Talking about physical technology is a red herring in my opinion. From an IT perspective incompatibility is really a minor issue and while you may need to make the case that new hardware needs to be purchased, it's something that can eventually be done or the company decided they just don't need it. The larger issue is the lack of data literacy with regard to what data is collected, why it is collected, and what segments of that data show. The former is a creeping problem typically with data being collected because of an error in the past and the collection is an attempt to avoid the error repeating. Over time the reasoning for it is forgotten and the data isn't collected as reliably. The second is a problem where people don't see a piece of data as relevant to their processes and don't collect it causing issues for other people. The third is a problem with a larger concern because if you're delivering a segment of your data to a customer, you need to understand why the customer wants that data. If you don't understand that then you may not realize that there are certain constraints that end up put in place in the data you collect, or even your business processes unless you want to risk upsetting and losing the customer.
At the end of the day you're talking about a business communication issue in many cases. A manager doesn't adequately train his employees on the data being collected or even enforce the collection of it. A department head may get indignant and defensive when another department head complains to him about how the lack of data collection causes his people to have to do more work. It's ugly and protectionism over their various fiefdoms.
It's really a shame because the larger the company the larger their data set and when you have a larger data set it becomes possible to leverage that data to identify inefficiencies that can be improved as a cost savings measure. But alas, GIGO rules the day.
Those two letters do not stand in contrast to each other but rather complement each other. The overall interpretation between the two is that it does not matter if the people keep and bear arms. Welcome it because the Constitution of the United States contains within it the mechanisms by which to change it (amendments) without needing to resort to force to change the document. Nothing regarding the letter you referenced suggests that the people need not be armed or that rebellions aren't a good thing, simply that we have the option to change the Constitution without requiring bloodshed.
Note that the letter I provided dated after the letter to which you reference. I shall also present another letter that Jefferson wrote to Madison in January of 1787.
It prevents the degeneracy of government, and nourishes a general attention to the public affairs. I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccesful rebellions indeed generally establish the incroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is a medecine necessary for the sound health of government.
The specific grant of power to Congress with regard to armies is
To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;
The primary reason for the grant of power is to provide for defense of the country and the justification for limiting the appropriations is to prevent a power buildup in the army to avoid the army curtailing individual liberty.
Federalist No. 26 provides some potential insight into this grant of power.
The legislature of the United States will be OBLIGED, by this provision, once at least in every two years, to deliberate upon the propriety of keeping a military force on foot; to come to a new resolution on the point; and to declare their sense of the matter, by a formal vote in the face of their constituents. They are not AT LIBERTY to vest in the executive department permanent funds for the support of an army, if they were even incautious enough to be willing to repose in it so improper a confidence.
This line alone shows that Hamilton was suggesting that a permanent standing army was acceptable primarily because Congress would have the opportunity to curtail its power ever two years by voting on the military.
Schemes to subvert the liberties of a great community REQUIRE TIME to mature them for execution. An army, so large as seriously to menace those liberties, could only be formed by progressive augmentations; which would suppose, not merely a temporary combination between the legislature and executive, but a continued conspiracy for a series of time. Is it probable that such a combination would exist at all? Is it probable that it would be persevered in, and transmitted along through all the successive variations in a representative body, which biennial elections would naturally produce in both houses? Is it presumable, that every man, the instant he took his seat in the national Senate or House of Representatives, would commence a traitor to his constituents and to his country? Can it be supposed that there would not be found one man, discerning enough to detect so atrocious a conspiracy, or bold or honest enough to apprise his constituents of their danger? If such presumptions can fairly be made, there ought at once to be an end of all delegated authority. The people should resolve to recall all the powers they have heretofore parted with out of their own hands, and to divide themselves into as many States as there are counties, in order that they may be able to manage their own concerns in person.
Here we see that Hamilton is writing that the standing army becoming a threat to individual liberty can only occur if successive generations of members elected to the House of Representatives (by the people) agree to continually increase the funding of the military to the point of oppression and he argues that because of this the justification is thus present that the representatives, having acting unfaithfully with regard to the electorate, have given the people justification to dissolve the United States and to form each county as its own independent nation (I believe States in this regard is referring to nations and not states of the United States).
