I don't think there is enough information to know whether this is a payroll error after the fact or an error made as part of the severance contract. If the amount was specified in the severance contract, then it is legally binding and Microsoft could be held to it. If there was an amount in the severance contract that was lower than what the former employees got, then the employees would likely be legally obligated to pay the excess back. If the amount or how the amount would be calculated wasn't specified, then there is a gray area which depends on the circumstances. If there was an actual check presented with the severance contract, then the error probably doesn't matter (within reason) because the employee agreed to the severance contract as part of the package. When you execute a contract and make payment based on a contract neither party has a right to unilaterally change the terms after the fact. So, I think there are some facts missing and I hope the facts can be clarified, because without this crucial detail it is hard to make sense of this story.
I agree somewhat. The free market is only applicable when there isn't a natural monopoly. Wired telecommunications is limited by physical space on telephone poles and under ground.
You wouldn't call for competition on how many different road providers can pave up to your house. Or how many water utilities you can hook your house up to. Natural monopolies are where government does best and is completely necessary. Instead of seeking more companies to string their own lines along the public right of way, local governments should own the lines and be bidding out the contracts to provide the maintenance and the Internet Service to connect to.
Just because the company used social engineering instead of technical exploits to put unwanted software on people's computers doesn't make it ethical. They were piggybacking their adware software on screensaver software or little widgets and then hiding that extra unwanted software on your system so it wasn't clear where it was coming from. Putting something in the EULA that you click through shouldn't cover this.
You had to go to some web site, download an uninstaller, take a short survey about why they were getting rid of us, and then it would actually remove us and we would also leave a Registry key to make sure we didnâ(TM)t reinstall.
That isn't like any uninstaller I have ever heard of, basically that means that they hid software on your machine and only the people that somehow realized what precisely was causing ads to pop up randomly on your screen could then follow some really obscure and tedious process to remove the software. That isn't an ethical practice.
Wind turbine -- the efficiency of the turbine is not something as important since we are not running out of wind, what is of importance is the total cost for the lenght of time it can be used at a specific power output.
Your point is taken, but as a practical matter we do in fact run out of wind quite often
Interesting, would need to replace all our intersections with rotaries though. Even still I don't see how you avoid stops when we reach a certain volume.
But ideas which require changes to the entire "system" before being practical for even one person are not ones that are likely to succeed.
The only countries for which this will be 'easy' are those able to tap geothermal reserves.
And those that have a huge stockpile of fissile material... All those nukes sitting around are going to be worth more than their weight in gold when we need to fuel all the new nuclear power generators.
What about desalination and water pipelines into the desert? Could mitigate sea level rise if done a large enough scale and the new shallow seas, say in North Africa and on a smaller scale in the American Southwest, could be used for fishing.
They are talking about doing something similar (without the desalination) to save the dead sea in Israel. Same could be done to refill the Aral Sea and make it productive again.
Yes the cost would be billions, but it potentially solve several problems at the same time.
Here in Massachusetts, US we seem to have the worst of both worlds we have high income taxes and then we are required to buy health insurance else get assessed an additional tax and still don't get any health benefits. 40% for people of middle income (5.3% state, effective 20% depending on the progressive bracket federal, social security 12.4% (half is hidden), and 2.9% for medicare (half is hidden)... medicare is what everyone over 65 has for free health care). House property taxes about $4000 per year for the average small house. And 5% sales tax on everything except clothing and food. Oh and taxes on gasoline, electricity and telephone. Excise tax on your car about $120 depending on how new it is. And I almost forgot the "sin" taxes on cigarettes and alcohol. I also tend to buy a lottery ticket every once in a while, which is about a billion dollars for this state each year, but since that is actually a voluntary contribution then I won't count that. And I won't count all the licensing and other "fees" that are a bit more indirect.
So, then on top of all that taxation we have to pay $4000 to $5000 on individual health insurance ($10-12k for a family) else we get "fined" an additional thousand dollars on our taxes and don't get any health benefits.
I've tried to figure out what people in other countries are paying in taxes, but it seems that governments worldwide have a talent for covering up the real cost of government. Percentage of GDP is a complete joke of a metric when the US is propping up our economy's GDP with half a trillion dollars a year in borrowing much of which comes from other countries.
