Traffic tickets are tricky things. Sure, maybe 80 or even 90 percent of the time it's obvious that the guy was running a red light, or speeding, or what have you. But that remaining 10-20% of the time, whoo boy. Did he REALLY run the red light, or was he close enough to the intersection that when the light turned yellow he wasn't able to stop? Is he driving without a turn signal, or did the bulb burn out during the current car trip? You're getting fined without the benefit of a trial, and without the benefit of "innocent until proven guilty."
So long as the fines are fairly low, this is no BIG deal. I mean, we've gotta keep the roads safe somehow, and I've never heard of any better scheme (though I'm open if anyone's got good ideas). But once the fines start reaching into the thousands, you can't let the cop act as judge jury and "executioner."
Any time you use an expedient, because of circumstances, rather than doing things the truly just way, you have to make sure that expedient is only used in unimportant cases. You see the same thing in government. What would truly be just is if everyone agreed on everything that was done. This is impractical. So it would be fairly just if we voted democratically on every proposed law (it would still be a "tyranny of the majority," but at least everyone would have direct input). This may be practical soon, if some of the problems with online voting are worked out, but it's not now, and it certainly wasn't when the Constitution was drafted. This leaves us with electing representatives. It's an expedient, but they still have to ammend the Consitution if they want to do anything REALLY big.
Any time there's a new proposal, always think of the potential for abuse FIRST, then consider what's good about it. We live in an imperfect world, and most things that sound good fail miserably in practice.
Since most of the flat tax rate schemes are BELOW the rates for capital gains, it doesn't really matter, does it? Make capital gains and income rates equal (probably somewhere around 15 or 16 percent, assuming the numbers on existing flat tax schemes really do add up), and then none of the problems you describe exist. Although, FYI, stock options are usually investments for less than a year, and hence are already taxed as income instead of personal gains.
Of course, your other point is correct. Taxes on wealth are stupid. If you want to try to tax that, sales taxes are the way to go. What's the point in having wealth if you don't spend it? Sooner or later the government will get a chance to collect, and you'll do wonders for encouraging investment (which, as any econ student knows, is one of the most important factors in determining a country's rate of economic growth).
Compared to WHAT?!? Even if there was life in the oceans a billion years earlier, this is still more than two thirds the age of that. That's pretty old. Hell, the universe is only, what, 20-30 billion years old? This is 10% of the age of the UNIVERSE. That's pretty damn long ago, no matter what the metric.
This is the problem with all publicly owned companies. They do mind numbingly stupid things because their shareholders demand it. One of the reasons we have these boom-bust cycles in the economy is because publicly owned companies always have to be growing faster than the economy, or their shareholders will abandon them. They know they can't grow that fast, but no one wants to say anything, because they'll be accused of just covering for their own incompetence.
Likewise, with music piracy, what is the company going to say? "Yes, we know people are pirating our music. No, we're not going to do anything about it." It would be suicide for all those execs making money off of their stock. Instead, they come up with crap like this to placate their shareholders.
...But mainly for computer illiterates. Sure, it might be tough to remember certain addresses when there are a number of similarly named companies (for example, Square Soft, makers of the Final Fantasy series, could just as easily be at www.square.com, or www.square-soft.com as www.squaresoft.com). As the number of companies online increases worldwide (especially when you have companies in other countries, allowing both to have trademarks on the same company name), more and more of these corporate and personal sites will crop up. However, even assuming that you have a phone number on hand, it still would probably be quicker to just do a google search than search through your address book.
On the other hand, for those using Altavista, or Lycos, or what have you, or who don't know how to properly refine a query, could have more difficulty. This could be a real boon for those people, as now you can simply look them up in the yellow pages.
Now whether or not we WANT those people to be able to use the Internet more easily is a question that goes beyond the scope of this post...
The original poster spelled it the former way, and so I followed suit. I assume that's the british way to spell it. Usually I see it spelled the latter way. Basically it means a promise to fulfill the obligation later. So you'd give the kid a note or something saying "I promise to buy you a playstation 2 within 2 months," or something along those lines. I think the origin is when sporting events would get rained out and they'd give people passes to future games.
I thought there was something awfully fishy when they offered our LUG a big discount on Applix software. Trying to dump the excess inventory before announcing that there would be no new versions, I guess. Too bad.
Well, part of the point he humorously makes is that most little kids are under the impression that Santa, not their parents, gives them their presents. Why would Santa give a rain cheque?
Happily, I'm not yet at the point in my life where I have kids, forcing me to choose whether or not to perpetuate the myth of Santa Claus. Santa has some good and bad points. On the good side, I think it reduces the degree of spoiling that occurs, because the kids don't think that they should expect to get quite so much from their parents, but it still allows the parents to go overboard in buying their kids presents. On the downside, you have situations like this, where kids want a certain present, and have every reason to expect that Santa will get it, but parents will be unable to find it.
