical standards that make you feel that you must fix the problem then it may be right to blow the whistle. If you go that route make sure you have already spoken with a lawyer before acting and have as much documentation as possible to make your case. Just showing up in court in a me said he/she said case won't get you anywhere and ruin your life. Secure copies of performance evaluations (as evidence that you weren't fired for performance) and all communication between you and anyone you report the offense to, particulalry your superiors (I hate that term because in this case they are obviosly not superior, just higher ranking).
No one here can tell you what to do, and the 1-liners saying to shut up are thoughtless. Just keeping your mouth shut is part of the problem in the corporate world these days and obviuosly everone that says to keep quiet is just keeping the status quo... they are just as guilty as the perpetratiors in my eyes. Giving one word of warning is not a valid attempt to fix a problem. If you witness a horrible crime should you just keep your mouth shut? No, you should repo
Actually at the very begining (first seconds) there was no matter, only energy. This energy was converted to matter (don't ask me how). One theory of how the big bang happened is that it was something like a super black hold with a singularity and that included all space, time, matter, and enegry. At some critical mass it just blew up. Obviuosly this is all just conjecture, but I think it is a way to explain both the big bang and the idea that black holes can simply disapper. If they disappear it violates the law of conservation of mass, but if they create a new universe/dimension than it wouldn't violate that constraint.
Matter and space do have some relationship, but it is more gravities warping of space than anything else. Theoretically space could exits with no matter or energy, but the reverse isn't true. Some believe that garavity will eventually collapse space back into a singularity at some point in the big crush, others think that everything will become so spread out that the average temperture in the universe apporaches absolute zero (to within something like 1X10^-1000000000000 degrese K) resulting in the big freeze. Don't ask me to explain this in much detail because it seems kind of crazy to me. All was created in the big bang and there is a relationship between them in that all of the energy require to create the big bang had to exist to create space, but if all of the energy and mass that resulted from the energy entered black holes and they disappered space would still exists although it would be impossible to test since our mass and energy wouldn't be here to test this hypothosis.
Actually smoking may be benificial here. The dust would tend to stick to the tar rather than scatter freely. Just look at the inside of a computer from a smokers house... the fans a gummed up, sticky dust covers everything and canned air does nothing on the tar laced dust. Mabe the tar can be used to help clean the dust from the air? NASA should give me funding to test this theory:-) Maybe the astronauts shouldn't smoke themselves but a tar derived from smokers homes could be used in air filters or something.
I guess that I will have to agree to disagree with you on the issue at hand. I agree that flat taxes and VAT's are not really very good as they tend to hurt the poor and help the wealthy. I don't really mind the progressive system we have but the way it gets trashed by congress is horrible. When Reagan (well, not really Reagan, his subordiantes based on a few basic ideas that he had such as supply side economics) rewrote the tax code it was changed to be relatively simple and had relatively few loopholes. Since then politicians have destroyed it by listening to special interest groups allowing more deductions, removing others and so on. It shouldn't take a huge manual to file a tax return. If the IRS gives you guidance it should be taken that it will hold up if they decide to audit you, but this isn't the case. The IRS can tell you something is okay, you go and do it, then they can audit you and penalize you for listening to them. No one knows what is going on including the enforcement community. It's just ludicrous.
My thought is that by shifting the burden to the owners of a firm isn't necesarilly that it is so much of a benifit to the economy due to higher EPS growth rates, its that it takes the power to cheat out of the corporations hands who tend to be able to afford the best tax lawyers and tend and avoid taxes at all costs. Most individuals (even most of the wealthy) tend to pay their taxes and use relatively conservative methods. By sticking with a progressive system the tax burden doesn't really change since the same physical people that own the corporations would have to pay the taxes instead of getting a smaller dividend and paying a lower rate on the dividend than they do on their other income, they would be able to get a higher dividend (I am considering dividend and capital gain the same here because they are both at the same rate right now) and be taxed at their rate whichever rate that is. To me it is just silly that if I am in the top tax brack based on my salary I pay less on my dividends, while those that are in the lower tax brackets pay closer to the same rate on both dividends and salary. If the Democrats have their way they will raise the taxes on dividends and the opposite will be true. The retirees (usually in the lower tax brackets) paying 15% now on dividends will pay more like 30-35% when the rest of their income is taxed at the 20-25% range hile the wealth will be paying similar rates on both. Neither of these is really ideal since the poorer person should be taxed at a lower rate across the board while the wealthy should be taxed at a higher rate across the board.
Let me state that I am not for the idea of redistribution of wealth, but I do understand the need for a progressive tax system. The underprivledged can barely afford to scrape by and shouldn't have to pay anything while the wealthy can afford to pay significantly more... but I am not for higher taxes in general because of several other beliefs I have such as faith in supply side economics and because of my belief that the government shouldn't be spending my money in the first place (yes that is the extreem end of my view, I do not really mind paying some taxes is used properly, but we have already discussed that aspect).
