You seem to have forgotten why Rudd & Co were able to take the actions they did - there was a BIG pile of cash reserves, put there by the previous govt as they enjoyed the profits and royalties of selling our coal & iron ore overseas. Unfortunately Rudd & Swan couldn't manage a chook raffle without going into debt.
Anyway, you're right about negative gearing - the sooner it's given the chop, the better. All those "wealth creation" schemes based on buying investment properties using interest-only loans. Look at https://www.propertyclub.com.a... (Previously "The Investors Club") and what they promise.
Use an interest-only loan (at up to 112% of the property valuation) to buy an investment property, rent it out, offset the losses against your other income in the first 1-2 years, then progressively borrow and buy more properties. Here's how it works - after about 7 years, the value of the property has doubled, and rents have risen to cover the loan's interest payments, but your loan still sits at the original value, so what do you do now? You borrow again for the difference between the original value and today's value, retire, and live on the money from the new loan. Lather, rinse, repeat. They boast of being "property millionaires", but they're living entirely on bank credit - their whole existence is debt financed by the current value of their investment properties. When, not if, the housing bubble bursts and property prices tumble, the banks will get worried and ask for their money. These people will have to put their properties on the market to service their debt (even though the philosophy is "never, ever sell"), but the market will be crowded, so there's likely to be defaults, repossession by the banks (technically mortgager's option to sell), and some destitute former millionaires.
I can't wait to see it happen - these pricks are non-productive parasites and contribute nothing but a burden on the tax system that the rest of us have to pay for. Entirely legal, of course, but no government in the last 20 years has had the spine to drop or even sunset the negative gearing rules.
This is a serious question, and I understand that things in the US are different from where I live, but what law or constitutional clause grants a "right to not be recorded"?
Where I live, there are laws covering this under various contexts and circumstances - for example, any one of multiple parties to a conversation can record it without the others' knowledge or permission, but someone who is *not* a party to that conversation, i.e. an eavesdropper, or clandestine listener, may not record the conversation (excepting police with a warrant, obviously). Most conversations can be recorded if you state the fact up front, which implies consent - but you can also request that it *not* be recorded.
Is it that an otherwise private entity like PP that receives tax/public funds suddenly becomes a government agency and therefore subject to the 4th amendment?
You in NSW? I'm pretty sure Qld doesn't have such a tax, but I've never owned two properties at once, so I wouldn't have encountered it, anyway.
I think historically Qld & W.A. have/had the lowest/least state taxes, mainly due high income from resource royalties - they could afford to abolish such taxes due to mining royalty income.
I've had the least trouble with Debian. Mint just doesn't seem to like me, and I don't like Ubuntu.
Building Gentoo from source was fun, Fedora just didn't feel right, FreeBSD wouldn't even work in Virtualbox, and I've yet to experience the pleasure of Slackware.
If this is to control manufacturing/industrial equipment, you really should be employing someone with skills and experience./advice
Much of this debate is moot - it would take 1. broad community support, meaning bilateral support from both major parties, and they've got much more pressing things to worry about, and 2. a major shift in most monetary policy.
The thing is, cash is legal tender, good for settlement of debt. Refusing cash is legally suspect - if I offer you a card, and the card is declined, then I offer cash, you can refuse, but I've offered a legal means to pay the debt. What are you going to do when I walk out with my coffee? Call the police? I'll tell them I offered cash, and I might even be lucky enough to have surveillance camera footage showing me offering cash. What's a judge going to do? That's the best thing about cash - it works when all other methods fail. I don't have to accept cheques or credit cards, but if I refuse cash, I don't get paid.
The transaction is fast, but I find paywave transactions take 2 -3 days to finally reconcile in my account. "Current balance" and "available funds" being two different amounts is a pain - a minor pain, but one I can avoid by not using paywave.
Some shopkeepers/assistants are skipping the question and just wave my card at the machine - then look puzzled and even horrified when I tell them I didn't want to use paywave. I don't make them reverse it out, but I make a note to in future, tell them before I hand them my card.
This is about Australia - we don't have to pay up front for petrol. The longest part of fuel payments - cash or otherwise - is waiting in the queue, but cash is slightly faster IME.
