Company A isn't paying $6,000 in sales tax - their clients are. Company A is only the collection agent. Both companies are paying the same tax - $25,000.00
Additionally, since the sales tax is part of the cost of doing busines, the customers of Company A get to deduct it from gross income.
and while you're all at it, better get used to it. There's trillions of dollars in debt that has to be paid back, with interest. Taxes have only one way to go - up!
The federal government is trillions of dollars in debt. State taxes, which this article is about, make no difference to the national deficit.
Where did I say "federal"?
State and local governments are also in hock past their eyeballs, for trillions as well. Even back in 2002 state and local government debt was 1.5 trillion dollars. Do you really think its gone down in the last 5 years? Speaking of total federal debt, if you used GAAP, the federal debt is really 59 trillion dollars.
Perhaps the poster didn't express it properly, but part of the "social contract" that your tax-free programmer benefits from is:
meat and other food inspections;
a system of laws and courts;
police and fire protection, disaster relief;
roads, water and other infrastructure;
basic education;
Or we could have everyone do what you advocate, and stop paying taxes. Schools would close. Houses would be allowed to burn to the ground, whoever had the biggest gang would p0wn your shit, and could butt-rape your 5-year-old son (and you) without fear of any jail time, but that would be okay, because you'd be "stickin' it to da man!"
Sales taxes are a relatively fair consumption tax, because past a certain point, you don't have to buy stuff. Someone who buys a $6,000 Rolex will pay more sales tax than someone who buys a $9.99 WalMart WallyWatch. It also encourages saving, which, considering the negative saving rate over the last decade, is something that is needed.
"In California, repair and installation labor is non-taxable."
It will probably be taxed sometime next year or the year after. The alternative is California having its' credit rating downgraded, because of the huge (10 billion bucks) shortfall in taxation revenue, which is likely to grow to approximately $30 billion by 2009, as the rest of the mortgage resets, foreclosures, and reposessions work their way through the system.
Seriously, this must be the 3rd story about Prince in 3 weeks. Is this going to be a weekly feature? Are we going to start seeing other fallen-from-favor media "personalities" iand "pop-tarts" in the rotation?
The measure increases sales tax by 1% and adds computer support services, data center support, custom programming, consulting, and disaster recovery services to the list. Legislators approved the change as part of a tax package they passed early Monday morning.
In other words, It will now have to pay its fair share of taxes, same as other businesses.
Why should people who have to shop at WallyWorld pay more than their fair share of taxes, so that IT consultants can pay none?
Get real! This is totally fair. Or does the IT industry somehow not benefit from the services provided by tax revenues?
And while you're all at it, better get used to it. There's trillions of dollars in debt that has to be paid back, with interest. Taxes have only one way to go - up! And everyone has to contribute. funny how you all scream about how unfair loopholes are, until someone does a goatse on your own personal loophole.
> "Nah. Becoming what I hate would be much more wear on my health and piece of mind."
Nobody says you have to start asking people for TPS reports:-)
What part do you "hate"? The "pretense" of wearing something nice? Why? Do you feel that, deep down, you don't merit it, or that you can't "pull it off"?
I'm serious. A LOT of the people in IT conform to the "non-conformist hippy" bit because they have self-esteem problems. That's why they have such a hard time getting up in front of a group and giving presentations that aren't full of techno-jargon, or fielding questions, or thinking of ways to ask questions to others that actually reinforce the other person, rather than degenerating into the all-too-typical "nerd pissing contest".
Think of it. What do those "pissing contests" accomplish? To outsiders, they mark both people as "socially challenged". Yet we see it all the time. There must be some truth in the stereotype of geeks being attracted to computers because of the social isolation it affords.
"In some environments this will lead to you being branded an ass-kisser, and you'll lose all respect from your immediate teammates."
Maybe if you're working on the loading dock , but nice threads make a difference, even though they shouldn't in what should be, in theory, a meritocracy.
Besides, the simple truth is that if this causes your team-mates to discrespect you, they didn't respect you in the first place.
