So I couldn't this one out. And googling didn't help much either.
The babelfish tells me that cadeau means gift in french. But it couldn't translate "Buon Natale a tutti voi Edo" into English. Translating from Italian, and the fish tells me it means: "Good NATO them to all you Edo", which evidently is a suggestion that we bring the Japanese into NATO. Which is interesting, as just yesterday I heard a report that with the North Korean situation and everything, the Japanese are once again considering their needs for their own defense.
The debunkers have a point. That was over 30 years ago and one look at today's world tells us it was obviously impossible. And everytime you vote for not funding the space program, you help them prove their point.
I know what I saw in my backyard on July 20, 1969. Watching under a full moon, watching the moon landing on TV. I know what I saw.
But I know now that I was wrong. What do I tell my daughters?
The essence of science is repeatability. Show me this wasn't a hoax. Wasn't a one time stunt at the most.
Don't give me a book. Don't debunk this with photoshop.
I was scammed out of $150 on eBay for a software package. What I was sent was the demo version and a time-bombed demo unlock code. And the seller had had good feedback.
Shortly there after, the seller disappeared, and then EBAY cancelled the account, indicating that EBAY knew these guys were frauds. But did eBay make it easy for victims to reclaim funds? Not on your life.
It's almost impossible to even find the eBay safe harbor forms. If you can find them, there is all sorts of "real" not "e" paperwork to fill out. I sent it all using registered mail to their address in Utah. According to their own rules, they were to respond in 90 days (or something like that).
They finally responded in more like six months. Only after countless emails on my part. You can't call ebay -- they make that impossible.
So though eBay knew these guys were frauds, they made it very difficult for me to file a claim, and then they took six months, not three months to return my money.
It's this kind of crap from eBay and Paypal that has me wishing state/federal regulation on them.
That's interesting. Why was such a high inclination chosen, what benefits did it offer?
Re:Must publically held mean no morals?
on
Google vs. Evil
·
· Score: 2
Just because the system can be gamed doesn't mean that the system is fundamentally wrong.
It may not be fundamentally wrong, but it is, I think you may agree, wrong in some degree. If it is wrong in some degree and of value, I think it is worthy to think of ways of changing the system. I think there are a lot of people that would not agree the system is wrong to any degree.
But also, if we agree the system isn't perfect, than we can remove the religious/absolutist position that a company should only follow the path of most profitability for the investor. And we can understand that there is no way to measure what that path would be anyway. All we can do when someone demands we follow such a path is to realize they are asking us to remove our judgment and use their's (Friedman's?) instead.
Fooey!
If the path of most profitability is a judgment, if I as an investor have a portfolio of choices to make, if there is a reasonably efficient market so that I can trade freely with lots of information, than I, as an investor, want the management of the company I invest in to make money the best way *they see fit*. Not the best way of Milton.
I am not condoning illegal, unethical, unregulated activities. I am saying that if a company has two choices A or B, and Milty suggests choice A but management prefers choice B, well, I want to see the company take choice B. I believe Milton's choice is a copout for management and investotrs. Making management actually make a choice makes them much more responsible for the company outcomes to investors, employees, and community. And I believe, it makes information about management, who they are, how they lead, etc., much more visible to the investor.
Re:Must publically held mean no morals?
on
Google vs. Evil
·
· Score: 2
I mean that tying the remuneration of management to short term share price over long term share price is a bad thing, esp. when the tenure of a CxO is relatively short.
It biases them towards short term profits and not what is good for the company over the longer term.
Yes, I understand that the market is efficient. Not, you silly sock puppet. Finance professors have been abandoning that canard the past few semesters. Care to buy some Enron, Worldcom, or Netscape?
I believe that "peoples' opinions should be weighted by the size of their wallets"? Non sequitor. Does not compute. Norman, coordinate.
Re:Must publically held mean no morals?
on
Google vs. Evil
·
· Score: 2
So you say that: "managers must do things that will increase shareholder value" and I had said that: "must only do the most profitable thing for their investors." and "make the most money in the quickest time". The first thing I said has to be in complete agreement with what you said, right? So your argument is over the second clause. Well, ultimately stock price has to be the NPV of cash flows right?
