Just vote your current house/senate member out of office. Cite this as the reason why. If you can remove one, half of the remainder will change their stance.
See tobacco industry for examples (too lazy to look up right now).
...to sit in traffic because some bozo stopped at a green light so they can finish their text message because their phone wont work once they start moving.
I would rather people who actually need this just go ahead and wreck their car. It would be the fastest way for them to learn how to drive and not use a damn phone for their 20 minute commute. More importantly, it would keep them off the road for a couple hours until they get a rental. Probably cheaper in the long run over paying for this service.
If they have an income of 50,000, they should not have expenses of more than 37,500 (including taxes). If they put 5,000 annually in savings, they could pay off 7500 per year. They also should have assets and can get a secured loan for their debt, probably around 6-7% annual interest. At this rate, they could pay it off in just under 10 years, at a total cost of 69734.21 (at 7% interest).
Lets assume they can still pay $7500 per year, but now at 14.5% interest (they can get a loan to pay off their debt but cant back the loan with personal assets, so they get a much higher interest rate). In this case, it will instead take 26 years, at a total cost of 195944.79.
First of all, this is/., so lets note that johnny's piss would dribble at a low parabolic arc until t=1 and then have a negative exponentially increasing arc. Also, why the hell would johnny want to figure out how long its going to take for his piss to hit the ground?
A textbook with this kind of math problem would be even less useful than the current one, and certainly would still not justify its price tag, regardless of how 'interesting' the book might be.
No, this feature is on youtube, not/.
Stupid people posting on youtube dont even realize that they are posting.
Stupid people on slashdot get modded funny or insighful, seemingly at random.
I pay $55.90 for 8/2 Comcast in Atlanta GA. I have seen 1.2 MB down, 400 up at the best. Normal peak is about 700 down, 100 up, which drops in seconds to 400 down, 70 up.
The only other option is 6/1, also from comcast, which when I had it the first month before "upgrading" gave me roughly half the speed.
I have been using this service for about 6 months and am planning on changing providers when FIOS is available "next year". When my lease runs out I am moving to somewhere with better service and lower price.
Since I can't mod you ignorant, and troll is not necessarily guaranteed, I'll save the points and point out what I see as the obvious.
Speaking as a rational shareholder, thats a quarterly dividend. This means they were paying 44 cents and are now paying 52 cents. Thats per share. On your investment, even if the stock doesnt move at all, you will double your investment in 50 years.
Lets review: you can make money in the long run even if microsoft stock drops in price (in which case you currently can take up to 3000 in losses every year against your capital gains). Most rational people would call that a return on investment. Microsofts stock price has effectively not changed in 5 years, so getting something for your investment, that amounts to over 2% of the stock price, is not crappy.
To be fair, there isnt really a point to microsoft raising its dividend. They are buying back shares, not raising capital.
In my area, comcast is the only non-dialup option. Business class is not available. The best I can get is 8 d / 1 up for $60 a month, but the best I have ever seen is about 300 kb down / 70 kb up ( i get about 700 kb d / 200 kb u for 10 seconds, then it falls quickly to 10 kb for both and slowly goes up to 2-300 kb). I am sure that many people (probably a material percentage of comcast users) are in the same boat.
I don't have a problem with paying a higher cost, I will just offset it by canceling my comcast cable, but what I want isnt available. Moving to an apartment where it is available means moving to an apartment that costs 2-3 times as much rent (and higher utilities, pet fees, etc). In order to afford that, I would have to stop investing in my 401k, savings accounts, stock portfolio, and stop visiting bars. That would give me the extra $1500 a month I would need to put myself in the position of being able to purchase a business class internet connection.
While I dont mind paying for services that I value, I have a serious problem with a change to service when other options are not available. An arbitrary bandwidth cap with no method of determining when I am approaching it other than losing my only affordable form of internet access is absolutely not acceptable.
Probably because from a business perspective, you do not assume that customers are complaining for the lulz.
Of course customers are going to break the 250 GB cap. They will rightly complain that they had no way of knowing when they were approaching or breaking their limit until they had broken their limit. The majority of these users will be going beyond the cap for legal uses of internet.