Also, just because you can make it yourself doesn't mean it is legal to do so, or possess it, or carry it, or use it. Just like buying a car doesn't mean you can legally drive it
You only require an operator's license to drive a vehicle on public roadways. You can operate a vehicle without a license on private property as long as you have the property owner's consent.
For example, the question as to whether Trump can refuse to answer a subpoena have been regularly raised, including by his own lawyers, which seemed like they would be settled law given that Nixon was forced to relinquish his incriminating tapes under a subpoena.
The case regarding Nixon was in reference to subpoena duces tecum and not a subpoena ad testificandum which Trump's lawyers are alleging he can refuse.
If a president is impeachable for criminal activity, then how would a reasonable assessment as to whether those crimes occurred unless an investigation took place?
A President may be impeached over a conviction treason, bribery, or committing high crimes and misdemeanors. High crimes and misdemeanors is a classical term which references crimes made only because of the office. To proceed through an impeachment the House of Representatives should convene a committee to perform a congressional investigation, not criminal investigation, into the allegations. If that committee finds sufficient evidence to believe that the President acted in a manner that warrants impeachment then they can refer Articles of Impeachment to the floor of the House.
This is the only proper course for impeachment of a President. Criminal investigations by the DoJ is idiotic at best and unconstitutional at worst as it would necessarily setup a fourth branch of the government that has virtually no checks and balances since the DoJ only reports up to the President.
As for the subpoenaed tapes. Congress can subpoena the executive branch for evidence related to investigations they are conducting. This is well established precedent and it is different from issuing a subpoena for the President to testify. Additionally, there's a 8-0 SCOTUS ruling that executive privilege isn't broad and all encompassing and that the courts can be involved to determine if a President rejecting a subpoena by exerting executive privilege is valid or not.
One of the most famous quotes of Thomas Jefferson directly alludes to it.
the people can not be all, & always, well informed. the part which is wrong [. ..] will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. if they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. we have had 13. states independant 11. years. there has been one rebellion. that comes to one rebellion in a century & a half for each state. what country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? let them take arms. the remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. what signify a few lives lost in a century or two? the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. it is it’s natural manure.
Once he's in a US court, he will DEFINITELY stand on trial both for the fraud AND for the copyright charges. Why wouldn't they?
Because doing so requires prosecutors to obtain special permission from New Zealand in order to do so. If they decided to charge and prosecute Kim Dotcom for the copyright charges without seeking the permission from New Zealand then it would be in violation of extradition treaties which would make other states question whether to extradite individuals in other cases.
Also, you Americans did most of the work against Japan - if it wasn't for you, it is conceivable that sooner or later USSR would be fighting on two fronts and I doubt it would end up well. For that I tip my hat to you.
Kind of. It really depends on how you define "most of the work". The United States was unquestionably key to victory in the Pacific with regard to naval and air capacity. China served the same role in the Pacific that the Soviets served in Europe. 3.8 million Chinese died fighting Japan. Japan had more soldiers die in China [455,700] than the United States suffered as casualties [injury & death] in the Pacific [426,000]. We could have discussions on how valuable keeping the Japanese army tied up in China was to reducing Japan's war machine as well as making it easier for the United States' island hopping.
It is the victim's fault and there's not much Uber can do beyond installing more speed bumps to conducting account actions. The user is already compromised by trusting that the person they're on the phone with is a representative of Uber. The scammer has the account password. At this point the scammer just need to continue asking for further supplied OTPs to complete the TFA.
The only thing that Uber can truly do is try to plaster messages saying that they will never ask for your password. Even saying what a two factor code is being requested for isn't a guarantee that it will stop the scams. Remember, the person being scammed already has a level of trust that the person on the phone is with Uber. If the person "from Uber" says, "Don't worry, we've had an issue reported with your account's ability to transfer funds. We need to verify it works with a $0.01 transfer and will credit it back to you."