I hope you are enjoying you career in computers. I definately did enjoy mine when I was in it, I just felt I was better suited to management rather than being a tech. With my resume back then I had no degree and companies didn't want me as a manager, only as a tech. I was only in management at the time because the firm I was with was small and I was in it from the early days. When I decided it was time to move to bigger and better things their really weren't any opportunities for me, this was soon after the dot com crash so jobs were more scarce for those without a degree wanting to be in a management position. At the time I got out my parents had just decided to buy a business and wanted me to help out so I joined their company. I did a bit of everything and found that accounting can be fun wh
I completely understand what you are saying about it not sinking in. I am no astophysicist so my knowlede isn't very detailed but I do try. I have read books on things like string theory and relativity jsut because I find it interesting but when they get into proving their statements I have no idea of how to verify any of it. I am really good at understanding concepts without knowing the nuts and bolts though and I do manage to get tidbits here and there... but others here are definately more knowledgeable, but they tend to use too complicated of explanations for others to understand. I think most of the time this is because they don't really understand the theory but understand the math, but it is hard for me to verify this, or it could be that they are just trying to impress people by using complicated explanations as many scientistific types tend to do.
As far as space being defined by the objects in it I don't think you are really correct. While space is considered to be "empty", it is made of something that we just don't understand yet. This is where string theory has come into play. String theory, although considered junk science by many, is an attempt to define the space-time construct, and in doing so unite relativity with quantum mechanics. While space obviously contains objects and matter it isn't really what defines space. Without matter or energy there would still be space, and based on the current understanding of the big bang theory and events following it space itself is expanding, regardless of the matter in it. No one really knows if space will continue to expand indefinately or collapse, but the evidence suggests that the rate of expansion is accellerating which poses another problem. Considering that the initial rate of expansion far outpaced that currently observed, it seems difficult to accept that expansion could be accelerating but the evidence suggests just that.
This is why many (including myself) have a difficult time believing in current theories even though they predict much of what we can observe. It's kind of like newtonian physics though, the theory works under most known circumstances but when things get going really fast or mass becomes really large the laws break down. Einstiens theories have helped expand our ability to understand and predict under these circumstances, but I really doubt that they are 100% correct. They also break down at even larger extreems such as in black holes. Even though Einstein predicted black holes and the effects they would have on their surroundings they fail to predict what happens once in a black hole. Since no one will ever be able to go there one could actually say that claiming to predict what happens in a black hole is no different from any religius claim since it is impossible to test. While math could possibly predict what happens, the true basis for the scientific method is the ability to make a prediction and then test it at some point (the one making the prediction doesn't have to be able to test it, it just has to be something that can be tested, hence the difference between theory and laws, laws have been proven by repeted testing of all possible predicitons where theories still lack sufficient testing to ensure that all possible combinations of predictions are 100% true).
I have read some on the big bang theory and at the early stages it was expanding at multiples of the speed of light. Something like a couple seconds after the event the universe was already many millions of miles in diameter. During the first moments of the universe there was no matter, only energy, but energy was moving faster than the speed of light from the origin. But the unverse itself is space time so it doesn't really break the rules of relativity because space itself was expanding and the enregy itself wasn't really moving at such high velocities. I can't remember the source though, it was years ago that I read this. The sme thing could still be hapening since the universe is still thought to be expanding, so in reality the mass and/or photons that are moving apart at faster than the speed of light aren't moving faster themselves, it is just a part of the universe itself expanding.
First I would like to say I am enjoying this debate. It appears that you are one of the few/.'ers that really understands things like accounting, economics, and the laws regarding these. I am an accountant finishing my MBA in Finance and Accounting (will be done in 8 weeks) so I understand what you are trying to say about most of the basics so you can skip things like the tax code, appeals process, etc. I have a pretty good understanding of all of these and you can save your time explaining the basics. I am not the typical/.'er that only understands tech, math, and science, and it appears that you are also not. (Yeah, I used to be a tech, sysadmin, and tech manager but have moved on.)
I wasn't trying to get into the semantics of the law, but in reality there is not much difference these days between a C-Corp, S-Corp, LLC, or LLP in the eyes of the law. An S-Corp is slightly different in effect because of the limits on shareholders (the # and that they must be Americans, etc). An LLC or LLP have the same legal protection (albeit it is a state entity and in the eyes of the IRS they are treated more like a partnership and it there is little legal precident about ownersip liability... we will find out after the Anderson case is finished) as a C-Corp for the owners yet they are a pass-through entitity where gains and losses are taxed by the shareholders. And as you stated access to capital is more difficult for those entities today but it is changing. There are several public LLC's and LLP's in various forms (most are MLLP's right now and they are most prevalant in the energy sector but as investors are becoming more sophisticated they are becoming more prevelant). It is hard to issue bonds, but "loans" are still available through other securites. Many special securities such as MIPS, PERCS, PEPS, etc. use LLC's or LLP's as a pass through in order to change the tax structure making the securities have additional value (most of these still just use an offshore company in a tax haven but this trend is changing). When I have worked on tax returns (I hated it but I learned a lot) as an undergraduate intern about half of the personal returns I did had some type of pass-through entity where the owner was a passive owner and not involved in the business. My clientelle was different than most being that I was working at a highly regarded firm in the Naples, FL area so I wasn't working on $50 returns like at H&R block, we usually charged about $500-$1500 per return (some were much more like $2000-$5000 but those were relatively rare).
My point about corporate taxes is the only reason they are the way they are is because the law set them up that way. I personally don't think that it is the best way. When tends to happen is companies are forced to show constant growth or suffer loses in shareholder confidence. If anything affects that growth the incentive is there to cook the books or raise prices. When the EPS goes down all hell breaks lose.