In reality, 6 months after the limit is in place, users will start getting alerts when they break say 90% of their limits, and charged by the MB (yes, MB, not GB) by Comcast at a ridiculous rate. Comcast, as a business, would rather make more money than lose high use customers. 1 year from when this is in place, everyone will be on a metered use. My guess is that Comcast will make more money on a smaller user base, since 5-15% of customers will move specifically to get a different ISP that doesnt impose limits.
In the short term, any business that changes its business model is going to have growing pains. Just because you have a reasonable method for how they should change does not take into account how the majority of users will be affected. Comcast does. While I disagree with the method they are taking (its roundabout and will anger many customers, including those who dont come anywhere near the cap, because they have to adjust their usage until they find out how they are doing), it isnt necesarily incorrect.
Sure, but who the hell wants to watch a video of someone eating a steak or spreading butter on something?
Have we really reached an entertainment void so high that this is what people would be posting?
I see a bigger problem than videos being removed in videos being posted. Maybe there are videos on youtube that are interesting or insightful or funny or some other term that gets modded on slashdot, but the vast majority of them are troll or redundant or just absolute crap.
I'm fairly certain that videos being removed are ones that normally would just have a click through agreement saying 'I understand that a knife is in this video' on most web sites.
No, its like asking how to get his car's engine to turn on faster so he can drive it, and you responding to keep the car on at all times.
While it is a perfectly reasonable thing to do if you have an electric car and can just run it off an outlet, under many circumstances (such as if you can't afford or simply chose not to run your car 24/7), it is not possible or efficient. It is not a solution to direct issue either.
To put this in a food analogy (which is just as valid as a car analogy, despite the fact that this is/.), if I asked you how to make fried chicken faster, because getting the oil to boil takes too long, and you responded that I should just always keep a batch of oil boiling, you would be correct, but it would be an inefficient solution, and not the task orientation that I would be looking for.
The best example, of course, would be if I were working out and wanted to record my progress quickly in an electronic format, you could tell me to keep my text editor on at all times. Granted, the simple solution would be to use a pen and paper, but I suppose telling me to send myself a text message on my cell phone would be a viable option, even if it is an unreasonable one.
I did not read your response because your html tag made it look like the only thing you responded was "Dude, I have a minor in economics and currently work as an accountant. I think I'm qualified to make the statement I made." I didnt look to see that you had said anything else in response
In my defense, its been a long day, and every place where I said accrual should in fact say deferral.
People do, however receive goods/services at an unspecified price all the damn time. Its called a futures contract, or an interest rate swap where one side is fixed and one side is variable, or a loan where the interest rate is variable (LIBOR +x%).
Of course accountants use science. Accounting is generally providing reasonable assurance that the items that go into financial statements can be relied upon. This is done through several types of testing that generally follow a scientific method, of proving or disproving items. (see dictionary.com -> auditor, also science).
Thats no excuse for a blatantly improper analogy. Its actually kind of insulting that you would work as an accountant and make such an improper analogy, especially in light of the fact that people on this forum understand economics or accounting so very little that they would mod you up for making such an improper statement. Qualified to respond, maybe. But no one can be qualified to misinform. Isnt that why Scott Adams had a survey done in the first place (due to lack of reliable information)?
If you think accounting and economics are unrelated, you clearly have never heard of an accrual. Items are booked for a reasonable estimate of future cost. Take a wild guess as to what the basis for those estimates are.
Burger flippers, on the other hand, are burger flippers precisely because they do not have the necessary skills to determine the long-term growth strategy of a company. They are replaceable assets. Should one of them dissapear, there would be no long term impact on the company.
As for the faith vs science debate, also way off. I don't know how anyone who takes 5 seconds to think before posting could possibly make that misconclusion. Economists and accountants both use science. Its the method of application that differs. Accountants generally work with actual numbers while economists generally work with the numbers that accountants prove to make generalizations about the economy. Just looking at the titles give this much information.
As for the usefullness of the survery, it certainly is. It tells us from the scope of 500 specific economists their opinion on which candidate would be fiscally better for this country. That is all that it does. Claiming that the study is flawed because it wasnt a study of multiple types of financial professionals is completely irrelevant to the purpose of the study.
Don't know if this has been mentioned, but if you have friends or family in another state, have them buy the parts, pay them back, and next time the visit you/you visit them, pick em up. No more sales tax.
