We don't need a "czar", we need a new military branch. I am not aware of ANY real and lasting contribution any "czar" has ever made in the United States. The first drug czars came close... if you call that a contribution, but from everything I've seen, they're basically PR and cheerleaders, and don't have much authority or get much done.
If we're serious... and I mean really serious... we need a branch of the military to do the heavy lifting. We don't need to start this in a big way, but we need the security infrastructure to build on should tensions begin rising with nation states. These guys would be the grunts doing the front line lifting and poking around while the NSA focuses it's talent on developing high level techniques. This is what we'd do if we got really serious.
In my view, the position of czar is a joke. Czars are for 19th century Russia and have no place in a modern United States government.
Uh, I'd say that displays their high cost structure. You think they generate a ton of advertising revenue off of that? Maybe they do, but I'm pretty skeptical - how many people really click through on the florescent shower head ad?
Sure, they make a few bucks, I'm just saying they probably don't make much. But hell, either: 1) I'm wrong or 2) they're overextending themselves by making unneeded acquisitions, like plenty of other companies have done in the past. But like I said, I hope I'm wrong and they're making buckets of money.
How the hell do these guys make any money? I mean, really... The ads don't pay that much. Good for them though, I'm hopeful they'll be able to keep it up.
Of those that looked at the link to wikipedia and the composite before/after photo... doesn't the after photo still look like a face? Kinda trippy.
Given what the face looks like, I think they should leave it alone and call it old woman of the mountain... the rename would be kind of interesting in a historical context too.
I disagree. Voice mail will not go away. It will eventually converge with email.
Sometimes I want to hear someone speak to understand tone, sometimes I want to read to save time. I think voice and email will converge. Just because he's getting speech to text doesn't mean he'll want to destroy the speech data. What if you don't know someone is being sarcastic, or if you just happen to miss the sound of someone's voice?
Alternatively, I think a simple text to speech feature will eventually come about too. Though theoretically not quite as useful for gauging emotion (though I'm sure some "emotional emphasis" could probably be added without too much difficulty), some people may prefer to hear a text message when they're doing things like driving.
It will certainly be refined and perfected over the next decade or so, but as the summary states, it's already starting to happen.
This is the best point of all. Upon selling a company, you MUST enlist the experience of an attorney and/or business broker to guide you through this process.
STOP. You're making too much sense! I just wish a politician would have the balls to actually change things. This war on drugs is such nonsense. If I had to choose between pot, cigarettes and alcohol to have legal, I'd choose pot. It's one of the most benign drugs anywhere.
It was viewed at Tribeca in NYC. I've waited for another film viewed at Tribeca that was seen over 3 years ago now, and it still hasn't come out on either DVD or in theaters.
As for the official release to the general public, given that I first heard about this particular movie a couple years ago, at this rate, I think it's slated for general release a few years after the singularity itself:P
I've got a better question... what the hell is "real time"?
The speed of light is finite, so the electrons will take time to move, the computations take time to calculate, the wiring has resistance, the OS and app have many layers to navigate.... Real time is one of those loaded buzz words I wish would die already.
Easy, if you value each tweet at 1 cent, that's how you derive the value. Of course, that's overvaluing each tweet by about 2 cents...
But seriously, the value would be derived exactly how all these other companies are "valued"... with eyeballs... sort of analogous to the late 90's mania. I'm all for tech, but it's pretty tough to make money with no business model whatsoever.
Steve leaves and within six months Apple goes and considers doing something really stupid (allegedly). Just shows you how important leadership in tech is. If Apple does this deal, unless they've got some kind of miracle plan, I'd sell any stock I had.
And, can Twitter decline an offer that is nearly three times their estimated worth?"
And how exactly was that value derived? Value is based on the present value of future earnings, and AFAIK, twitter has none. Any number in the hundreds of millions of dollars should be seriously looked at. What I don't understand is what Apple would do with Twitter.
Well, I think the story is that they're patenting a "look and feel" that is atrocious, in many people's opinion. It's one of the ugliest tech designs ever. I'm not sure if anyone is clamoring to steal it.
Which country are you from? Unless you're from China or a handful of other countries, odds are your country is just as bankrupt as the USA (I'm sorry to say). Many countries in Europe are much worse off than the US.
In the end, there are only four types of taxes: taxes on labor, taxes on capital, taxes on imports, and taxes on consumption.