Toss in two factors: a) cost of capital of about 15% or more b) market prediction meaurement problems
(when the boys in marketing and finance
can't see that the bottom is about to fall
out of the asbestos market and keep
estimating it with a straight line (-x**2
as opposed to 1.2x, or
when they estimate cyclical markets with
a straight line (DOW 36000) sin(t) as
opposed to 1.2t, or when they mis predict
(on purpose perhaps?) emerging markets
trains(t) = 1.3t forever vs.
trains(t) = 1/t and planes(t) = 1.3t)
So if you don't/can't/won't accurately forecast where the market is going and you are faced with factors that penalize you harshly for taking risk, then the institutional bias is to the short term.
I am not angry about bad business decisions. I am angry about an insitutional bias towards the short term and a refusal to acknowledge that. I am angry that we give corporations more rights than people but we don't penalize them the same nor do we expect as much from them.
Sheesh, Seinfeld and his buddies got thrown in jail for not caring. THAT'S the behavior that Friedman demands of corporations.
(Yes, I use Friedman as a whipping boy w/o really knowing of what he says apart from various interviews and hearing what others say of him. If I am wrong about that, I humbly beg of Milt to invite me for dinner up in Nob Hill and I will very graciously apologize.)
Re:Must publically held mean no morals?
on
Google vs. Evil
·
· Score: 2
The NPV equation won't have much to do with it, besides the fact that earnings in the future are discounted in an exponential fashion relative to earlier earnings. So throw in a discounted cost of capital of 15% to your NPV equation, and tell me where the bias is: is it to short term cash flows or long term cash flows?
Toss in the average stay of a CEO of two years and CEO incentive stock options tied to the share price.
So when you tell the CEO and board that for the next eight quarters our new employee retention will depress our earnings but after that we expect earnings to grow at two percent more per annum, what is that CEO and board incented to do?
An affront to democratic ideals? It's my money. If I want to invest in a google that doesn't take cigarette ads because I believe in the founder and his board and the people that follow his dream, that should be my decision, not yours nor *your* elected representatives. Let's let government govern least. Once Caesar has his due, Caesar can do with it, but not until then. Until then, if Sergey believes that the best thing for his company is not to take cigarette ads, well, I'll give my money to Sergey.
Why would we give companies the rights of people, including freedom of speech, but then take away their right to choose how they earn their money?
If you don't like what Sergey does, find another investment. Just because you like only half of what he does, what gives you the right to tell him not to do the other things?
Must publically held mean no morals?
on
Google vs. Evil
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
There is this (Milton Friedman I believe) argument that public companies must only do the most profitable thing for their investors.
More and more as companies grow from small to large, they must sacrifice the moral visions of their founders and early years to always take on the next most profitable venture.
Paraphrased, "It is better for investors to give their money to the charity of their choice than for a company to do that for them."
Screw long term environmental projects and the better return and new (and better?) opportunities for the company. Go for the short term payoff. Screw long term employee productivity and how that can add to the bottom line. Go for hard working, miserable, short term employees. Go for CEO to avg wage ratios of over 400.
When Sergey Brin says no to meta-tags in 1999, that is controversial but visionary. When Sergey Brin says no to cigarette ads, that is controversial and offensive to the free market.
And we wonder how the CEO/CFO/board became so disconnected and downright corrupt?
It's Milton Friedman and this chain of logic, that begins by saying that public companies should have no morals other than make the most money in the quickest time.
Scr*w you Milt and your Nob Hill apartment.
Thank you Sergey Brin, and even, thank you Bill Gates (tenuous reach?): for creating companies that have definite personalities, and definite moral stances (though you and I may not agree with all of them.)
As I think you know, you raise a valid question: the social good to society of the answers to these distributed processing questions (aliens-p, better drugs, better understanding of math) vs. the social good to society of better energy conservation.
And then you also bring in the economic problems of understanding altruism (folks do pay the costs of participating in these low payoff questions, why do they?).
The problem of free riders. Jeez Tim, when we find the aliens one hour too late, just because you didn't turn your computer on, I hope you're the first one up against the wall.
And even the problem of how much sense does common sense make: I think you want to look at average power prices, not peak.