In the overall picture, it also takes away one avenue of attack. Look at how many detractors derogate F/LOSS by pointing to RMS's hair, grubby-looking sweaters, etc. We don't need that, on or off the job.
People claim (and often they are right) that "nerds and geeks" don't know how to communicate with "the rest of the world." You walk into a situation with your laptop, grubby T-shirt, jeans, baseball cap and sneakers and your competitor/back-stabbing co-worker/whoever goes sans laptop, but with a $400 leather coat, $60 shirt, shined shoes, etc. - who do you think is going to be considered more credible?
... especially since you'll be so busy "proving" your point, showing sh*t on your lappy, that you won't be listening! And I don't mean just with your ears. 80% of all communication is non-verbal. Sure, you'll be "communicating" visually with your laptop, but its a one-way street - and that's not 1-on-1 communication any more than a TV show is.
The threads will more than pay for themselves, so they're really free once you've done the initial investment. The laptop? Depreciates faster than a US greenback on the world market, and with the extra bucks from your raises and bonuses you'll be able to buy a macbook pro AND a crackberry instead of that WinTel piece of crap.
"This is true. Managers tend to overlook those who telecommute full time, even if they do a great job."
Moral of the story
- Don't buy that new laptop. Spend the money on $50 shirts instead. They'll pay for themselves with your next pay increase.
Seriously, if you're in tech, and you're in the office, you have to learn to play office politics. When everyone else is doing "nerd casual" (t shirts, blue jeans, runners) go for the nice threads - you'll be noticed and respected. Look at what your boss is wearing - and go half a step up.
Not only will you get more respect, but when you argue that a feature/deadline/whatever is unreasonable, they're more likely to listen. That alone is worth spending the bux, just to save on your own health/wear and tear/peace of mind.
"They probably figure - correctly - that they can accomplish as much with half the staff. Most telecommuters suck"
Add in the costs of more office and parking space, facilities/environment/energy expenses, as well as the energy costs expended by people who used to telecommute and now have to sit in traffic, and enter the office in a pissed-off mood because some asshole cut them off, or construction/an accident/road closure/snowstorm delayed them, etc...
So much for AT&T sabotaging their whole "communications can save your business money" angle. Morons.
"I wonder why the powers that be don't make some way for those comments to be automatically deleted?"
[_] the "powers that be" posted them in the first place;
[_] they LIKE it...;
[X] once you start deleting posts, your legal position vis. posted content changes. They don't want to go back to having to delete scientology-slagging posts, etc.
Simple - follow the money. There are two things that corrupt - power and money. You do bogus "bullet lead analysis", and you get more funding, a bigger staff, more power... rinse, lather, and repeat.
Welcome to faith-based criminology - where nobody bothers to test basic assumptions because in Soviet Amerika, the FBI trolls YOU! And no, its not just a problem for the US.
What's particularly galling is that nobody in government feels a need to review all the cases where the FBI basically LIED. Again, power and money. Is it a coincidence that the first case this was used on was the Kennedy Assassination, and that it supposedly tied the "magic bullet" to a box of bullets Oswald had? Or was this the FBI "inventing junk science" for a political agenda, and then it got out of hand?
>>The judge ruled that this was personal email so that the case would end, and the submitter would go away.
>So you're suggesting that the judge is corrupt and prejudicial and that this case was not decided on its merits.
No, more likely tht the judge is a total idiot who doesn't "get it", and really , really REALLY deserves to receive a million spams with "link to your site/personal profile/linkedin/faceboolk.myspace" profile (seeing as this is a clueless judge, myspace is the most likely).
No need to shoot you - DesiLu / Paramount / somebody will be happy to sue you out of existence for infringing on their Start Trek Intellectual Property.
>"It turned out that my office sucked away 2.2 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of power during that time. Since all of that power is converted to heat, I was also warming up my office to the tune of 562 British Thermal Units (BTUs) per hour. That's roughly one-sixth of the heat output from a 1,000-watt hair dryer, heat that my fan had to work to remove."
1 kW/hr = 3413 BTU/hr, not the other way around. In other words, its equal to 7,500 BTUs. Or. more obviously, 2.2 1,000 watt hair dryers.