While I appreciate the point you're trying to make here, I'd say off the top of my head, there's at least one more type of tax, and that's the estate tax. (I suppose you could put it under the umbrella of capital tax if dying is a capital event)
As far as I'm concerned an effective estate tax is the low hanging fruit of taxation. I think taking money away from those that have proven themselves to be efficient allocators of capital is a bad (but admittedly necessary) move. At the same time, highly regressive consumption taxes disproportionally affect the lower-income earners. There are similar downsides to the other taxes you mention.
However, an *effective* (highly important emphasis there) estate tax has virtually no downside, as far as I can tell. Yes, there is the "moral" issue of taking a very large portion of someone's wealth away when they die, but I personally don't think the heirs deserve the money anymore than anyone else in society deserves the money. On the contrary, I think those that know from birth that they'll be trust fund babies for the rest of their lives, have a motivation to NOT make anything of themselves.
Taking money away from those who efficiently allocate capital slows economic growth, but taking it away once they die does nothing to economic growth, strictly speaking.
The biggest impediment to this plan (say... 90% estate tax rate) is implementation. How can you create an estate tax plan that actually works, instead of the BS we have now? I'm not too sure about that. Also, how do you value and effectively tax illiquid assets like businesses? I'm not sure of that either, but I think very high estate taxes are an option that is sorely missing from today's list of options. I have yet to hear an effective rebuttal when I mention this tax strategy.
"If rules are changed on tax deferral and we are taxed in the U.S. on non-U.S. profit, this significant additional U.S. tax cost would adversely impact our ability to invest and grow our business in the U.S.... and to compete against our foreign competitors who are not subject to the U.S. tax," said Cisco Systems Inc. spokesman John Earnhardt.
The thing to note which is often left out of these conversations is that the USA taxes WORLD income. I can't really blame folks for not understanding the details (I can't say I fully understand them myself, by any means), but at the core, the USA expects you to pay income tax no matter where you generated the revenue and no matter what other taxes you've already paid. One of these "loopholes" was flexibility in this doctrine.
One must wonder how competitive the USA can be when we are taxing our own corporation's profits they've generated (for example) with Chinese workers, using Chinese products and Chinese consumers. The USA is generally unique in this regard. A company's value is based on its earnings, which is reflected in the share prices which are owned in your 401k plans. A company also hires and reinvests based on how much money they money they net.
Sure, you can work under the assumption that reinstating heavier taxation on overseas revenue will "bring jobs back home", but to blatantly simplify this issue by calling this "a tax haven" without any detail is intellectual dishonesty.
Is the whole notion of a hacker that acts on behalf of the "public good" by shutting these things down (i.e. gray hat) just a myth?
Yeah, it's probably technically illegal, but I thought there were folks out there doing it. I'd be interested to know if any/.ers have ever engaged in trying to kill one of these things.
Speaking for myself... I haven't because of the technically illegal nature of the work (at least I think it'd be technically illegal). Plus, without ever doing it, I don't know enough about how to do it. Can't be that hard though. Why are these things allowed to exist?
Still, seems like a pretty cool thing to hack, and you're doing some good at the same time.
Of course, this would have the effect of choking off the content brings people to their site while at the same time doing nothing to reduce what actually costs money to run youtube (i.e. download bandwidth and website maintenance and enhancement)
One rarely discussed aspect of this is the major banks.
They have a large problem with these types of setups because they don't play any role in them. Though I'm not sure of any specific actions on micro-royalties, banks have in the past used their lobbying power to stop any type of innovative payment system.
A case in point is Wal-mart and their efforts to create a payment system of their own. Using political and lobbying power, the banks managed to shut down Wal-mart's efforts, and I'd imagine Google will face resistance from the banks on any type of setup that excludes them.
I agree. But there's loads of problems with that. Who really gets paid for certain vids?
If you create a really cool vid, and I pull it down off youtube and put it back up, people will start tipping me for your hard work. If this were the case, there would probably be thousands of duplicates for even moderately popular vids.
Slashdot Mirror
We don't need a "czar", we need a new military branch. I am not aware of ANY real and lasting contribution any "czar" has ever made in the United States. The first drug czars came close... if you call that a contribution, but from everything I've seen, they're basically PR and cheerleaders, and don't have much authority or get much done.