The actual governmental tax burden on the average citizen is probably around 50%, but it could be much higher once you consider there is a sizable tax already built into the prices of many of the products and services we buy.
The difference is in how the system treats poor people. For the average Joe with a decent income, it works out about the same under either system.
The poor get free medical care in the US, at least in many states, so there is no difference there. It is the middle income people that find themselves vulnerable to suddenly being without a paycheck and unable to afford the $400 a month insurance premium or $1000 per month for a family. And if you are very unlucky you find yourself going to the hospital where a stay for anything serious can leave you with thousands or tens of thousands in medical bills which you can't pay because you are out of work... often because you are sick.
It is the lower middle income that suffer the most, the ones that actually try to make their own living but face a "system" arrayed against them improving their own lives.
"Actions speak louder than words", is a phrase that more people should learn and apply to real life. Then they would look far less stupid than they do.
When the Republicans came to power for the first time in modern history in the 1990s we had a fiscally responsible congress which had almost balanced the budget by the end of the decade. Since the Democrats came back to power two years ago we have had record budget deficits.
If anything the lesson here is that Republicans are just as corruptible as the Democrats and after 10 years in power they succumbed to lobbyists and special interests just as the Democrats had. But fiscal restraint went pretty well for a while after the 1994 mid term elections.
Every spending plan in the last two years that Bush has proposed has been increased by Congress. They have thrown fiscal responsibility out the window, i suppose figuring they can just get what they want and blame Bush.
But when you start with a fiscally irresponsible president and have a congress that adds to it, then you have a recipe for fiscal disaster. Neither party can duck their responsibility for the mess they have made of our government.
Yet that's the entirety of McCain's economic plan. How else does he plan on paying for his war against Iran, and the perpetual occupation of Iraq?
I would give Obama a point in his favor except he wants to escalate America's other war. He doesn't want to bring our troops home he just wants to send them over to Afghanistan and to start into Pakistan. Seems like a wash both fiscally and strategically between the two candidates.
So, you have two candidates that are both going to still have huge deficits and huge government bureaucracies, have us embroiled in foreign wars in perpetuity with the only difference being which war. Obama's tax increases on the higher income people doesn't bother me and it will raise some extra cash, but it won't solve our structural deficits without seriously restraining spending.
Say his job was to maintain medical records and he pulled records for someone he wasn't treating - no different, ethically, from tazering somoene who didn't need it.
You lost me there. I'd say intentionally inflicting physical pain on someone is very much different, ethically, than looking over a medical record without authorization. Maybe you mean professional ethics, in which case I might agree that it is a similar line to cross.
I know medical professionals are repeatedly told what a terrible thing violating someone's privacy can be, but physical assault is a step above that in my book.
Swing voters are stupid. If they weren't stupid, they wouldn't have trouble deciding who to support.
Because clearly a reasoned voter could easily choose between one party that wants government out of your pocket book but in your womb and the other party that wants government out of your womb but in just about every other personal decision.
If your concern is the actual function of government rather than some inane rhetoric, then there is nothing to suggest that either candidate will really restrain spending much or that personal liberties will be particularly respected.
Both candidates have tax plans that would have the same effect on most tax payers. The biggest difference is that Obama would tax every family making over $250,000 about 20% more via social security (including the "employer contribution"... as if the employer isn't contributing your whole salary) and Obama would be raising the rates on the highest tax bracket.
It is a complete trade off. You either choose to restrain the economy in the short term via higher taxation on the people that have/had enough money to actually provide others with jobs. Or you keep the taxes near where they are and try to restrain government spending in order to stabilize the value of our currency and thus keep hyper-inflation in check.
Since our international credit line is probably not going to get extended perpetually or much longer, neither candidate will have the option to simply borrow our way out of this like Bush has done.
Do you honestly think that we should be teaching creationism in science class?
Sure, and then examining exactly why it is not a scientifically valid theory... because it cannot be ruled out by observation. Creating a "taboo" is how these ideas gain traction. Just as I would say to compare other creation stories to theories on the big bang. I don't think she was suggesting we confront creationism in the classroom.
If you teach any scientific theory you have to be willing to attack it with reason otherwise it isn't science. It isn't good enough to say "this is the way it is" or "this was the way it was". Otherwise it isn't science no matter what you are teaching.
