Yes, to avoid triple taxation. Subsidiary companies are used when a business has foreign investments or owns a company that it uses in production of its main product. When you have to purchase raw materials, but then also use those materials to create another product, you dont want to have to pay taxes on the materials, and then on the product, because then the consumer gets both passed along to them. Thats bad for everyone, not just business. Subsidiaries aren't wiggling out of tax situations, they are creating true tax situations based on the reality of what end product is providing value for society.
Apparently you dont understand taxes, and should be in jail for avoiding them. If you earn money in the US, that is income, and gets taxed. Maybe you can defer those taxes, but at some point, you have to pay them. Retiring in Europe doenst mean that you dont have to pay taxes.
Of course, the more you earn, the more property is safeguarded, and the more you pay to do so.
Paris hilton deserves every dollar she has, because those dollars have already been taxed. It is no different from me deserving every dollar I have, because I pay the taxes on them as well.
It is not the wealth of parents that creates the wealth of offspring, but the experience of the wealthy parents who teach their offspring how to create that wealth. If your parents are poor, you will be poor because you will follow in their footsteps and not live within your means. You will go paycheck to paycheck and go into debt when you unexpected bills arrive, declare bancruptcy when they get too high, and repeat the pattern. If your parents save money you will save money. Maybe they can bail you out when you screw up, but the long term financials are not created by the haves and the have nots, but by the proper use of assets.
Look at your CAGR and your ROI and figure out why you can't afford rent. Dont blame your parents.
Our society creates value based on the value back to society. Bill Gates has created a company that provides a better service than a factory worker or construction worker or waiter or maid. It is not about how much time is put in, or you could sit around you couch and masturbate as hard as you could, and since you worked harder at it than Bill at his job, you would get paid more. See why your argument is stupid? Some people win lotteries, and they are lucky. Those who lose lotteries tried just as hard, but they dont get paid. No reasonable person complains about this. Had Bill Gates been raised under different conditions, he wouldn't be Bill Gates. I don't go to McDonalds and then say "if this was Ruth's Chris, my big mac would be a 32 ounce porterhouse." Don't compare the rich to the poor based on their upbringing. Generally, they earned it. Blaming your heritage is choosing to not rise above the challenges in your life. There is no reason that anyone cannot escape from where they are if they put forth the effort. That is the american dream and the american reality.
If all you can do is work two jobs at Mcdonalds, you should be poor. I may need hamburgers, but I sure as hell am not going to pay a lot of money for it. Picking my burger off the delivery line and isnt hard. I can get so drunk that I can't tell what channel is on cable with the giant logo in the corner, but I can still cook a burger on the stove.
The military supports our way of life. It protects us from our enemies and it creates goodwill towards other nations to reduce the number of enemies that we have. Shame on you. Someone mark the AKMarc as troll.
Bill Gates just finished his last day of work. He isnt taking a hit by spending the next 20-50 years doing acts of philanthropy, using his gains to help the world as his foundation sees best. If a dictator came into this country, thanks to the right to bear arms, we would be right back to being a republic again (thats right, we are a republic, not a democracy, look it up).
Having a stable legal system means that anyone can handle their disagreements. By having the money, you are bound to have more disagreements, as people who dont understand the law are going to try to take a piece of what you have earned. Bancruptcy is a last option for when things outside of your control ruin your livelihood. It is not to protect those who abuse the system, like the poor who have the repo man come in and start again. The rich already pay more to the government, and receive the same government services as everyone else.
The income spent on those items is already taxed, dumbass.
Of course if you have more money you spend less of it as a percentage of income on sales tax. When you make enough money, you arent going into debt to pay for the cost of living. This is first grade math.
As an accountant, I can tell you that I spend less of my money because I pay attention to where it goes, not because of how much I make.
When you can afford your rent, you spend less of your income on it. Feel free to insert maid/hooker/cocaine/yacht instead of rent. All of the income spent on these items has already been taxed. Then it gets sales tax.
Government services are imposed by the governed. The aggregate society chooses what government services will be. If you dont want your tax dollars spent on something, meet with a large enough portion of society and those tax dollars will get reallocated somewhere else. The only reason there is corruption from this is because people are put in charge of distributing those government services. Those people have power, and power corrupts.
As for a fair tax having to be constant or fixed rate, society changes, and thus society's needs change. You can't fight a war (which the aggregate of those in power decide society needs) without paying for it. The governed who want the war to succeed have to pay for it. When your local area wants better roads, or sewers, or schools, the budgets for these items come from different taxes. You can't lump it all together as a percentage because then there is no money for schools because we are fighting a war. There is no money for roads because the budget for schools is gone, and the school budget pays for roads leading from residential areas to schools. You can't pay for the war because it is war time and no one is working.
These points ignored, people are taxed at the same rate. Until you make x dollars, you pay x percent. Then when you reach another level of income, that income above x is taxed at a different rate. So on and so forth. If you participate in activities that save society money (like your 401k), then you get either a deferral on taxes or a break from them. All of this is based on what society has decided society should do.
If businesses could have price discrimination based on income, they would. Then they would only sell to the rich, to appease shareholders. Instead, businesses are taxed at rates higher than individuals, for providing services that people decide that they either need or want. Society gets angry at them for changing prices to meet changes in input costs.
Running away on a tangent, why are people so angry at oil companies and yet not angry at corn farmers. Corn farmers get tax breaks out the ass and have profit margins that would make the lemonade stand on the corner blush.
Jumping back onto the original point, since I've lost even myself at this point (at least from a sequential standpoint), our tax system punishes the rich and rewards the poor. The poor just don't notice it because they make so little money. The poor have access to the exact same government services as the rich, and they pay much less for it.
IANAL, but in today's world, if you sell 100 gallons of milk and only have 20, that is considered fraud. That isnt what is happening here. We have companies selling the right to milk cows and take as much milk as you can drink, for a set fee. The companies assume that people can drink x amount of milk, and that they only want to use the milk for drinking, as a supplement to the rest of their diet. They also expect users to pay for the maintenance of the cows during the service, built into the price of the milk contract. Certain subscribers are taking milk baths, lying under the cows, and using programs to milk the cows directly onto them 24 hours a day. Other users are using milk as the entire source of nutrition, easily able to sustain a gallon challenge or two.
In response, rather than realizing that the business model of unlimited milk is being used by customers in a different way than expected, these companies are refusing to adjust the business model. Users arent willing to pay more money for less milk, so charging by the gallon isn't going to work in this environment. The companies response has been exactly the opposite of what a good would say, instead of investing in cows that produce more milk or in larger herds or selling to less customers with existing infrastructure, companies are reducing the amount of milk that each cow can produce and claiming that it is necessary for consumers to reduce their proper usage of a contract.
Sadly, this works much better than the traditional car analogy.
Buddhism is a philosophy, not a religion, and exists outside or in conjunction with religion.
How do I mod you ignorant?
There are muslim scout leaders, and muslim scout troops.
As a Jew and an eagle scout, there were muslims in my troop, and there were aetheists. The majority of the group was made of christians, and we met in a church. I never felt that anything from being a scout was negatively affected by the fact that religion was allowed. I was able to meet people of very different backgrounds and get to appreciate their views. I learned leadership skills and life skills that I use today.