If the author could make such a simple mistake, I wouldn't trust any other figures, esp. since
there is no "compensation" for heating cost offsets in winter from reduced heating load
"none of the equipment is energy star rated" - how f*cking OLD is that shit? More than a decade?
On a side note, according to one of the links I posted elsewhere in this thread, with Oracle, the user name and password are never transmitted in cleartext, even if the session isn't encrypted. Not a bad idea, and something I suspect the rest of the food chain will eventually adopt as SOP.
Glad you liked the "or they use slashdot to proxy their luser abuse:-)" bit.
One thing I've noticed is that the "lack of social skills" stereotype is true for a lot of people in the IT industry; it certainly took me a long time to see that social skills are the MOST IMPORTANT part of any project. Hate to say it, but you can "really know your shit", but without the ability to listen more than speak, and to also pick up the unspoken stuff, reading between the lines, knowing when to say less, etc., you're only contributing a portion of what you can really contribute.
Unfortunately, age doesn't guarantee that, but it increases the odds. Also, if your "crew" has a problem with someone higher up, you'll have more of a chance having it addressed if you have someone older on your team bitching about it.
We code because we enjoy "the chase" - the solving of problems, some of them rather abtruse. We enjoy crafting something, we enjoy the "art". Still, we also have to be able to communicate on all levels, and unfortunately, this is an art that most people, not just programmers, need to be constantly working on. Sure, we're the worst offenders - hence the stereotype - but at least we have the lingo for it (herding cats, luser abuse, etc) so we know that we have our work cut out for us.
Unlike certain "management" people, who tend to make diagrams with 4 squares, and tend to try to put people into one or more of those squares, as their "personality types", then wonder why people get pissed off. You can't "box people in". All those "motiviational" speakers who indulge in such fantasies are full of crap, and should learn to think outside the box.
The whole "war crimes" bit isn't being enforced all that vigorously any more - every few years, we find some old fart who has spent the last 50 years hiding... its pitiful.
. where an act or omission is committed outside Canada and the act or omission, when committed in those circumstances, is an offence...
The question is - is it an offense if the act or omission had been commited on Canadian soil. If its not an offense in Canada, its simply not an offense as far as our laws are concerned. This is why the US was so pissed of when former Prime Minister Chretien wanted to decriminalize pot, and rattled the trade sanctions sabre. Simply put, if its not an offense under the Canadian criminal code, we won't enforce other country's laws, when they contradict ours, or ours permit said activity. See music downloading as the best example - legal in Canada because we pay a fee on blank media and remit the funds to the music industry. Nobody is going to be charged with "piracy" for downloading - just uploading - which IS a separate copyright violation. Also, look at prohibition. Even before the Canadian constitution was enacted, since booze was legal in Canada, we had no problem with Bronfman and friends exporting (smuggling) to the US. So what if it was illegal in the US - not our laws, not our country, not our jurisdiction. Unlike the bankruptcy judge in the SCO vs Suse arbitration, we aren't foolish enough to bother trying to infringe on other country's sovereignty except in accordance with international law (which is why we're in Afghanistan, but not Iraq).
IIRC, the whole duality thing was changed with the extradition of Ng to the US. Prior to that, the question was "is it constitutional to extradite when the person could face the death penalty?" - and countries would have to agree in advance not to seek the death penalty, or we wouldn't extradite. The extradition of Ng to the US, w/o such guarantees, changed that. However, it could be changed again should another case arise and the defense make better arguments. Unlike the US, our Supremes are more flexible about revisiting laws when the case that sets the precedent is a "corner case".
The Canadian Nazi won't be "held accountable" in Canada - unlike the US, our laws don't permit the prosecution of someone for a crime committed outside of the country, with the sole exceptions are pedophilia/child sexual assault - sections 150ff of the Canadian Criminal Code. Even murderers have to be extradited. And its unconstitutional to extradite for something that isn't an offense in Canada. So, while offering to sell Nazi memorabilia might be an offense in Germany, Canada won't extradite since it isn't an offense in Canada.