If it's a distributed solution, don't you also have to consider the sheer numbers of processors participating? There are more folks in participating in the project now than four years ago, and many of these folks have more computers.
Five years from now, it may be that your house is participating, your cars are, as well perhaps as your shirts and underwear.
In sixeen years, shortly before skynet takes over, the smart dust in your living room may decide to participate as well. (Most likely the dust will not participate, but will instead form themselves into a gollum and try to kill you, but maybe...)
Arggh! I upgraded my 1.2beta and will probably roll it out.
They have removed the new pop up manager saying it will return when it's ready for prime time. Damn! I thought the pop up manager was terrific as it is.
They also, but I can't find the bug report now, seem to have removed the middle-click kills a tabbed window behavior, another behavior I use all the time.
I am too tired to explain why this is the best, so I'll just say it's my favorite, and for good reason.
Man against Man, Man against Nature, and especially Man against himself. It's a shoot-em-up. It's romantic. It's revolutionary. It's serious. It's funny.
And then throw on some accurate forecasting (such as predicting the slashdot effect and distributed
denial of service attacks, the problems of security through obscurity, and even 404s) and there you have it, the best sf.
Gully Foyle is my name
And Terra is my nation
Deep space is my dwelling place
The Stars my destination
You're right I don't want the job of writing out all those checks. So if the states want this to happen, then I will be able to:
A) Send each state a check B) Send each state a check and a table of how
to split that up. C) Send my CPA one check and a table of how
to split that up. D) Send paypal instructions to charge
sales tax and send that to the states E) Send some company one check and a table of
how to split that up. F) Have accounting software send each state
a check and a table of how to split that up G) Have accounting software use XML-RPC/SOAP
to send each check their funds and
information on how to split that up.
Unfortunately, I would expect that I need to keep proper records in case someone decides to audit me. Unfortunately, I would expect some state treasurer to become a dipshit and audit way too many people.
So no, I don't want the job of writing out those checks. Luckily, I can't imagine that in a world of free enterprise that I couldn't pay someone a very small amount to take that job off my hands.
I am sure you are correct about requiring zip+4, but my real point is that if the states want to tax based on zip code, it won't really wouldn't have to be a problem for the average developer/publisher to assemble the different tax rates from raw data.
The tax rates will come from the different states or the different counties based on zip code, and if the states really wanted to tax based on zip codes, then they could easily offer a mechanism whereby any developer/publisher could obtain the state specific lookup table.
As I said before it's the arguments about how difficult this is to implement that I can't figure out. I understand the controversy as to whether we should be taxing internet sales at all.
Zipcodes are five digits long right? That's a lookup table of 100,000 tax rates. The tax rate for each cell in this lookup tables comes from one of approximately 50 entities, or about 2,000 zip codes per state.
100,000 tax rates and say 4 bytes per tax rate. That's a 400K table. Pretty small table overall.
Each state probably has at most 100 different state tax rates. That I am sure is a gross overestimate. I bet it's more like 10.
This seems like a pretty easy job of data asembling to do.
You can have each state make their own particular lookup table made available from their secretary of state, or available with their digital signature available from the state website.
Then start with one zipcode to state lookup table published by the USPS and available online, signed, at some well known URL.
The rest is a smop for the sophomore programmer.
If you're a legacy (*nix, windows) publisher, you assign an intern to call up each 50 states and get their tax rates tables and stick that into your legacy app.
OR, if you're an ASP/VSP, you can make one website surf the state urls for updates and make that available as one interface (SOAP, XML-RPC)
Pretty easy. I never understood the arguments that this was too hard to implement.
Yes I was joking. In fact, I think that's a really old joke. What's most interesting about your analysis (and thank you) is the claim (I won't dispute it) that with a ground based optical telescope we can only get 1 arcsec of resolution.
I am not sure where you got the skinny triangle approximation from, or what D represents (presumably the long side of the triangle.) Using some presumably old numbers from howstuffworks http://www.howstuffworks.com/questi on529.htm A KH12 can see 5" at 200miles.
Using your skinny triangle, that's a frustratingly low resolution of only 8e-2 arc seconds. That needs to be reduced by an order of magnitude and then some to use a KH12 to see the rover.