I learned how to set and keep a budget. I learned about local, federal, and world government. I learned how to change a tire on my car. I learned how to train myself to safely be able to go on a 14 day backpacking trip through the appalachian mountains. I learned about why we should volunteer for causes we believe in. My eagle project was designing a website for the United Way that created a database of United way agencies to post volunteer opportunities for high school students, which was later turned into hard copies and posted in the libraries of the high schools in my county. All of this before I was 17. At first I did it because it was fun. Then I kept doing it because it would look good on a college resume. I keep up with it now because I have seen the impact it has had on my and many of my friends lives. It is a bond that when an eagle scout meets another eagle eagle scout, he knows a few things about that persons morals and life standards.
It is a bond that has only come close to being matched by that of being in a fraternity (not a group of drinking buddies (we did that too), but an educational one).
As a member of society, you get to use government services. You pay taxes so that the leadership that you elect uses your tax money for the benefit of society. If you believe that BSA is not beneficial to society, then by all means, bring a real argument.
As for the gay issue, you can be a gay scout. You can't be a gay scout leader. I understand the thought process, that if a gay scout leader did something to cause a lawsuit (lets not get into specifics, if such a lawsuit occured it would be national news and you would agree that the lawsuit was warranted), then BSA would effectively be shut down for not discriminating. It is not my personal view that scout leaders cannot be gay.
I have met former scouts who are gay who left because of intolerance within their troops. But that intolerance exists outside of scouting. It is because it is an organization made of people.
When I was 16 I changed cities, and wanted to complete my eagle scout.
At my new troop, I was once asked by another scout where my horns were (apparently in the south there are christians who believe that all Jews have horns). I tried talking to him about his preconcieved notions, I tried talking with his parents, I had my rabbi come and talk to him and his parents. It didn't make a difference. I decided to leave that troop because he wasn't the only one.
I ended up getting my eagle through venture crew. Like any organization, different branches will have different people. Find one that fits your needs, but don't punish the whole for the acts of the majority (the leaders of BSA want to follow the tenants of scouting, not enforce stereotypes or specific religions).
Since I am already modded offtopic, open source has nothing to do with this. Its isnt based on who uses it, it is based on promoting software and sharing of information. If opensource sees BSA as a good partner for this (either through the hard work and intelligence of the smarter scouts out there or through fiscal considerations) then I see no legal, moral, or reasonable method of denying that use.
If anyone feels otherwise, shame one them.
Personally, I am proud to be an eagle scout.
I remember from my into to computing class in high school that if you try to tear a hole in the space/time fabric on the internet, you risk dooming us all to oblivion, but in the real world, nothing will happen.
Your response to my question of deliberately misinterperating me is to deliberately misinterperate me? Wow, I bet that really worked back in 3rd grade, along with the arguments of nah-uh, NO!! and mine mine mine! Playing grammar nazi because you dont have a point is probably one of the dumber things you could do. No one will enjoin you for that kind of thought, especially when you began by mispelling jail. You certainly could never be Irish with your childish acts of replacing grammatical tics and sound bytes for actual thought.
You are taking both quotes out of context. These points are referring to fraud, not supervision, and thus makes sense. There is a comma (thats one these: , ), which would imply a break in thought, and in that case, two different ones. To talk of deliberate misinterpretation. The supervisor takes responsibility for what his or her subordinates do. You have ignored reality in assuming that an employee can commit fraud without the supervisor recognizing it. If I knew that I would be personally responsible (meaning from a legal standpoint) for what my employees did...
These points are not in contention with one another. Claiming something is not worth discussion is the equivalent of saying that you dont have a valid point. I accept your defeat in this battle of wits, its ok, you were unarmed.
Again, you are the one making the strawman argument.
I absolutely believe that a corporation should not act ethically to make more money.
I will repeat that, even though I am typing it, because you have issue with.
I absolutely believe that a corporation should not act ethically to make more money.
They should act ethically because it is the standard they (and their shareholders, and society, to a lesser extent) hold themselves to. It should not be profit driven. The minute you make the argument that acting ethically for profit reasons is valid, you are driving the point of profitability at any cost, including ethics, which is inherently unethical.
I generally disagree with you on your other points.
I said that the next step after holding employees responsible for the actions of coworkers is that families of employees would be held responsible for having knowledge. I also stated that employees who have knowledge, specifically accountants, who would be in the position of doing so, should find jobs with more ethical companies. This has nothing to do with children, or about the impact of losing a parent due to criminal charges. If a father is guilty of a crime (and I realize that you may not like this point either) and a court chooses to seperate the parent, then the crime was sufficient to bear doing so. I believe in our court systems (and believing in our court systems is very different from believing in our legal system, and you advocate changing both).
You have completely ignored reality in assuming that an employee can commit fraud without his supervisor recognizing it. The supervisor, as a matter of reality, takes responsibility for what his or her subordinates do. Therefore, it is impossible for the employee to commit fraud as a legal matter.
I dont mention limited liability for corporations, but I certainly believe that limited liability is the entire purpose of corporations. The penalty for limited liability of a corporation is double taxation and liability to shareholders. If you do not see that these costs of business are not sufficient, then look at all the worthless lawsuits brought against corporations and settled merely because of our legal system (which was my point, not yours, and lets stick to my points, since they are what I am talking about at this point).
IANAL, but as for a normal citizen landing in jail (what the hell is a gaol?) for what corporations do not, I disagree. Looking at the example of sony's rootkit, I do not beleive that you could have done that, but if you did, you would not be serving a prison sentence. Show me one hacker who is jail for what they did. Generally, the good ones get a slap on the wrist, a fine, maybe a suspended sentence, and then they get hired as programmers for absurd amounts of money. They dont get their assets frozen (neither do criminals in jail for the most part, unless they are in jail for civil issues, and then only the assets at risk for the issues are frozen, and then only if there is a significant flight risk for those assets).
The result of Sony rootkit is that they (eventually) took responsibilty, offered owners copies of the cd's without the backdoor, and people who even cared about it had already removed the software. People who didnt understands it really didnt have to worry about it anyway, all it did was phone home. Yes, sony claimed that it didnt phone home, but they weren't using it for the security reasons that some people were hyping it up to be. The software, by the way, was illegal only on certain issues in certain jurisdictions (wikipedia's words, not mine). This would give precendence that it was an emerging drm issue, and not anything that the courts had previously ruled on. Sony has learned from its mistakes, and you should forgive it since it has changed its ways to stay within legal realms (which is all it should do, there are no ethical issues in drm, only legal ones). Disclaimer: I do not work for a company that uses DRM.
You either have claimed that the janitor should be punished by losing his job or that corporations should b
Obviously I would never advocate fraud, and I take offense that you would imply that I would. If you would respond to my post, and not to sound bytes from it, you would see that I expect corporations to follow the rule of law. That is not what I am discussing.
You cannot be downsized at any time, despite the language of the law. That is not intent of the employment contract. It is for legal protection should your employer have to fire you.
I did not claim that unethical behavior is a good idea. In fact, I specifically said that ethics are important. On the other hand, I don't believe that should act ethically to make more money, which you explicitly stated you do believe, since that would be the opposing idea to acting unethically to make more money.
If you start this concept, the next step is that your family is also responsible, since they must known as well. Then your neighbors. It sounds like a stretch now, but one of the reasons that we don't have this legal issue is because of the precendent it would create. Its a fairly weak reasoning, and I am giving better ones, that you are trying to counter by saying that unethical behavior is bad. You are not addressing the issue at hand.
