And this why Android will eventually displace IOS as the mobile operating system of choice, those vendors who choose to sell only for Android will be at least 30% less expensive.
If Apple is taking a 30% cut of all subscription fees from subscriptions sold in the app store and the publisher must sell subscriptions in the app store for the same or less than what they sell them for outside of the app store, the publisher will be unable to sell the subscriptions as low as their competitor on Android. For you Apple fandois, this means that subscriptions delivered on Apple products have at least a 30% premium.
On the other hand this move will accelerate the Android becoming the dominant mobile platform.
Or they might just be doing it to give Texas the shaft and move their future business to less litigious regions.
In effect - "Sorry about all those income taxes you were collecting on those workers, Texas. *snigger* not really. I'm sure somewhere else would be happy to have it."
Perhaps, however, if the yare they are really poor business people, because Texas wasn't collecting income taxes from those workers. Texas does not have an income tax.
Just because Amazon claims something is so, doesn't make it so. It is clear that Amazon is convinced they will lose this battle in court, or they would not be closing the facility.
Their argument is BS. Amazon wants the advantages of having a physical presence in Texas (speed of delivery) without the obligation of collecting sales tax. If Amazon wants to avoid collecting sales tax on goods sold to people living in Texas, they should ship those goods from outside of the state. The problem with Amazon's argument is that the distribution center is just as much a part of Amazon as the affiliates that are the reason they have to collect sales tax in New York. I would be more sympathetic to Amazon's position if they had shut down their affiliate program in New York when they lost that case.
I don't use all of my minutes now, and I rarely text. What advantage do I get from paying the same amount and having to pay for my phone? I am looking to spend less on my cellphone, not get more features.
Why didn't Amazon collect the sales tax in the first place? They had a physical presence in Texas. There is a long established precedent that if you have a physical presence in a state you can be obligated to collect sales tax from people you sell to in that state. My understanding is that they are collectng sales tax in New York, even though they don't really have a physical presence there because New York law says that because they have afiliates in New York they are obligated to collect sales tax. They didn't pull out of New York over that, a much more questionable practice.
The money the state of Texas is trying to collect from Amazon is not from some new tax that Amazon did not know about. This tax was in place when Amazon opened its facility in the first place. Oh yeah, the fact that Amazon says they will close the facility over this indicates that it is not a separate entity as they tried to claim to avoid paying the tax they were supposed to collect. If it was actually run by a separate entity all Amazon could say would be that they would no longer use the facility.
I do not want a touchscreen phone unless it also has some sort of physical keyboard. I often dial my phone without looking at it. I can do this because I can feel the keys. How do those smartphones with keyboards lock the keyboard?
You mention several pretty good prepaid deals. How much does that go up when you add a second phone to the account? Or do you have to get an account for each phone? Every time I have looked into the deals I have seen, they have turned out to be a better deal only for one person. As soon as you have a second person, it ends up being the same price point as my current plan or higher. My current plan is $49.95 + $9.95 (plus all of the various taxes and fees that they never mention in the adds). That is really more than I am happy with.
Yeah, who needs those pesky things called rights, they are outdated. We should just just ignore the Bill of Rights. It was written more than 200 years ago, it doesn't apply anymore./s
If you think that parts of the Constitution are outdated, there is a way to deal with that. It is called getting an Ammendment passed.
Will I be able to get that Android phone for free (with contract) and without having to pay extra for a data plan? Actually will I be able to get two Android phones for free? Three months ago my wife dropped and broke her phone. Our contract had expired, so we went into the closest store for our provider. Picked out the cheapest phone that was satisfactory, turns out that since we were out of contract we were eligible for some discounts that made them free. I was really tempted to get a smartphone, but none of them were clamshell design. I like being able to close my phone so that none of the buttons are exposed (except the volume), that way I don't have to worry about pocket dialing someone.
The barbershops near me all give shitty haircuts and cost more than Haircuttery or Supercuts (there's a third one of those but I can't remember the name at the moment). I would much rather have a pretty young thing cutting my hair than some old dude. I do know of several barbershops that give very good haircuts at reasonable prices, but they are all too far away from where I live and work to be worth the time to get there.