Sales tax and a number of other taxes were phased out when the GST (goods and service tax) was introduced. It didn't simplify the system as much as it should have but it went partway there. Yes, we have income tax, but I don't find it burdensome - even the first AUD$18,200 is tax-free.There's no property tax, but someone is proposing to phase out contract stamp duty in favour of a property tax. Yes, there are "sin' taxes. Don't know what a homeowner tax is, but we do pay council rates for roads & parks, sewerage, rubbish collection, etc. No poll tax.
Wasteful spending aside, taxes are the way a government collects revenue to spend on public utilities and services - major infrastructure like interstate highways, health care (Australia has universal free health care), defense, and so on. All that is common knowledge.
The GST was proposed to even out the tax burden - have a broad-based goods and service tax (with some exemptions), instead of a narrow tax here, and another one there, and more over there. It spreads the tax burden more evenly over the population. The super-rich can avoid income tax with creative accounting, but they can't avoid 10% GST on their fine wines and home cinemas. That's the theory, anyway.
I think the proponents of this system should take a close look at north Queensland over the next week. Tropical cyclone Debbie is about to hit the coast near Bowen in the next day or so.
Let's see how that EFTPOS infrastructure holds up when people need to buy essentials such as bottled water, canned food, generator fuel, etc (and beer, of course). It won't matter if the problem lies with the water-logged EFTPOS terminal, the local exchange, or the flood-damaged fibre cable down the street, "tap-and-go" just won't "go".
One of my customers had to fork out for installation media because the Win 10 upgrade hosed the recovery partition - well, not hosed, because I could see it with gparted on another machine, but the customer's machine failed to access it, and none of the available tools would convince the bios that there was indeed, a recovery partition.
I'd call that damage. Win 10 had no business doing anything beyond looking at other partitions on the drive.
The breakdowns that I've encountered, while rare, are generally moderately severe, i.e. not just out for a few minutes, but hours, or overnight. Fortunately the local IGA supermarket will allow known customers to run a tab for as long as it takes to recover the EFTPOS systems.
I don't do EFTPOS or credit card, it's cash, cheque, or direct deposit. The banks charge too much on EFTPOS and credit card transactions. Some of the merchants around here are already adding 30 or 50 cents to EFTPOS/CC purchases.
If you try to take cash away, people will find something to replace it - there's already a LET system here, but most of it is for the hippies - trading a patchouli-scented massage for some free-range eggs, but I can see it picking up if cash is withdrawn. The government didn't invent cash, they just stepped in when they saw a need to regulate it.
There's a good chance that this machine's software/interfaces will have....inadequate security. Someone, somewhere, will achieve control over it, and then when it turns on the thin blue line behind it, ostensibly waiting to "clean up" the now-subdued rioters, there will be some outrage from the police department/s who bought it, some swift spin from the manufacturer, and the units will either 1. be withdrawn, or 2. given a firmware upgrade, in which case, see above.
At the very least, someone will be able to jam its communication, rendering it unresponsive.
It's more like "halve the emissions", not "halve the energy". See, it's about trying to generate electricity for us to use, while reducing the byproducts that are bad for the environment.
Glad I could clear that up for you, and thanks for your contribution to the debate.
Yeah, but - use it or lose it. I'm scared about *anything* that reduces our cognitive ability/ies.
And it's not so much that we don't have a clue where the hell we're going, it's more that we don't give a damn to find out, when the technology will take care of it.
Fair enough, I suppose, except when the technology proves unreliable cough*apple maps* cough.
I get the joke, but mine is a very effective headless, X-less torrent client and media server. It streams internet radio into the home stereo, and without the buffering issues that Windows machines seem to have. I can add a Linux ISO to the torrent queue and forget about it until I actually want to try it out.
Both of which could be handled by an old laptop running Windows or Debian, of course, but not for the price and energy consumption of the Pi.
Does that mean that one or more subscribers who have never "shared" copyright material will have their details sent to the court?
Educate me, please - just how could a plaintiff establish to a court's satisfaction which particular subscriber was involved?
Talk about a scattergun approach.
"Here is the list of subscribers sharing that IP address at nine PM last Tuesday night, your honor."
"What, there's twenty of them, all at different physical addresses, and not otherwise related to each other? Case dismissed. Plaintiff, get your facts straight before coming here again."