Corporations dont exist outside the rule of law. In fact, a very large part of our law is specifically designed for corporations. I do not believe that corporations and individuals should have the same standards for criminal or civil actions. This is why individuals don't get class action lawsuits, its a matter of scale. This why corporations should not have unrelated individuals punished for the actions of the individuals who commit fraud. Those individuals are responsible for the actions their employees when they sign the financial statements. When they do so, they knowingly take responsibility, and if joe schmoe accountant straight out of college had the same jail sentence for not understanding the most recent law, and then his supervisor, his mananger, and his ceo all go with it, someone has to be responsible, but they should not all go to jail. The responsibility of the higher ups is to catch those mistakes. If they arent doing their jobs, the highest up takes the hit. You want everyone to take the hit, and if that were true, no one would become an accountant. The only ones who want to be come the boss are those who are willing to learn enough and to manage enough to make sure that their employees are on the same page. We should respect that level of commitment against fraud, and punish beyond the level of merit those who use the position to create fraud.
I dont know how you saw the polar opposite of this from my post, if you had actually read it, instead of pulling sound bytes that you could criticize. If you want to push your agenda, make it stand on its own, not as an argument to a viewpoint that does not exist.
I disagree with you because you cannot throw the lower level accountants to the wolves because you are the one approving everything they do and shaping the course of action that they take. If you are causing fraud they are not at fault if they do not know that they are doing so. This is when criminal charges exist. If they know about a higher up committing fraud through their actions, any decent accountant I know would quit their job on the spot and find a company with a higher ethical standard.
You wont find an accountant to admit that he or she knowingly stayed in a position where they knowingly had to act unethically, nevermind illegally. You seem to not understand what accountants do.
Companies that behave unethically will have a shortage of customers, not employees, for that very reason. The employees who have incentive to leave are not the ones who act unethically.
I don't know more ways to say that you dont know what you are talking about.
Suppose you work for a company that has a large number of workers (mine has over 330k). If you think that anyone in the company would work if they were to be held responsible personally for the actions of any of the others, no one would work.
Lets treat our goverment as a corporation. Under your ideas, in 10 minutes, we would be an anarchist state.
Even under the best of situations, mistakes of legal nature can and will occur. Sometimes it is blatent fraud. Other times, it is reasonable misunderstanding of laws (for example, when laws change so rapidly that it is difficult to understand them, or they can be interperated in multiple ways, meaning that by definition everyone is wrong [see organized religion]).
The entire point of corporations is liability. If I knew that I would be personally responsible for what my employees did, I would not be able to afford to hire anyone that I could trust to never make mistakes. Employees would be paid ridiculous sums of money with contracts that held them to such a degree of liability for their actions, and I would only be able to have them work 2 hour shifts. A mcdonalds would have to have 4000 hourly workers every week paid $50 an hour in todays dollar values (I am probably lowballing this). Guess how long the dollar menu sticks around under those conditions?
Never mind that our legal system is generally based on special interests, or that this is a sure fire way to unjustly cripple our economy by removing the value of education and instead focusing on ethics.
Don't misunderstand me, ethical standards are important. But they are not enforceable on an individual level. Here is an extreme example. If a woman at one corporation chooses to have an abortion, it is legal, but there are judges who would throw men from that corporation in jail under your idea. Those judges are wrong, but they would do so. What if someone "illegally" downloads music at work? Does everyone in the company have to share the settlement fine?
If there is a dumber than idea that was not a joke, I have not heard one.
The questions change every semester.
The book changes every semester, causing students to have to pay $100 plus for each class.
The overall material does not change.
For students to not have access to examples of previous material is ridiculous. Students who copy homework answers generally fail the exams (and thus the classes) or at least have a hit to their GPA to point that those who learn the material rather than copying have the advantage in the real world. In fact, those who struggle through the material and get comparable grades to those who copy answers generally have the same advantage because in the workplace, they know how to get things done.
The issue that universities have is not that students are learning from other students, but rather that anyone with a facebook account could join this group and to an extent, learn the material for free. If you are studying in the library, you are more likely to be a student. In fact, when facebook was only open to college students, I am willing to bet that universities didnt care at all about facebook study groups. In fact, some of my professors recommended facebook study groups in past. You might have noticed, if your school wasnt complete crap, that you had/have group work in your undergraduate career. It should be fairly simple to note that acadamia does not want learning to occur only on the individual level. A university is a business, and needs to find ways to keep students paying tuition. That is the only factor in the "academic misconduct" here.
The real question to ask is whether or not a classroom experience is an education license. I would say yes, which unfortunately for the student, means that creating a study group that can be accessed by non-students is a violation of academic misconduct.
Its not 8.6 million per person...
Lets call it 200 yen per person that uses it, and assume that 10% of Japan uses this thing. If Japan has 125 million citizens (anyone know if this is reasonable?), then that is 12.5 million people who buy this thing because of no DST. At 0.009577 $ to yen, thats 24 million bucks, or nearly triple the cost.
The population of Indiana is 6.3 million, but everyone is affected. We can account for this by adjusting the population to 63 million (we used a 10% affected rate of the cheapest solution, unless someone has an idea that costs less than 100 yen to remove the effect of no DST), which is roughly half of Japan in effect. This creates an offset to Japan of 50% of the cost.
End point is that by not having DST, Japan pays 50% more in its cheapest solution.
I don't normally respond to the blind, but in your case, you need help.
Tobacco does not kill people. Cancer does.
My point, which I feel was obvious, has nothing to do with when people choose to start doing anything. Whether or not people under the age of 18 should be smoking was not involved. The fact that children like to do things that adults tell them not to is completely irrelevant to the legal issue of what people over the age of 18 choose to do. I see people that choose to break the law by smoking while underage as deserving to get addicted, just as you might see someone over the age of 18 drunk driving, crashing, and killing themselves as deserving what they got for breaking the law.
Tobacco companies have done absolutely nothing wrong by following legislation that requires its product to be sold specifically to those old enough in the eyes of society to make the decision to smoke or not to smoke, despite what poorly made commercials funded by overprotective parents who would rather have our government raise their kids would have you believe.
If I had to guess, you are one of the strange people who think that our ISP's should have a children filter, rather than having parents be the proper filter. Or perhaps you believe that abstinence education is the cause of teen pregnancy. Maybe you are one of those people who thinks that Windows is wrong for charging whatever it wants for its OS (its not a monopoly just because it requires education to use an alternative. If so, your heart surgeon is a monopolist and should only be allowed to charge whatever the unlicensed guy in a dark alley does). Maybe next you will get mad at budweiser for underage drunk drivers.
Whatever your parents did in improperly raising you to not think for yourself, calling me sick or immoral for defending a corporation is much more unjust. Our legal system has charged the tobacco industry who cares how much money for following a business model within the confines of the law, and that is unjust. The fact that you continue to attack them is unjust, and the idea that you would attack me for thinking so under moral guidlines is as stupid as suing the birth control pill company because the condom broke (for the confused, the point is that of misguidance and improper foundation).
The only thing you say that has any value whatsoever is that money is not the only value. In fact, to a corporation, money is not of any value (that is just for the shareholders, as a matter of raising capital to fund R&D and to continue and upgrade operations and to reward its workers, who are driven by money, for their efforts to follow the business plan, which I repeat, is not to make money, but rather to benefit society. After all, if a product has no value to society, the company cannot exist in the long term). The purpose of a corporation is never about money. It begins with a vision statement. Go read 1000 vision statements. None of them are about money . They are about being the best provider of service, the best product innovator, the niche market leader. Not money. Integrity is the biggest asset that a corporation can have (just ask Enron how going after money instead of the business plan turned out).