As for human trafficking, its definitely extraditable, so not an issue.
Well, people DO like to steal PCs. Removing all the recordable media isn't all that bad an idea, if (TRUE STORY) the night cleaners like to surf pr0n sites, and Windows users like to leave their pretty screen savers unlocked.
Slashdot Mirror
Company A isn't paying $6,000 in sales tax - their clients are. Company A is only the collection agent. Both companies are paying the same tax - $25,000.00
Additionally, since the sales tax is part of the cost of doing busines, the customers of Company A get to deduct it from gross income.
Where did I say "federal"?
State and local governments are also in hock past their eyeballs, for trillions as well. Even back in 2002 state and local government debt was 1.5 trillion dollars. Do you really think its gone down in the last 5 years? Speaking of total federal debt, if you used GAAP, the federal debt is really 59 trillion dollars.
That money has to be made somewhere. Taxes.
Perhaps the poster didn't express it properly, but part of the "social contract" that your tax-free programmer benefits from is:
Or we could have everyone do what you advocate, and stop paying taxes. Schools would close. Houses would be allowed to burn to the ground, whoever had the biggest gang would p0wn your shit, and could butt-rape your 5-year-old son (and you) without fear of any jail time, but that would be okay, because you'd be "stickin' it to da man!"
Sales taxes are a relatively fair consumption tax, because past a certain point, you don't have to buy stuff. Someone who buys a $6,000 Rolex will pay more sales tax than someone who buys a $9.99 WalMart WallyWatch. It also encourages saving, which, considering the negative saving rate over the last decade, is something that is needed.
"In California, repair and installation labor is non-taxable."
It will probably be taxed sometime next year or the year after. The alternative is California having its' credit rating downgraded, because of the huge (10 billion bucks) shortfall in taxation revenue, which is likely to grow to approximately $30 billion by 2009, as the rest of the mortgage resets, foreclosures, and reposessions work their way through the system.
Seriously, this must be the 3rd story about Prince in 3 weeks. Is this going to be a weekly feature? Are we going to start seeing other fallen-from-favor media "personalities" iand "pop-tarts" in the rotation?
FTFA:
In other words, It will now have to pay its fair share of taxes, same as other businesses.
Why should people who have to shop at WallyWorld pay more than their fair share of taxes, so that IT consultants can pay none?
Get real! This is totally fair. Or does the IT industry somehow not benefit from the services provided by tax revenues?
And while you're all at it, better get used to it. There's trillions of dollars in debt that has to be paid back, with interest. Taxes have only one way to go - up! And everyone has to contribute. funny how you all scream about how unfair loopholes are, until someone does a goatse on your own personal loophole.
> "Nah. Becoming what I hate would be much more wear on my health and piece of mind."
Nobody says you have to start asking people for TPS reports :-)
What part do you "hate"? The "pretense" of wearing something nice? Why? Do you feel that, deep down, you don't merit it, or that you can't "pull it off"?
I'm serious. A LOT of the people in IT conform to the "non-conformist hippy" bit because they have self-esteem problems. That's why they have such a hard time getting up in front of a group and giving presentations that aren't full of techno-jargon, or fielding questions, or thinking of ways to ask questions to others that actually reinforce the other person, rather than degenerating into the all-too-typical "nerd pissing contest".
Think of it. What do those "pissing contests" accomplish? To outsiders, they mark both people as "socially challenged". Yet we see it all the time. There must be some truth in the stereotype of geeks being attracted to computers because of the social isolation it affords.
"In some environments this will lead to you being branded an ass-kisser, and you'll lose all respect from your immediate teammates."
Maybe if you're working on the loading dock , but nice threads make a difference, even though they shouldn't in what should be, in theory, a meritocracy.
Besides, the simple truth is that if this causes your team-mates to discrespect you, they didn't respect you in the first place.
In the overall picture, it also takes away one avenue of attack. Look at how many detractors derogate F/LOSS by pointing to RMS's hair, grubby-looking sweaters, etc. We don't need that, on or off the job.