I can see the danger in high school teachers tackling real science, which is probably something they can barely comprehend in most cases. And the dangers of modern creationism or "Intelligent Design" is that they are skillfully formulated to fill in the gray areas of science with untestable ideas.
I think intelligent designers have it backwards though. Intelligence is an emergent property of the Universe as proven by ourselves and other intelligent creatures. In that this property emerges as a function of the natural world doesn't mean there was a primary intelligence starting it all.
But we can safely say that butterfly wings and eyes although beautiful examples of complex form and function are explainable through the thoroughly observed and well understood process of natural selection.
That the only examples of "intelligent design" in nature have been achieved through genetic engineering or selective breeding. But these are examples of an emergent intelligence acting to influence the "design" of another creature. Not evidence of God interceding from outside the natural world in a supernatural way.
So yes, current scientific understanding allows that aliens could have come to earth one day and said "Hmm I think that monkey needs a bigger brain" or "I'd really like a bigger more colorful wing on that insect" and fiddled with the DNA accordingly. It could even allow for the idea that every evolutionary step along the way up until this point could have been historically achieved by some agent of intelligence.
But today we can see natural selection in the lab. And we can document it in the field. We can describe the chemical processes that lead to it with some great precision. And there is no fact based reason to believe that anything other than the current process of natural selection was the predominant means and cause of evolution.
If a teacher can't openly, reasonably and dispassionately discuss this in the classroom or the kids can't eventually wrap their heads around it, then they should be in a remedial classroom.
Time to dust off the Apollo capsule design and mount it on top of a Delta or Atlas then?
I think that is the greater question, the shock absorbers are probably a reasonable engineering decision, but we already have the Atlas V which has a payload capacity approximately the same as this new rocket and the Delta IV has a greater payload capacity. NASA sold this new rocket as using "of the shelf" components from the shuttle programs, but as the engineering happens it is clearly a whole new bird.
Probably too late in the process to second guess unless there are serious technical problems or cost over runs. Might have been better to have a good old fashioned competitive process.
Fair tax isn't constitutional, so there would have to be a constitutional amendment. And then we would be stuck with the income tax in addition, unless the income tax amendment was repealed at the same time.
There are some things good about the national sales tax idea, but there is no way a constitutional amendment is getting passed.
I don't think "wealth" means what you think it means. In a free market or capitalist society wealth is largely "the means of production". Say for instance I own a factory which has a value of 1 million dollars. If I owed more in taxes on the factory each year than I make in income, then there won't be any factory. Wealth is a dumb measure for taxation. Income has problems too, but it is much better than trying to measure "wealth".
Even the flat tax is a progressive tax. I haven't heard any serious flat tax proposal that doesn't include a large personal exemption or deduction of the first $15 or $20k in salary. I would even put it at $25 or $30k and index it to inflation.
That way your actually living expenses are tax free, but only that money that is above that gets taxed.
Problem with having tax brackets that are not indexed to inflation and are set at middle class levels is that year after year you have more and more middle income people falling into higher tax brackets and therefore getting a bigger slice of their lives getting taxed. The progressive income tax therefore is just a built in tax increase without the political accountability. Increased taxation without representation.
This is bad for government too because it gets them used to having budgets that grow faster than inflation. Government can't grow ahead of the rest of the economy any more than any other industry. And when that bubble bursts there are usually bullets that start flying.
Brushing off the NIMBY problem is absurd. It is the greatest cost and problem. France provides most of its electricity with nuclear and it isn't going bankrupt... at least not because of nuclear power. The US stopped building nuclear plants because of the irrational fear caused by 3 mile island and the return of cheap oil.
If cheap oil is gone, then we either suffer the consequences of not having enough heat and electricity or we go nuclear. There is no other viable option.
And for the most part we got out of Saudi Arabia after 9/11 and the Iraq invasion... yet somehow that withdrawal wasn't seen as giving in to terrorism.
Slashdot Mirror
It is believed that during the big bang areas of space expanded faster than the speed of light, so does this disprove the big bang theory also?