The oil companies are not paying people to deny global warming. That is at best a misguided view, and likely slander should you find yourself in litigation with an oil company. They are however, funding research for the benefit of society to determine whether the use and creation of its product are hurting society. This seems to me like throwing money away, not trying to make it. Finding that global warming exists would just raise the price of oil, which would go directly to consumers. The oil companies would not be hurt by it (although their stockholders might).
Absolutely not.
Tobacco doesnt kill people, cancer kills people.
Would you claim that unhealthy diets kill people? Of course not. Heart attacks do.
You have broken off fo the orginal point, which I beleive is that you cannot try to use the US legal system to personal benefit, only for protection of justice. When you make the outrageous claim that your lifestyle has been affected by your own actions, in this case reliance on oil, suing yourself has no purpose.
With victory, the costs of the lawsuit will be passed onto consumers. Everyone who uses "global warming causing items" will end up paying for it, including those that sue over it.
With the inevitable (and proper) loss, the value of the product that has been shown to not cause global warming will improve and prices for that product will rise, meaning that everyone who uses "global warming causing items" will bear the cost. Either way, the only way to profit from this is to invest in the oil companies.
Meanwhile, stop blaming tobacco companies for its consumers use of product. There is not a single person alive who is of legal age to use tobacco products who doesnt know the risks and consequences of such use. The lawsuits involved are insulting to capitalism at best, and an insult to our courts.
Finally, don't assume that the scientific community isnt just as skewed in its thought as a corporation that funds research. Funding research to better an organization's interests is how you got your ipod, guitar hero, and 28 oz steaks (all of which are healthy in moderation). The scientific community is how you got your more often wrong than right weather forecast and flu shots that give you a cold.
Based on the fact that you think that teenagers dont ask questions when told things, you must be from the United States (you ignore reality when it serves your own purposes...dont worry, me too:))
Here in the US, we have intellectual property law. Here is a letter linked from a.gov website (http://www.uspto.gov/) that talks about why we are probably not changing intellectual property law from its one size fits all method of prosecution even though we should.
http://www.ogc.doc.gov/ogc/legreg/letters/110/S1145020408.pdf
The gist of it is that intellectual property is a $5 TRILLION business.
Whee.
So yes, patent and copyright and trademark law does exist, is written down, and claiming that someone was just lying is so disrespectful that you will probably be in jail in the next 6 months to 10 years to learn that lesson. Respect your elders you stupid kids.
No one has ever wanted to pay for anything.
We can choose to be willing to pay for something out of respect for the time and effort put into creation of something or we can choose to be willing to pay for something that is scarce, but a simple look at supply and demand will show that no one will ever want to pay for an OS.
The marginal cost of producing software is effectively 0. The gain from being to use a computer is treated as an impossible to reproduce otherwise gain to productivity. Effectively, if MS were to charge $arbitrary large amount of money per person on earth for windows, it would be a good deal. Reality, of course, is that our society tends to overvalue money rather than goods and services. We want to get the best value for our dollar rather than a better product (which, as time goes to infinity, creates a better value, regardless of cost [for the inevetiable disagreement on this point, keep in mind that we are comparing 2 products that already exist]).
For now (and probably until time t=infinity), people will be happy getting an OS that is good enough, rather than fast, at a price that approaches too much money, but doesn't quite break that barrier, or they will do drugs until stealing property seems like a good risk vs the possibility of jail time.
I expect that most of us will see a usable OS that we are willing to go to jail for before we see a fast OS we are willing to pay for.
I can't really agree with you on this.
The way that MS has built itself to where it is was by not paying dividends for a long time. MS generally got away with this because the company was providing more value for my investment than I could make elsewhere. This takeover bid for yahoo is done for essentially the same purpose: together, MS and yahoo are much better than the sum of their individual parts. MS went out on a limb and threw in a premium for yahoo, who is only rejecting the offer because they think they can get an extra dollar or two per share.
As for MS not being an internet company? The percentage of US population using windows and IE as a default is ridiculous. To create an OS for low prices is to throw away the brand image. The only people who complain about MS are stupid fanboys who are willing to pay the price that MS charges. The percentage of businesses that use (and continue to use) office is the largest portion of MS sales. To claim that these business entities want something flashy rather than something useful is like saying that I want to pay $12 for a McDonalds cheeseburger and for them to cook it with Kobe beef. Its just unreasonable for my cookie-cutter software needs.
As for the recession that you allude to, our economy is already tanking. Business is down this year. Just because Bernanke isnt calling it a recession doesnt mean we arent in one. Open your eyes people.
I got off track here, but my point is that generally retained earnings should not be given out as a dividend. Because our economy is going negative, it is a great time to use RE to buy out competitors at a discount. MS generally does not have enough debt, which hurts ROI (imagine how high the stock price would go if they increased debt just a bit. Now look at what adding yahoo into MS does...suddenly 45 billion doesnt seem like such a bad deal)
Since the offer is for either cash or equivalent stock, yahoo shareholders would have to pay taxes on the gain would the deal have gone through (the basis in the stock then becomes $31).
If you held yahoo stock for less than a year, the difference between your purchase price and $31 would be taxed to you as income (as opposed to capital gains).
Assuming you get taxed at 20%, this reduces the premium being paid to below 50%, not 62.
When you use a tv you have an implied in fact contract with your cable provider or any other function your tv is used for. If you have a playstation hooked up to the tv and the playstation guidebook says not to pour water on the system, by using the playstation you are entered into contract not to pour water on the system. The NFL, unfortunately for you, has a licensing contract with the over the air tv provider. Legally, you are liable if you break that contract by having a larger than 55 inch tv and or too many people because the law is common law and as such should be known and available to you. Based on news coverage alone, you would lose if the NFl sued you for breach of that contract.
You can't be serious...
The penalty for filing a frivolous lawsuit is the cost of your time and court fees. Generally, if a lawsuit has no merit, we use our judicial system to determine that the lawsuit in fact has no merit. It is a fundamental right of every corporation to protect themselves against anything it considers to be a threat to it.
The reality is that while most lawsuits that have little merit are eventually removed, sometimes they have a basis that is found valid upon appeal or with further evidence, even if summary judgment initially causes it to be dismissed with prejudice. To prevent a company from acting in the ordinary course of business due to litigation should only be imposed when independence could be impaired. When litigation is unrelated to merger/acquisition finance issues, it is ridiculous to penalize the company for using litigation for purposes other than just to make a quick buck. Settlements, marketing, and other valid reasons for frivilous lawsuits have nothing to do with a corporate charter, nor should board members typically responsible to shareholders (accountants are responsible to the public, not the shareholders) be penalized for acting in accordance with the interests of the company in mind.
The reality is that small time patent investors would no longer be able to file a patent because patent trolls would work to create filings contesting other patents rather than trying to get their own in first. The clause you ask for would bankrupt the small guy with more than his mortgage invested into a patent filing while rewarding the institutional investor.
Ok, the previous paragraph is as much bullshit as your entire post. But so is the notion that the RIAA, MPAA, or patent troll would even be affected by this. A simple method of creating a patent through a new company owned through an SIV would protect the main corporation from any real damage. This clause would just close down some SIV companies (companies separately run but included as part of an organization that legally are separate for the purpose of litigation, taxation, profit. These are the vehicles that Enron used to hide debt, albeit under different language, the concept was the same) that lose a $250 corporation filing fee. Changing the language of the clause to include SIV's liable to the original corporation defeats the purpose of having an SIV.
The total number will reasonably be higher because 10 million is only the number of active accounts.