People claim (and often they are right) that "nerds and geeks" don't know how to communicate with "the rest of the world." You walk into a situation with your laptop, grubby T-shirt, jeans, baseball cap and sneakers and your competitor/back-stabbing co-worker/whoever goes sans laptop, but with a $400 leather coat, $60 shirt, shined shoes, etc. - who do you think is going to be considered more credible?
The threads will more than pay for themselves, so they're really free once you've done the initial investment. The laptop? Depreciates faster than a US greenback on the world market, and with the extra bucks from your raises and bonuses you'll be able to buy a macbook pro AND a crackberry instead of that WinTel piece of crap.
Constructive Dismissal.
Sounds about right to me.
"This is true. Managers tend to overlook those who telecommute full time, even if they do a great job."
Moral of the story - Don't buy that new laptop. Spend the money on $50 shirts instead. They'll pay for themselves with your next pay increase.
Seriously, if you're in tech, and you're in the office, you have to learn to play office politics. When everyone else is doing "nerd casual" (t shirts, blue jeans, runners) go for the nice threads - you'll be noticed and respected. Look at what your boss is wearing - and go half a step up.
Not only will you get more respect, but when you argue that a feature/deadline/whatever is unreasonable, they're more likely to listen. That alone is worth spending the bux, just to save on your own health/wear and tear/peace of mind.
"They probably figure - correctly - that they can accomplish as much with half the staff. Most telecommuters suck"
Add in the costs of more office and parking space, facilities/environment/energy expenses, as well as the energy costs expended by people who used to telecommute and now have to sit in traffic, and enter the office in a pissed-off mood because some asshole cut them off, or construction/an accident/road closure/snowstorm delayed them, etc ...
So much for AT&T sabotaging their whole "communications can save your business money" angle. Morons.
"I wonder why the powers that be don't make some way for those comments to be automatically deleted?"
Simple - follow the money. There are two things that corrupt - power and money. You do bogus "bullet lead analysis", and you get more funding, a bigger staff, more power ... rinse, lather, and repeat.
Welcome to faith-based criminology - where nobody bothers to test basic assumptions because in Soviet Amerika, the FBI trolls YOU! And no, its not just a problem for the US.
What's particularly galling is that nobody in government feels a need to review all the cases where the FBI basically LIED. Again, power and money. Is it a coincidence that the first case this was used on was the Kennedy Assassination, and that it supposedly tied the "magic bullet" to a box of bullets Oswald had? Or was this the FBI "inventing junk science" for a political agenda, and then it got out of hand?
>>The judge ruled that this was personal email so that the case would end, and the submitter would go away.
>So you're suggesting that the judge is corrupt and prejudicial and that this case was not decided on its merits. No, more likely tht the judge is a total idiot who doesn't "get it", and really , really REALLY deserves to receive a million spams with "link to your site/personal profile/linkedin/faceboolk.myspace" profile (seeing as this is a clueless judge, myspace is the most likely).
No need to shoot you - DesiLu / Paramount / somebody will be happy to sue you out of existence for infringing on their Start Trek Intellectual Property.
It's $40. US, $60 Canadian? Hey Toys R Us - the Canadian Dollar is worth MORE. It should be $38.00 Canadian, not $60. Just another rip-off!
>"It turned out that my office sucked away 2.2 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of power during that time. Since all of that power is converted to heat, I was also warming up my office to the tune of 562 British Thermal Units (BTUs) per hour. That's roughly one-sixth of the heat output from a 1,000-watt hair dryer, heat that my fan had to work to remove."
1 kW/hr = 3413 BTU/hr, not the other way around. In other words, its equal to 7,500 BTUs. Or. more obviously, 2.2 1,000 watt hair dryers.
If the author could make such a simple mistake, I wouldn't trust any other figures, esp. since
Its the best indicator that "the smell of death" has attached itself to a project|company|whatever.
On a side note, according to one of the links I posted elsewhere in this thread, with Oracle, the user name and password are never transmitted in cleartext, even if the session isn't encrypted. Not a bad idea, and something I suspect the rest of the food chain will eventually adopt as SOP.