Hmm, maybe someone can come along and make the argument that if howstuffworks, using old numbers, thinks the resolution of a keyhole is 5", then the real resolution is.2" which would work out very nicely.
Which ground based telescopes could find and resolve the lunar lander, a rover, a flag, or a footprint? And what stops us from using a ground based telescope to find the LM,...?
The crux of the argument is that to sell Office, they'll give Windows away for free. Why would they do that?
If the money is in Office and there is little money, and thus little value in Windows, then it would be better for them to port their apps to Linux, OSX, etc., offering their apps to a greater market, and still offering their OS at a (nonzero) price for those that can value Windows.
More likely is that successful competition from OSX, Linux and OpenOffice and StarOffice increasing marketshare of these OSs and apps would drive Microsoft to:
1) Port Office to Linux and OSX 2) Offer Windows licenses at a reduced price
This is a price discrimination argument. For those buyers that can understand/afford the Linux self-help model, they can buy the features (office) at a reduced price. For those that need the support they perceive from Microsoft, or those that can afford not to learn the new UI, or those that perceive whatever value they see in Windows, will pay more to buy Windows.
Consider switching costs alone. People will pay not to have to learn new things and experience more risk. Even if Windows on PC had no value whatsoever in Microsoft's eyes, Windows on PC has lots of values to consumers of newer markets, that is, consumers of Pocket PCs, Tablet Computers, Microsoft Windows Phones, Microsoft Windows Cars, and even Microsoft Windows Routers. (Um, not to mention Microsoft Windows Navy Destroyers). Consumers of all of these devices will naturally prefer to use Windows, and some (most) will pay for that option.
If Microsoft is moving to give Windows away, look for less and less R&D and marketing being spent on Windows itself. If Microsoft perceives value (and profit) in Windows, look for increased R&D and more marketing being spent on Windows, itself.
The
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 prescribes procedures for requesting judicial authorization for electronic surveillance and physical search of persons engaged in espionage or international terrorism against the United States on behalf of a foreign power.
Requests are adjudicated by a special eleven member court called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I have to say, that crossed my mind too. Silly me, if Natale was spelled natal and/or had not been capitalized, I may have clued in.
So I couldn't this one out. And googling didn't help much either.
The babelfish tells me that cadeau means gift in french. But it couldn't translate "Buon Natale a tutti voi Edo" into English. Translating from Italian, and the fish tells me it means: "Good NATO them to all you Edo", which evidently is a suggestion that we bring the Japanese into NATO. Which is interesting, as just yesterday I heard a report that with the North Korean situation and everything, the Japanese are once again considering their needs for their own defense.
But what does that have to do with Ogg?
If you lookup Swift, Jonathan, a Modest Proposal, then I promise to work harder on my writing skills.
The debunkers have a point. That was over 30 years ago and one look at today's world tells us it was obviously impossible. And everytime you vote for not funding the space program, you help them prove their point.
I know what I saw in my backyard on July 20, 1969. Watching under a full moon, watching the moon landing on TV. I know what I saw.
But I know now that I was wrong. What do I tell my daughters?
The essence of science is repeatability. Show me this wasn't a hoax. Wasn't a one time stunt at the most.
Don't give me a book. Don't debunk this with photoshop.
Give me a space program. Let's go back.
Instead of a repeated slashdot story, how about some boobies?
I was scammed out of $150 on eBay for a software package. What I was sent was the demo version and a time-bombed demo unlock code. And the seller had had good feedback.
Shortly there after, the seller disappeared, and then EBAY cancelled the account, indicating that EBAY knew these guys were frauds. But did eBay make it easy for victims to reclaim funds? Not on your life.
It's almost impossible to even find the eBay safe harbor forms. If you can find them, there is all sorts of "real" not "e" paperwork to fill out. I sent it all using registered mail to their address in Utah. According to their own rules, they were to respond in 90 days (or something like that).
They finally responded in more like six months. Only after countless emails on my part. You can't call ebay -- they make that impossible.
So though eBay knew these guys were frauds, they made it very difficult for me to file a claim, and then they took six months, not three months to return my money.
It's this kind of crap from eBay and Paypal that has me wishing state/federal regulation on them.
That's interesting. Why was such a high inclination chosen, what benefits did it offer?