Sure, this project is doomed, but the theory of lip reading in general is sound. I attended an interesting lecture by a researcher in the field. From the side, or even worse, from directly in front is very difficult to do, however they've had a great degree of success with reading lips when a head is pointed towards the camera at 45 degrees. Even from the side it's not *that* bad, it was able to pick up much of the lip reading scene in 2001.
Of course, as you say, it's still speech recognition, not language recognition. And you might be right, it might still require too much processing power for a home computer.
I'll just point to Standard Oil, US Steel and a multitude of other exampes of a 'free market' at work, which it was back then. Unrestrained competition and battle ultimately produces a winner, and his reward is monopoly up until he gets lazy and taken over by a younger, more dynamic enemy (ie, a new company with bright ideas, low overhead, etc.)
Well that's part of the problem, see once a company gets big, it gets slow. The leasing world is a beautiful example of this. So much falls through the cracks just because companies like GE Capital can't move fast enough, giving the smaller comanies plenty to profit off of. Setting aside the railroads (which obviously were never true monopolies anyway, hence the plural, but are probably industries that would become natural monopolies), two large monopolies hardly seems to be a stunning argument in favor of regulation.
I know, you said "a multitude of other examples," and I'm thinking, but all I can come up with to add to that is AT&T, which did have an awful lot of regulation helping it along. Microsoft is obviously not a true monopoly (mono meaning one, Linux, Mac, BeOS, etc. being more than one).
So sure, every once in a while you'll see a monopoly arise through the free market, but a heck of a lot more often you see it in regulation (see the poster below you for a few examples of government sponsored monopolies, and add to that anyone who's selling anything they've got a patent on).
*stifles laugh* Yeah, hate them PG-17 ratings... Sorry, I shouldn't mock you for not knowing a relatively trivial fact. Anyway, the real rating system is G, PG, PG-13 (I've heard vague things to the effect that those under 13 have to be accompanied by an adult, but I've never seen any problems arise because of it), R (under 17 must be accompanied by an adult), and NC-17 (no one under 17 permitted).
Now then, as for the charge that this has a tremendous impact on American cinema, I don't really think that's as accurate as you think. Often times, studios intentionally throw in unbelievably bloody scenes in order to allow the stuff they actually want shown to slip by. Much of the "censoring" is actually by design. I agree, it's stupid, and it is an abridgment of rights, and I think the current Supreme court probably would have struck it down if they'd been the ones to decide it, but they don't feel like overturning an established precident. It sucks, but I still prefer economic disincentives to creating "obscene" movies to an outright ban on viewing certain things. Or for that matter, a national committe which sets the standards for my language (newspeak is doubleplus good!)
As for the topless bit, now you're just being silly. I can see your point on the movies, but countries are allowed to set their own standards of decency. The fact that we consider toplessness similar to bottomlessness is just what we're used to. Now, I'm a libertarian, I believe that people ought to be able to wear as little as they like (and the rest of us have an equal right to shout lewd comments:), but assuming that a country is going to pass laws concerning indecent exposure, the fact that our laws include tops and yours don't hardly makes us less free.
The view of sex as an act without consequences and as some kind of right is modern. Don't try to project it on others. It's abhorent to all but careless young men and misogynists.
My girlfriend would be rather upset to hear you say that... It's not only men who like sex. Ever hear that a woman's sex drive peaks around 30? There's a fair amount of evidence to suggest that that's mainly due to the fact that it takes women that long to fully get over having been socially conditioned to believe that girls who like sex are morally inferior. If one takes proper precautions, the risk of sex is no greater than any of a number of other activities we take for granted (such as driving). Trying to project morals from eras before effective safe sex onto the modern world is sickening, and demeaning to women.
in most cases, the nerves were taken from cadavers.
I find this even more amazing. I know, I know, the implanted nerves just act as conduits for regrowth, but still, being able to implant nerves coming from dead people is pretty amazing. Reminds me of science fiction books where they talk about criminals being executed by dissassembly (no dissassemble, Stephanie!), and raise the question of whether the convict is truly dead.
I know, I'm reading too much into the implanting of dead nerves, but I just got up, so I'm easily impressed right now.
Universities always get special pricing packages. Don't sweat it, they'll work something out. Actually, my university (Brown) stopped supplying students with MS products because it got too expensive, so maybe they won't...
I never said "on the road to bankrupcy." I agree, in all likelyhood, Walmart will be with us for quite some time. However, it's certainly not becoming increasingly powerful, as the original poster claimed. Their stock is down almost 30% since January, during a period when investors are fleeing tech stocks and looking for companies that can deliver stable annual earnings. Not to beat a dead horse, but Wagreens stock is up over 30% in the same period.