There are a number of players that buy the game, play for a few months, and then stop. I know that back in my college dorm a number of us played mmorpgs but switched around between which one we would pay for to keep things interesting.
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Yes, to avoid triple taxation. Subsidiary companies are used when a business has foreign investments or owns a company that it uses in production of its main product. When you have to purchase raw materials, but then also use those materials to create another product, you dont want to have to pay taxes on the materials, and then on the product, because then the consumer gets both passed along to them. Thats bad for everyone, not just business. Subsidiaries aren't wiggling out of tax situations, they are creating true tax situations based on the reality of what end product is providing value for society.
Apparently you dont understand taxes, and should be in jail for avoiding them. If you earn money in the US, that is income, and gets taxed. Maybe you can defer those taxes, but at some point, you have to pay them. Retiring in Europe doenst mean that you dont have to pay taxes. Of course, the more you earn, the more property is safeguarded, and the more you pay to do so. Paris hilton deserves every dollar she has, because those dollars have already been taxed. It is no different from me deserving every dollar I have, because I pay the taxes on them as well. It is not the wealth of parents that creates the wealth of offspring, but the experience of the wealthy parents who teach their offspring how to create that wealth. If your parents are poor, you will be poor because you will follow in their footsteps and not live within your means. You will go paycheck to paycheck and go into debt when you unexpected bills arrive, declare bancruptcy when they get too high, and repeat the pattern. If your parents save money you will save money. Maybe they can bail you out when you screw up, but the long term financials are not created by the haves and the have nots, but by the proper use of assets. Look at your CAGR and your ROI and figure out why you can't afford rent. Dont blame your parents.
Our society creates value based on the value back to society. Bill Gates has created a company that provides a better service than a factory worker or construction worker or waiter or maid. It is not about how much time is put in, or you could sit around you couch and masturbate as hard as you could, and since you worked harder at it than Bill at his job, you would get paid more. See why your argument is stupid? Some people win lotteries, and they are lucky. Those who lose lotteries tried just as hard, but they dont get paid. No reasonable person complains about this. Had Bill Gates been raised under different conditions, he wouldn't be Bill Gates. I don't go to McDonalds and then say "if this was Ruth's Chris, my big mac would be a 32 ounce porterhouse." Don't compare the rich to the poor based on their upbringing. Generally, they earned it. Blaming your heritage is choosing to not rise above the challenges in your life. There is no reason that anyone cannot escape from where they are if they put forth the effort. That is the american dream and the american reality.
If all you can do is work two jobs at Mcdonalds, you should be poor. I may need hamburgers, but I sure as hell am not going to pay a lot of money for it. Picking my burger off the delivery line and isnt hard. I can get so drunk that I can't tell what channel is on cable with the giant logo in the corner, but I can still cook a burger on the stove. The military supports our way of life. It protects us from our enemies and it creates goodwill towards other nations to reduce the number of enemies that we have. Shame on you. Someone mark the AKMarc as troll. Bill Gates just finished his last day of work. He isnt taking a hit by spending the next 20-50 years doing acts of philanthropy, using his gains to help the world as his foundation sees best. If a dictator came into this country, thanks to the right to bear arms, we would be right back to being a republic again (thats right, we are a republic, not a democracy, look it up). Having a stable legal system means that anyone can handle their disagreements. By having the money, you are bound to have more disagreements, as people who dont understand the law are going to try to take a piece of what you have earned. Bancruptcy is a last option for when things outside of your control ruin your livelihood. It is not to protect those who abuse the system, like the poor who have the repo man come in and start again. The rich already pay more to the government, and receive the same government services as everyone else.
The income spent on those items is already taxed, dumbass. Of course if you have more money you spend less of it as a percentage of income on sales tax. When you make enough money, you arent going into debt to pay for the cost of living. This is first grade math. As an accountant, I can tell you that I spend less of my money because I pay attention to where it goes, not because of how much I make. When you can afford your rent, you spend less of your income on it. Feel free to insert maid/hooker/cocaine/yacht instead of rent. All of the income spent on these items has already been taxed. Then it gets sales tax.
Government services are imposed by the governed. The aggregate society chooses what government services will be. If you dont want your tax dollars spent on something, meet with a large enough portion of society and those tax dollars will get reallocated somewhere else. The only reason there is corruption from this is because people are put in charge of distributing those government services. Those people have power, and power corrupts. As for a fair tax having to be constant or fixed rate, society changes, and thus society's needs change. You can't fight a war (which the aggregate of those in power decide society needs) without paying for it. The governed who want the war to succeed have to pay for it. When your local area wants better roads, or sewers, or schools, the budgets for these items come from different taxes. You can't lump it all together as a percentage because then there is no money for schools because we are fighting a war. There is no money for roads because the budget for schools is gone, and the school budget pays for roads leading from residential areas to schools. You can't pay for the war because it is war time and no one is working. These points ignored, people are taxed at the same rate. Until you make x dollars, you pay x percent. Then when you reach another level of income, that income above x is taxed at a different rate. So on and so forth. If you participate in activities that save society money (like your 401k), then you get either a deferral on taxes or a break from them. All of this is based on what society has decided society should do. If businesses could have price discrimination based on income, they would. Then they would only sell to the rich, to appease shareholders. Instead, businesses are taxed at rates higher than individuals, for providing services that people decide that they either need or want. Society gets angry at them for changing prices to meet changes in input costs. Running away on a tangent, why are people so angry at oil companies and yet not angry at corn farmers. Corn farmers get tax breaks out the ass and have profit margins that would make the lemonade stand on the corner blush. Jumping back onto the original point, since I've lost even myself at this point (at least from a sequential standpoint), our tax system punishes the rich and rewards the poor. The poor just don't notice it because they make so little money. The poor have access to the exact same government services as the rich, and they pay much less for it.
IANAL, but in today's world, if you sell 100 gallons of milk and only have 20, that is considered fraud. That isnt what is happening here. We have companies selling the right to milk cows and take as much milk as you can drink, for a set fee. The companies assume that people can drink x amount of milk, and that they only want to use the milk for drinking, as a supplement to the rest of their diet. They also expect users to pay for the maintenance of the cows during the service, built into the price of the milk contract. Certain subscribers are taking milk baths, lying under the cows, and using programs to milk the cows directly onto them 24 hours a day. Other users are using milk as the entire source of nutrition, easily able to sustain a gallon challenge or two. In response, rather than realizing that the business model of unlimited milk is being used by customers in a different way than expected, these companies are refusing to adjust the business model. Users arent willing to pay more money for less milk, so charging by the gallon isn't going to work in this environment. The companies response has been exactly the opposite of what a good would say, instead of investing in cows that produce more milk or in larger herds or selling to less customers with existing infrastructure, companies are reducing the amount of milk that each cow can produce and claiming that it is necessary for consumers to reduce their proper usage of a contract. Sadly, this works much better than the traditional car analogy.
