The type of jobs introduced by manufacturing in this day and age don't pay very well. Even if a megacorp moved all of their production into the US, they might add 20,000 jobs. In a nation with 130+million employees, the increase in domestic demand is negligible. An increase in cost per product of 5%, however, is noticeable by almost every consumer.
To h4rr4r who posted below this comment who says that if "you have a cost and pass it on, your prices go up," that's sort of the definition of passing a cost on. Everyone and anyone can raise prices, it just wouldn't make economical sense to do so when they're at an optimal level. The tax alters the economics, which alters the optimal point, which alters the resulting steady state price. Every one of their competitors likely use offshored labor if those competitors are american, and thus they would also be sharing in the higher cost. According to game theory, they'll see that all their costs will rise, and they'll be comfortable letting their prices rise.
The trouble with these type of taxes is that the corporations simply pass it onto the customers. Unless a huge tax is placed on the products, it will still be cheaper overall to offshore labor and charge consumers more. There are three scenarios:
1) Low tax, say taxing the corporations for 20% of the difference between US cost of labor and offshored cost of labor. Consumers will pay more in the US, but get no new jobs, and are worse off. The government earns taxes and is better off. The corporations sell slightly fewer products due to slightly higher cost, and are slightly worse off.
2) Medium tax rate, say taxing the corporations for 80% of the difference between US cost of labor and offshored cost of labor. Consumers will pay more in the US, but get no new jobs, and are worse off. The government earns lots of taxes and is better off. The corporations sell fewer products due to higher cost, and are noticeably worse off.
3) High tax rate, say taxing the corporations for 120% of the difference between US cost of labor and offshored cost of labor. Consumers will pay more in the US, but get some new jobs, and are worse off unless they would be unemployed otherwise. The government earns very little in taxes and is barely better off. The corporations sell fewer products due to higher cost, and are much worse off.
Of course, the corporations lose less money if the goods in question are price inelastic (demand doesn't drop that much if price increases) and there's a social benefit from more employment and technical expertise, but the government gets the most money in case 2, where everyone except for the government is made worse off by the taxes. In real life, there's a huge time in cost and effort needed to move manufacturing back to the US, what with hiring new managers, building or reopening factories, establishing entirely new supply lines, canceling contracts, etc. Because of this, companies are unlikely to move manufacturing back to the US even if the tax makes hiring offshore workers the same as hiring American workers; the slight gain in quality and public respect is canceled out by the upfront cost of moving.
I for one sincerely doubt that the US government will tax corporations with a high enough rate to make most of them move back to the US, as the tax income is the lowest in that situation. Sadly, even if this knee jerk reaction goes through, social benefit to consumers and citizens will likely take a back seat to corporate interests and government revenue collection.
The speed of light is about 300,000,000 m/s, or 300,000 km/s. 17km/s is such a minuscule fraction of that speed that relativity doesn't come into play.
Fischer happened to be at a level where openings were a matter of players choosing the type of game they wanted to play. Was it open and aggressive? Closed and positional? Most players who think openings are a significant problem with chess likely haven't jumped that skill hurdle and are getting wrecked competitively because of it.
Starcraft sold huge numbers of copies and is still widely played in Korea at a very high level. Chess is a game known across the world and played by a vast number of people from every walk of life. They're successful games, and Blizzard seems to know a thing or two about making games require strategy (macro) and execution (micro.)
That's like saying chess appeals to folks who like memorizing openings and practicing until they're able to apply it better than the other loser they're playing up against. I'm sorry it takes practice and "skill" to not get stomped, but surely you wouldn't want to play with losers anyway eh?
At any decently high level, RTS games are a reactive series of attacks and counterattacks. Starcraft: Brood War in particular became popular in large part to how dynamic strategies became, and how much properly managing one's army matters.
Screwing with random units from game to game will just frustrate newbies and introduce an unneeded luck element.
How does giving the source code for an encryption algorithm equate with giving the sourcecode for the hardware?
For that matter, how the heck does giving someone the source code (controlling software, drivers, encryption, backup algorithms, etc) equate with giving them blueprints for your hardware?