I do like your example of "perfect" competition, but the truth is that is never really exists. In order to have perfect competition there must be perfect information. Considering that many transactions are completed in the futures market for commodities such as wheat there is less than perfect information. No one knows what the weather will do in two weeks so when a futures contract is written neither side has perfect information. While some small farmers refuse to participate in the futures market because they don't fully understand it most are moving towards it, especially as farms become more and more consolidated. Prices are manipulated in the futures market by speculators which also affects the perfect competition. I will agree that the farmer doesn't have much control over the price, but it is a function of their market power. There are many more farmers than there are buyers and the supply is not a constant. In this case it is almost impssible to pass costs on and that is why the small farmer is a dying breed. The larger corporat
I wasn't really trying to say that corporate taxes should be discontinued. What I am implying is that corporations are essentially an extension of the investors (forget their legal stus for a minute becaue it really isn't too important for my discussion). If corporations were treated like pass-through entities like LLC's, partnerships, and proprietorships the government could tax dividends as regular income and end up with the same result (Corporations maximum tax rate is lower than that of the top income earners, if more dividends were paid out more people would end up in that class, and the net result could be the same with some minor tweaking of the individual tax rates). Corporate profits, if used to fund growth, are essentially not taxed because of the large number of tax breaks companies get such as expensing R&D, depreciation, and the like. If the profits are paid out as dividends they are taxed twice which hurts the stockholders. The double taxation system isn't really a bad thing, it just isn't needed and probably leads to many more costs associated with the additional burden placed on the IRS.
Your 3-button mouse example doesn't take into account that any company that sells mice in the U.S. is impacted by an effective U.S. tax hike (changing the rules on foreign earned profits that aren't repatriated is the same thing as a tx hike in it effect) and therefore the price is bound to rise, or the supply will fall making it harder to find a 3-button mouse. In reality it is almost imperciptible on such a small ticket item, the price may change by a few pennies, or a company making a variety of other products will move the price increase to a larger ticket item and force other companies with a less diversified product portfolio to either close up shop, lay people off, or face a revolt from their shareholders (due to lower earnings or earnings growth) which usually leads to the earlier two options. The end effect is higher average prices, regardless of the price of a specific item.
In reality the IRS states that it is an entities responsibility to minimize their tax burden within the laws. The IRS is natorious for going after companies for somethng that is actually legal. When they fail the tax code often changes to ensure that the next time the particular circumstance arises they can be more successfull in a court (providing their lobby in congress outweighs the corporations affected).
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First of all, for a product to be commercially viable the product needs to provide a benefit (or at least a percieved benefit). You can argue all you want on that point, but it is a basic principle of economics.
Sure, basic research leads to more research which may lead to a commercially viable product. Heck, knowledge is good just for for the sake of knowing. But think of the average Jane and Joe sitting at home. What good does a research paper on the latest dicovery really provide them? If that research leads to something tangible, whatever it is, that they can use in their life then it is providing them a benefit. If they read scientific journals for enjoyment then yes, it does, but most people (most people also don't read /.) don't sit around reading journals for the heck of it. In most cases, for that research to get from a university lab to the average joe requires commercialization, which usually means patenting and licensing. Hence, commercial viable and benefit are tied together.
Countless examples of basic research turning into a commercially viable product way down the line do exist, but until the become commecially viable it provides little to no benefit to the average joe. Your examples are actually perfect examples of what I am talking about. Sure, the microscope led to many great discoveries that have saved countless lives, but until someone made something practical (ie antibiotics) society as a whole didn't benefit. Did the discovery of germs help anyone? No, the development of antibiotics and sanitation practices did.
I never said that universities should focus all of their research on commercially viable topics. Basic research is a good thing. I only implied that patents help foster research making it from the lab to the end users and until that end product/practice is out the research is of little use to most of society. The real benefit comes from practical applications, not the research itself or some journal article. Sure the research and journals are needed in order to get to the end, and I never said that these steps aren't needed.
Maybe you should look into the Bayh-Dole act a little. The premise behind it was to get government funded research from the lab to the people that paid for it (ie the tax payers). Almost anyone that has done any subsiquent research on the outcome of the act has said that it has been a success, although many hoped that more would be commercialized out of it because there are countless commercial applications for basic research that have yet to be commercialized for the benefit of society.
Cars? Look up Ford, its subsidiaries, and suppliers on the USPTO, I am sure that you will find a pretty big list. Sure, the overall concept is no longer covered, but they get a design patent for every new model, they patent all of the new gadgets, and the list goes on and on.
I will agree that many products are produced without patents, but bubble gum is covered by trade secrets much like Coke. Asperin is a great example of a marketable item with no IP protection at all. Good marketing can incent a company to produce a product without protection, but for a new product that has not met the market test it is difficult to get the ball rolling within an organization (or if a new company to get funding) if you can't protect your intelectual property. I have met with lot's of VC's (as much as people hate them they do serve a useful purpose) and if you are trying to get money to start a company based on a new technology they won't even talk to you if you don't have some type of protection for the technology (usually a patent or two, but sometimes they might agree that keeping it secret is better).
Innovation would occur without patents, but I would not agree that more innovation would. Patents actually force disclosure of the technology in question which allows others to build off of that idea. Trade secrets (the other main form of protection) make this much more difficult. Sometimes patents do get in the way of progress when the holder refuses to license it to others trying to build off of that idea. I don't really have a solution to this problem, but some middle ground needs to be found.
Hehehe... bad comedians...
That goes to me... oh how I wish :-) Sorry, I left out the 1/3% for each party.
While I do understand the ethical side of your argument (the greedy health care companies), it would never work. If no patents could be held in health care, no companies would research new technologies, and healthcare would become stagnant. Who do you propose handles making new health care technolgies, or are you suggesting that we don't need any new treatments?