Buddhism is a philosophy, not a religion, and exists outside or in conjunction with religion. How do I mod you ignorant? There are muslim scout leaders, and muslim scout troops. As a Jew and an eagle scout, there were muslims in my troop, and there were aetheists. The majority of the group was made of christians, and we met in a church. I never felt that anything from being a scout was negatively affected by the fact that religion was allowed. I was able to meet people of very different backgrounds and get to appreciate their views. I learned leadership skills and life skills that I use today. I learned how to set and keep a budget. I learned about local, federal, and world government. I learned how to change a tire on my car. I learned how to train myself to safely be able to go on a 14 day backpacking trip through the appalachian mountains. I learned about why we should volunteer for causes we believe in. My eagle project was designing a website for the United Way that created a database of United way agencies to post volunteer opportunities for high school students, which was later turned into hard copies and posted in the libraries of the high schools in my county. All of this before I was 17. At first I did it because it was fun. Then I kept doing it because it would look good on a college resume. I keep up with it now because I have seen the impact it has had on my and many of my friends lives. It is a bond that when an eagle scout meets another eagle eagle scout, he knows a few things about that persons morals and life standards. It is a bond that has only come close to being matched by that of being in a fraternity (not a group of drinking buddies (we did that too), but an educational one). As a member of society, you get to use government services. You pay taxes so that the leadership that you elect uses your tax money for the benefit of society. If you believe that BSA is not beneficial to society, then by all means, bring a real argument. As for the gay issue, you can be a gay scout. You can't be a gay scout leader. I understand the thought process, that if a gay scout leader did something to cause a lawsuit (lets not get into specifics, if such a lawsuit occured it would be national news and you would agree that the lawsuit was warranted), then BSA would effectively be shut down for not discriminating. It is not my personal view that scout leaders cannot be gay. I have met former scouts who are gay who left because of intolerance within their troops. But that intolerance exists outside of scouting. It is because it is an organization made of people. When I was 16 I changed cities, and wanted to complete my eagle scout. At my new troop, I was once asked by another scout where my horns were (apparently in the south there are christians who believe that all Jews have horns). I tried talking to him about his preconcieved notions, I tried talking with his parents, I had my rabbi come and talk to him and his parents. It didn't make a difference. I decided to leave that troop because he wasn't the only one. I ended up getting my eagle through venture crew. Like any organization, different branches will have different people. Find one that fits your needs, but don't punish the whole for the acts of the majority (the leaders of BSA want to follow the tenants of scouting, not enforce stereotypes or specific religions). Since I am already modded offtopic, open source has nothing to do with this. Its isnt based on who uses it, it is based on promoting software and sharing of information. If opensource sees BSA as a good partner for this (either through the hard work and intelligence of the smarter scouts out there or through fiscal considerations) then I see no legal, moral, or reasonable method of denying that use. If anyone feels otherwise, shame one them. Personally, I am proud to be an eagle scout.
I remember from my into to computing class in high school that if you try to tear a hole in the space/time fabric on the internet, you risk dooming us all to oblivion, but in the real world, nothing will happen.
Your response to my question of deliberately misinterperating me is to deliberately misinterperate me? Wow, I bet that really worked back in 3rd grade, along with the arguments of nah-uh, NO!! and mine mine mine! Playing grammar nazi because you dont have a point is probably one of the dumber things you could do. No one will enjoin you for that kind of thought, especially when you began by mispelling jail. You certainly could never be Irish with your childish acts of replacing grammatical tics and sound bytes for actual thought.
You are taking both quotes out of context. These points are referring to fraud, not supervision, and thus makes sense. There is a comma (thats one these: , ), which would imply a break in thought, and in that case, two different ones. To talk of deliberate misinterpretation. The supervisor takes responsibility for what his or her subordinates do. You have ignored reality in assuming that an employee can commit fraud without the supervisor recognizing it. If I knew that I would be personally responsible (meaning from a legal standpoint) for what my employees did... These points are not in contention with one another. Claiming something is not worth discussion is the equivalent of saying that you dont have a valid point. I accept your defeat in this battle of wits, its ok, you were unarmed.
Again, you are the one making the strawman argument. I absolutely believe that a corporation should not act ethically to make more money. I will repeat that, even though I am typing it, because you have issue with. I absolutely believe that a corporation should not act ethically to make more money. They should act ethically because it is the standard they (and their shareholders, and society, to a lesser extent) hold themselves to. It should not be profit driven. The minute you make the argument that acting ethically for profit reasons is valid, you are driving the point of profitability at any cost, including ethics, which is inherently unethical. I generally disagree with you on your other points. I said that the next step after holding employees responsible for the actions of coworkers is that families of employees would be held responsible for having knowledge. I also stated that employees who have knowledge, specifically accountants, who would be in the position of doing so, should find jobs with more ethical companies. This has nothing to do with children, or about the impact of losing a parent due to criminal charges. If a father is guilty of a crime (and I realize that you may not like this point either) and a court chooses to seperate the parent, then the crime was sufficient to bear doing so. I believe in our court systems (and believing in our court systems is very different from believing in our legal system, and you advocate changing both). You have completely ignored reality in assuming that an employee can commit fraud without his supervisor recognizing it. The supervisor, as a matter of reality, takes responsibility for what his or her subordinates do. Therefore, it is impossible for the employee to commit fraud as a legal matter. I dont mention limited liability for corporations, but I certainly believe that limited liability is the entire purpose of corporations. The penalty for limited liability of a corporation is double taxation and liability to shareholders. If you do not see that these costs of business are not sufficient, then look at all the worthless lawsuits brought against corporations and settled merely because of our legal system (which was my point, not yours, and lets stick to my points, since they are what I am talking about at this point). IANAL, but as for a normal citizen landing in jail (what the hell is a gaol?) for what corporations do not, I disagree. Looking at the example of sony's rootkit, I do not beleive that you could have done that, but if you did, you would not be serving a prison sentence. Show me one hacker who is jail for what they did. Generally, the good ones get a slap on the wrist, a fine, maybe a suspended sentence, and then they get hired as programmers for absurd amounts of money. They dont get their assets frozen (neither do criminals in jail for the most part, unless they are in jail for civil issues, and then only the assets at risk for the issues are frozen, and then only if there is a significant flight risk for those assets). The result of Sony rootkit is that they (eventually) took responsibilty, offered owners copies of the cd's without the backdoor, and people who even cared about it had already removed the software. People who didnt understands it really didnt have to worry about it anyway, all it did was phone home. Yes, sony claimed that it didnt phone home, but they weren't using it for the security reasons that some people were hyping it up to be. The software, by the way, was illegal only on certain issues in certain jurisdictions (wikipedia's words, not mine). This would give precendence that it was an emerging drm issue, and not anything that the courts had previously ruled on. Sony has learned from its mistakes, and you should forgive it since it has changed its ways to stay within legal realms (which is all it should do, there are no ethical issues in drm, only legal ones). Disclaimer: I do not work for a company that uses DRM. You either have claimed that the janitor should be punished by losing his job or that corporations should b
Obviously I would never advocate fraud, and I take offense that you would imply that I would. If you would respond to my post, and not to sound bytes from it, you would see that I expect corporations to follow the rule of law. That is not what I am discussing. You cannot be downsized at any time, despite the language of the law. That is not intent of the employment contract. It is for legal protection should your employer have to fire you. I did not claim that unethical behavior is a good idea. In fact, I specifically said that ethics are important. On the other hand, I don't believe that should act ethically to make more money, which you explicitly stated you do believe, since that would be the opposing idea to acting unethically to make more money. If you start this concept, the next step is that your family is also responsible, since they must known as well. Then your neighbors. It sounds like a stretch now, but one of the reasons that we don't have this legal issue is because of the precendent it would create. Its a fairly weak reasoning, and I am giving better ones, that you are trying to counter by saying that unethical behavior is bad. You are not addressing the issue at hand. Corporations dont exist outside the rule of law. In fact, a very large part of our law is specifically designed for corporations. I do not believe that corporations and individuals should have the same standards for criminal or civil actions. This is why individuals don't get class action lawsuits, its a matter of scale. This why corporations should not have unrelated individuals punished for the actions of the individuals who commit fraud. Those individuals are responsible for the actions their employees when they sign the financial statements. When they do so, they knowingly take responsibility, and if joe schmoe accountant straight out of college had the same jail sentence for not understanding the most recent law, and then his supervisor, his mananger, and his ceo all go with it, someone has to be responsible, but they should not all go to jail. The responsibility of the higher ups is to catch those mistakes. If they arent doing their jobs, the highest up takes the hit. You want everyone to take the hit, and if that were true, no one would become an accountant. The only ones who want to be come the boss are those who are willing to learn enough and to manage enough to make sure that their employees are on the same page. We should respect that level of commitment against fraud, and punish beyond the level of merit those who use the position to create fraud. I dont know how you saw the polar opposite of this from my post, if you had actually read it, instead of pulling sound bytes that you could criticize. If you want to push your agenda, make it stand on its own, not as an argument to a viewpoint that does not exist. I disagree with you because you cannot throw the lower level accountants to the wolves because you are the one approving everything they do and shaping the course of action that they take. If you are causing fraud they are not at fault if they do not know that they are doing so. This is when criminal charges exist. If they know about a higher up committing fraud through their actions, any decent accountant I know would quit their job on the spot and find a company with a higher ethical standard. You wont find an accountant to admit that he or she knowingly stayed in a position where they knowingly had to act unethically, nevermind illegally. You seem to not understand what accountants do. Companies that behave unethically will have a shortage of customers, not employees, for that very reason. The employees who have incentive to leave are not the ones who act unethically. I don't know more ways to say that you dont know what you are talking about.