Product branding is a marketing issue, not a safety issue. There is no material benefit to 100% testing vs 1% testing. The fact that someone might want to buy "organic" doesnt mean that I should pay for it. Since the "organic" is a higher price, the generic jumps their price as well. Look at recent prices of wheat, corn, agave, and software as examples. False shortages are affecting the cost/demand curve, and it is shameful. Gimmicks, sweepstakes, and uneducated masses may increase the ability of companies to raise prices, but the only benefit from these items is obsfucation of true costs.
How would you feel flying a plane if the baggage screeners only actually looked at a random 1% of the items, and metal detectors were off, except for a random 1% of passengers?
If metal detectors are that accurate, I would be shocked. Quite frankly, I dont feel safer flying in the US just because "100%" of luggage is searched, and I dont feel that my beef would be any safer from 100% testing vs 1% testing. Granted, this is because I understand statistics, but if you dont, you probably dont have any right to complain.
The market is not right in the short term, which would be what 100% testihg would propose. In the long term, there is absolutely no additional benefit, regardless of how the uninformed masses might think.
Regarding willful ignorance on the relevant issue, we don't have flying cars, because the technology just isn't there yet.
Considering how many people have mad cow disease linked to US beef compared to other countries beef, and the relative amount of beef that is eaten/exported from those countries, I offer that we are doing better than everyone else here in the states.
The positions of wealth and power that we have are based on economic and political issues that we have justly earned. If you feel otherwise, economics will laugh at your ignorance. Shame on you for claiming to love this country and yet feel that we dont deserve everything that we have worked for. I am fairly cetain that since the boston tea party, we have agreed as a nation that economic issues should be relevant and fair.
Relocating headquarters to Mexico or Canada or Singapore would mean that the testing that goes on would not be as stringent, and the value of it, while reducing the price of beef, would also reduce its quality, both real and perceived. Its the reason that we get some of our beef from argentina, and not from singapore, canada, or mexico. I am insulted that you think goverment functions of location of headquarters have anything to do with religion (see christmas card comment). It would most certainly be economically better to send our testing facilites to these countries, but it would not be better from a safety standpoint, or a quality standpoint. As an American, I am proud to pay higher prices for higher quality.
The USDA isnt offering obstructions to quality to point that it is economically more feasible to leave the US, which would indicate that the free market is working. Shame on you for implying that anyone should pay more for something of lower quality.
I'm glad you were modded funny, because it sure as hell isnt insightful. In case you were going for thst, drug dealers are not responsible for users. Most drugs are illegal because no taxes are paid on them (see amsterdam). By any reasonable standard, items that effect someone's state of mind have a valid market (see coffee, chocolate, oxygen bars, tobacco, alcohol, live music, and anything used to improve your sex life) and with limited exceptions should not be prohibited.
Businesses should buy laws, so long as our politicians are selling them. From a shareholder perspective, I would dissapointed if they didnt, and invest my money elsewhere. Its a dont hate the player, hate the game situation.
There were numerous records broken at Sydney because athletes tend to get better when they train an additional 4 years. The same reason that records get broken every olympics. Granted, not every event has a new record every year, but look at Michael Phelps. He has set new world records in 5 golds (so far). It isnt just new equipment setting records; its better athletes, new training methods, etc.
As for using it to improve your vision, why the hell else would you get LASIK? I wear glasses. If I were to get LASIK, my vision would be improved. If I didn't wear glasses, it probably would still improve my vision.
Although I dont remember this occuring, the gold medal would be stripped for testing positive for marijuana because it was on the list of substances that were not allowed to be used by olympic athletes. It doesn't need to be performance enhancing to be illegal (and depending on the sport, marijuana could be performance enhancing as a muscle relaxer). I can't smoke crack and go to work, but it isnt because crack would give me an unfair advantage in my job. USe some common sense.
Continuing the realm of common sense that you seem to completely ignore, steroids are not allowed because they easily can be abused and even if not have side effects that outweigh the benefits. In a contest of the limits of human ability, it defeats the purpose to use artificial methods of producing short term (thats right, when you stop using steroids, the benefit goes away) gains to reach those limits. It is not a pinnacle of human achievement to use steroids.
Slashdot Mirror
Everyone knows that IRS Codes have part, then chapter, then section.
At least the department of the Treasury does.
Ok, everyone with 30 seconds to do a google search knows that IRS Codes have part, then chapter, then section.
I believe we have one, called voting.