That being true, the next stage of the project is to install some supercapacitors just for those sorts of inrush loads. Quite a lot of very big capacitors, sure - but is there any reason this couldn't be part of the arrangement?
Also, what happened to your radars if/when the island's power failed?
and software to "curate" your ads, why not go further and identify you by licence plate?
Tie your licence plate to your vehicle's onboard 3G/4G account, and via that to your social media (a fair assumption that you've been silly enough to use your social media gmail/hotmail address to activate your vehicle's 3G/4G access when you bought it, or even used that gmail/hotmail address as a recovery email if forced to use a 'customer@gm.com' address), and you've got access to a wealth of information.
And don't believe that {social media} wouldn't sell the contents of your profile to the highest bidder. Do any social media accounts ask for vehicle licence plate number?
Maybe it won't be long before social media start to ask you for your vehicle's account details "to serve you better", perhaps in the guise of "if you have an accident, we can notify your friends!"
Hell, that'd be a damn sight more accurate for curated ads than just the car make and model.
My next car will be pre-1980, european, manual, and two-seater. I will of course upgrade it if necessary with radial tyres, and decent brakes.
And replace all the poor-design or faulty components with something more modern - but it won't have a computer in it.
Cold water fish, which tend to be oily, and herbivore meat, aren't what I'd describe as meagre, calorie-wise. Of course, they might not have eaten a lot of it, but that's not connected with the gut's ability to extract nutrition.
The gut flora has got to be significant here - starchy carbs are a big component of many diets - italian, for instance - and there's got to be something more to study there.
Slashdot Mirror
You seem to have forgotten why Rudd & Co were able to take the actions they did - there was a BIG pile of cash reserves, put there by the previous govt as they enjoyed the profits and royalties of selling our coal & iron ore overseas. Unfortunately Rudd & Swan couldn't manage a chook raffle without going into debt.
Anyway, you're right about negative gearing - the sooner it's given the chop, the better. All those "wealth creation" schemes based on buying investment properties using interest-only loans. Look at https://www.propertyclub.com.a... (Previously "The Investors Club") and what they promise.
Use an interest-only loan (at up to 112% of the property valuation) to buy an investment property, rent it out, offset the losses against your other income in the first 1-2 years, then progressively borrow and buy more properties. Here's how it works - after about 7 years, the value of the property has doubled, and rents have risen to cover the loan's interest payments, but your loan still sits at the original value, so what do you do now? You borrow again for the difference between the original value and today's value, retire, and live on the money from the new loan. Lather, rinse, repeat. They boast of being "property millionaires", but they're living entirely on bank credit - their whole existence is debt financed by the current value of their investment properties. When, not if, the housing bubble bursts and property prices tumble, the banks will get worried and ask for their money. These people will have to put their properties on the market to service their debt (even though the philosophy is "never, ever sell"), but the market will be crowded, so there's likely to be defaults, repossession by the banks (technically mortgager's option to sell), and some destitute former millionaires.
I can't wait to see it happen - these pricks are non-productive parasites and contribute nothing but a burden on the tax system that the rest of us have to pay for. Entirely legal, of course, but no government in the last 20 years has had the spine to drop or even sunset the negative gearing rules.
This is a serious question, and I understand that things in the US are different from where I live, but what law or constitutional clause grants a "right to not be recorded"?
Where I live, there are laws covering this under various contexts and circumstances - for example, any one of multiple parties to a conversation can record it without the others' knowledge or permission, but someone who is *not* a party to that conversation, i.e. an eavesdropper, or clandestine listener, may not record the conversation (excepting police with a warrant, obviously). Most conversations can be recorded if you state the fact up front, which implies consent - but you can also request that it *not* be recorded.
Is it that an otherwise private entity like PP that receives tax/public funds suddenly becomes a government agency and therefore subject to the 4th amendment?
You in NSW? I'm pretty sure Qld doesn't have such a tax, but I've never owned two properties at once, so I wouldn't have encountered it, anyway.
I think historically Qld & W.A. have/had the lowest/least state taxes, mainly due high income from resource royalties - they could afford to abolish such taxes due to mining royalty income.
Just Debian, no derivatives.
I've had the least trouble with Debian. Mint just doesn't seem to like me, and I don't like Ubuntu.