It may not be fundamentally wrong, but it is, I think you may agree, wrong in some degree. If it is wrong in some degree and of value, I think it is worthy to think of ways of changing the system. I think there are a lot of people that would not agree the system is wrong to any degree.
But also, if we agree the system isn't perfect, than we can remove the religious/absolutist position that a company should only follow the path of most profitability for the investor. And we can understand that there is no way to measure what that path would be anyway. All we can do when someone demands we follow such a path is to realize they are asking us to remove our judgment and use their's (Friedman's?) instead.
Fooey!
If the path of most profitability is a judgment, if I as an investor have a portfolio of choices to make, if there is a reasonably efficient market so that I can trade freely with lots of information, than I, as an investor, want the management of the company I invest in to make money the best way *they see fit*. Not the best way of Milton.
I am not condoning illegal, unethical, unregulated activities. I am saying that if a company has two choices A or B, and Milty suggests choice A but management prefers choice B, well, I want to see the company take choice B. I believe Milton's choice is a copout for management and investotrs. Making management actually make a choice makes them much more responsible for the company outcomes to investors, employees, and community. And I believe, it makes information about management, who they are, how they lead, etc., much more visible to the investor.
I mean that tying the remuneration of management to short term share price over long term share price is a bad thing, esp. when the tenure of a CxO is relatively short.
It biases them towards short term profits and not what is good for the company over the longer term.
Yes, I understand that the market is efficient. Not, you silly sock puppet. Finance professors have been abandoning that canard the past few semesters. Care to buy some Enron, Worldcom, or Netscape?
I believe that "peoples' opinions should be weighted by the size of their wallets"? Non sequitor. Does not compute. Norman, coordinate.
So you say that: "managers must do things that will increase shareholder value" and I had said that: "must only do the most profitable thing for their investors." and "make the most money in the quickest time". The first thing I said has to be in complete agreement with what you said, right? So your argument is over the second clause. Well, ultimately stock price has to be the NPV of cash flows right?
Toss in two factors:
a) cost of capital of about 15% or more
b) market prediction meaurement problems
(when the boys in marketing and finance
can't see that the bottom is about to fall
out of the asbestos market and keep
estimating it with a straight line (-x**2
as opposed to 1.2x, or
when they estimate cyclical markets with
a straight line (DOW 36000) sin(t) as
opposed to 1.2t, or when they mis predict
(on purpose perhaps?) emerging markets
trains(t) = 1.3t forever vs.
trains(t) = 1/t and planes(t) = 1.3t)
So if you don't/can't/won't accurately forecast where the market is going and you are faced with factors that penalize you harshly for taking risk, then the institutional bias is to the short term.
I am not angry about bad business decisions. I am angry about an insitutional bias towards the short term and a refusal to acknowledge that. I am angry that we give corporations more rights than people but we don't penalize them the same nor do we expect as much from them.
Sheesh, Seinfeld and his buddies got thrown in jail for not caring. THAT'S the behavior that Friedman demands of corporations.
(Yes, I use Friedman as a whipping boy w/o really knowing of what he says apart from various interviews and hearing what others say of him. If I am wrong about that, I humbly beg of Milt to invite me for dinner up in Nob Hill and I will very graciously apologize.)
The NPV equation won't have much to do with it, besides the fact that earnings in the future are discounted in an exponential fashion relative to earlier earnings. So throw in a discounted cost of capital of 15% to your NPV equation, and tell me where the bias is: is it to short term cash flows or long term cash flows?
Toss in the average stay of a CEO of two years and CEO incentive stock options tied to the share price.
So when you tell the CEO and board that for the next eight quarters our new employee retention will depress our earnings but after that we expect earnings to grow at two percent more per annum, what is that CEO and board incented to do?
An affront to democratic ideals? It's my money. If I want to invest in a google that doesn't take cigarette ads because I believe in the founder and his board and the people that follow his dream, that should be my decision, not yours nor *your* elected representatives. Let's let government govern least. Once Caesar has his due, Caesar can do with it, but not until then. Until then, if Sergey believes that the best thing for his company is not to take cigarette ads, well, I'll give my money to Sergey.