If your monthly mortgage is $1,000 and you pay $1,200 then you spent $200 of your disposable income on your mortgage. That extra $200 is discretionary spending on your part even if the payment is made at the same time as the mandatory portion of the mortgage.
It hardly matters and the fact that you're asking the question shows that you bought the optics hook, line, and sinker. The fact that this "pact" organization not to accept PAC or corporate money exists is nothing but a publicity stunt at best because the sum of dollars we're talking about is so low as to be inconsequential and ignores how PACs are structured and how the support candidates. Any given PAC can only donate $5,000 to a candidate per election and up $15,000 to political party each year. Compared to the donations from individuals this is a drop in the bucket and very easy for any politician to refuse, especially if the politician is in a safe seat or has a large election fund built up. That is the extent of the interaction between a PAC and a politician. The PAC may spend excess funds in support of the candidate, typically via advertising or other funding methods and the candidate has no control or influence over that.
Because of how PACs/Super PACs influence the influx and spending of money for campaigns, one could argue that pulling a stunt like rejecting PAC money when it barely affects their finances is a bad thing as it helps to cover up and hide the real problems.
Autopilot is a grossly overloaded term because people confuse pilot and navigator. There's already at least two types of autopilot in aviation and I'm guessing at least two types of nautical autopilots.
The most basic autopilots maintain a heading and speed. That's it. Tesla's autopilot is right in line with this type of autopilot except slightly more advanced in that it capable of steering to follow pavement.
After that you have the navigational autopilots which you can set waypoints and the autopilot will make course corrections to reach the waypoints. We have this mostly solved for cars but there's some critical components that still need to be tested.
Nautical and aeronautical autopilots don't really get much more advanced than that for two reasons. The first is they expect the plane or ship's pilot to be paying attention to respond to changing conditions. The second is that the air and sea are so large that the probability of collisions is drastically smaller than that of cars. The collision avoidance aspect which isn't as critical for airplanes and ships is critical for cars and necessary for self-navigating autopilots on cars.
It's probably not as big an effect as you might think for two main reasons. The first reason is munitions. The F-14's combat advantage was with missile payload. Once all those missiles were expended there would be no replacements and the plane would be relegated to carrying bombs/torpedoes of the day, assuming they could be fitted to the airframe. The second, and more critical, factor would be fuel. The US military was operating planes that used high octane fuel while the planes the USS Nimitz carried were using jet fuel. Peacetime exercises for aircraft carriers can see the wing go through the onboard fuel in about a week. The F14s would be grounded in quick order. The US would need to get a sample of the jet fuel, be able to replicate it with the tools and technology they have and start up an industry and supply chain capable of keeping the Nimitz fed for combat operations.
Once the fuel is gone and the munitions expired, the USS Nimitz's value is as a carrier that doesn't require refueling to move. The good news is that the Nimitz's flight deck is over 1000 feet long. As long as naval aircraft of the era can takeoff and land on that deck the Nimitz can likely be fairly easily repurposed for that era's aircraft. The Nimitz's catapult would likely wreck the airframes of the craft from the era.
The ability of the Nimitz to have won the war would really be limited to making the Japanese think they have more of these aircraft, munitions, and ships and using a show of force to bring Japan to the peace table.
I doubt that you could have won the Battle of Hastings in 13 minutes. Mostly because one machine gun isn't going to be significant enough. There were anywhere from 7,000 to 12,000 Norman invaders. Given a fire rate of 400 rounds a minute, which allows for some control, it would take you 17.5 to 30 minutes to kill all the invaders. That's a really optimistic estimate of 100% accuracy and each bullet fired is a kill. There's also the logistics of ammunition weight. I'll use a figure of 24.5gram which matches 7.62x51mm ammunition. That would mean between 171,500 grams and 294,000 grams of ammunition. For those that need a conversion of kg to pound that's about 380 to 650 pounds, again assuming 100% accuracy. The typical effective engagement range for your machine gun is going to be around 300 meters. Beyond that, you'll miss more than you hit. An average human runs at around 22 miles per hour so I'll knock this down to 15 miles per hour to account for equipment (I'm ignoring the cavalry/archer component of the Norman army). This is equivalent to 6.7 meters per second.
