I don't give a crap about "carbon footprints" and I am certainly not a stereotypical redneck asshole. I'm not saying the original poster is right-- but the carbon footprint as a catch-all is simply a means of dumbing down the problem. We are an excessively wasteful society, and trying to offset energy consumption, landfill space, and (non-carbon related) resource use under the catch all of a carbon footprint really is just a means of convincing people it's OK for them to be wasteful, provided they are being the *right type* of wasteful.
Thinking too hard about this one. The AC in this case is a natural side effect of the expansion of gasses- there is no additional energy used to run a standard AC compressor. Likewise no refrigerant.
Granted I'm no expert on the drives of these air cars, but for cost reasons I can't imagine the drivetrain being much more complex than having compressed air drive a turbine.
The models prior to MagSafe didn't, I've repaired to of them for family members. However in that case it still isn't attached to the motherboard-- the power board is a separate circuit card which could be had for about fifty bucks from resellers. I actually can't recall the last Mac notebook I dug into that had the power plug soldered to the motherboard... I'm fair certain they existed at one point, but it's kind of moot now.
It takes an exceptional person (sometimes two generations of exceptional people) to work their way out of poverty. It is nonsensical to blame poor people for not being exceptional. Is it OK for somebody well-off to party their way through college on their parents dime? It's a similar class of people-- the "rich kids" will still end up with a decent paying job despite not being any more motivated than the poor kids who didn't have as much starting out. They made the same decisions, but you are placing blame on the poor while ignoring that social mobility is *hard* and not everybody is up for it.
Few poor people are welfare leeching drunks-- and like you I am all for cutting off those that are and letting them freeze by the river-- most; however, work multiple jobs to keep afloat. For most they truly are doing the best they can, they don't deserve our scorn, and they sure as hell don't want our pity.
I don't necessarily disagree, but I think a citation would be useful here. Corruption in government happens enough that most of us view it as a natural byproduct (cue any given government corruption scandal reference). Church and charity corruption happens, but either they are ridiculously good at covering it up, or it just isn't as widespread.
Because it's clearly the poor's fault that they decided to drop out of school to take a job and feed themselves, thereby not receiving the sex education to really learn about contraceptives and thus be stuck raising their children in single parent homes.
We could argue about this all day long, but I personally think you're mixing up cause and effect. Yes, *some* are abusing the system to be lazy, but how many do you figure actually choose to be in that situation?
Is it really fair to tax two households differently, if one uses the extra power to run their servers, and the other uses it to run an extra refrigerator and heaters, because they chose to have one or two extra children? Taxing the energy usage seems more appropriate to me. Or are you (I'm not from California) trying to impose sin taxes? Then I can understand.
Except at the energy levels involved- while you may reflect an initial portion of the energy, the energy that did not get reflected will ablate the surface and pretty quickly remove your shinies.
I mean, did you even *see* what the fingerprint smudge on the lense did in Real Genius?!!?
None of your examples are strictly commerce related. This is one of the specific powers granted to the Federal government, perhaps the one thing the Commerce Clause defines but the feds don't actually do. There are heaps of things I don't want from Uncle Sam that he does, but I *do* expect Uncle Sam to facilitate interstate commerce.
That said, I imagine there are private companies that provide this service. However, the costs involved in keeping track of this information are not trivial-- subscribing to a service like this may put up a significant barrier to entry for smaller online resellers.
Many large retailers (like Amazon) deal hundreds or thousands of transactions per *minute*. It is not trivial to call up a city and ask what the current tax is. Particularly when you need to present the taxes right away for the customer to complete their transaction (taxes are charged to the customer, not the retailer). Additionally, local governments aren't simply going to send a tax bill to a company in a different state. I somehow find it unlikely that a retailer will email every city and tax jurisdiction saying "we sold this much crap to your residents, send us a bill."
So no, with tax rates varying so widely and changing so frequently, it currently is extremely problematic to charge the local tax rates.
but all of the national retail chains have to deal with it, so why can't Amazon and the other online retail companies?
Because a retail chain with a physical store presence only needs to deal with the taxes at that location. Management at *that* franchise stays on top of the local tax rates and charges accordingly. This also means you only need to track tax rates for jurisdictions where you have a presence (ever wonder why a lot of retail chain websites ask for your ZIP and then reference your nearest store?). A store with no physical presence can't simply refer to the tax rates at the nearest location and charge that.
A nationwide sales tax also isn't the solution-- sales taxes are local, to support state and local governments, it is entirely counterproductive to collect this at the national level. I'd consider the best case to be a database of tax schedules that online resellers can reference, either managed state by state or at the federal level (something that *actually* falls under regulating interstate commerce).
It is a very challenging problem to solve. I don't even want to think about what would be involved in disbursing collected taxes back to local governments-- as you've mentioned there are significantly more than 50 tax jurisdictions-- there is the potential of sending a few dollars to thousands (and thousands?) of local governments.
Eh, only time I spent more than $100 on concert tickets it has been for multi-day festivals. Like you, I don't understand why anybody would fork over that much cash to see a single band a single evening, but apparently people are willing to do it. More power to them I suppose. I can't personally fault them for what they charge for concerts. I *can* (and do) sit back and hope the concert is a flop with no attendees, but it seems folks are willing to pay.
What *really* irks me is trying to see a concert with a nominal 30-60 dollar ticket price, finding the tickets are sold out, then finding vast swaths of the same damn seats available through third party "premium" resellers at ridiculous markups. Most often those several hundred dollar tickets are due to these resellers, not the initial cost at the venue. This practice has turned me off to concerts in general.