In my opinion, absolutely not. What good is research to those not involved in academia if it provides no benifit to them? Public universities are there to serve the public and by providing something that can turn into something marketable they, in theory, are adding to the quality of life of those taxpayers funding the unviersity. One can argue all day long about consumerisim hurting people, but I doubt anyone that recieves a medical implant/procedure or drug that saves their life based on research that started in a university would be complaining.
In essence it does. The public "owns" the university, therefore when the university owns a patent the public owns it as well. The problem with not patenting research is that if it can't be protected it usually never makes into practical use. Whaat good is research to joe public when he doesn't ever see a practical use for it? Sure, some research does fall out of this scope (climate change for example), but for something that can become a tangible product that suits a market need it doesn't do any good to just publish a paper on it if there is no way I can get my hands on it as a potential users. A great example is medical devices. Universites do tons of research on these, but there is no incentive for the makers of these products to go through the trouble of getting FDA approvial if everyone else can build the same device. Hence most research ends up being just that... just research with no practical device, drug, or other tangible product comming out of it.
You can argue about our patent system all you want and how it needs modifications and I will not object, but intelectual property rights still need to exist and currently the only legal method to protect a technology is through patents or secrecy. I would rather the universities patent something than keep their research secret.
If non-profits (particularly universities) hold patents that are funded by donantions and grants they can, in theory, reduce their need for these sources of funds. The Bayh-Dole Act provided an avenue for this and actually encourages universities to license their technologies.
I am currently a research assitant for the Technology Commercialization Lab (a group that works closely with the Office of Technology Commercialization which governs patent rights for research conducted at the university) at my university and this is part of what we are supposed to do. We try to help professors in either starting a new company based on their research in order to develop a commercial product or to license it to a third party. The university gets 33% of the proceeds, the department gets 33%, and the professor gets 33% of any licensing fees paid to the university. In a research orinted university these proceeds have the ability to add up to a lot of cash to help fund further research, new facilities, and pay salaries. At my university we haven't produced many "killer techs" that have turned into large sums of money, but it can happen. Stanford and MIT (along with others) have both recieved significant sums of money from licensing patents.
That guy sounds like a bafoon and I am suprised he passed (I attent a rival MBA program... no wonder we always beat them in the rankings). I am currently pursing an MBA and in our intro communications class they teach us the exact opposite. Use the 6X6 rule (no more than 6 bullets with no more than 6 words/bullet), no fancy graphics, and use handouts for things like spreadsheets or where more concrete detail is needed for the audience. If you need powerpoint to do a presentaion you shouldn't be presenting in the first place. A whiteboard should be sufficient. Powerpoint is a good tool that is usually misused. I use powerpoint to keep the audience on-track with where I am going, not to convey complex information. The complex info comes from my speaking and/or supplimential handouts such as reports and spreadsheets. Graphs work really well in helping convey information through powerpoint but I also seem them abused.
Bullshitting, as you call it, is one of the most essential skills in the professional world. A good paper should be convincing to the reader, and that is exactly what professional communication is all about. You need to lay out data, turn that data into information, draw a conclusion, and convince the reader to agree with your conclusion. You will never lead a project if you can't put those pieces together. You call this "climbing that social ladder" but it is much more than that. Most managers get their jobs because they can communicate effectively, whether it is through oral or written communications (usually both). Both written and oral arguments require the same things, abeit in slightly differnt forms. Salesmenship is applicable to ALL professions, not just salesmen. Have you ever been in an interview?
I will agree that most term-papers in academia are not really graded properly and become busy work, but that is a problem with many professors, not the term-paper itself. Educators live in their ivory-tower worlds and don't always understand what is usefull beyond their class-rooms. The idea of assigning papers with minimum word requirements is really counter productive to everyone involved. If you can fulfill the requirements of a paper in one page why shouldn't that be enough? When I was in undergrad I felt much like you, that I wrote a lot of papers without much substance just because I had to fulfill a requirement. As I moved into the real world I had to write "papers" in order to communicate with clients, coworkers, bosses, and everyone else. Without the exercises presenting an argument I wouldn't have gotten very far. Yes, a term-paper can be busywork, but it shouldn't be.
Like it or not, the real world requires social skills to be anything more than a programmer/engineer sitting in isolation. You can't be part of a team if you can't communicate. The "best" engineer may be quite a burden on a company if they don't have the ability to communicate. The "social ladder" is not really such a bad thing. People who climb it do so for a reason, they have both the drive and the skills to do so. Yes, it isn't always merit based, but that is another topic all together. Good "sales" skills apply to all parts of ones life. Hopefully, some day you will realize that the social ladder isn't really what you think it is. People are promoted for their ability to "sell" their ideas even if they are inferior to other ideas. Here in reality, if an idea can't be "sold" it is useless.
I couldn't agree more. I have managed the bookkeeping department before and know how bad it can be for a bookkeeper to be disporganized. One of the last people we let go was let go for that reason alone. We couldn't follow the paper trail on several occasions and it always amounted to the poor organization of the bookkeeper. On the other hand I was the senior accountant and IT guy and had a very messy desk at all times with no problems. Since I only reviewed financials and fixed problems I didn't keep the bookkeeping documents on my desk. When I needed a file I used it an put it back ASAP so it idn't end up at the bottom of my pile in the "unimportant" section.