Just vote your current house/senate member out of office. Cite this as the reason why. If you can remove one, half of the remainder will change their stance.
See tobacco industry for examples (too lazy to look up right now).
...to sit in traffic because some bozo stopped at a green light so they can finish their text message because their phone wont work once they start moving.
I would rather people who actually need this just go ahead and wreck their car. It would be the fastest way for them to learn how to drive and not use a damn phone for their 20 minute commute. More importantly, it would keep them off the road for a couple hours until they get a rental. Probably cheaper in the long run over paying for this service.
If they have an income of 50,000, they should not have expenses of more than 37,500 (including taxes). If they put 5,000 annually in savings, they could pay off 7500 per year. They also should have assets and can get a secured loan for their debt, probably around 6-7% annual interest. At this rate, they could pay it off in just under 10 years, at a total cost of 69734.21 (at 7% interest).
Lets assume they can still pay $7500 per year, but now at 14.5% interest (they can get a loan to pay off their debt but cant back the loan with personal assets, so they get a much higher interest rate). In this case, it will instead take 26 years, at a total cost of 195944.79.
Seems pretty clear to me...
You must be new here.
First of all, this is /., so lets note that johnny's piss would dribble at a low parabolic arc until t=1 and then have a negative exponentially increasing arc. Also, why the hell would johnny want to figure out how long its going to take for his piss to hit the ground?
A textbook with this kind of math problem would be even less useful than the current one, and certainly would still not justify its price tag, regardless of how 'interesting' the book might be.
No, this feature is on youtube, not /.
Stupid people posting on youtube dont even realize that they are posting.
Stupid people on slashdot get modded funny or insighful, seemingly at random.
No. Only kdawson can make things up and get on the front page.
I pay $55.90 for 8/2 Comcast in Atlanta GA. I have seen 1.2 MB down, 400 up at the best. Normal peak is about 700 down, 100 up, which drops in seconds to 400 down, 70 up.
The only other option is 6/1, also from comcast, which when I had it the first month before "upgrading" gave me roughly half the speed.
I have been using this service for about 6 months and am planning on changing providers when FIOS is available "next year". When my lease runs out I am moving to somewhere with better service and lower price.
Since I can't mod you ignorant, and troll is not necessarily guaranteed, I'll save the points and point out what I see as the obvious.
Speaking as a rational shareholder, thats a quarterly dividend. This means they were paying 44 cents and are now paying 52 cents. Thats per share. On your investment, even if the stock doesnt move at all, you will double your investment in 50 years.
Lets review: you can make money in the long run even if microsoft stock drops in price (in which case you currently can take up to 3000 in losses every year against your capital gains). Most rational people would call that a return on investment. Microsofts stock price has effectively not changed in 5 years, so getting something for your investment, that amounts to over 2% of the stock price, is not crappy.
To be fair, there isnt really a point to microsoft raising its dividend. They are buying back shares, not raising capital.
In my area, comcast is the only non-dialup option. Business class is not available. The best I can get is 8 d / 1 up for $60 a month, but the best I have ever seen is about 300 kb down / 70 kb up ( i get about 700 kb d / 200 kb u for 10 seconds, then it falls quickly to 10 kb for both and slowly goes up to 2-300 kb). I am sure that many people (probably a material percentage of comcast users) are in the same boat.
I don't have a problem with paying a higher cost, I will just offset it by canceling my comcast cable, but what I want isnt available. Moving to an apartment where it is available means moving to an apartment that costs 2-3 times as much rent (and higher utilities, pet fees, etc). In order to afford that, I would have to stop investing in my 401k, savings accounts, stock portfolio, and stop visiting bars. That would give me the extra $1500 a month I would need to put myself in the position of being able to purchase a business class internet connection.
While I dont mind paying for services that I value, I have a serious problem with a change to service when other options are not available. An arbitrary bandwidth cap with no method of determining when I am approaching it other than losing my only affordable form of internet access is absolutely not acceptable.
Probably because from a business perspective, you do not assume that customers are complaining for the lulz.
Of course customers are going to break the 250 GB cap. They will rightly complain that they had no way of knowing when they were approaching or breaking their limit until they had broken their limit. The majority of these users will be going beyond the cap for legal uses of internet.