I don't think there is enough information to know whether this is a payroll error after the fact or an error made as part of the severance contract. If the amount was specified in the severance contract, then it is legally binding and Microsoft could be held to it. If there was an amount in the severance contract that was lower than what the former employees got, then the employees would likely be legally obligated to pay the excess back. If the amount or how the amount would be calculated wasn't specified, then there is a gray area which depends on the circumstances. If there was an actual check presented with the severance contract, then the error probably doesn't matter (within reason) because the employee agreed to the severance contract as part of the package. When you execute a contract and make payment based on a contract neither party has a right to unilaterally change the terms after the fact. So, I think there are some facts missing and I hope the facts can be clarified, because without this crucial detail it is hard to make sense of this story.
I agree somewhat. The free market is only applicable when there isn't a natural monopoly. Wired telecommunications is limited by physical space on telephone poles and under ground.
You wouldn't call for competition on how many different road providers can pave up to your house. Or how many water utilities you can hook your house up to. Natural monopolies are where government does best and is completely necessary. Instead of seeking more companies to string their own lines along the public right of way, local governments should own the lines and be bidding out the contracts to provide the maintenance and the Internet Service to connect to.
Just because the company used social engineering instead of technical exploits to put unwanted software on people's computers doesn't make it ethical. They were piggybacking their adware software on screensaver software or little widgets and then hiding that extra unwanted software on your system so it wasn't clear where it was coming from. Putting something in the EULA that you click through shouldn't cover this.
You had to go to some web site, download an uninstaller, take a short survey about why they were getting rid of us, and then it would actually remove us and we would also leave a Registry key to make sure we didnâ(TM)t reinstall.
That isn't like any uninstaller I have ever heard of, basically that means that they hid software on your machine and only the people that somehow realized what precisely was causing ads to pop up randomly on your screen could then follow some really obscure and tedious process to remove the software. That isn't an ethical practice.
Wind turbine -- the efficiency of the turbine is not something as important since we are not running out of wind, what is of importance is the total cost for the lenght of time it can be used at a specific power output.
Your point is taken, but as a practical matter we do in fact run out of wind quite often
Interesting, would need to replace all our intersections with rotaries though. Even still I don't see how you avoid stops when we reach a certain volume.
But ideas which require changes to the entire "system" before being practical for even one person are not ones that are likely to succeed.
The only countries for which this will be 'easy' are those able to tap geothermal reserves.
And those that have a huge stockpile of fissile material... All those nukes sitting around are going to be worth more than their weight in gold when we need to fuel all the new nuclear power generators.
What about desalination and water pipelines into the desert? Could mitigate sea level rise if done a large enough scale and the new shallow seas, say in North Africa and on a smaller scale in the American Southwest, could be used for fishing.
They are talking about doing something similar (without the desalination) to save the dead sea in Israel. Same could be done to refill the Aral Sea and make it productive again.
Yes the cost would be billions, but it potentially solve several problems at the same time.
Disadvantages: higher income tax than the US.
You sure about that?
Here in Massachusetts, US we seem to have the worst of both worlds we have high income taxes and then we are required to buy health insurance else get assessed an additional tax and still don't get any health benefits. 40% for people of middle income (5.3% state, effective 20% depending on the progressive bracket federal, social security 12.4% (half is hidden), and 2.9% for medicare (half is hidden)... medicare is what everyone over 65 has for free health care). House property taxes about $4000 per year for the average small house. And 5% sales tax on everything except clothing and food. Oh and taxes on gasoline, electricity and telephone. Excise tax on your car about $120 depending on how new it is. And I almost forgot the "sin" taxes on cigarettes and alcohol. I also tend to buy a lottery ticket every once in a while, which is about a billion dollars for this state each year, but since that is actually a voluntary contribution then I won't count that. And I won't count all the licensing and other "fees" that are a bit more indirect.
So, then on top of all that taxation we have to pay $4000 to $5000 on individual health insurance ($10-12k for a family) else we get "fined" an additional thousand dollars on our taxes and don't get any health benefits.
I've tried to figure out what people in other countries are paying in taxes, but it seems that governments worldwide have a talent for covering up the real cost of government. Percentage of GDP is a complete joke of a metric when the US is propping up our economy's GDP with half a trillion dollars a year in borrowing much of which comes from other countries.
The actual governmental tax burden on the average citizen is probably around 50%, but it could be much higher once you consider there is a sizable tax already built into the prices of many of the products and services we buy.
The difference is in how the system treats poor people. For the average Joe with a decent income, it works out about the same under either system.