If the bookkeepers maintained a system like mine all hell would have broke loose. We actually got most of our business because other firms were unable to maintain books in an orderly fashion. When we took over management (we managed homeowner and condo associations as wll as maintained their books... we maintained about 100 sets of financials on a monthly basis) we had to go through everything and essentially perform an audit just to get stuff in some logical order (preferably our sense of order). For the most part our office was well organized and full of "neat freaks", but most of the office was support staff that needed effective group communication and collective organization in order to perform their duties. The property managers and people like myself that had their hands in a lot of things often developed their own organizaion (or disorganization from an outside perspective) systems, but their work is much more independent and requires much less colloboration with others.
The article summary is definately lacking in a solid justification for its conclusion. Some jobs, particularly highly collaborative or dealing with sensitive data that must be accurate, require high levels of organization and tidyness in order to maximize productivity. Other jobs, particularly creative jobs or ones that require little collaboration require much less organization. I would like to agree with the article since I am usually the one being pressed to clean up my desk, but I don't really belive that it can be used in all situations, or even a majority of them.
While auto land is not done with regularity, it is possiblle and has gone through extensive testing. Supposedly it tends to give a smoother landing than a tranditional pilot most of the time. I personally think it isn't used becuase it is takes the pilots out of the loop essentially and pilots don't like that idea and lobby very hard against it. They do want something to do other than sit in the cockpit and flip a few switches until something major happens. Essentially pilots are really only a backup anyway since modern planes are able to take-off, navigate, and land all on their own. They are also the only current way for aircraft control to have any control over an airplane but that will probably change as technology progresses, although the security implications of using a computerized air trafic control system to automate aircraft patterns is also a major hurdle. If the planes could do it on their own and just rely on plane-to-plane communication backed up with radar data it could be relatively secure but there are still problems if a terrorist got into the system and could send signals say hey, I'm plane X and going at 250 knots heading 220, and at 10K feet when in reality there is no plane even there or the plane is actually at 8K feet or something.
Everyone is entiled to their own opinion. Most of what he has done ahs been done by his predicessors. Yes, he may have used things like the NSA wiretap program more extensively (a program in existance for decades and used extensively by Clinton as well), and tried to execute more power than most, but it is more of a symptom of people in the position than particular person. Obviously you hate Bush, and probably attribute anything that congress has done to him even though his working relationship with them has been tenious at best even when the Republicans were in power.
I am personally not a big Bush supporter myself, but the other options have been even more disturbing (they haven't been willing to stick to their guns on even minor issues, and this includes people in both parties). I am not for taking away liberties, but I amslo not for things like redistribution of wealth and having the government protect me from my own stupidity (both parties do this, Democrats think we can't shot an armed burgaler in our own homes and Republicans don't think they have the right to push their morals on me). I personally lean libertarian and don't really like much of what any president since Reagan has done, and even he did a lot that distrubed me. All of the politicans in Washington are corrupt with a few exceptions. One of those I have the most respect for is Liberman and his party has almost excommunicated him. He doesn't follow a party line and uses reason when making decisions rather than listening to the idiot figureheads with extremist views like most politicians on both sides.
Rather than just spouting off what you think others believe when trying to attack them, maybe, just maybe you should ask them what they think. Maybe you should use some facts to back up your statements rather than try and attack someone whom you know nothing about and haven't even bothered to dig into. In my opinion you smide remark makes you seem like a tool, but I will only atack your remark and not try to make implications about what you are trying to say that are not evident in your comments. Try doing some historical research if you really think the Bush is much much worse than a proven sexual preditor (I'm not talking about Monica, she was willing, but the trial where Monica came up where he haid to pay 100's of thousands in a civil judgement) named Clinton who was only the second President ever to be impeached for lying under oath, an incompetent Carter that couldn't handle a hostage crisis and made our already suffering economy worse, a Bush Sr. that trashed our economy and let himself be tricked into passing a tax hike by the Democrats just for them to use it against him in an election, a Nixon that was impeached for a cover up, etc, etc, etc. All of these Presidents have been bad in reality, some have just had better PR people or were more personable, or had inside connections in the major press outlets. I can go on and on about all of the mistakes that all of these Presidents made if you would like just to make it clear that there s really nothing new here. And as I said, Bush is not really much, much worse, he is just as bad as the rest of them.
I don't think you are correct. Congress doesn't read bills, the Presidnet doesn't read bills, they all essentially look at an abstract written by someone else. When different parties are in charge of different branches or even the senate and house this practice isn't really dimminished. Pork still gets in on almost every bill. No one reads the budget in its entirety. Single lines of law slip past both parties all of the time. The only thing tht gets kept under control by having different parties in power is the main subject of a bill when it is something that is controversial (which is about everything these days except for pay raises for the house and senate). All of the rider amendments usually get through because no one cares to look.
It's called the commander in chief role. While I will agree that Presidents tend to overstep their bounds, with Bush being no exception. If you want examples of others abusing their power I can probably dig one up for every President to ever sit in office. The country has a history of a power strugle between the branches since before the Constitution was ever even finalized.
The executive branch is there for the purpose of enforcement. Congress passes laws, the Judiciary decides guilt/innocence/punishment, and the excutive enforces laws. Enforcement is the only part that can protect. A law is useless without enforcement, hence the President is the sole individueal with the "power" to protect the country from enemies. The President has the sole authority to declare war, not congress. Congress can keep that power in check by refusing to fund a war. There is a system of checks and balances, but in truth the Constitution gives the power to protect the country from enemies and to decide who those enemies are. No other branch has this power by design.