In reality, 6 months after the limit is in place, users will start getting alerts when they break say 90% of their limits, and charged by the MB (yes, MB, not GB) by Comcast at a ridiculous rate. Comcast, as a business, would rather make more money than lose high use customers. 1 year from when this is in place, everyone will be on a metered use. My guess is that Comcast will make more money on a smaller user base, since 5-15% of customers will move specifically to get a different ISP that doesnt impose limits.
In the short term, any business that changes its business model is going to have growing pains. Just because you have a reasonable method for how they should change does not take into account how the majority of users will be affected. Comcast does. While I disagree with the method they are taking (its roundabout and will anger many customers, including those who dont come anywhere near the cap, because they have to adjust their usage until they find out how they are doing), it isnt necesarily incorrect.
Sure, but who the hell wants to watch a video of someone eating a steak or spreading butter on something?
Have we really reached an entertainment void so high that this is what people would be posting?
I see a bigger problem than videos being removed in videos being posted. Maybe there are videos on youtube that are interesting or insightful or funny or some other term that gets modded on slashdot, but the vast majority of them are troll or redundant or just absolute crap.
I'm fairly certain that videos being removed are ones that normally would just have a click through agreement saying 'I understand that a knife is in this video' on most web sites.
No, its like asking how to get his car's engine to turn on faster so he can drive it, and you responding to keep the car on at all times.
While it is a perfectly reasonable thing to do if you have an electric car and can just run it off an outlet, under many circumstances (such as if you can't afford or simply chose not to run your car 24/7), it is not possible or efficient. It is not a solution to direct issue either.
To put this in a food analogy (which is just as valid as a car analogy, despite the fact that this is /.), if I asked you how to make fried chicken faster, because getting the oil to boil takes too long, and you responded that I should just always keep a batch of oil boiling, you would be correct, but it would be an inefficient solution, and not the task orientation that I would be looking for.
The best example, of course, would be if I were working out and wanted to record my progress quickly in an electronic format, you could tell me to keep my text editor on at all times. Granted, the simple solution would be to use a pen and paper, but I suppose telling me to send myself a text message on my cell phone would be a viable option, even if it is an unreasonable one.
I did not read your response because your html tag made it look like the only thing you responded was "Dude, I have a minor in economics and currently work as an accountant. I think I'm qualified to make the statement I made." I didnt look to see that you had said anything else in response
In my defense, its been a long day, and every place where I said accrual should in fact say deferral.
People do, however receive goods/services at an unspecified price all the damn time. Its called a futures contract, or an interest rate swap where one side is fixed and one side is variable, or a loan where the interest rate is variable (LIBOR +x%).
Of course accountants use science. Accounting is generally providing reasonable assurance that the items that go into financial statements can be relied upon. This is done through several types of testing that generally follow a scientific method, of proving or disproving items. (see dictionary.com -> auditor, also science).
Thats no excuse for a blatantly improper analogy. Its actually kind of insulting that you would work as an accountant and make such an improper analogy, especially in light of the fact that people on this forum understand economics or accounting so very little that they would mod you up for making such an improper statement. Qualified to respond, maybe. But no one can be qualified to misinform. Isnt that why Scott Adams had a survey done in the first place (due to lack of reliable information)?
Both of you are way off here.
If you think accounting and economics are unrelated, you clearly have never heard of an accrual. Items are booked for a reasonable estimate of future cost. Take a wild guess as to what the basis for those estimates are.
Burger flippers, on the other hand, are burger flippers precisely because they do not have the necessary skills to determine the long-term growth strategy of a company. They are replaceable assets. Should one of them dissapear, there would be no long term impact on the company.
As for the faith vs science debate, also way off. I don't know how anyone who takes 5 seconds to think before posting could possibly make that misconclusion. Economists and accountants both use science. Its the method of application that differs. Accountants generally work with actual numbers while economists generally work with the numbers that accountants prove to make generalizations about the economy. Just looking at the titles give this much information.
As for the usefullness of the survery, it certainly is. It tells us from the scope of 500 specific economists their opinion on which candidate would be fiscally better for this country. That is all that it does. Claiming that the study is flawed because it wasnt a study of multiple types of financial professionals is completely irrelevant to the purpose of the study.
Don't know if this has been mentioned, but if you have friends or family in another state, have them buy the parts, pay them back, and next time the visit you/you visit them, pick em up. No more sales tax.