Suppose you work for a company that has a large number of workers (mine has over 330k). If you think that anyone in the company would work if they were to be held responsible personally for the actions of any of the others, no one would work. Lets treat our goverment as a corporation. Under your ideas, in 10 minutes, we would be an anarchist state. Even under the best of situations, mistakes of legal nature can and will occur. Sometimes it is blatent fraud. Other times, it is reasonable misunderstanding of laws (for example, when laws change so rapidly that it is difficult to understand them, or they can be interperated in multiple ways, meaning that by definition everyone is wrong [see organized religion]). The entire point of corporations is liability. If I knew that I would be personally responsible for what my employees did, I would not be able to afford to hire anyone that I could trust to never make mistakes. Employees would be paid ridiculous sums of money with contracts that held them to such a degree of liability for their actions, and I would only be able to have them work 2 hour shifts. A mcdonalds would have to have 4000 hourly workers every week paid $50 an hour in todays dollar values (I am probably lowballing this). Guess how long the dollar menu sticks around under those conditions? Never mind that our legal system is generally based on special interests, or that this is a sure fire way to unjustly cripple our economy by removing the value of education and instead focusing on ethics. Don't misunderstand me, ethical standards are important. But they are not enforceable on an individual level. Here is an extreme example. If a woman at one corporation chooses to have an abortion, it is legal, but there are judges who would throw men from that corporation in jail under your idea. Those judges are wrong, but they would do so. What if someone "illegally" downloads music at work? Does everyone in the company have to share the settlement fine? If there is a dumber than idea that was not a joke, I have not heard one.
The questions change every semester. The book changes every semester, causing students to have to pay $100 plus for each class. The overall material does not change. For students to not have access to examples of previous material is ridiculous. Students who copy homework answers generally fail the exams (and thus the classes) or at least have a hit to their GPA to point that those who learn the material rather than copying have the advantage in the real world. In fact, those who struggle through the material and get comparable grades to those who copy answers generally have the same advantage because in the workplace, they know how to get things done. The issue that universities have is not that students are learning from other students, but rather that anyone with a facebook account could join this group and to an extent, learn the material for free. If you are studying in the library, you are more likely to be a student. In fact, when facebook was only open to college students, I am willing to bet that universities didnt care at all about facebook study groups. In fact, some of my professors recommended facebook study groups in past. You might have noticed, if your school wasnt complete crap, that you had/have group work in your undergraduate career. It should be fairly simple to note that acadamia does not want learning to occur only on the individual level. A university is a business, and needs to find ways to keep students paying tuition. That is the only factor in the "academic misconduct" here. The real question to ask is whether or not a classroom experience is an education license. I would say yes, which unfortunately for the student, means that creating a study group that can be accessed by non-students is a violation of academic misconduct.
Its not 8.6 million per person... Lets call it 200 yen per person that uses it, and assume that 10% of Japan uses this thing. If Japan has 125 million citizens (anyone know if this is reasonable?), then that is 12.5 million people who buy this thing because of no DST. At 0.009577 $ to yen, thats 24 million bucks, or nearly triple the cost. The population of Indiana is 6.3 million, but everyone is affected. We can account for this by adjusting the population to 63 million (we used a 10% affected rate of the cheapest solution, unless someone has an idea that costs less than 100 yen to remove the effect of no DST), which is roughly half of Japan in effect. This creates an offset to Japan of 50% of the cost. End point is that by not having DST, Japan pays 50% more in its cheapest solution.
I don't normally respond to the blind, but in your case, you need help. Tobacco does not kill people. Cancer does. My point, which I feel was obvious, has nothing to do with when people choose to start doing anything. Whether or not people under the age of 18 should be smoking was not involved. The fact that children like to do things that adults tell them not to is completely irrelevant to the legal issue of what people over the age of 18 choose to do. I see people that choose to break the law by smoking while underage as deserving to get addicted, just as you might see someone over the age of 18 drunk driving, crashing, and killing themselves as deserving what they got for breaking the law. Tobacco companies have done absolutely nothing wrong by following legislation that requires its product to be sold specifically to those old enough in the eyes of society to make the decision to smoke or not to smoke, despite what poorly made commercials funded by overprotective parents who would rather have our government raise their kids would have you believe. If I had to guess, you are one of the strange people who think that our ISP's should have a children filter, rather than having parents be the proper filter. Or perhaps you believe that abstinence education is the cause of teen pregnancy. Maybe you are one of those people who thinks that Windows is wrong for charging whatever it wants for its OS (its not a monopoly just because it requires education to use an alternative. If so, your heart surgeon is a monopolist and should only be allowed to charge whatever the unlicensed guy in a dark alley does). Maybe next you will get mad at budweiser for underage drunk drivers. Whatever your parents did in improperly raising you to not think for yourself, calling me sick or immoral for defending a corporation is much more unjust. Our legal system has charged the tobacco industry who cares how much money for following a business model within the confines of the law, and that is unjust. The fact that you continue to attack them is unjust, and the idea that you would attack me for thinking so under moral guidlines is as stupid as suing the birth control pill company because the condom broke (for the confused, the point is that of misguidance and improper foundation). The only thing you say that has any value whatsoever is that money is not the only value. In fact, to a corporation, money is not of any value (that is just for the shareholders, as a matter of raising capital to fund R&D and to continue and upgrade operations and to reward its workers, who are driven by money, for their efforts to follow the business plan, which I repeat, is not to make money, but rather to benefit society. After all, if a product has no value to society, the company cannot exist in the long term). The purpose of a corporation is never about money. It begins with a vision statement. Go read 1000 vision statements. None of them are about money . They are about being the best provider of service, the best product innovator, the niche market leader. Not money. Integrity is the biggest asset that a corporation can have (just ask Enron how going after money instead of the business plan turned out). The oil companies are not paying people to deny global warming. That is at best a misguided view, and likely slander should you find yourself in litigation with an oil company. They are however, funding research for the benefit of society to determine whether the use and creation of its product are hurting society. This seems to me like throwing money away, not trying to make it. Finding that global warming exists would just raise the price of oil, which would go directly to consumers. The oil companies would not be hurt by it (although their stockholders might).