On top of that, sales growth rate is slowing. Their same store sales are up a mere 8% for the year, down from 9% last year, looking fairly shabby compared to the 13-15% other large general purpose retailers have been experiencing.
Walmart has never had an effective long term vision, and now it's coming back to bite them in the ass. If they'd put some thought into it in the first place, they probably would never have built many of those stores that they've been closing. When your job is retail, researching your location is critical. Walmart doesn't bring anything to the table that the other guys don't, and if they continue to grow more slowly, they will get passed up, and they will eventually lose their prominence. It ain't gonna happen overnight, if at all, and there's an awful lot of time for them to find great executives to revitalize the company, but right now, yes, I would say that they are indeed in "a world of hurt."
So, by assuring a Microsoft-AOL duopoly this is supposed to be better than a potential AOL monopoly? I don't think so. Both companies have different focuses, and so by making them both more powerful, the scope of the duopoly would be tremendous, encompassing virtually the entire computer industry.
I was never really that worried about the AOL-Time Warner merger (I don't think AOL is managed well enough to dominate the market), but now I am.
You aren't up on the stock market, are you? Walmart's in a world of hurt, closing stores all over the place. Walgreen's where it's at, in a large part because they didn't pour tons of money into the Internet fad.
Anyway, the point I wanted to make was, yeah, middlement are important, but how much cost is there for an Internet middleman? Not much. Fundamentally, I think free sites can end up being just as good, because most users are willing to spend a second or two contributing back to the value of the site. Take Slashdot. Slashdot acts as a middleman for news, but most of the value is added by posters and moderators, not by those who post the articles.
They have a permanent show in many major cities. They're excellent. Yeah, the commercials utilizing them are less than brilliant, but don't condemn them on a basis of two ads.
It's a 3 person show. Besides, IV still only has 3 lines in it. Now if they used crazy roman numerals, like IIII, then maybe we'd have something:) Sort of reminds you of those floating point problems in the original Pentiums.
Nope, that's volume. Hence the cubing. And the reason he didn't use metric was because people are quoting these "gee whiz" numbers in imperial, and he wanted to see if they were right.
Slashdot Mirror
So long as the fines are fairly low, this is no BIG deal. I mean, we've gotta keep the roads safe somehow, and I've never heard of any better scheme (though I'm open if anyone's got good ideas). But once the fines start reaching into the thousands, you can't let the cop act as judge jury and "executioner."
Any time you use an expedient, because of circumstances, rather than doing things the truly just way, you have to make sure that expedient is only used in unimportant cases. You see the same thing in government. What would truly be just is if everyone agreed on everything that was done. This is impractical. So it would be fairly just if we voted democratically on every proposed law (it would still be a "tyranny of the majority," but at least everyone would have direct input). This may be practical soon, if some of the problems with online voting are worked out, but it's not now, and it certainly wasn't when the Constitution was drafted. This leaves us with electing representatives. It's an expedient, but they still have to ammend the Consitution if they want to do anything REALLY big.
Any time there's a new proposal, always think of the potential for abuse FIRST, then consider what's good about it. We live in an imperfect world, and most things that sound good fail miserably in practice.
Of course, your other point is correct. Taxes on wealth are stupid. If you want to try to tax that, sales taxes are the way to go. What's the point in having wealth if you don't spend it? Sooner or later the government will get a chance to collect, and you'll do wonders for encouraging investment (which, as any econ student knows, is one of the most important factors in determining a country's rate of economic growth).
Compared to WHAT?!? Even if there was life in the oceans a billion years earlier, this is still more than two thirds the age of that. That's pretty old. Hell, the universe is only, what, 20-30 billion years old? This is 10% of the age of the UNIVERSE. That's pretty damn long ago, no matter what the metric.
Likewise, with music piracy, what is the company going to say? "Yes, we know people are pirating our music. No, we're not going to do anything about it." It would be suicide for all those execs making money off of their stock. Instead, they come up with crap like this to placate their shareholders.
On the other hand, for those using Altavista, or Lycos, or what have you, or who don't know how to properly refine a query, could have more difficulty. This could be a real boon for those people, as now you can simply look them up in the yellow pages.
Now whether or not we WANT those people to be able to use the Internet more easily is a question that goes beyond the scope of this post...
The original poster spelled it the former way, and so I followed suit. I assume that's the british way to spell it. Usually I see it spelled the latter way. Basically it means a promise to fulfill the obligation later. So you'd give the kid a note or something saying "I promise to buy you a playstation 2 within 2 months," or something along those lines. I think the origin is when sporting events would get rained out and they'd give people passes to future games.
I thought there was something awfully fishy when they offered our LUG a big discount on Applix software. Trying to dump the excess inventory before announcing that there would be no new versions, I guess. Too bad.