And there is your fundamental mistake, you are assuming that someone with a bachelor's degree can handle basic writing tasks better than someone from a tech school and won't consider someone from a tech school. Therefore, people who can't handle (or don't want to handle) basic writing skills go to get a bachelor's degree and cheat to get it. Since you don't actually check whether or not they have basic writing skills (if you did, there would be no reason not to consider a tech school graduate), they do not lose anything by this strategy. The result being that those institutions that give out bachelor's degrees can charge more.
I know that it is rather routine for Congress to write bad laws like this one. "Improving access to advanced telecommunications services" is entirely too subjective, especially for a special purpose tax. I do know that Congress often delegates quite a bit to regulatory agencies. I beleive that that is bad policy. It encourages people to blame bureaucrats for things that they should be blaming their Congressperson for.
As far as I know, you can't get a decent engineering job with just a technical certificate. The only way to get the good engineering jobs is to get a degree from a school that makes you take humanities courses. There are engineering jobs that will be better done by someone with a well rounded education, but most of them can be done just as well or better by someone who focuses on just the technical courses.
The problem is that colleges and universities in the U.S. (and probably elsewhere) have been selling themselves as the route to a better paying job for 50 years. They gave up trying to sell a "liberal arts" education (as opposed to a Liberal Arts education) years ago. The market for vocational training is much larger than the market for a "liberal arts" education, so they have chosen to go for the vocational training market.
You are correct that there is value in a "liberal arts" education, but you are going to find it difficult to convince people to spend more than the price of a new car every year for four or more years for one. The thing about community college is that the big schools spend a lot of time telling you how much more you can earn if you go to them rather than to a more vocational training oriented school.
You are correct. Congress wrote a bad law (what a surprise). The law should specify what this tax is for and when that purpose becomes obsolete, Congress should abolish the tax. If there is a new need, Congress should pass a new law authorizing a tax for that purpose (or just paying for it out of general funds). I generally oppose special purpose taxes, although this is the type of special purpose that makes sense. However, the purpose should be clearly defined and the tax eliminated when the purpose is accomplished. If there is a related, but different purpose, it should require Congress to actually take the politial risk of passing a new law.
Congress created this tax. When they did they also specified what it would be used for. The FCC does not have the authority to decide to use this money for something else, no matter how worthy that something else might be, nor how obsolete the original purpose might be.
The U.S. Constitution says that only Congress may decide how Federal money can be spent.
He still has a point. Congress passed the bill to tax phone service. Congress, additionally, designated that the moneys raised by that tax would be used to fund rural phone lines. The FCC does not have the authority to now use those moneys for some other purpose. The FCC may request that Congress pass a law designating that those funds can be used for rural broadband, but it is not allowed to just decide to use those funds for it because the original purpose is obsolete (in their opinion, which in this case is probably correct). Under the U.S. Constitution, all spending bils must originate in the House of Representatives.
The FCC does not get to decide how it will spend its money, unless the law explicitly gives them that authority. In this case, the law explicitly states what the money is to be used for, that means that the FCC does not have the authority to do this.
There is no reason to look outside of the history of AOL for something like that. When Time Warner split off AOL everybody talked about "Why did Time Warner buy AOL in the first place?" when in fact AOL had bought Time Warner and then kept Time Warner as the overall corporate name.
What the story fails to mention is who they predicted would lose the Super Bowl. If they are truly on to something, the same method that predicts the Super Bowl winner should, also, be able to predict the winners of each conference. It says something about how accurately Madden Football reflects the relative strenghts of the teams, but it is only truly impressive if it can predict the Conference Chanpions with significant reliability.
Once again, punishment is punishment. It is not something intended to accomplish something else. Some people may wish to use punishment to accomplish other goals and we can discuss whether or not punishment is effective at accomplishing those other goals, but the statement that "punishment doesn't work" only makes sense once one has defined that one is doing punishment to accomplish some other goal. That is not something I ever said.
"Social sciences" are not science, never have been, hopefully never will. The various "social sciences" can only be real science in a completely evil society.
No, it is not the "scientific" definition of the word punishment. It is merely the definition of the word punishment. You appear to be confusing "punishment" with "negative reinforcement". (BTW, if you think negative reinforcement doesn't work, I hope you are never a parent.)
Additionally, since none of the fields that would create a definition of "punishment" are sciences it really doesn't matter.
Slashdot Mirror
And this why Android will eventually displace IOS as the mobile operating system of choice, those vendors who choose to sell only for Android will be at least 30% less expensive.