Absolutely not. Tobacco doesnt kill people, cancer kills people. Would you claim that unhealthy diets kill people? Of course not. Heart attacks do. You have broken off fo the orginal point, which I beleive is that you cannot try to use the US legal system to personal benefit, only for protection of justice. When you make the outrageous claim that your lifestyle has been affected by your own actions, in this case reliance on oil, suing yourself has no purpose. With victory, the costs of the lawsuit will be passed onto consumers. Everyone who uses "global warming causing items" will end up paying for it, including those that sue over it. With the inevitable (and proper) loss, the value of the product that has been shown to not cause global warming will improve and prices for that product will rise, meaning that everyone who uses "global warming causing items" will bear the cost. Either way, the only way to profit from this is to invest in the oil companies. Meanwhile, stop blaming tobacco companies for its consumers use of product. There is not a single person alive who is of legal age to use tobacco products who doesnt know the risks and consequences of such use. The lawsuits involved are insulting to capitalism at best, and an insult to our courts. Finally, don't assume that the scientific community isnt just as skewed in its thought as a corporation that funds research. Funding research to better an organization's interests is how you got your ipod, guitar hero, and 28 oz steaks (all of which are healthy in moderation). The scientific community is how you got your more often wrong than right weather forecast and flu shots that give you a cold.
Based on the fact that you think that teenagers dont ask questions when told things, you must be from the United States (you ignore reality when it serves your own purposes...dont worry, me too :))
Here in the US, we have intellectual property law. Here is a letter linked from a .gov website (http://www.uspto.gov/) that talks about why we are probably not changing intellectual property law from its one size fits all method of prosecution even though we should.
http://www.ogc.doc.gov/ogc/legreg/letters/110/S1145020408.pdf
The gist of it is that intellectual property is a $5 TRILLION business.
Whee.
So yes, patent and copyright and trademark law does exist, is written down, and claiming that someone was just lying is so disrespectful that you will probably be in jail in the next 6 months to 10 years to learn that lesson. Respect your elders you stupid kids.
No one has ever wanted to pay for anything. We can choose to be willing to pay for something out of respect for the time and effort put into creation of something or we can choose to be willing to pay for something that is scarce, but a simple look at supply and demand will show that no one will ever want to pay for an OS. The marginal cost of producing software is effectively 0. The gain from being to use a computer is treated as an impossible to reproduce otherwise gain to productivity. Effectively, if MS were to charge $arbitrary large amount of money per person on earth for windows, it would be a good deal. Reality, of course, is that our society tends to overvalue money rather than goods and services. We want to get the best value for our dollar rather than a better product (which, as time goes to infinity, creates a better value, regardless of cost [for the inevetiable disagreement on this point, keep in mind that we are comparing 2 products that already exist]). For now (and probably until time t=infinity), people will be happy getting an OS that is good enough, rather than fast, at a price that approaches too much money, but doesn't quite break that barrier, or they will do drugs until stealing property seems like a good risk vs the possibility of jail time. I expect that most of us will see a usable OS that we are willing to go to jail for before we see a fast OS we are willing to pay for.
I can't really agree with you on this. The way that MS has built itself to where it is was by not paying dividends for a long time. MS generally got away with this because the company was providing more value for my investment than I could make elsewhere. This takeover bid for yahoo is done for essentially the same purpose: together, MS and yahoo are much better than the sum of their individual parts. MS went out on a limb and threw in a premium for yahoo, who is only rejecting the offer because they think they can get an extra dollar or two per share. As for MS not being an internet company? The percentage of US population using windows and IE as a default is ridiculous. To create an OS for low prices is to throw away the brand image. The only people who complain about MS are stupid fanboys who are willing to pay the price that MS charges. The percentage of businesses that use (and continue to use) office is the largest portion of MS sales. To claim that these business entities want something flashy rather than something useful is like saying that I want to pay $12 for a McDonalds cheeseburger and for them to cook it with Kobe beef. Its just unreasonable for my cookie-cutter software needs. As for the recession that you allude to, our economy is already tanking. Business is down this year. Just because Bernanke isnt calling it a recession doesnt mean we arent in one. Open your eyes people. I got off track here, but my point is that generally retained earnings should not be given out as a dividend. Because our economy is going negative, it is a great time to use RE to buy out competitors at a discount. MS generally does not have enough debt, which hurts ROI (imagine how high the stock price would go if they increased debt just a bit. Now look at what adding yahoo into MS does...suddenly 45 billion doesnt seem like such a bad deal)
Since the offer is for either cash or equivalent stock, yahoo shareholders would have to pay taxes on the gain would the deal have gone through (the basis in the stock then becomes $31). If you held yahoo stock for less than a year, the difference between your purchase price and $31 would be taxed to you as income (as opposed to capital gains). Assuming you get taxed at 20%, this reduces the premium being paid to below 50%, not 62.
When you use a tv you have an implied in fact contract with your cable provider or any other function your tv is used for. If you have a playstation hooked up to the tv and the playstation guidebook says not to pour water on the system, by using the playstation you are entered into contract not to pour water on the system. The NFL, unfortunately for you, has a licensing contract with the over the air tv provider. Legally, you are liable if you break that contract by having a larger than 55 inch tv and or too many people because the law is common law and as such should be known and available to you. Based on news coverage alone, you would lose if the NFl sued you for breach of that contract.
You can't be serious... The penalty for filing a frivolous lawsuit is the cost of your time and court fees. Generally, if a lawsuit has no merit, we use our judicial system to determine that the lawsuit in fact has no merit. It is a fundamental right of every corporation to protect themselves against anything it considers to be a threat to it. The reality is that while most lawsuits that have little merit are eventually removed, sometimes they have a basis that is found valid upon appeal or with further evidence, even if summary judgment initially causes it to be dismissed with prejudice. To prevent a company from acting in the ordinary course of business due to litigation should only be imposed when independence could be impaired. When litigation is unrelated to merger/acquisition finance issues, it is ridiculous to penalize the company for using litigation for purposes other than just to make a quick buck. Settlements, marketing, and other valid reasons for frivilous lawsuits have nothing to do with a corporate charter, nor should board members typically responsible to shareholders (accountants are responsible to the public, not the shareholders) be penalized for acting in accordance with the interests of the company in mind. The reality is that small time patent investors would no longer be able to file a patent because patent trolls would work to create filings contesting other patents rather than trying to get their own in first. The clause you ask for would bankrupt the small guy with more than his mortgage invested into a patent filing while rewarding the institutional investor. Ok, the previous paragraph is as much bullshit as your entire post. But so is the notion that the RIAA, MPAA, or patent troll would even be affected by this. A simple method of creating a patent through a new company owned through an SIV would protect the main corporation from any real damage. This clause would just close down some SIV companies (companies separately run but included as part of an organization that legally are separate for the purpose of litigation, taxation, profit. These are the vehicles that Enron used to hide debt, albeit under different language, the concept was the same) that lose a $250 corporation filing fee. Changing the language of the clause to include SIV's liable to the original corporation defeats the purpose of having an SIV.
The total number will reasonably be higher because 10 million is only the number of active accounts. There are a number of players that buy the game, play for a few months, and then stop. I know that back in my college dorm a number of us played mmorpgs but switched around between which one we would pay for to keep things interesting.