Why would we give companies the rights of people, including freedom of speech, but then take away their right to choose how they earn their money?
If you don't like what Sergey does, find another investment. Just because you like only half of what he does, what gives you the right to tell him not to do the other things?
There is this (Milton Friedman I believe) argument that public companies must only do the most profitable thing for their investors.
More and more as companies grow from small to large, they must sacrifice the moral visions of their founders and early years to always take on the next most profitable venture.
Paraphrased, "It is better for investors to give their money to the charity of their choice than for a company to do that for them."
Screw long term environmental projects and the better return and new (and better?) opportunities for the company. Go for the short term payoff. Screw long term employee productivity and how that can add to the bottom line. Go for hard working, miserable, short term employees. Go for CEO to avg wage ratios of over 400.
When Sergey Brin says no to meta-tags in 1999, that is controversial but visionary. When Sergey Brin says no to cigarette ads, that is controversial and offensive to the free market.
And we wonder how the CEO/CFO/board became so disconnected and downright corrupt?
It's Milton Friedman and this chain of logic, that begins by saying that public companies should have no morals other than make the most money in the quickest time.
Scr*w you Milt and your Nob Hill apartment.
Thank you Sergey Brin, and even, thank you Bill Gates (tenuous reach?): for creating companies that have definite personalities, and definite moral stances (though you and I may not agree with all of them.)
Billboards, my friend. Billboards.
As I think you know, you raise a valid question: the social good to society of the answers to these distributed processing questions (aliens-p, better drugs, better understanding of math) vs. the social good to society of better energy conservation.
And then you also bring in the economic problems of understanding altruism (folks do pay the costs of participating in these low payoff questions, why do they?).
The problem of free riders. Jeez Tim, when we find the aliens one hour too late, just because you didn't turn your computer on, I hope you're the first one up against the wall.
And even the problem of how much sense does common sense make: I think you want to look at average power prices, not peak.
If it's a distributed solution, don't you also have to consider the sheer numbers of processors participating? There are more folks in participating in the project now than four years ago, and many of these folks have more computers.
Five years from now, it may be that your house is participating, your cars are, as well perhaps as your shirts and underwear.
In sixeen years, shortly before skynet takes over, the smart dust in your living room may decide to participate as well. (Most likely the dust will not participate, but will instead form themselves into a gollum and try to kill you, but maybe...)
Arggh! I upgraded my 1.2beta and will probably roll it out.
They have removed the new pop up manager saying it will return when it's ready for prime time. Damn! I thought the pop up manager was terrific as it is.
They also, but I can't find the bug report now, seem to have removed the middle-click kills a tabbed window behavior, another behavior I use all the time.
Hey, for me, 1.2.1 is much worse than 1.2beta.
I am too tired to explain why this is the best, so I'll just say it's my favorite, and for good reason.
Man against Man, Man against Nature, and especially Man against himself. It's a shoot-em-up. It's romantic. It's revolutionary. It's serious. It's funny.
And then throw on some accurate forecasting (such as predicting the slashdot effect and distributed denial of service attacks, the problems of security through obscurity, and even 404s) and there you have it, the best sf.
Gully Foyle is my name
And Terra is my nation
Deep space is my dwelling place
The Stars my destination
You're right I don't want the job of writing out all those checks. So if the states want this to happen, then I will be able to:
A) Send each state a check
B) Send each state a check and a table of how
to split that up.
C) Send my CPA one check and a table of how
to split that up.
D) Send paypal instructions to charge
sales tax and send that to the states
E) Send some company one check and a table of
how to split that up.
F) Have accounting software send each state
a check and a table of how to split that up
G) Have accounting software use XML-RPC/SOAP
to send each check their funds and
information on how to split that up.
Unfortunately, I would expect that I need to keep proper records in case someone decides to audit me. Unfortunately, I would expect some state treasurer to become a dipshit and audit way too many people.
So no, I don't want the job of writing out those checks. Luckily, I can't imagine that in a world of
free enterprise that I couldn't pay someone
a very small amount to take that job off my
hands.
I am sure you are correct about requiring zip+4, but my real point is that if the states want to tax based on zip code, it won't really wouldn't have to be a problem for the average developer/publisher to assemble the different tax rates from raw data.