Building Gentoo from source was fun, Fedora just didn't feel right, FreeBSD wouldn't even work in Virtualbox, and I've yet to experience the pleasure of Slackware.
If this is to control manufacturing/industrial equipment, you really should be employing someone with skills and experience. /advice
Much of this debate is moot - it would take 1. broad community support, meaning bilateral support from both major parties, and they've got much more pressing things to worry about, and 2. a major shift in most monetary policy.
The thing is, cash is legal tender, good for settlement of debt. Refusing cash is legally suspect - if I offer you a card, and the card is declined, then I offer cash, you can refuse, but I've offered a legal means to pay the debt. What are you going to do when I walk out with my coffee? Call the police? I'll tell them I offered cash, and I might even be lucky enough to have surveillance camera footage showing me offering cash. What's a judge going to do? That's the best thing about cash - it works when all other methods fail. I don't have to accept cheques or credit cards, but if I refuse cash, I don't get paid.
The transaction is fast, but I find paywave transactions take 2 -3 days to finally reconcile in my account. "Current balance" and "available funds" being two different amounts is a pain - a minor pain, but one I can avoid by not using paywave.
Some shopkeepers/assistants are skipping the question and just wave my card at the machine - then look puzzled and even horrified when I tell them I didn't want to use paywave. I don't make them reverse it out, but I make a note to in future, tell them before I hand them my card.
This is about Australia - we don't have to pay up front for petrol. The longest part of fuel payments - cash or otherwise - is waiting in the queue, but cash is slightly faster IME.
Sales tax and a number of other taxes were phased out when the GST (goods and service tax) was introduced. It didn't simplify the system as much as it should have but it went partway there. Yes, we have income tax, but I don't find it burdensome - even the first AUD$18,200 is tax-free.There's no property tax, but someone is proposing to phase out contract stamp duty in favour of a property tax. Yes, there are "sin' taxes. Don't know what a homeowner tax is, but we do pay council rates for roads & parks, sewerage, rubbish collection, etc. No poll tax.
Wasteful spending aside, taxes are the way a government collects revenue to spend on public utilities and services - major infrastructure like interstate highways, health care (Australia has universal free health care), defense, and so on. All that is common knowledge.
The GST was proposed to even out the tax burden - have a broad-based goods and service tax (with some exemptions), instead of a narrow tax here, and another one there, and more over there. It spreads the tax burden more evenly over the population. The super-rich can avoid income tax with creative accounting, but they can't avoid 10% GST on their fine wines and home cinemas. That's the theory, anyway.
I think the proponents of this system should take a close look at north Queensland over the next week. Tropical cyclone Debbie is about to hit the coast near Bowen in the next day or so.
Let's see how that EFTPOS infrastructure holds up when people need to buy essentials such as bottled water, canned food, generator fuel, etc (and beer, of course). It won't matter if the problem lies with the water-logged EFTPOS terminal, the local exchange, or the flood-damaged fibre cable down the street, "tap-and-go" just won't "go".
I can't see a $4.00 takeaway coffee returning much profit after the bank takes its share.
"Tap-and-go", but only if your purchase exceeds $15, otherwise, what?
One of my customers had to fork out for installation media because the Win 10 upgrade hosed the recovery partition - well, not hosed, because I could see it with gparted on another machine, but the customer's machine failed to access it, and none of the available tools would convince the bios that there was indeed, a recovery partition.
I'd call that damage. Win 10 had no business doing anything beyond looking at other partitions on the drive.
The breakdowns that I've encountered, while rare, are generally moderately severe, i.e. not just out for a few minutes, but hours, or overnight. Fortunately the local IGA supermarket will allow known customers to run a tab for as long as it takes to recover the EFTPOS systems.
I don't do EFTPOS or credit card, it's cash, cheque, or direct deposit. The banks charge too much on EFTPOS and credit card transactions. Some of the merchants around here are already adding 30 or 50 cents to EFTPOS/CC purchases.
If you try to take cash away, people will find something to replace it - there's already a LET system here, but most of it is for the hippies - trading a patchouli-scented massage for some free-range eggs, but I can see it picking up if cash is withdrawn. The government didn't invent cash, they just stepped in when they saw a need to regulate it.