If Apple is taking a 30% cut of all subscription fees from subscriptions sold in the app store and the publisher must sell subscriptions in the app store for the same or less than what they sell them for outside of the app store, the publisher will be unable to sell the subscriptions as low as their competitor on Android. For you Apple fandois, this means that subscriptions delivered on Apple products have at least a 30% premium.
On the other hand this move will accelerate the Android becoming the dominant mobile platform.
Or they might just be doing it to give Texas the shaft and move their future business to less litigious regions.
In effect - "Sorry about all those income taxes you were collecting on those workers, Texas. *snigger* not really. I'm sure somewhere else would be happy to have it."
Perhaps, however, if the yare they are really poor business people, because Texas wasn't collecting income taxes from those workers. Texas does not have an income tax.
Just because Amazon claims something is so, doesn't make it so. It is clear that Amazon is convinced they will lose this battle in court, or they would not be closing the facility.
Their argument is BS. Amazon wants the advantages of having a physical presence in Texas (speed of delivery) without the obligation of collecting sales tax. If Amazon wants to avoid collecting sales tax on goods sold to people living in Texas, they should ship those goods from outside of the state. The problem with Amazon's argument is that the distribution center is just as much a part of Amazon as the affiliates that are the reason they have to collect sales tax in New York. I would be more sympathetic to Amazon's position if they had shut down their affiliate program in New York when they lost that case.
I don't use all of my minutes now, and I rarely text. What advantage do I get from paying the same amount and having to pay for my phone? I am looking to spend less on my cellphone, not get more features.
Why didn't Amazon collect the sales tax in the first place? They had a physical presence in Texas. There is a long established precedent that if you have a physical presence in a state you can be obligated to collect sales tax from people you sell to in that state. My understanding is that they are collectng sales tax in New York, even though they don't really have a physical presence there because New York law says that because they have afiliates in New York they are obligated to collect sales tax. They didn't pull out of New York over that, a much more questionable practice.
The money the state of Texas is trying to collect from Amazon is not from some new tax that Amazon did not know about. This tax was in place when Amazon opened its facility in the first place. Oh yeah, the fact that Amazon says they will close the facility over this indicates that it is not a separate entity as they tried to claim to avoid paying the tax they were supposed to collect. If it was actually run by a separate entity all Amazon could say would be that they would no longer use the facility.
I do not want a touchscreen phone unless it also has some sort of physical keyboard. I often dial my phone without looking at it. I can do this because I can feel the keys. How do those smartphones with keyboards lock the keyboard?
You mention several pretty good prepaid deals. How much does that go up when you add a second phone to the account? Or do you have to get an account for each phone? Every time I have looked into the deals I have seen, they have turned out to be a better deal only for one person. As soon as you have a second person, it ends up being the same price point as my current plan or higher. My current plan is $49.95 + $9.95 (plus all of the various taxes and fees that they never mention in the adds). That is really more than I am happy with.
Yeah, who needs those pesky things called rights, they are outdated. We should just just ignore the Bill of Rights. It was written more than 200 years ago, it doesn't apply anymore. /s
If you think that parts of the Constitution are outdated, there is a way to deal with that. It is called getting an Ammendment passed.
How about taking that money and just reduce the deficit?
Will I be able to get that Android phone for free (with contract) and without having to pay extra for a data plan? Actually will I be able to get two Android phones for free? Three months ago my wife dropped and broke her phone. Our contract had expired, so we went into the closest store for our provider. Picked out the cheapest phone that was satisfactory, turns out that since we were out of contract we were eligible for some discounts that made them free. I was really tempted to get a smartphone, but none of them were clamshell design. I like being able to close my phone so that none of the buttons are exposed (except the volume), that way I don't have to worry about pocket dialing someone.
The barbershops near me all give shitty haircuts and cost more than Haircuttery or Supercuts (there's a third one of those but I can't remember the name at the moment). I would much rather have a pretty young thing cutting my hair than some old dude. I do know of several barbershops that give very good haircuts at reasonable prices, but they are all too far away from where I live and work to be worth the time to get there.
You do know that the Federal Reserve bought a huge chunk of those with money that didn't exist before they used it to buy those bonds.