The tax rates will come from the different states or the different counties based on zip code, and if the states really wanted to tax based on zip codes, then they could easily offer a mechanism whereby any developer/publisher could obtain the state specific lookup table.
As I said before it's the arguments about how difficult this is to implement that I can't figure out. I understand the controversy as to whether we should be taxing internet sales at all.
It's called a lookup table.
Zipcodes are five digits long right? That's a lookup table of 100,000 tax rates. The tax rate for each cell in this lookup tables comes from one of approximately 50 entities, or about 2,000 zip codes per state.
100,000 tax rates and say 4 bytes per tax rate. That's a 400K table. Pretty small table overall.
Each state probably has at most 100 different state tax rates. That I am sure is a gross overestimate. I bet it's more like 10.
This seems like a pretty easy job of data asembling to do.
You can have each state make their own particular lookup table made available from their secretary of state, or available with their digital signature available from the state website.
Then start with one zipcode to state lookup table published by the USPS and available online, signed, at some well known URL.
The rest is a smop for the sophomore programmer.
If you're a legacy (*nix, windows) publisher, you assign an intern to call up each 50 states and get their tax rates tables and stick that into your legacy app.
OR, if you're an ASP/VSP, you can make one website surf the state urls for updates and make that available as one interface (SOAP, XML-RPC)
Pretty easy. I never understood the arguments that this was too hard to implement.
Yes I was joking. In fact, I think that's a really old joke. What's most interesting about your analysis (and thank you) is the claim (I won't dispute it) that with a ground based optical telescope we can only get 1 arcsec of resolution.
i on529.htm
.2" which would work out very nicely.
I am not sure where you got the skinny triangle approximation from, or what D represents (presumably the long side of the triangle.) Using some presumably old numbers from howstuffworks
http://www.howstuffworks.com/quest
A KH12 can see 5" at 200miles.
Using your skinny triangle, that's a frustratingly low resolution of only 8e-2 arc seconds. That needs to be reduced by an order of magnitude and then some to use a KH12 to see the rover.
Hmm, maybe someone can come along and make the argument that if howstuffworks, using old numbers, thinks the resolution of a keyhole is 5", then the real resolution is
Too much light? Take the pictures at night!
...?
Which ground based telescopes could find and resolve the lunar lander, a rover, a flag, or a footprint? And what stops us from using a ground based telescope to find the LM,
The crux of the argument is that to sell Office, they'll give Windows away for free. Why would they do that?
If the money is in Office and there is little money, and thus little value in Windows, then it would be better for them to port their apps to Linux, OSX, etc., offering their apps to a greater market, and still offering their OS at a (nonzero) price for those that can value Windows.
More likely is that successful competition from OSX, Linux and OpenOffice and StarOffice increasing marketshare of these OSs and apps would drive Microsoft to:
1) Port Office to Linux and OSX
2) Offer Windows licenses at a reduced price
This is a price discrimination argument. For those buyers that can understand/afford the Linux self-help model, they can buy the features (office) at a reduced price. For those that need the support they perceive from Microsoft, or those that can afford not to learn the new UI, or those that perceive whatever value they see in Windows, will pay more to buy Windows.
Consider switching costs alone. People will pay not to have to learn new things and experience more risk. Even if Windows on PC had no value whatsoever in Microsoft's eyes, Windows on PC has lots of values to consumers of newer markets, that is, consumers of Pocket PCs, Tablet Computers, Microsoft Windows Phones, Microsoft Windows Cars, and even Microsoft Windows Routers. (Um, not to mention Microsoft Windows Navy Destroyers). Consumers of all of these devices will naturally prefer to use Windows, and some (most) will pay for that option.
If Microsoft is moving to give Windows away, look for less and less R&D and marketing being spent on Windows itself. If Microsoft perceives value (and profit) in Windows, look for increased R&D and more marketing being spent on Windows, itself.
I couldn't make the boulders out well in the newspaper's photograph, so here is the medium size image of the Ritz Carlton Half Moon Bay , the beachfront, and the boulders taken from the website.
It is identified as: N37 26.03 W122 26.84 Image 6133 Mon Sep 30 16:05:57 2002
For more info on the FISA court, see the FAS page on FISA