If we're serious... and I mean really serious... we need a branch of the military to do the heavy lifting. We don't need to start this in a big way, but we need the security infrastructure to build on should tensions begin rising with nation states. These guys would be the grunts doing the front line lifting and poking around while the NSA focuses it's talent on developing high level techniques. This is what we'd do if we got really serious.
In my view, the position of czar is a joke. Czars are for 19th century Russia and have no place in a modern United States government.
Uh, I'd say that displays their high cost structure. You think they generate a ton of advertising revenue off of that? Maybe they do, but I'm pretty skeptical - how many people really click through on the florescent shower head ad?
Sure, they make a few bucks, I'm just saying they probably don't make much. But hell, either: 1) I'm wrong or 2) they're overextending themselves by making unneeded acquisitions, like plenty of other companies have done in the past. But like I said, I hope I'm wrong and they're making buckets of money.
How the hell do these guys make any money? I mean, really... The ads don't pay that much. Good for them though, I'm hopeful they'll be able to keep it up.
The matter inside of me is just reconstituted material dating back ~20 Billion years. Beat that!
Of those that looked at the link to wikipedia and the composite before/after photo... doesn't the after photo still look like a face? Kinda trippy.
Given what the face looks like, I think they should leave it alone and call it old woman of the mountain... the rename would be kind of interesting in a historical context too.
I disagree. Voice mail will not go away. It will eventually converge with email.
Sometimes I want to hear someone speak to understand tone, sometimes I want to read to save time. I think voice and email will converge. Just because he's getting speech to text doesn't mean he'll want to destroy the speech data. What if you don't know someone is being sarcastic, or if you just happen to miss the sound of someone's voice?
Alternatively, I think a simple text to speech feature will eventually come about too. Though theoretically not quite as useful for gauging emotion (though I'm sure some "emotional emphasis" could probably be added without too much difficulty), some people may prefer to hear a text message when they're doing things like driving.
It will certainly be refined and perfected over the next decade or so, but as the summary states, it's already starting to happen.
This is the best point of all. Upon selling a company, you MUST enlist the experience of an attorney and/or business broker to guide you through this process.
STOP. You're making too much sense! I just wish a politician would have the balls to actually change things. This war on drugs is such nonsense. If I had to choose between pot, cigarettes and alcohol to have legal, I'd choose pot. It's one of the most benign drugs anywhere.
No, those rules are just for THE OTHER guys, not us 'mericans!
(We have domestic law enforcement spying on us)
Holy crap, with all the jokes, I honestly figured this thing was killed years ago... I'm truly surprised people were still working on the thing.
It was viewed at Tribeca in NYC. I've waited for another film viewed at Tribeca that was seen over 3 years ago now, and it still hasn't come out on either DVD or in theaters.
:P
As for the official release to the general public, given that I first heard about this particular movie a couple years ago, at this rate, I think it's slated for general release a few years after the singularity itself
I've got a better question... what the hell is "real time"?
The speed of light is finite, so the electrons will take time to move, the computations take time to calculate, the wiring has resistance, the OS and app have many layers to navigate.... Real time is one of those loaded buzz words I wish would die already.
I know I'm voting for the AI party in 2040. Corrupt humans be damned!
And at that point, I literally will welcome our AI overlords
Easy, if you value each tweet at 1 cent, that's how you derive the value. Of course, that's overvaluing each tweet by about 2 cents...
But seriously, the value would be derived exactly how all these other companies are "valued"... with eyeballs... sort of analogous to the late 90's mania. I'm all for tech, but it's pretty tough to make money with no business model whatsoever.
Steve leaves and within six months Apple goes and considers doing something really stupid (allegedly). Just shows you how important leadership in tech is. If Apple does this deal, unless they've got some kind of miracle plan, I'd sell any stock I had.
And, can Twitter decline an offer that is nearly three times their estimated worth?"
And how exactly was that value derived? Value is based on the present value of future earnings, and AFAIK, twitter has none. Any number in the hundreds of millions of dollars should be seriously looked at. What I don't understand is what Apple would do with Twitter.
Because it's another 20+ years away, and because we've got to maintain some kind of appearance of rationality. The idea sounds nutty enough as it is :)
Well, I think the story is that they're patenting a "look and feel" that is atrocious, in many people's opinion. It's one of the ugliest tech designs ever. I'm not sure if anyone is clamoring to steal it.