Product branding is a marketing issue, not a safety issue. There is no material benefit to 100% testing vs 1% testing. The fact that someone might want to buy "organic" doesnt mean that I should pay for it. Since the "organic" is a higher price, the generic jumps their price as well. Look at recent prices of wheat, corn, agave, and software as examples. False shortages are affecting the cost/demand curve, and it is shameful. Gimmicks, sweepstakes, and uneducated masses may increase the ability of companies to raise prices, but the only benefit from these items is obsfucation of true costs.
How would you feel flying a plane if the baggage screeners only actually looked at a random 1% of the items, and metal detectors were off, except for a random 1% of passengers?
If metal detectors are that accurate, I would be shocked. Quite frankly, I dont feel safer flying in the US just because "100%" of luggage is searched, and I dont feel that my beef would be any safer from 100% testing vs 1% testing. Granted, this is because I understand statistics, but if you dont, you probably dont have any right to complain. The market is not right in the short term, which would be what 100% testihg would propose. In the long term, there is absolutely no additional benefit, regardless of how the uninformed masses might think.
Regarding willful ignorance on the relevant issue, we don't have flying cars, because the technology just isn't there yet.
Considering how many people have mad cow disease linked to US beef compared to other countries beef, and the relative amount of beef that is eaten/exported from those countries, I offer that we are doing better than everyone else here in the states.
The positions of wealth and power that we have are based on economic and political issues that we have justly earned. If you feel otherwise, economics will laugh at your ignorance. Shame on you for claiming to love this country and yet feel that we dont deserve everything that we have worked for. I am fairly cetain that since the boston tea party, we have agreed as a nation that economic issues should be relevant and fair.
Relocating headquarters to Mexico or Canada or Singapore would mean that the testing that goes on would not be as stringent, and the value of it, while reducing the price of beef, would also reduce its quality, both real and perceived. Its the reason that we get some of our beef from argentina, and not from singapore, canada, or mexico. I am insulted that you think goverment functions of location of headquarters have anything to do with religion (see christmas card comment). It would most certainly be economically better to send our testing facilites to these countries, but it would not be better from a safety standpoint, or a quality standpoint. As an American, I am proud to pay higher prices for higher quality.
The USDA isnt offering obstructions to quality to point that it is economically more feasible to leave the US, which would indicate that the free market is working. Shame on you for implying that anyone should pay more for something of lower quality.
I'm glad you were modded funny, because it sure as hell isnt insightful. In case you were going for thst, drug dealers are not responsible for users. Most drugs are illegal because no taxes are paid on them (see amsterdam). By any reasonable standard, items that effect someone's state of mind have a valid market (see coffee, chocolate, oxygen bars, tobacco, alcohol, live music, and anything used to improve your sex life) and with limited exceptions should not be prohibited.
Businesses should buy laws, so long as our politicians are selling them. From a shareholder perspective, I would dissapointed if they didnt, and invest my money elsewhere. Its a dont hate the player, hate the game situation.
iridium is made of unhealthy diets and poor exercise?
Of course now my mod points are gone. Couldnt have said it better.
There were numerous records broken at Sydney because athletes tend to get better when they train an additional 4 years. The same reason that records get broken every olympics. Granted, not every event has a new record every year, but look at Michael Phelps. He has set new world records in 5 golds (so far). It isnt just new equipment setting records; its better athletes, new training methods, etc.
As for using it to improve your vision, why the hell else would you get LASIK? I wear glasses. If I were to get LASIK, my vision would be improved. If I didn't wear glasses, it probably would still improve my vision.
Although I dont remember this occuring, the gold medal would be stripped for testing positive for marijuana because it was on the list of substances that were not allowed to be used by olympic athletes. It doesn't need to be performance enhancing to be illegal (and depending on the sport, marijuana could be performance enhancing as a muscle relaxer). I can't smoke crack and go to work, but it isnt because crack would give me an unfair advantage in my job. USe some common sense.
Continuing the realm of common sense that you seem to completely ignore, steroids are not allowed because they easily can be abused and even if not have side effects that outweigh the benefits. In a contest of the limits of human ability, it defeats the purpose to use artificial methods of producing short term (thats right, when you stop using steroids, the benefit goes away) gains to reach those limits. It is not a pinnacle of human achievement to use steroids.