She just has to make sure to marry a man rich enough to afford the engineering...
Happily, I'm not yet at the point in my life where I have kids, forcing me to choose whether or not to perpetuate the myth of Santa Claus. Santa has some good and bad points. On the good side, I think it reduces the degree of spoiling that occurs, because the kids don't think that they should expect to get quite so much from their parents, but it still allows the parents to go overboard in buying their kids presents. On the downside, you have situations like this, where kids want a certain present, and have every reason to expect that Santa will get it, but parents will be unable to find it.
Of course, as you say, it's still speech recognition, not language recognition. And you might be right, it might still require too much processing power for a home computer.
Well that's part of the problem, see once a company gets big, it gets slow. The leasing world is a beautiful example of this. So much falls through the cracks just because companies like GE Capital can't move fast enough, giving the smaller comanies plenty to profit off of. Setting aside the railroads (which obviously were never true monopolies anyway, hence the plural, but are probably industries that would become natural monopolies), two large monopolies hardly seems to be a stunning argument in favor of regulation.
I know, you said "a multitude of other examples," and I'm thinking, but all I can come up with to add to that is AT&T, which did have an awful lot of regulation helping it along. Microsoft is obviously not a true monopoly (mono meaning one, Linux, Mac, BeOS, etc. being more than one).
So sure, every once in a while you'll see a monopoly arise through the free market, but a heck of a lot more often you see it in regulation (see the poster below you for a few examples of government sponsored monopolies, and add to that anyone who's selling anything they've got a patent on).
Now then, as for the charge that this has a tremendous impact on American cinema, I don't really think that's as accurate as you think. Often times, studios intentionally throw in unbelievably bloody scenes in order to allow the stuff they actually want shown to slip by. Much of the "censoring" is actually by design. I agree, it's stupid, and it is an abridgment of rights, and I think the current Supreme court probably would have struck it down if they'd been the ones to decide it, but they don't feel like overturning an established precident. It sucks, but I still prefer economic disincentives to creating "obscene" movies to an outright ban on viewing certain things. Or for that matter, a national committe which sets the standards for my language (newspeak is doubleplus good!)
As for the topless bit, now you're just being silly. I can see your point on the movies, but countries are allowed to set their own standards of decency. The fact that we consider toplessness similar to bottomlessness is just what we're used to. Now, I'm a libertarian, I believe that people ought to be able to wear as little as they like (and the rest of us have an equal right to shout lewd comments :), but assuming that a country is going to pass laws concerning indecent exposure, the fact that our laws include tops and yours don't hardly makes us less free.
My girlfriend would be rather upset to hear you say that... It's not only men who like sex. Ever hear that a woman's sex drive peaks around 30? There's a fair amount of evidence to suggest that that's mainly due to the fact that it takes women that long to fully get over having been socially conditioned to believe that girls who like sex are morally inferior. If one takes proper precautions, the risk of sex is no greater than any of a number of other activities we take for granted (such as driving). Trying to project morals from eras before effective safe sex onto the modern world is sickening, and demeaning to women.
in most cases, the nerves were taken from cadavers.
I find this even more amazing. I know, I know, the implanted nerves just act as conduits for regrowth, but still, being able to implant nerves coming from dead people is pretty amazing. Reminds me of science fiction books where they talk about criminals being executed by dissassembly (no dissassemble, Stephanie!), and raise the question of whether the convict is truly dead.
I know, I'm reading too much into the implanting of dead nerves, but I just got up, so I'm easily impressed right now.
Actually, they also made Office 95, so we only have to wait for version 94 before they start running into problems...
On top of that, sales growth rate is slowing. Their same store sales are up a mere 8% for the year, down from 9% last year, looking fairly shabby compared to the 13-15% other large general purpose retailers have been experiencing.
Walmart has never had an effective long term vision, and now it's coming back to bite them in the ass. If they'd put some thought into it in the first place, they probably would never have built many of those stores that they've been closing. When your job is retail, researching your location is critical. Walmart doesn't bring anything to the table that the other guys don't, and if they continue to grow more slowly, they will get passed up, and they will eventually lose their prominence. It ain't gonna happen overnight, if at all, and there's an awful lot of time for them to find great executives to revitalize the company, but right now, yes, I would say that they are indeed in "a world of hurt."
I was never really that worried about the AOL-Time Warner merger (I don't think AOL is managed well enough to dominate the market), but now I am.
Anyway, the point I wanted to make was, yeah, middlement are important, but how much cost is there for an Internet middleman? Not much. Fundamentally, I think free sites can end up being just as good, because most users are willing to spend a second or two contributing back to the value of the site. Take Slashdot. Slashdot acts as a middleman for news, but most of the value is added by posters and moderators, not by those who post the articles.