This gives you a scant 45 seconds before the Norman infantry collides with you. Congratulations on killing less than 300 Norman invaders. You most likely didn't cause a rout. You die as the Normans hack you limb from limb. The Normans still probably win.
The point to his comment is to paint the appropriate context of the Enigma machine. While the cracking the Enigma did provide the Allies with crucial information that did help in many cases it didn't "win" the war by any metric. Information can't win anything. All it can do is better position you to take advantage of a situation. It's a tool, nothing more.
I highly doubt Amazon "does it". Mostly likely the contract out to a company like Vertex, query the address, and receive all the tax information for the location. It would be incredibly stupid, read significantly more costly and less risk indemnification, for Amazon to build and maintain the information database in house.
I doubt Amazon built their own tax calculation system. Unless they're foolish, they outsourced it to a company like Vertex which has the infrastructure and staff in place necessary to accumulate all the tax information necessary to calculate the correct tax rates for an order. Amazon probably built the system which makes the query to Vertex or whatever entity they use.
200 is a perfectly reasonable threshold for South Dakota. The last census put South Dakota at 814,191 and the current population estimate is for 869,666. You need to have sufficient sales penetration for roughly one sale for every 4,350 individuals in South Dakota which is already a fairly significant market penetration. That's assuming your product can be targeted at all demographics. Most likely your upper end for demographics is 20% of the population if you're lucky and at that point we're talking about making a sale for every 900 people in your audience. This is remarkably penetration for an online retailer and at this point we're talking about a vendor based out of South Dakota, a regional vendor in South Dakota and it's neighboring states, or a large national vendor.
Taking California as the other extreme, 200 transactions is definitely not enough. You only need to make one sale for roughly every 200,000 people living in the state. Again, maybe your product's target demographic is only 20% of the population. It's still one sale for every 40,000 people. If California pass a law with that low of a transaction limit and it faces challenge and prevailed, that would be a court case that was botched because at the level of penetration, the tax collection creates too much of an overhead burden to conduct business within the state.
The Supreme Court weighed in on the overreach roughly 75 years ago. You would do well to read up on a number of the cases in front of the Supreme Court during the New Deal era along with the political climate of the time. One case in particular to read about is Wickard v. Filburn, which IIRC was referred to in order to support the ruling on the ACA.
To give you an idea of how bad Wickard v. Filburn was as a decision. It's rated up with Dred Scot and Koramatsu in the list of terrible decisions from the Supreme Court that haven't been overturned. Unlikely Dred Scot or Koramatsu, which are likely to be overturned if the opportunity ever arose, it is actually quite unlikely the Supreme Court would overturn Wickard v. Filburn.
The problem with the commerce clause isn't the clause itself as much as the case Wickard v. Filburn. That court case was a direct assault on the 10th Amendment by greatly stripping the individual states of their ability to regulate intrastate commerce. That case is also a significant foundation piece for most of the regulatory basis of the US Federal government.
Overturning Wickard v. Filburn or amending the Commerce Clause would have the same effect of collapsing significant portions of the US Federal government. As such, we can practically guarantee that the case will never be overturned by the Supreme Court because no set of justices would ever want to be responsible for collapsing that much of the government. We can also practically guarantee that Congress will never instigate the Amendment process to revise the Commerce Clause because there's no reasonable expectation would be willing to give up the power granted to them. We can also practically guarantee no convention of states to address the issue because while they stand to gain power from the strengthening of the 10th Amendment, the overall gravy train of government money would shut down pretty heavily.