Glad you liked the "or they use slashdot to proxy their luser abuse :-)" bit.
One thing I've noticed is that the "lack of social skills" stereotype is true for a lot of people in the IT industry; it certainly took me a long time to see that social skills are the MOST IMPORTANT part of any project. Hate to say it, but you can "really know your shit", but without the ability to listen more than speak, and to also pick up the unspoken stuff, reading between the lines, knowing when to say less, etc., you're only contributing a portion of what you can really contribute.
Unfortunately, age doesn't guarantee that, but it increases the odds. Also, if your "crew" has a problem with someone higher up, you'll have more of a chance having it addressed if you have someone older on your team bitching about it.
We code because we enjoy "the chase" - the solving of problems, some of them rather abtruse. We enjoy crafting something, we enjoy the "art". Still, we also have to be able to communicate on all levels, and unfortunately, this is an art that most people, not just programmers, need to be constantly working on. Sure, we're the worst offenders - hence the stereotype - but at least we have the lingo for it (herding cats, luser abuse, etc) so we know that we have our work cut out for us.
Unlike certain "management" people, who tend to make diagrams with 4 squares, and tend to try to put people into one or more of those squares, as their "personality types", then wonder why people get pissed off. You can't "box people in". All those "motiviational" speakers who indulge in such fantasies are full of crap, and should learn to think outside the box.
You bring up some good points.
The whole "war crimes" bit isn't being enforced all that vigorously any more - every few years, we find some old fart who has spent the last 50 years hiding ... its pitiful.
. where an act or omission is committed outside Canada and the act or omission, when committed in those circumstances, is an offence ...
The question is - is it an offense if the act or omission had been commited on Canadian soil. If its not an offense in Canada, its simply not an offense as far as our laws are concerned. This is why the US was so pissed of when former Prime Minister Chretien wanted to decriminalize pot, and rattled the trade sanctions sabre. Simply put, if its not an offense under the Canadian criminal code, we won't enforce other country's laws, when they contradict ours, or ours permit said activity. See music downloading as the best example - legal in Canada because we pay a fee on blank media and remit the funds to the music industry. Nobody is going to be charged with "piracy" for downloading - just uploading - which IS a separate copyright violation. Also, look at prohibition. Even before the Canadian constitution was enacted, since booze was legal in Canada, we had no problem with Bronfman and friends exporting (smuggling) to the US. So what if it was illegal in the US - not our laws, not our country, not our jurisdiction. Unlike the bankruptcy judge in the SCO vs Suse arbitration, we aren't foolish enough to bother trying to infringe on other country's sovereignty except in accordance with international law (which is why we're in Afghanistan, but not Iraq).
IIRC, the whole duality thing was changed with the extradition of Ng to the US. Prior to that, the question was "is it constitutional to extradite when the person could face the death penalty?" - and countries would have to agree in advance not to seek the death penalty, or we wouldn't extradite. The extradition of Ng to the US, w/o such guarantees, changed that. However, it could be changed again should another case arise and the defense make better arguments. Unlike the US, our Supremes are more flexible about revisiting laws when the case that sets the precedent is a "corner case".
As you can see, firebird, maxdb, mysql and postgresql all support encrypted connections.
Oracle can be configured to as well.
Instructions for JDBC (java database clients) encryption.
That should be enough options for now - so pick your favorite poison :-)
The Canadian Nazi won't be "held accountable" in Canada - unlike the US, our laws don't permit the prosecution of someone for a crime committed outside of the country, with the sole exceptions are pedophilia/child sexual assault - sections 150ff of the Canadian Criminal Code. Even murderers have to be extradited. And its unconstitutional to extradite for something that isn't an offense in Canada. So, while offering to sell Nazi memorabilia might be an offense in Germany, Canada won't extradite since it isn't an offense in Canada.
As for human trafficking, its definitely extraditable, so not an issue.
Well, people DO like to steal PCs. Removing all the recordable media isn't all that bad an idea, if (TRUE STORY) the night cleaners like to surf pr0n sites, and Windows users like to leave their pretty screen savers unlocked.