If you really belive that the Preisdent doesn't have the power to protect the country from enemies you really need to go and read the Constitution. It is quite clear in this matter.
Yeah, it's a lot like BASIC. It's full of GOTO statements... "In addition to Title X, Paragraph Y, Line Z, we add the provision to protect W in Title Z, Paragraph Y, Line V."
Isn't what they do now quite wastefull?
YES!!! Isn't this what the constitution says? I never read anything about federal entitlement programs in the constitution, yet every day they want to dole out more money to their own pet projects that they use soley for the purpose of securing votes. They don't get my vote when they pass these crappy bills, they make me look for a new candidate that claims to support the constitution. What ever happened to states rights and the idea that states would garner most of the domestic power and the federal government would handle international affairs and disputes between states? It seems lost to the few of us left that see through the BS the fed tells us they have to due for us. Leave me alone big brother and quite telling me what you can do for me other than take my moeny ion the form of taxes to waste of bridges to nowhere. I welcome the day that little brother steps up to the plate and fights big brother to regain their original levels of power.
The whislteblower act is relatively clear, as well as SOX requirements on data security. Physical security of financial data is part of SOX and this is a clear violation. As an accountant I know these laws fairly well and this case is a no brainer if proper evidence can be provided. Whistleblowers are afforded much protection, but in reality your career is over even if they can't fire you. They can make you want to quite by treating you poorly and refusing to promote you. If you are labeled a whistleblower your corporate career is over though, you will never have any position of consequence in a large organization. This doesn't really mean that your career is over. Many smaller firms would welcome a whistleblower due to the fact that many of them try to do the right thing. Another possible route for whistleblowers is to become a guest speaker. MBA programs bring them in constantly to teach in ethics courses... hah MBA and ethics... I kid because I am one and the ethics lectures I have had are hardly worth hearing except when they bring in people that have spent time in prison... they usually have good stories and give a good sense of reason as to why relatively honest people end up in bad situations and end up crossing the line at some point. Whistleblowers also make good investive journalists and writers because of their experiences. I know a guy who was a whistleblower at a finacial firm (I think it was Morgan Stanley, but I can't be sure... it's been a while since I communicated with him). He became set for life because the act povides the whistleblower with 30% of any penalties the corporation has to pay. In his case the settlement was in the 100's of millions so he got a big chuck of change. He got his PhD, teaches ethics as an adjunct on occasion, and writes independantly for the WSJ and other major financial publications as well writes books. Not a bad way to live, being semiretired since his mid-30's. On another note it seems that the situation at hand has nothing to do with fraud, fraud may be happening, but there is no evidence here of it. This just sounds like sloppy bookkeeping. I have managed a bookkeeping depatment and all of the account and routing numbers we had for our clients were under lock and key. Only the bookkeepers and the owners of the company had keys to the room and the file cabinet they were in. I didn't even have a key even though I wrote the contracts, ran the programs to make the transactions, and managed the AIS which had the data in it. We had no legal requirement for this since we weren't a public company and our contract with our customers didn't state anything about us protecting their data more than it would be held confidential. SOX requires that data security rules be followed (including physical protection of data) so this is a clear breach of SOX. It is a personal decision to become a whistleblower. It will change your life forever and force a new career path. If you have stong morals and ethical standards that make you feel that you must fix the problem then it may be right to blow the whistle. If you go that route make sure you have already spoken with a lawyer before acting and have as much documentation as possible to make your case. Just showing up in court in a me said he/she said case won't get you anywhere and ruin your life. Secure copies of performance evaluations (as evidence that you weren't fired for performance) and all communication between you and anyone you report the offense to, particulalry your superiors (I hate that term because in this case they are obviosly not superior, just higher ranking). No one here can tell you what to do, and the 1-liners saying to shut up are thoughtless. Just keeping your mouth shut is part of the problem in the corporate world these days and obviuosly everone that says to keep quiet is just keeping the status quo... they are just as guilty as the perpetratiors in my eyes. Giving one word of warning is not a valid attempt to fix a problem. If you witness a horrible crime should you just keep your mouth shut? No, you should repo
Actually at the very begining (first seconds) there was no matter, only energy. This energy was converted to matter (don't ask me how). One theory of how the big bang happened is that it was something like a super black hold with a singularity and that included all space, time, matter, and enegry. At some critical mass it just blew up. Obviuosly this is all just conjecture, but I think it is a way to explain both the big bang and the idea that black holes can simply disapper. If they disappear it violates the law of conservation of mass, but if they create a new universe/dimension than it wouldn't violate that constraint.
Matter and space do have some relationship, but it is more gravities warping of space than anything else. Theoretically space could exits with no matter or energy, but the reverse isn't true. Some believe that garavity will eventually collapse space back into a singularity at some point in the big crush, others think that everything will become so spread out that the average temperture in the universe apporaches absolute zero (to within something like 1X10^-1000000000000 degrese K) resulting in the big freeze. Don't ask me to explain this in much detail because it seems kind of crazy to me. All was created in the big bang and there is a relationship between them in that all of the energy require to create the big bang had to exist to create space, but if all of the energy and mass that resulted from the energy entered black holes and they disappered space would still exists although it would be impossible to test since our mass and energy wouldn't be here to test this hypothosis.