Slashdot Mirror
Talking about physical technology is a red herring in my opinion. From an IT perspective incompatibility is really a minor issue and while you may need to make the case that new hardware needs to be purchased, it's something that can eventually be done or the company decided they just don't need it. The larger issue is the lack of data literacy with regard to what data is collected, why it is collected, and what segments of that data show. The former is a creeping problem typically with data being collected because of an error in the past and the collection is an attempt to avoid the error repeating. Over time the reasoning for it is forgotten and the data isn't collected as reliably. The second is a problem where people don't see a piece of data as relevant to their processes and don't collect it causing issues for other people. The third is a problem with a larger concern because if you're delivering a segment of your data to a customer, you need to understand why the customer wants that data. If you don't understand that then you may not realize that there are certain constraints that end up put in place in the data you collect, or even your business processes unless you want to risk upsetting and losing the customer.
At the end of the day you're talking about a business communication issue in many cases. A manager doesn't adequately train his employees on the data being collected or even enforce the collection of it. A department head may get indignant and defensive when another department head complains to him about how the lack of data collection causes his people to have to do more work. It's ugly and protectionism over their various fiefdoms.
It's really a shame because the larger the company the larger their data set and when you have a larger data set it becomes possible to leverage that data to identify inefficiencies that can be improved as a cost savings measure. But alas, GIGO rules the day.
Those two letters do not stand in contrast to each other but rather complement each other. The overall interpretation between the two is that it does not matter if the people keep and bear arms. Welcome it because the Constitution of the United States contains within it the mechanisms by which to change it (amendments) without needing to resort to force to change the document. Nothing regarding the letter you referenced suggests that the people need not be armed or that rebellions aren't a good thing, simply that we have the option to change the Constitution without requiring bloodshed.
Note that the letter I provided dated after the letter to which you reference. I shall also present another letter that Jefferson wrote to Madison in January of 1787.
https://founders.archives.gov/...
It prevents the degeneracy of government, and nourishes a general attention to the public affairs. I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccesful rebellions indeed generally establish the incroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is a medecine necessary for the sound health of government.
I suggest you read Federalist No. 26. It provides insight regarding the intent of the 2 year spending authorization for armies.
The specific grant of power to Congress with regard to armies is
To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;
The primary reason for the grant of power is to provide for defense of the country and the justification for limiting the appropriations is to prevent a power buildup in the army to avoid the army curtailing individual liberty.
Federalist No. 26 provides some potential insight into this grant of power.
The legislature of the United States will be OBLIGED, by this provision, once at least in every two years, to deliberate upon the propriety of keeping a military force on foot; to come to a new resolution on the point; and to declare their sense of the matter, by a formal vote in the face of their constituents. They are not AT LIBERTY to vest in the executive department permanent funds for the support of an army, if they were even incautious enough to be willing to repose in it so improper a confidence.
This line alone shows that Hamilton was suggesting that a permanent standing army was acceptable primarily because Congress would have the opportunity to curtail its power ever two years by voting on the military.
Schemes to subvert the liberties of a great community REQUIRE TIME to mature them for execution. An army, so large as seriously to menace those liberties, could only be formed by progressive augmentations; which would suppose, not merely a temporary combination between the legislature and executive, but a continued conspiracy for a series of time. Is it probable that such a combination would exist at all? Is it probable that it would be persevered in, and transmitted along through all the successive variations in a representative body, which biennial elections would naturally produce in both houses? Is it presumable, that every man, the instant he took his seat in the national Senate or House of Representatives, would commence a traitor to his constituents and to his country? Can it be supposed that there would not be found one man, discerning enough to detect so atrocious a conspiracy, or bold or honest enough to apprise his constituents of their danger? If such presumptions can fairly be made, there ought at once to be an end of all delegated authority. The people should resolve to recall all the powers they have heretofore parted with out of their own hands, and to divide themselves into as many States as there are counties, in order that they may be able to manage their own concerns in person.
Here we see that Hamilton is writing that the standing army becoming a threat to individual liberty can only occur if successive generations of members elected to the House of Representatives (by the people) agree to continually increase the funding of the military to the point of oppression and he argues that because of this the justification is thus present that the representatives, having acting unfaithfully with regard to the electorate, have given the people justification to dissolve the United States and to form each county as its own independent nation (I believe States in this regard is referring to nations and not states of the United States).
https://www.congress.gov/resou...