So what you're trying to say is, Turbine chose to get double the gold reward from the quest by gaining 3 evil alignment points? Who wouldn't do that in their shoes?
Pedophiles who contact their victims over phone aren't banned from ever using a phone, yet apparently some judge thought it would be a good idea to prevent a system engineer of 10 years (from the article) from using a computer. A three judge panel concluded that "it is often necessary to use a computer to apply for a job, including at McDonald's and PETCO."
Why the heck do we have judges who are so out of touch with reality making these sorts of mistakes? If the guy can't use a computer and really wanted to meet kids online, what's to stop him from getting an iPhone or a Blackberry? Justice isn't about revenge, it's about upholding the law and meting out punishment and forcing rehabilitation onto perpetrators. Along the way it became about taking someone off the streets for a time while teaching them the best way to commit crimes and not get called. (It's called jail). And now, we've moved onto some judges literally telling criminals that even when they're not in jail, they can't be a part of modern society at all? [sarcasm] That'll work really well to keep pedos from kids [/sarcasm]
Since the actual summary seems to involve a fluff filled soundclip without anything useful, here's the run down of the article. 1) We first tried to make AIs that could think like us by inferring new knowledge from existing knowledge. 2) It turns out that teaching AIs to infer new ideas is really freaking hard. (Birds can fly because they have wings, mayflies can fly because they have wings, helicopters can... what??) 3) We turned to probability based AI creation: you feed the AI a ton of data (training sets) and it can go "based on training data, most helicopters can fly."
4) This guy, Noah Goodman of MIT, uses inferences with probability: he uses a programming language named "Church" so the computer can go "100% of birds in training set can fly. Thus, for a new bird there is a 100% chance it can fly" "Oh ok, penguins can't fly. Given a random bird, 90% chance it can fly. Given random bird with weight to wing span ratio of 5 or less, 80% chance." and so on and so forth. 5) Using a language that mixes two separate strategies to train AIs, a grand unified theory of ai (lower case) is somehow created.
6) ??? 7) When asked if sparrows can fly, the AI asks if it's a European sparrow or an African sparrow, and Skynet ensues.
Please consider the following from the article and the paper: 1) The vast majority of provinces have suspended vaccinations for people not over 65. These provinces likely have several individuals on their health boards with more qualifications than the average SD poster. 2) The sample size was 12 to 13 million people. The paper was written by a large group of very high level names, and the initial peer review results don't involve "sampling bias" or "conditional probability" attacks. 3) The vaccination DOES NOT boost the chances of normal flu, but DOES boosts the chances of swine flu. Accounting for age group and health differences, the trend still remains. People who have gotten vaccinated up to two years ago still show a statistically significant difference in their chance of catching swine flu. 4) Before the bandwagon leaves on the "people who are more likely to get sick are more likely to get vaccinated, accounting for the 100% increase", people who get vaccinations aren't twice as likely to catch flu as people who don't get vaccinations. There's definitely something going on here.
TLDR: This isn't some crackpot study or some anti-vaccination study. They noticed something weird, and like a good pack of scientists, are investigating it.
Speaking as a biomedical engineer, there are no significant systems that we know of that require a varying pressure of blood to function correctly. The pulse as the blood gets pumped stretches the arterial and capillary walls slightly, but that's about it. Very few cells in the body experience the effects of the pulsing pressure to begin with, and those tend to be ones that can function despite the pulse rather than because of it.
President Obama seems to conveniently overlook the large differences in educational structure and cultural attitude between the USA and the countries producing the highest test scores. Unless having a larger economy results in more money for education that is well spent on quality teachers and actually useful programs (looking at you, No Child Left Behind), there is no reason to expect the USA's students to do better on average than other countries. Throw in the fact that the highest scoring countries include those with either a pervasive cultural respect for learning or a relatively homogeneous population for whom centralized education control is beneficial, and one begins to wonder why President Obama expects the USA to be able to compete for the highest average.
On top of that, the USA produces a fair number of top notch scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and computer scientists right now, but those top notch individuals tend to be results of family pressure, personal ambition, or sheer-jealousy-inducing talent. Forcing those top level people into more hours of classes that tend to bore the living daylights out of them is not helpful. Mandating more school time for inner city or rural kids isn't going to be terribly useful for obvious reasons. The only students it might benefit are those who are capable and talented, but just a bit slow on picking up new concepts.