Which country are you from? Unless you're from China or a handful of other countries, odds are your country is just as bankrupt as the USA (I'm sorry to say). Many countries in Europe are much worse off than the US.
In the end, there are only four types of taxes: taxes on labor, taxes on capital, taxes on imports, and taxes on consumption.
While I appreciate the point you're trying to make here, I'd say off the top of my head, there's at least one more type of tax, and that's the estate tax. (I suppose you could put it under the umbrella of capital tax if dying is a capital event)
As far as I'm concerned an effective estate tax is the low hanging fruit of taxation. I think taking money away from those that have proven themselves to be efficient allocators of capital is a bad (but admittedly necessary) move. At the same time, highly regressive consumption taxes disproportionally affect the lower-income earners. There are similar downsides to the other taxes you mention.
However, an *effective* (highly important emphasis there) estate tax has virtually no downside, as far as I can tell. Yes, there is the "moral" issue of taking a very large portion of someone's wealth away when they die, but I personally don't think the heirs deserve the money anymore than anyone else in society deserves the money. On the contrary, I think those that know from birth that they'll be trust fund babies for the rest of their lives, have a motivation to NOT make anything of themselves.
Taking money away from those who efficiently allocate capital slows economic growth, but taking it away once they die does nothing to economic growth, strictly speaking.
The biggest impediment to this plan (say... 90% estate tax rate) is implementation. How can you create an estate tax plan that actually works, instead of the BS we have now? I'm not too sure about that. Also, how do you value and effectively tax illiquid assets like businesses? I'm not sure of that either, but I think very high estate taxes are an option that is sorely missing from today's list of options. I have yet to hear an effective rebuttal when I mention this tax strategy.
"If rules are changed on tax deferral and we are taxed in the U.S. on non-U.S. profit, this significant additional U.S. tax cost would adversely impact our ability to invest and grow our business in the U.S. ... and to compete against our foreign competitors who are not subject to the U.S. tax," said Cisco Systems Inc. spokesman John Earnhardt.
The thing to note which is often left out of these conversations is that the USA taxes WORLD income. I can't really blame folks for not understanding the details (I can't say I fully understand them myself, by any means), but at the core, the USA expects you to pay income tax no matter where you generated the revenue and no matter what other taxes you've already paid. One of these "loopholes" was flexibility in this doctrine.
One must wonder how competitive the USA can be when we are taxing our own corporation's profits they've generated (for example) with Chinese workers, using Chinese products and Chinese consumers. The USA is generally unique in this regard. A company's value is based on its earnings, which is reflected in the share prices which are owned in your 401k plans. A company also hires and reinvests based on how much money they money they net.
Sure, you can work under the assumption that reinstating heavier taxation on overseas revenue will "bring jobs back home", but to blatantly simplify this issue by calling this "a tax haven" without any detail is intellectual dishonesty.
Yep. Unfortunately, I agree with you.
Is the whole notion of a hacker that acts on behalf of the "public good" by shutting these things down (i.e. gray hat) just a myth?
/.ers have ever engaged in trying to kill one of these things.
Yeah, it's probably technically illegal, but I thought there were folks out there doing it. I'd be interested to know if any
Speaking for myself... I haven't because of the technically illegal nature of the work (at least I think it'd be technically illegal). Plus, without ever doing it, I don't know enough about how to do it. Can't be that hard though. Why are these things allowed to exist?
Still, seems like a pretty cool thing to hack, and you're doing some good at the same time.
Of course, this would have the effect of choking off the content brings people to their site while at the same time doing nothing to reduce what actually costs money to run youtube (i.e. download bandwidth and website maintenance and enhancement)
One rarely discussed aspect of this is the major banks.
They have a large problem with these types of setups because they don't play any role in them. Though I'm not sure of any specific actions on micro-royalties, banks have in the past used their lobbying power to stop any type of innovative payment system.
A case in point is Wal-mart and their efforts to create a payment system of their own. Using political and lobbying power, the banks managed to shut down Wal-mart's efforts, and I'd imagine Google will face resistance from the banks on any type of setup that excludes them.
I agree. But there's loads of problems with that. Who really gets paid for certain vids?
If you create a really cool vid, and I pull it down off youtube and put it back up, people will start tipping me for your hard work. If this were the case, there would probably be thousands of duplicates for even moderately popular vids.