And there is your fundamental mistake, you are assuming that someone with a bachelor's degree can handle basic writing tasks better than someone from a tech school and won't consider someone from a tech school. Therefore, people who can't handle (or don't want to handle) basic writing skills go to get a bachelor's degree and cheat to get it. Since you don't actually check whether or not they have basic writing skills (if you did, there would be no reason not to consider a tech school graduate), they do not lose anything by this strategy. The result being that those institutions that give out bachelor's degrees can charge more.
What does that have to do with choosing between someone with a degree from a technical school and someone with a bachelor's degree?
I know that it is rather routine for Congress to write bad laws like this one. "Improving access to advanced telecommunications services" is entirely too subjective, especially for a special purpose tax. I do know that Congress often delegates quite a bit to regulatory agencies. I beleive that that is bad policy. It encourages people to blame bureaucrats for things that they should be blaming their Congressperson for.
As far as I know, you can't get a decent engineering job with just a technical certificate. The only way to get the good engineering jobs is to get a degree from a school that makes you take humanities courses. There are engineering jobs that will be better done by someone with a well rounded education, but most of them can be done just as well or better by someone who focuses on just the technical courses.
The problem is that colleges and universities in the U.S. (and probably elsewhere) have been selling themselves as the route to a better paying job for 50 years. They gave up trying to sell a "liberal arts" education (as opposed to a Liberal Arts education) years ago. The market for vocational training is much larger than the market for a "liberal arts" education, so they have chosen to go for the vocational training market.
You are correct that there is value in a "liberal arts" education, but you are going to find it difficult to convince people to spend more than the price of a new car every year for four or more years for one. The thing about community college is that the big schools spend a lot of time telling you how much more you can earn if you go to them rather than to a more vocational training oriented school.
You are correct. Congress wrote a bad law (what a surprise). The law should specify what this tax is for and when that purpose becomes obsolete, Congress should abolish the tax. If there is a new need, Congress should pass a new law authorizing a tax for that purpose (or just paying for it out of general funds). I generally oppose special purpose taxes, although this is the type of special purpose that makes sense. However, the purpose should be clearly defined and the tax eliminated when the purpose is accomplished. If there is a related, but different purpose, it should require Congress to actually take the politial risk of passing a new law.
Congress created this tax. When they did they also specified what it would be used for. The FCC does not have the authority to decide to use this money for something else, no matter how worthy that something else might be, nor how obsolete the original purpose might be.
The U.S. Constitution says that only Congress may decide how Federal money can be spent.
He still has a point. Congress passed the bill to tax phone service. Congress, additionally, designated that the moneys raised by that tax would be used to fund rural phone lines. The FCC does not have the authority to now use those moneys for some other purpose. The FCC may request that Congress pass a law designating that those funds can be used for rural broadband, but it is not allowed to just decide to use those funds for it because the original purpose is obsolete (in their opinion, which in this case is probably correct). Under the U.S. Constitution, all spending bils must originate in the House of Representatives.
The FCC does not get to decide how it will spend its money, unless the law explicitly gives them that authority. In this case, the law explicitly states what the money is to be used for, that means that the FCC does not have the authority to do this.
There is no reason to look outside of the history of AOL for something like that. When Time Warner split off AOL everybody talked about "Why did Time Warner buy AOL in the first place?" when in fact AOL had bought Time Warner and then kept Time Warner as the overall corporate name.
What the story fails to mention is who they predicted would lose the Super Bowl. If they are truly on to something, the same method that predicts the Super Bowl winner should, also, be able to predict the winners of each conference. It says something about how accurately Madden Football reflects the relative strenghts of the teams, but it is only truly impressive if it can predict the Conference Chanpions with significant reliability.
Once again, punishment is punishment. It is not something intended to accomplish something else. Some people may wish to use punishment to accomplish other goals and we can discuss whether or not punishment is effective at accomplishing those other goals, but the statement that "punishment doesn't work" only makes sense once one has defined that one is doing punishment to accomplish some other goal. That is not something I ever said.
"Social sciences" are not science, never have been, hopefully never will. The various "social sciences" can only be real science in a completely evil society.
No, it is not the "scientific" definition of the word punishment. It is merely the definition of the word punishment. You appear to be confusing "punishment" with "negative reinforcement". (BTW, if you think negative reinforcement doesn't work, I hope you are never a parent.)
Additionally, since none of the fields that would create a definition of "punishment" are sciences it really doesn't matter.