Of course, the biggest issue is what happens when you multiply the current school times by 25-30%. As best as I can remember, I spent about 9.5months in school in Virginia (a state in the USA.) If that time increases by 25%, that results in students spending roughtly 11.85 months in school. Alternately, students can spend 10 hours away from home for school, which I'm sure will work really well.
All in all, no thanks, the problem isn't the quantity of time spent in school, but rather the quality of said time.
The findings might be true for certain markets, but huge hits recently such as Bioshock and Mass Effect show pretty clearly that a good plot, solid setting, and good graphics are key to a blockbuster game. The study is based on reviews made by gamers, and thus tends to have a skewed sampling population. Certain segments of the market enjoy variety and social games. Other parts enjoy plot driven RPGs or gorgeous and engaging FPS games. Without doing an economic or financial analysis, judging what factors correlate most strongly to success is a rather large leap for this study.
Being a scientist is linked very closely to being educated at graduate level or higher. These views (acceptance of evolution, belief in human caused global warming, etc) are linked to the replacement of a prior belief (whatever the Bible implies) with a belief in a complicated theory that often doesn't make sense without serious study. A casual textbook explanation of evolution leads to questions of how complicated mechanisms such as sexual reproduction came into being, which leaves serious doubts about the validity of "scientific theories" in the minds of individuals with high school education.
Should we be surprised at all that increased levels of education help people critically analyze and accept/deny scientific theories? Should we still be surprised that the more educated someone is, the more liberal (generally speaking) their political views tend to be? So long as the cutting edge of science involves far more math or heavy statistical theory than the average human is educated in, the layman who doesn't take time to research issues will have to either take faith in the word of "experts", or take faith in the "word of God, as brought to you by $Preacher.)
The complaints are: 1. Licensing of the online games software disguised as a sale 2. Monthly fees ("fees") to play online games 3. Penalties for late payment fees 4. Interest charges for late payment fees 5. Charges while the online game account is suspended 6. Termination of the right to use the online game for late payment of the fees 7. User restrictions and conditions related to the online games 8. Termination of game data for late payment of the fees
Lets see... 1) Normal for mmos 2) Normal for mmos 3) Sounds like a credit card company 4) Sounds like a credit card company 5) Sounds like a scam company 6) Hello, if you don't pay for something, are you shocked that they cut it off? 7) Their game, their rules 8) Their game, their rules
All in all, this set of complaints seems to boil down to: "your billing department is confusing."
The article seems filled with examples of fuzzy logic. For example, it discusses how many "bad guys" force illegal immigrants/migrants to sell pirated DVDs on the street, thus showing an example of how innocent foreigners are harmed by the trade in illegal software/media. However... isn't this better than them being forced into being drug mules or prostitutes? Shouldn't they be trying to clarify that morality != legality rather than muddling the issue?
I suppose it's better than RIAA's tactics, but the claims of reducing piracy by 5% seem tenuous at best.
Most of these tax cuts are proposed with "marketable" in mind.
It's very easy to claim that someone with half a million dollars in revenue a year shouldn't be needing precious tax payer dollars. Whether the profit margin is large enough to keep up with the market or, as you say, tide them over for rainy days is a story that these individuals probably don't care about. If it sounds good on paper, then it's probably good enough to pass up the chain.
According to the article, these things can kill a dog in a single bite. Even given that venomous spiders the size of an adult male's fist aren't really photogenic, (won't have some "humane solution" protesters) what can the town do about them? Poison all the possible breeding areas? Make a civil patrol with bug zappers?
Should be interesting to see how it works out.
local climate-change grants. Begun last October, the administration found that this program lacks guidance, defined outcomes, and an effective means of targeting funds.
News about government initiatives seem to revolve around the passing of a bill and the subsequent appointment of a blue ribbon panel or the filling of a key post. We rarely get news of how well the initiatives are doing unless there is a scandal, but I can't help but feel that given how undermanned some agencies are, (1/3 to 2/3 of government bureaucrats don't do noticeable amounts of useful work) most new programs and initiatives lack guidance, defined outcomes, and an effective means of targeting funds.