Also, just because you can make it yourself doesn't mean it is legal to do so, or possess it, or carry it, or use it. Just like buying a car doesn't mean you can legally drive it
You only require an operator's license to drive a vehicle on public roadways. You can operate a vehicle without a license on private property as long as you have the property owner's consent.
For example, the question as to whether Trump can refuse to answer a subpoena have been regularly raised, including by his own lawyers, which seemed like they would be settled law given that Nixon was forced to relinquish his incriminating tapes under a subpoena.
The case regarding Nixon was in reference to subpoena duces tecum and not a subpoena ad testificandum which Trump's lawyers are alleging he can refuse.
If a president is impeachable for criminal activity, then how would a reasonable assessment as to whether those crimes occurred unless an investigation took place?
A President may be impeached over a conviction treason, bribery, or committing high crimes and misdemeanors. High crimes and misdemeanors is a classical term which references crimes made only because of the office. To proceed through an impeachment the House of Representatives should convene a committee to perform a congressional investigation, not criminal investigation, into the allegations. If that committee finds sufficient evidence to believe that the President acted in a manner that warrants impeachment then they can refer Articles of Impeachment to the floor of the House.
This is the only proper course for impeachment of a President. Criminal investigations by the DoJ is idiotic at best and unconstitutional at worst as it would necessarily setup a fourth branch of the government that has virtually no checks and balances since the DoJ only reports up to the President.
As for the subpoenaed tapes. Congress can subpoena the executive branch for evidence related to investigations they are conducting. This is well established precedent and it is different from issuing a subpoena for the President to testify. Additionally, there's a 8-0 SCOTUS ruling that executive privilege isn't broad and all encompassing and that the courts can be involved to determine if a President rejecting a subpoena by exerting executive privilege is valid or not.
One of the most famous quotes of Thomas Jefferson directly alludes to it.
the people can not be all, & always, well informed. the part which is wrong [. . .] will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. if they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. we have had 13. states independant 11. years. there has been one rebellion. that comes to one rebellion in a century & a half for each state. what country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? let them take arms. the remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. what signify a few lives lost in a century or two? the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. it is it’s natural manure.
Emphasis mine. http://tjrs.monticello.org/let...
Once he's in a US court, he will DEFINITELY stand on trial both for the fraud AND for the copyright charges. Why wouldn't they?
Because doing so requires prosecutors to obtain special permission from New Zealand in order to do so. If they decided to charge and prosecute Kim Dotcom for the copyright charges without seeking the permission from New Zealand then it would be in violation of extradition treaties which would make other states question whether to extradite individuals in other cases.
https://www.justice.gov/usam/u...
Also, you Americans did most of the work against Japan - if it wasn't for you, it is conceivable that sooner or later USSR would be fighting on two fronts and I doubt it would end up well. For that I tip my hat to you.
Kind of. It really depends on how you define "most of the work". The United States was unquestionably key to victory in the Pacific with regard to naval and air capacity. China served the same role in the Pacific that the Soviets served in Europe. 3.8 million Chinese died fighting Japan. Japan had more soldiers die in China [455,700] than the United States suffered as casualties [injury & death] in the Pacific [426,000]. We could have discussions on how valuable keeping the Japanese army tied up in China was to reducing Japan's war machine as well as making it easier for the United States' island hopping.
It is the victim's fault and there's not much Uber can do beyond installing more speed bumps to conducting account actions. The user is already compromised by trusting that the person they're on the phone with is a representative of Uber. The scammer has the account password. At this point the scammer just need to continue asking for further supplied OTPs to complete the TFA.
The only thing that Uber can truly do is try to plaster messages saying that they will never ask for your password. Even saying what a two factor code is being requested for isn't a guarantee that it will stop the scams. Remember, the person being scammed already has a level of trust that the person on the phone is with Uber. If the person "from Uber" says, "Don't worry, we've had an issue reported with your account's ability to transfer funds. We need to verify it works with a $0.01 transfer and will credit it back to you."