The poor get free medical care in the US, at least in many states, so there is no difference there. It is the middle income people that find themselves vulnerable to suddenly being without a paycheck and unable to afford the $400 a month insurance premium or $1000 per month for a family. And if you are very unlucky you find yourself going to the hospital where a stay for anything serious can leave you with thousands or tens of thousands in medical bills which you can't pay because you are out of work... often because you are sick.
It is the lower middle income that suffer the most, the ones that actually try to make their own living but face a "system" arrayed against them improving their own lives.
"Actions speak louder than words", is a phrase that more people should learn and apply to real life. Then they would look far less stupid than they do.
When the Republicans came to power for the first time in modern history in the 1990s we had a fiscally responsible congress which had almost balanced the budget by the end of the decade. Since the Democrats came back to power two years ago we have had record budget deficits.
If anything the lesson here is that Republicans are just as corruptible as the Democrats and after 10 years in power they succumbed to lobbyists and special interests just as the Democrats had. But fiscal restraint went pretty well for a while after the 1994 mid term elections.
Every spending plan in the last two years that Bush has proposed has been increased by Congress. They have thrown fiscal responsibility out the window, i suppose figuring they can just get what they want and blame Bush.
But when you start with a fiscally irresponsible president and have a congress that adds to it, then you have a recipe for fiscal disaster. Neither party can duck their responsibility for the mess they have made of our government.
Yet that's the entirety of McCain's economic plan. How else does he plan on paying for his war against Iran, and the perpetual occupation of Iraq?
I would give Obama a point in his favor except he wants to escalate America's other war. He doesn't want to bring our troops home he just wants to send them over to Afghanistan and to start into Pakistan. Seems like a wash both fiscally and strategically between the two candidates.
So, you have two candidates that are both going to still have huge deficits and huge government bureaucracies, have us embroiled in foreign wars in perpetuity with the only difference being which war. Obama's tax increases on the higher income people doesn't bother me and it will raise some extra cash, but it won't solve our structural deficits without seriously restraining spending.
Say his job was to maintain medical records and he pulled records for someone he wasn't treating - no different, ethically, from tazering somoene who didn't need it.
You lost me there. I'd say intentionally inflicting physical pain on someone is very much different, ethically, than looking over a medical record without authorization. Maybe you mean professional ethics, in which case I might agree that it is a similar line to cross.
I know medical professionals are repeatedly told what a terrible thing violating someone's privacy can be, but physical assault is a step above that in my book.
Swing voters are stupid. If they weren't stupid, they wouldn't have trouble deciding who to support.
Because clearly a reasoned voter could easily choose between one party that wants government out of your pocket book but in your womb and the other party that wants government out of your womb but in just about every other personal decision.
If your concern is the actual function of government rather than some inane rhetoric, then there is nothing to suggest that either candidate will really restrain spending much or that personal liberties will be particularly respected.
Both candidates have tax plans that would have the same effect on most tax payers. The biggest difference is that Obama would tax every family making over $250,000 about 20% more via social security (including the "employer contribution"... as if the employer isn't contributing your whole salary) and Obama would be raising the rates on the highest tax bracket.
It is a complete trade off. You either choose to restrain the economy in the short term via higher taxation on the people that have/had enough money to actually provide others with jobs. Or you keep the taxes near where they are and try to restrain government spending in order to stabilize the value of our currency and thus keep hyper-inflation in check.
Since our international credit line is probably not going to get extended perpetually or much longer, neither candidate will have the option to simply borrow our way out of this like Bush has done.
Do you honestly think that we should be teaching creationism in science class?
Sure, and then examining exactly why it is not a scientifically valid theory... because it cannot be ruled out by observation. Creating a "taboo" is how these ideas gain traction. Just as I would say to compare other creation stories to theories on the big bang. I don't think she was suggesting we confront creationism in the classroom.
If you teach any scientific theory you have to be willing to attack it with reason otherwise it isn't science. It isn't good enough to say "this is the way it is" or "this was the way it was". Otherwise it isn't science no matter what you are teaching.
I can see the danger in high school teachers tackling real science, which is probably something they can barely comprehend in most cases. And the dangers of modern creationism or "Intelligent Design" is that they are skillfully formulated to fill in the gray areas of science with untestable ideas.