So, if they're doing nothing wrong, why all the suggestions on ways to hide what you're doing?
Moral != legal
Immoral != illegal
Hiding possibly illegal activities != Hiding possibly immoral activties
Hint: People of both the innocent and guilty variety dislike going to jail.
In this case,I don't see how the folk belief in herbal cures (which actually do work sometimes from personal experience) affects the legitimacy of the research from the academic and corporate elite.
It's as facetious as saying that since the majority of the USA believes in the existence of God and in the existence of angels, the scientific legitimacy of the physics research coming out of it has to be highly dubious. The general beliefs of the populace do not in any way affect how scientifically valid a given piece of technology or research is. That validity is established through peer review and clinical testing.
Bashing that validity based on what the average American Joe or Chinese peasant believes is either suggesting that the race of the researchers is somehow causing them to think incorrectly (racism), suggesting that all the people of that nation/system share some sort of scientific incompetence(stereotype of ignorance), or suggesting that the subjects of research are lulled into recovering due to a placebo effect (a valid claim.)
In any case, doubting the research coming from a lab or company based purely on what peasants believe is as silly as doubting the reliably of the LHC based on how many citizens fear that it marks the end of the world.
That's just the point though; in the current market, Intel's influence >> AMD's influence. If Intel can keep doing this sort of stuff while AMD can't, it will continuously increase its market share until it becomes as dominant a player in the hardware field as Microsoft is now in the software field.
The EU apparently is extremely leery of letting a single corporation obtain that sort of leverage, and is trying to slap down the biggest competitor in a market whenever said competitor exhibits signs of wanting to abuse its near monopolistic leverage. That is to say, it's not the practices now that are truely troublesome, but the practices possible if Intel's market share grows that are making the regulators scared.
Off the top of my head, Intel makes about $6b a year in net income, so a 1.3b euro fine would be fairly hefty. Does anyone more familiar with Intel's finances want to comment on the effect the fine will have if carried out?
Slashdot Mirror
The type of jobs introduced by manufacturing in this day and age don't pay very well. Even if a megacorp moved all of their production into the US, they might add 20,000 jobs. In a nation with 130+million employees, the increase in domestic demand is negligible. An increase in cost per product of 5%, however, is noticeable by almost every consumer.
To h4rr4r who posted below this comment who says that if "you have a cost and pass it on, your prices go up," that's sort of the definition of passing a cost on. Everyone and anyone can raise prices, it just wouldn't make economical sense to do so when they're at an optimal level. The tax alters the economics, which alters the optimal point, which alters the resulting steady state price. Every one of their competitors likely use offshored labor if those competitors are american, and thus they would also be sharing in the higher cost. According to game theory, they'll see that all their costs will rise, and they'll be comfortable letting their prices rise.
The trouble with these type of taxes is that the corporations simply pass it onto the customers. Unless a huge tax is placed on the products, it will still be cheaper overall to offshore labor and charge consumers more. There are three scenarios:
1) Low tax, say taxing the corporations for 20% of the difference between US cost of labor and offshored cost of labor. Consumers will pay more in the US, but get no new jobs, and are worse off. The government earns taxes and is better off. The corporations sell slightly fewer products due to slightly higher cost, and are slightly worse off.
2) Medium tax rate, say taxing the corporations for 80% of the difference between US cost of labor and offshored cost of labor. Consumers will pay more in the US, but get no new jobs, and are worse off. The government earns lots of taxes and is better off. The corporations sell fewer products due to higher cost, and are noticeably worse off.
3) High tax rate, say taxing the corporations for 120% of the difference between US cost of labor and offshored cost of labor. Consumers will pay more in the US, but get some new jobs, and are worse off unless they would be unemployed otherwise. The government earns very little in taxes and is barely better off. The corporations sell fewer products due to higher cost, and are much worse off.