Then those restrooms end up migrating to air drying machines and removing paper towels and its an inward opening door.
If your monthly mortgage is $1,000 and you pay $1,200 then you spent $200 of your disposable income on your mortgage. That extra $200 is discretionary spending on your part even if the payment is made at the same time as the mandatory portion of the mortgage.
It hardly matters and the fact that you're asking the question shows that you bought the optics hook, line, and sinker. The fact that this "pact" organization not to accept PAC or corporate money exists is nothing but a publicity stunt at best because the sum of dollars we're talking about is so low as to be inconsequential and ignores how PACs are structured and how the support candidates. Any given PAC can only donate $5,000 to a candidate per election and up $15,000 to political party each year. Compared to the donations from individuals this is a drop in the bucket and very easy for any politician to refuse, especially if the politician is in a safe seat or has a large election fund built up. That is the extent of the interaction between a PAC and a politician. The PAC may spend excess funds in support of the candidate, typically via advertising or other funding methods and the candidate has no control or influence over that.
Because of how PACs/Super PACs influence the influx and spending of money for campaigns, one could argue that pulling a stunt like rejecting PAC money when it barely affects their finances is a bad thing as it helps to cover up and hide the real problems.
Autopilot is a grossly overloaded term because people confuse pilot and navigator. There's already at least two types of autopilot in aviation and I'm guessing at least two types of nautical autopilots.
The most basic autopilots maintain a heading and speed. That's it. Tesla's autopilot is right in line with this type of autopilot except slightly more advanced in that it capable of steering to follow pavement.
After that you have the navigational autopilots which you can set waypoints and the autopilot will make course corrections to reach the waypoints. We have this mostly solved for cars but there's some critical components that still need to be tested.
Nautical and aeronautical autopilots don't really get much more advanced than that for two reasons. The first is they expect the plane or ship's pilot to be paying attention to respond to changing conditions. The second is that the air and sea are so large that the probability of collisions is drastically smaller than that of cars. The collision avoidance aspect which isn't as critical for airplanes and ships is critical for cars and necessary for self-navigating autopilots on cars.
It's probably not as big an effect as you might think for two main reasons. The first reason is munitions. The F-14's combat advantage was with missile payload. Once all those missiles were expended there would be no replacements and the plane would be relegated to carrying bombs/torpedoes of the day, assuming they could be fitted to the airframe. The second, and more critical, factor would be fuel. The US military was operating planes that used high octane fuel while the planes the USS Nimitz carried were using jet fuel. Peacetime exercises for aircraft carriers can see the wing go through the onboard fuel in about a week. The F14s would be grounded in quick order. The US would need to get a sample of the jet fuel, be able to replicate it with the tools and technology they have and start up an industry and supply chain capable of keeping the Nimitz fed for combat operations.
Once the fuel is gone and the munitions expired, the USS Nimitz's value is as a carrier that doesn't require refueling to move. The good news is that the Nimitz's flight deck is over 1000 feet long. As long as naval aircraft of the era can takeoff and land on that deck the Nimitz can likely be fairly easily repurposed for that era's aircraft. The Nimitz's catapult would likely wreck the airframes of the craft from the era.
The ability of the Nimitz to have won the war would really be limited to making the Japanese think they have more of these aircraft, munitions, and ships and using a show of force to bring Japan to the peace table.
I doubt that you could have won the Battle of Hastings in 13 minutes. Mostly because one machine gun isn't going to be significant enough. There were anywhere from 7,000 to 12,000 Norman invaders. Given a fire rate of 400 rounds a minute, which allows for some control, it would take you 17.5 to 30 minutes to kill all the invaders. That's a really optimistic estimate of 100% accuracy and each bullet fired is a kill. There's also the logistics of ammunition weight. I'll use a figure of 24.5gram which matches 7.62x51mm ammunition. That would mean between 171,500 grams and 294,000 grams of ammunition. For those that need a conversion of kg to pound that's about 380 to 650 pounds, again assuming 100% accuracy. The typical effective engagement range for your machine gun is going to be around 300 meters. Beyond that, you'll miss more than you hit. An average human runs at around 22 miles per hour so I'll knock this down to 15 miles per hour to account for equipment (I'm ignoring the cavalry/archer component of the Norman army). This is equivalent to 6.7 meters per second.