There's a good chance that this machine's software/interfaces will have....inadequate security. Someone, somewhere, will achieve control over it, and then when it turns on the thin blue line behind it, ostensibly waiting to "clean up" the now-subdued rioters, there will be some outrage from the police department/s who bought it, some swift spin from the manufacturer, and the units will either 1. be withdrawn, or 2. given a firmware upgrade, in which case, see above.
At the very least, someone will be able to jam its communication, rendering it unresponsive.
Perhaps they should apologise to Drew Curtis (www.fark.com) and send him the advertising revenue they withheld for "inappropriate content".
http://www.fark.com/comments/b...
What's the next naming scheme?
It's more like "halve the emissions", not "halve the energy". See, it's about trying to generate electricity for us to use, while reducing the byproducts that are bad for the environment.
Glad I could clear that up for you, and thanks for your contribution to the debate.
Yeah, but - use it or lose it. I'm scared about *anything* that reduces our cognitive ability/ies.
And it's not so much that we don't have a clue where the hell we're going, it's more that we don't give a damn to find out, when the technology will take care of it.
Fair enough, I suppose, except when the technology proves unreliable cough*apple maps* cough.
I get the joke, but mine is a very effective headless, X-less torrent client and media server. It streams internet radio into the home stereo, and without the buffering issues that Windows machines seem to have. I can add a Linux ISO to the torrent queue and forget about it until I actually want to try it out.
Both of which could be handled by an old laptop running Windows or Debian, of course, but not for the price and energy consumption of the Pi.
Does that mean that one or more subscribers who have never "shared" copyright material will have their details sent to the court?
Educate me, please - just how could a plaintiff establish to a court's satisfaction which particular subscriber was involved?
Talk about a scattergun approach.
"Here is the list of subscribers sharing that IP address at nine PM last Tuesday night, your honor."
"What, there's twenty of them, all at different physical addresses, and not otherwise related to each other? Case dismissed. Plaintiff, get your facts straight before coming here again."
We can only hope, and trust in VPNs.
This is why I don't normally object to the volume of patents filed by and granted to IBM. It's R&D that actually leads to useful things.
That being true, the next stage of the project is to install some supercapacitors just for those sorts of inrush loads. Quite a lot of very big capacitors, sure - but is there any reason this couldn't be part of the arrangement?
Also, what happened to your radars if/when the island's power failed?
Lots of windows laptops have this, also. BIOS or hardware switch.
Also, depending on the situation, you could:
1. only one AP in range? i.e. are you working from home, and out of range of other APs?. Blacklist your laptop's MAC address at the AP.
2. turn off DHCP on the laptop, set static IP to 169.254.xxx.xxx
3. not sure about this one, but: arp -s 127.0.0.1 your-mac-address
and software to "curate" your ads, why not go further and identify you by licence plate?
Tie your licence plate to your vehicle's onboard 3G/4G account, and via that to your social media (a fair assumption that you've been silly enough to use your social media gmail/hotmail address to activate your vehicle's 3G/4G access when you bought it, or even used that gmail/hotmail address as a recovery email if forced to use a 'customer@gm.com' address), and you've got access to a wealth of information.
And don't believe that {social media} wouldn't sell the contents of your profile to the highest bidder. Do any social media accounts ask for vehicle licence plate number?
Maybe it won't be long before social media start to ask you for your vehicle's account details "to serve you better", perhaps in the guise of "if you have an accident, we can notify your friends!"
Hell, that'd be a damn sight more accurate for curated ads than just the car make and model.
My next car will be pre-1980, european, manual, and two-seater. I will of course upgrade it if necessary with radial tyres, and decent brakes.
And replace all the poor-design or faulty components with something more modern - but it won't have a computer in it.
It *is* a pain, but not that difficult to mitigate. The reboot is a scheduled task which can easily be modified, or even disabled.
A bit more of a task for non-technical folk, sure, but not nearly as daunting as poking around in the registry.
Cold water fish, which tend to be oily, and herbivore meat, aren't what I'd describe as meagre, calorie-wise. Of course, they might not have eaten a lot of it, but that's not connected with the gut's ability to extract nutrition.
The gut flora has got to be significant here - starchy carbs are a big component of many diets - italian, for instance - and there's got to be something more to study there.