Of course, the corporations lose less money if the goods in question are price inelastic (demand doesn't drop that much if price increases) and there's a social benefit from more employment and technical expertise, but the government gets the most money in case 2, where everyone except for the government is made worse off by the taxes. In real life, there's a huge time in cost and effort needed to move manufacturing back to the US, what with hiring new managers, building or reopening factories, establishing entirely new supply lines, canceling contracts, etc. Because of this, companies are unlikely to move manufacturing back to the US even if the tax makes hiring offshore workers the same as hiring American workers; the slight gain in quality and public respect is canceled out by the upfront cost of moving.
I for one sincerely doubt that the US government will tax corporations with a high enough rate to make most of them move back to the US, as the tax income is the lowest in that situation. Sadly, even if this knee jerk reaction goes through, social benefit to consumers and citizens will likely take a back seat to corporate interests and government revenue collection.
The probe obviously got rick-rolled during the approach vector.
The speed of light is about 300,000,000 m/s, or 300,000 km/s. 17km/s is such a minuscule fraction of that speed that relativity doesn't come into play.
Fischer happened to be at a level where openings were a matter of players choosing the type of game they wanted to play. Was it open and aggressive? Closed and positional? Most players who think openings are a significant problem with chess likely haven't jumped that skill hurdle and are getting wrecked competitively because of it.
Starcraft sold huge numbers of copies and is still widely played in Korea at a very high level. Chess is a game known across the world and played by a vast number of people from every walk of life. They're successful games, and Blizzard seems to know a thing or two about making games require strategy (macro) and execution (micro.)
That's like saying chess appeals to folks who like memorizing openings and practicing until they're able to apply it better than the other loser they're playing up against. I'm sorry it takes practice and "skill" to not get stomped, but surely you wouldn't want to play with losers anyway eh?
At any decently high level, RTS games are a reactive series of attacks and counterattacks. Starcraft: Brood War in particular became popular in large part to how dynamic strategies became, and how much properly managing one's army matters.
Screwing with random units from game to game will just frustrate newbies and introduce an unneeded luck element.
How does giving the source code for an encryption algorithm equate with giving the sourcecode for the hardware?
For that matter, how the heck does giving someone the source code (controlling software, drivers, encryption, backup algorithms, etc) equate with giving them blueprints for your hardware?
Mindless Chinabashing at its best.
We surely wouldn't want to expose the children to any media influences that glorify violence and fighting, now would we?
So what you're trying to say is, Turbine chose to get double the gold reward from the quest by gaining 3 evil alignment points? Who wouldn't do that in their shoes?
Pedophiles who contact their victims over phone aren't banned from ever using a phone, yet apparently some judge thought it would be a good idea to prevent a system engineer of 10 years (from the article) from using a computer. A three judge panel concluded that "it is often necessary to use a computer to apply for a job, including at McDonald's and PETCO."
Why the heck do we have judges who are so out of touch with reality making these sorts of mistakes? If the guy can't use a computer and really wanted to meet kids online, what's to stop him from getting an iPhone or a Blackberry? Justice isn't about revenge, it's about upholding the law and meting out punishment and forcing rehabilitation onto perpetrators. Along the way it became about taking someone off the streets for a time while teaching them the best way to commit crimes and not get called. (It's called jail). And now, we've moved onto some judges literally telling criminals that even when they're not in jail, they can't be a part of modern society at all? [sarcasm] That'll work really well to keep pedos from kids [/sarcasm]
Since the actual summary seems to involve a fluff filled soundclip without anything useful, here's the run down of the article.
1) We first tried to make AIs that could think like us by inferring new knowledge from existing knowledge.
2) It turns out that teaching AIs to infer new ideas is really freaking hard. (Birds can fly because they have wings, mayflies can fly because they have wings, helicopters can... what??)
3) We turned to probability based AI creation: you feed the AI a ton of data (training sets) and it can go "based on training data, most helicopters can fly."
4) This guy, Noah Goodman of MIT, uses inferences with probability: he uses a programming language named "Church" so the computer can go
"100% of birds in training set can fly. Thus, for a new bird there is a 100% chance it can fly"
"Oh ok, penguins can't fly. Given a random bird, 90% chance it can fly. Given random bird with weight to wing span ratio of 5 or less, 80% chance." and so on and so forth.
5) Using a language that mixes two separate strategies to train AIs, a grand unified theory of ai (lower case) is somehow created.