Actually smoking may be benificial here. The dust would tend to stick to the tar rather than scatter freely. Just look at the inside of a computer from a smokers house... the fans a gummed up, sticky dust covers everything and canned air does nothing on the tar laced dust. Mabe the tar can be used to help clean the dust from the air? NASA should give me funding to test this theory :-) Maybe the astronauts shouldn't smoke themselves but a tar derived from smokers homes could be used in air filters or something.
I guess that I will have to agree to disagree with you on the issue at hand. I agree that flat taxes and VAT's are not really very good as they tend to hurt the poor and help the wealthy. I don't really mind the progressive system we have but the way it gets trashed by congress is horrible. When Reagan (well, not really Reagan, his subordiantes based on a few basic ideas that he had such as supply side economics) rewrote the tax code it was changed to be relatively simple and had relatively few loopholes. Since then politicians have destroyed it by listening to special interest groups allowing more deductions, removing others and so on. It shouldn't take a huge manual to file a tax return. If the IRS gives you guidance it should be taken that it will hold up if they decide to audit you, but this isn't the case. The IRS can tell you something is okay, you go and do it, then they can audit you and penalize you for listening to them. No one knows what is going on including the enforcement community. It's just ludicrous.
My thought is that by shifting the burden to the owners of a firm isn't necesarilly that it is so much of a benifit to the economy due to higher EPS growth rates, its that it takes the power to cheat out of the corporations hands who tend to be able to afford the best tax lawyers and tend and avoid taxes at all costs. Most individuals (even most of the wealthy) tend to pay their taxes and use relatively conservative methods. By sticking with a progressive system the tax burden doesn't really change since the same physical people that own the corporations would have to pay the taxes instead of getting a smaller dividend and paying a lower rate on the dividend than they do on their other income, they would be able to get a higher dividend (I am considering dividend and capital gain the same here because they are both at the same rate right now) and be taxed at their rate whichever rate that is. To me it is just silly that if I am in the top tax brack based on my salary I pay less on my dividends, while those that are in the lower tax brackets pay closer to the same rate on both dividends and salary. If the Democrats have their way they will raise the taxes on dividends and the opposite will be true. The retirees (usually in the lower tax brackets) paying 15% now on dividends will pay more like 30-35% when the rest of their income is taxed at the 20-25% range hile the wealth will be paying similar rates on both. Neither of these is really ideal since the poorer person should be taxed at a lower rate across the board while the wealthy should be taxed at a higher rate across the board.
Let me state that I am not for the idea of redistribution of wealth, but I do understand the need for a progressive tax system. The underprivledged can barely afford to scrape by and shouldn't have to pay anything while the wealthy can afford to pay significantly more... but I am not for higher taxes in general because of several other beliefs I have such as faith in supply side economics and because of my belief that the government shouldn't be spending my money in the first place (yes that is the extreem end of my view, I do not really mind paying some taxes is used properly, but we have already discussed that aspect).
I hope you are enjoying you career in computers. I definately did enjoy mine when I was in it, I just felt I was better suited to management rather than being a tech. With my resume back then I had no degree and companies didn't want me as a manager, only as a tech. I was only in management at the time because the firm I was with was small and I was in it from the early days. When I decided it was time to move to bigger and better things their really weren't any opportunities for me, this was soon after the dot com crash so jobs were more scarce for those without a degree wanting to be in a management position. At the time I got out my parents had just decided to buy a business and wanted me to help out so I joined their company. I did a bit of everything and found that accounting can be fun wh
I completely understand what you are saying about it not sinking in. I am no astophysicist so my knowlede isn't very detailed but I do try. I have read books on things like string theory and relativity jsut because I find it interesting but when they get into proving their statements I have no idea of how to verify any of it. I am really good at understanding concepts without knowing the nuts and bolts though and I do manage to get tidbits here and there... but others here are definately more knowledgeable, but they tend to use too complicated of explanations for others to understand. I think most of the time this is because they don't really understand the theory but understand the math, but it is hard for me to verify this, or it could be that they are just trying to impress people by using complicated explanations as many scientistific types tend to do.
As far as space being defined by the objects in it I don't think you are really correct. While space is considered to be "empty", it is made of something that we just don't understand yet. This is where string theory has come into play. String theory, although considered junk science by many, is an attempt to define the space-time construct, and in doing so unite relativity with quantum mechanics. While space obviously contains objects and matter it isn't really what defines space. Without matter or energy there would still be space, and based on the current understanding of the big bang theory and events following it space itself is expanding, regardless of the matter in it. No one really knows if space will continue to expand indefinately or collapse, but the evidence suggests that the rate of expansion is accellerating which poses another problem. Considering that the initial rate of expansion far outpaced that currently observed, it seems difficult to accept that expansion could be accelerating but the evidence suggests just that.
This is why many (including myself) have a difficult time believing in current theories even though they predict much of what we can observe. It's kind of like newtonian physics though, the theory works under most known circumstances but when things get going really fast or mass becomes really large the laws break down. Einstiens theories have helped expand our ability to understand and predict under these circumstances, but I really doubt that they are 100% correct. They also break down at even larger extreems such as in black holes. Even though Einstein predicted black holes and the effects they would have on their surroundings they fail to predict what happens once in a black hole. Since no one will ever be able to go there one could actually say that claiming to predict what happens in a black hole is no different from any religius claim since it is impossible to test. While math could possibly predict what happens, the true basis for the scientific method is the ability to make a prediction and then test it at some point (the one making the prediction doesn't have to be able to test it, it just has to be something that can be tested, hence the difference between theory and laws, laws have been proven by repeted testing of all possible predicitons where theories still lack sufficient testing to ensure that all possible combinations of predictions are 100% true).