This gives you a scant 45 seconds before the Norman infantry collides with you. Congratulations on killing less than 300 Norman invaders. You most likely didn't cause a rout. You die as the Normans hack you limb from limb. The Normans still probably win.
The point to his comment is to paint the appropriate context of the Enigma machine. While the cracking the Enigma did provide the Allies with crucial information that did help in many cases it didn't "win" the war by any metric. Information can't win anything. All it can do is better position you to take advantage of a situation. It's a tool, nothing more.
I highly doubt Amazon "does it". Mostly likely the contract out to a company like Vertex, query the address, and receive all the tax information for the location. It would be incredibly stupid, read significantly more costly and less risk indemnification, for Amazon to build and maintain the information database in house.
That was the first and easiest. Further laws will be passed to begin collecting county and city sales taxes. It may also spread to other excise taxes.
Collecting is easy. Knowing how much to collect is hard. Remitting the tax is hard.
I doubt Amazon built their own tax calculation system. Unless they're foolish, they outsourced it to a company like Vertex which has the infrastructure and staff in place necessary to accumulate all the tax information necessary to calculate the correct tax rates for an order. Amazon probably built the system which makes the query to Vertex or whatever entity they use.
200 is a perfectly reasonable threshold for South Dakota. The last census put South Dakota at 814,191 and the current population estimate is for 869,666. You need to have sufficient sales penetration for roughly one sale for every 4,350 individuals in South Dakota which is already a fairly significant market penetration. That's assuming your product can be targeted at all demographics. Most likely your upper end for demographics is 20% of the population if you're lucky and at that point we're talking about making a sale for every 900 people in your audience. This is remarkably penetration for an online retailer and at this point we're talking about a vendor based out of South Dakota, a regional vendor in South Dakota and it's neighboring states, or a large national vendor.
Taking California as the other extreme, 200 transactions is definitely not enough. You only need to make one sale for roughly every 200,000 people living in the state. Again, maybe your product's target demographic is only 20% of the population. It's still one sale for every 40,000 people. If California pass a law with that low of a transaction limit and it faces challenge and prevailed, that would be a court case that was botched because at the level of penetration, the tax collection creates too much of an overhead burden to conduct business within the state.
The Supreme Court weighed in on the overreach roughly 75 years ago. You would do well to read up on a number of the cases in front of the Supreme Court during the New Deal era along with the political climate of the time. One case in particular to read about is Wickard v. Filburn, which IIRC was referred to in order to support the ruling on the ACA.
To give you an idea of how bad Wickard v. Filburn was as a decision. It's rated up with Dred Scot and Koramatsu in the list of terrible decisions from the Supreme Court that haven't been overturned. Unlikely Dred Scot or Koramatsu, which are likely to be overturned if the opportunity ever arose, it is actually quite unlikely the Supreme Court would overturn Wickard v. Filburn.
The problem with the commerce clause isn't the clause itself as much as the case Wickard v. Filburn. That court case was a direct assault on the 10th Amendment by greatly stripping the individual states of their ability to regulate intrastate commerce. That case is also a significant foundation piece for most of the regulatory basis of the US Federal government.
Overturning Wickard v. Filburn or amending the Commerce Clause would have the same effect of collapsing significant portions of the US Federal government. As such, we can practically guarantee that the case will never be overturned by the Supreme Court because no set of justices would ever want to be responsible for collapsing that much of the government. We can also practically guarantee that Congress will never instigate the Amendment process to revise the Commerce Clause because there's no reasonable expectation would be willing to give up the power granted to them. We can also practically guarantee no convention of states to address the issue because while they stand to gain power from the strengthening of the 10th Amendment, the overall gravy train of government money would shut down pretty heavily.
Business already exist that provide that service. They're not cheap to use.