6) ???
7) When asked if sparrows can fly, the AI asks if it's a European sparrow or an African sparrow, and Skynet ensues.
Please consider the following from the article and the paper:
1) The vast majority of provinces have suspended vaccinations for people not over 65. These provinces likely have several individuals on their health boards with more qualifications than the average SD poster.
2) The sample size was 12 to 13 million people. The paper was written by a large group of very high level names, and the initial peer review results don't involve "sampling bias" or "conditional probability" attacks.
3) The vaccination DOES NOT boost the chances of normal flu, but DOES boosts the chances of swine flu. Accounting for age group and health differences, the trend still remains. People who have gotten vaccinated up to two years ago still show a statistically significant difference in their chance of catching swine flu.
4) Before the bandwagon leaves on the "people who are more likely to get sick are more likely to get vaccinated, accounting for the 100% increase", people who get vaccinations aren't twice as likely to catch flu as people who don't get vaccinations. There's definitely something going on here.
TLDR: This isn't some crackpot study or some anti-vaccination study. They noticed something weird, and like a good pack of scientists, are investigating it.
Speaking as a biomedical engineer, there are no significant systems that we know of that require a varying pressure of blood to function correctly. The pulse as the blood gets pumped stretches the arterial and capillary walls slightly, but that's about it. Very few cells in the body experience the effects of the pulsing pressure to begin with, and those tend to be ones that can function despite the pulse rather than because of it.
President Obama seems to conveniently overlook the large differences in educational structure and cultural attitude between the USA and the countries producing the highest test scores. Unless having a larger economy results in more money for education that is well spent on quality teachers and actually useful programs (looking at you, No Child Left Behind), there is no reason to expect the USA's students to do better on average than other countries. Throw in the fact that the highest scoring countries include those with either a pervasive cultural respect for learning or a relatively homogeneous population for whom centralized education control is beneficial, and one begins to wonder why President Obama expects the USA to be able to compete for the highest average.
On top of that, the USA produces a fair number of top notch scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and computer scientists right now, but those top notch individuals tend to be results of family pressure, personal ambition, or sheer-jealousy-inducing talent. Forcing those top level people into more hours of classes that tend to bore the living daylights out of them is not helpful. Mandating more school time for inner city or rural kids isn't going to be terribly useful for obvious reasons. The only students it might benefit are those who are capable and talented, but just a bit slow on picking up new concepts.
Of course, the biggest issue is what happens when you multiply the current school times by 25-30%. As best as I can remember, I spent about 9.5months in school in Virginia (a state in the USA.) If that time increases by 25%, that results in students spending roughtly 11.85 months in school. Alternately, students can spend 10 hours away from home for school, which I'm sure will work really well.
All in all, no thanks, the problem isn't the quantity of time spent in school, but rather the quality of said time.
The findings might be true for certain markets, but huge hits recently such as Bioshock and Mass Effect show pretty clearly that a good plot, solid setting, and good graphics are key to a blockbuster game. The study is based on reviews made by gamers, and thus tends to have a skewed sampling population. Certain segments of the market enjoy variety and social games. Other parts enjoy plot driven RPGs or gorgeous and engaging FPS games. Without doing an economic or financial analysis, judging what factors correlate most strongly to success is a rather large leap for this study.
Being a scientist is linked very closely to being educated at graduate level or higher. These views (acceptance of evolution, belief in human caused global warming, etc) are linked to the replacement of a prior belief (whatever the Bible implies) with a belief in a complicated theory that often doesn't make sense without serious study. A casual textbook explanation of evolution leads to questions of how complicated mechanisms such as sexual reproduction came into being, which leaves serious doubts about the validity of "scientific theories" in the minds of individuals with high school education.
Should we be surprised at all that increased levels of education help people critically analyze and accept/deny scientific theories? Should we still be surprised that the more educated someone is, the more liberal (generally speaking) their political views tend to be? So long as the cutting edge of science involves far more math or heavy statistical theory than the average human is educated in, the layman who doesn't take time to research issues will have to either take faith in the word of "experts", or take faith in the "word of God, as brought to you by $Preacher.)