I have read some on the big bang theory and at the early stages it was expanding at multiples of the speed of light. Something like a couple seconds after the event the universe was already many millions of miles in diameter. During the first moments of the universe there was no matter, only energy, but energy was moving faster than the speed of light from the origin. But the unverse itself is space time so it doesn't really break the rules of relativity because space itself was expanding and the enregy itself wasn't really moving at such high velocities. I can't remember the source though, it was years ago that I read this. The sme thing could still be hapening since the universe is still thought to be expanding, so in reality the mass and/or photons that are moving apart at faster than the speed of light aren't moving faster themselves, it is just a part of the universe itself expanding.
First I would like to say I am enjoying this debate. It appears that you are one of the few /.'ers that really understands things like accounting, economics, and the laws regarding these. I am an accountant finishing my MBA in Finance and Accounting (will be done in 8 weeks) so I understand what you are trying to say about most of the basics so you can skip things like the tax code, appeals process, etc. I have a pretty good understanding of all of these and you can save your time explaining the basics. I am not the typical /.'er that only understands tech, math, and science, and it appears that you are also not. (Yeah, I used to be a tech, sysadmin, and tech manager but have moved on.)
I wasn't trying to get into the semantics of the law, but in reality there is not much difference these days between a C-Corp, S-Corp, LLC, or LLP in the eyes of the law. An S-Corp is slightly different in effect because of the limits on shareholders (the # and that they must be Americans, etc). An LLC or LLP have the same legal protection (albeit it is a state entity and in the eyes of the IRS they are treated more like a partnership and it there is little legal precident about ownersip liability... we will find out after the Anderson case is finished) as a C-Corp for the owners yet they are a pass-through entitity where gains and losses are taxed by the shareholders. And as you stated access to capital is more difficult for those entities today but it is changing. There are several public LLC's and LLP's in various forms (most are MLLP's right now and they are most prevalant in the energy sector but as investors are becoming more sophisticated they are becoming more prevelant). It is hard to issue bonds, but "loans" are still available through other securites. Many special securities such as MIPS, PERCS, PEPS, etc. use LLC's or LLP's as a pass through in order to change the tax structure making the securities have additional value (most of these still just use an offshore company in a tax haven but this trend is changing). When I have worked on tax returns (I hated it but I learned a lot) as an undergraduate intern about half of the personal returns I did had some type of pass-through entity where the owner was a passive owner and not involved in the business. My clientelle was different than most being that I was working at a highly regarded firm in the Naples, FL area so I wasn't working on $50 returns like at H&R block, we usually charged about $500-$1500 per return (some were much more like $2000-$5000 but those were relatively rare).
My point about corporate taxes is the only reason they are the way they are is because the law set them up that way. I personally don't think that it is the best way. When tends to happen is companies are forced to show constant growth or suffer loses in shareholder confidence. If anything affects that growth the incentive is there to cook the books or raise prices. When the EPS goes down all hell breaks lose.
I do like your example of "perfect" competition, but the truth is that is never really exists. In order to have perfect competition there must be perfect information. Considering that many transactions are completed in the futures market for commodities such as wheat there is less than perfect information. No one knows what the weather will do in two weeks so when a futures contract is written neither side has perfect information. While some small farmers refuse to participate in the futures market because they don't fully understand it most are moving towards it, especially as farms become more and more consolidated. Prices are manipulated in the futures market by speculators which also affects the perfect competition. I will agree that the farmer doesn't have much control over the price, but it is a function of their market power. There are many more farmers than there are buyers and the supply is not a constant. In this case it is almost impssible to pass costs on and that is why the small farmer is a dying breed. The larger corporat
I wasn't really trying to say that corporate taxes should be discontinued. What I am implying is that corporations are essentially an extension of the investors (forget their legal stus for a minute becaue it really isn't too important for my discussion). If corporations were treated like pass-through entities like LLC's, partnerships, and proprietorships the government could tax dividends as regular income and end up with the same result (Corporations maximum tax rate is lower than that of the top income earners, if more dividends were paid out more people would end up in that class, and the net result could be the same with some minor tweaking of the individual tax rates). Corporate profits, if used to fund growth, are essentially not taxed because of the large number of tax breaks companies get such as expensing R&D, depreciation, and the like. If the profits are paid out as dividends they are taxed twice which hurts the stockholders. The double taxation system isn't really a bad thing, it just isn't needed and probably leads to many more costs associated with the additional burden placed on the IRS.
Your 3-button mouse example doesn't take into account that any company that sells mice in the U.S. is impacted by an effective U.S. tax hike (changing the rules on foreign earned profits that aren't repatriated is the same thing as a tx hike in it effect) and therefore the price is bound to rise, or the supply will fall making it harder to find a 3-button mouse. In reality it is almost imperciptible on such a small ticket item, the price may change by a few pennies, or a company making a variety of other products will move the price increase to a larger ticket item and force other companies with a less diversified product portfolio to either close up shop, lay people off, or face a revolt from their shareholders (due to lower earnings or earnings growth) which usually leads to the earlier two options. The end effect is higher average prices, regardless of the price of a specific item.
In reality the IRS states that it is an entities responsibility to minimize their tax burden within the laws. The IRS is natorious for going after companies for somethng that is actually legal. When they fail the tax code often changes to ensure that the next time the particular circumstance arises they can be more successfull in a court (providing their lobby in congress outweighs the corporations affected).