I think intelligent designers have it backwards though. Intelligence is an emergent property of the Universe as proven by ourselves and other intelligent creatures. In that this property emerges as a function of the natural world doesn't mean there was a primary intelligence starting it all.
But we can safely say that butterfly wings and eyes although beautiful examples of complex form and function are explainable through the thoroughly observed and well understood process of natural selection.
That the only examples of "intelligent design" in nature have been achieved through genetic engineering or selective breeding. But these are examples of an emergent intelligence acting to influence the "design" of another creature. Not evidence of God interceding from outside the natural world in a supernatural way.
So yes, current scientific understanding allows that aliens could have come to earth one day and said "Hmm I think that monkey needs a bigger brain" or "I'd really like a bigger more colorful wing on that insect" and fiddled with the DNA accordingly. It could even allow for the idea that every evolutionary step along the way up until this point could have been historically achieved by some agent of intelligence.
But today we can see natural selection in the lab. And we can document it in the field. We can describe the chemical processes that lead to it with some great precision. And there is no fact based reason to believe that anything other than the current process of natural selection was the predominant means and cause of evolution.
If a teacher can't openly, reasonably and dispassionately discuss this in the classroom or the kids can't eventually wrap their heads around it, then they should be in a remedial classroom.
Time to dust off the Apollo capsule design and mount it on top of a Delta or Atlas then?
I think that is the greater question, the shock absorbers are probably a reasonable engineering decision, but we already have the Atlas V which has a payload capacity approximately the same as this new rocket and the Delta IV has a greater payload capacity. NASA sold this new rocket as using "of the shelf" components from the shuttle programs, but as the engineering happens it is clearly a whole new bird.
Probably too late in the process to second guess unless there are serious technical problems or cost over runs. Might have been better to have a good old fashioned competitive process.
Not with the meager budget they're getting.
You mean the engineers are paid less for coming up with a bad idea?
Fair tax isn't constitutional, so there would have to be a constitutional amendment. And then we would be stuck with the income tax in addition, unless the income tax amendment was repealed at the same time.
There are some things good about the national sales tax idea, but there is no way a constitutional amendment is getting passed.
I don't think "wealth" means what you think it means. In a free market or capitalist society wealth is largely "the means of production". Say for instance I own a factory which has a value of 1 million dollars. If I owed more in taxes on the factory each year than I make in income, then there won't be any factory. Wealth is a dumb measure for taxation. Income has problems too, but it is much better than trying to measure "wealth".
Even the flat tax is a progressive tax. I haven't heard any serious flat tax proposal that doesn't include a large personal exemption or deduction of the first $15 or $20k in salary. I would even put it at $25 or $30k and index it to inflation.
That way your actually living expenses are tax free, but only that money that is above that gets taxed.
Problem with having tax brackets that are not indexed to inflation and are set at middle class levels is that year after year you have more and more middle income people falling into higher tax brackets and therefore getting a bigger slice of their lives getting taxed. The progressive income tax therefore is just a built in tax increase without the political accountability. Increased taxation without representation.
This is bad for government too because it gets them used to having budgets that grow faster than inflation. Government can't grow ahead of the rest of the economy any more than any other industry. And when that bubble bursts there are usually bullets that start flying.
And if we turned to nuclear power then nuclear fuel would be too valuable to keep sitting in warheads.
yes there's also the NIMBY problem but still
Brushing off the NIMBY problem is absurd. It is the greatest cost and problem. France provides most of its electricity with nuclear and it isn't going bankrupt... at least not because of nuclear power. The US stopped building nuclear plants because of the irrational fear caused by 3 mile island and the return of cheap oil.
If cheap oil is gone, then we either suffer the consequences of not having enough heat and electricity or we go nuclear. There is no other viable option.
His motive cannot both be malicious and ignorant under your reasoning; choose which you would prefer to argue.
You don't follow politics much?
Not one society in all our history has ever functioned on libertarian or anarchist principles. Not one.
Society usually functions despite its principles not because of them.
They want us out of Saudi Arabia.
And for the most part we got out of Saudi Arabia after 9/11 and the Iraq invasion... yet somehow that withdrawal wasn't seen as giving in to terrorism.
careful observation and critiques of human nature always seem somewhat prophetic. Turns out that being human is pretty predictable.
Damn those power companies. How dare they expect returns on their investments!
How dare they expect a state sponsored monopoly.