The complaints are:
1. Licensing of the online games software disguised as a sale
2. Monthly fees ("fees") to play online games
3. Penalties for late payment fees
4. Interest charges for late payment fees
5. Charges while the online game account is suspended
6. Termination of the right to use the online game for late payment of the fees
7. User restrictions and conditions related to the online games
8. Termination of game data for late payment of the fees
Lets see...
1) Normal for mmos
2) Normal for mmos
3) Sounds like a credit card company
4) Sounds like a credit card company
5) Sounds like a scam company
6) Hello, if you don't pay for something, are you shocked that they cut it off?
7) Their game, their rules
8) Their game, their rules
All in all, this set of complaints seems to boil down to: "your billing department is confusing."
The article seems filled with examples of fuzzy logic. For example, it discusses how many "bad guys" force illegal immigrants/migrants to sell pirated DVDs on the street, thus showing an example of how innocent foreigners are harmed by the trade in illegal software/media. However... isn't this better than them being forced into being drug mules or prostitutes? Shouldn't they be trying to clarify that morality != legality rather than muddling the issue?
I suppose it's better than RIAA's tactics, but the claims of reducing piracy by 5% seem tenuous at best.
Indeed, the game's funding got halted just today.
Most of these tax cuts are proposed with "marketable" in mind.
It's very easy to claim that someone with half a million dollars in revenue a year shouldn't be needing precious tax payer dollars. Whether the profit margin is large enough to keep up with the market or, as you say, tide them over for rainy days is a story that these individuals probably don't care about. If it sounds good on paper, then it's probably good enough to pass up the chain.
According to the article, these things can kill a dog in a single bite. Even given that venomous spiders the size of an adult male's fist aren't really photogenic, (won't have some "humane solution" protesters) what can the town do about them? Poison all the possible breeding areas? Make a civil patrol with bug zappers? Should be interesting to see how it works out.
News about government initiatives seem to revolve around the passing of a bill and the subsequent appointment of a blue ribbon panel or the filling of a key post. We rarely get news of how well the initiatives are doing unless there is a scandal, but I can't help but feel that given how undermanned some agencies are, (1/3 to 2/3 of government bureaucrats don't do noticeable amounts of useful work) most new programs and initiatives lack guidance, defined outcomes, and an effective means of targeting funds.
Moral != legal
Immoral != illegal
Hiding possibly illegal activities != Hiding possibly immoral activties
Hint: People of both the innocent and guilty variety dislike going to jail.
In this case,I don't see how the folk belief in herbal cures (which actually do work sometimes from personal experience) affects the legitimacy of the research from the academic and corporate elite. It's as facetious as saying that since the majority of the USA believes in the existence of God and in the existence of angels, the scientific legitimacy of the physics research coming out of it has to be highly dubious. The general beliefs of the populace do not in any way affect how scientifically valid a given piece of technology or research is. That validity is established through peer review and clinical testing. Bashing that validity based on what the average American Joe or Chinese peasant believes is either suggesting that the race of the researchers is somehow causing them to think incorrectly (racism), suggesting that all the people of that nation/system share some sort of scientific incompetence(stereotype of ignorance), or suggesting that the subjects of research are lulled into recovering due to a placebo effect (a valid claim.) In any case, doubting the research coming from a lab or company based purely on what peasants believe is as silly as doubting the reliably of the LHC based on how many citizens fear that it marks the end of the world.
That's just the point though; in the current market, Intel's influence >> AMD's influence. If Intel can keep doing this sort of stuff while AMD can't, it will continuously increase its market share until it becomes as dominant a player in the hardware field as Microsoft is now in the software field.
The EU apparently is extremely leery of letting a single corporation obtain that sort of leverage, and is trying to slap down the biggest competitor in a market whenever said competitor exhibits signs of wanting to abuse its near monopolistic leverage. That is to say, it's not the practices now that are truely troublesome, but the practices possible if Intel's market share grows that are making the regulators scared.
Off the top of my head, Intel makes about $6b a year in net income, so a 1.3b euro fine would be fairly hefty. Does anyone more familiar with Intel's finances want to comment on the effect the fine will have if carried out?