If you don't like the terms of the contract, shop somewhere else? Certainly you have the right to be upset, but why would you give hundreds of dollars a year to a company you're upset with?
Slashdot Mirror
I need a correlation between "moose knuckle" and "camel toe"
Do you think you could deliver that in car-analogy form?
I don't give a crap about "carbon footprints" and I am certainly not a stereotypical redneck asshole. I'm not saying the original poster is right-- but the carbon footprint as a catch-all is simply a means of dumbing down the problem. We are an excessively wasteful society, and trying to offset energy consumption, landfill space, and (non-carbon related) resource use under the catch all of a carbon footprint really is just a means of convincing people it's OK for them to be wasteful, provided they are being the *right type* of wasteful.
Missing the point-- they put it in *somebody else's* back yard. See? No downsides!
Thinking too hard about this one. The AC in this case is a natural side effect of the expansion of gasses- there is no additional energy used to run a standard AC compressor. Likewise no refrigerant.
Granted I'm no expert on the drives of these air cars, but for cost reasons I can't imagine the drivetrain being much more complex than having compressed air drive a turbine.
You missed my point, but that's cool I spose.
I'm from Canadia you insensitive clod!
The models prior to MagSafe didn't, I've repaired to of them for family members. However in that case it still isn't attached to the motherboard-- the power board is a separate circuit card which could be had for about fifty bucks from resellers. I actually can't recall the last Mac notebook I dug into that had the power plug soldered to the motherboard... I'm fair certain they existed at one point, but it's kind of moot now.
You are highlighting the problem.
It takes an exceptional person (sometimes two generations of exceptional people) to work their way out of poverty. It is nonsensical to blame poor people for not being exceptional. Is it OK for somebody well-off to party their way through college on their parents dime? It's a similar class of people-- the "rich kids" will still end up with a decent paying job despite not being any more motivated than the poor kids who didn't have as much starting out. They made the same decisions, but you are placing blame on the poor while ignoring that social mobility is *hard* and not everybody is up for it.
Few poor people are welfare leeching drunks-- and like you I am all for cutting off those that are and letting them freeze by the river-- most; however, work multiple jobs to keep afloat. For most they truly are doing the best they can, they don't deserve our scorn, and they sure as hell don't want our pity.
I don't necessarily disagree, but I think a citation would be useful here. Corruption in government happens enough that most of us view it as a natural byproduct (cue any given government corruption scandal reference). Church and charity corruption happens, but either they are ridiculously good at covering it up, or it just isn't as widespread.
Because it's clearly the poor's fault that they decided to drop out of school to take a job and feed themselves, thereby not receiving the sex education to really learn about contraceptives and thus be stuck raising their children in single parent homes.
We could argue about this all day long, but I personally think you're mixing up cause and effect. Yes, *some* are abusing the system to be lazy, but how many do you figure actually choose to be in that situation?
Dammit, I expanded this entire comment chain waiting for some nugget of hilarity but you all have failed me. You should be ashamed of yourselves!
Is it really fair to tax two households differently, if one uses the extra power to run their servers, and the other uses it to run an extra refrigerator and heaters, because they chose to have one or two extra children? Taxing the energy usage seems more appropriate to me. Or are you (I'm not from California) trying to impose sin taxes? Then I can understand.
hehehe, I like this guy, he's funny!
...well played.
Can we still rag on TFS for being precocious by using words like "penultimate?"
Except at the energy levels involved- while you may reflect an initial portion of the energy, the energy that did not get reflected will ablate the surface and pretty quickly remove your shinies.
I mean, did you even *see* what the fingerprint smudge on the lense did in Real Genius?!!?
None of your examples are strictly commerce related. This is one of the specific powers granted to the Federal government, perhaps the one thing the Commerce Clause defines but the feds don't actually do. There are heaps of things I don't want from Uncle Sam that he does, but I *do* expect Uncle Sam to facilitate interstate commerce.
That said, I imagine there are private companies that provide this service. However, the costs involved in keeping track of this information are not trivial-- subscribing to a service like this may put up a significant barrier to entry for smaller online resellers.
wait... What?
Many large retailers (like Amazon) deal hundreds or thousands of transactions per *minute*. It is not trivial to call up a city and ask what the current tax is. Particularly when you need to present the taxes right away for the customer to complete their transaction (taxes are charged to the customer, not the retailer). Additionally, local governments aren't simply going to send a tax bill to a company in a different state. I somehow find it unlikely that a retailer will email every city and tax jurisdiction saying "we sold this much crap to your residents, send us a bill."
So no, with tax rates varying so widely and changing so frequently, it currently is extremely problematic to charge the local tax rates.
but all of the national retail chains have to deal with it, so why can't Amazon and the other online retail companies?
Because a retail chain with a physical store presence only needs to deal with the taxes at that location. Management at *that* franchise stays on top of the local tax rates and charges accordingly. This also means you only need to track tax rates for jurisdictions where you have a presence (ever wonder why a lot of retail chain websites ask for your ZIP and then reference your nearest store?). A store with no physical presence can't simply refer to the tax rates at the nearest location and charge that.
A nationwide sales tax also isn't the solution-- sales taxes are local, to support state and local governments, it is entirely counterproductive to collect this at the national level. I'd consider the best case to be a database of tax schedules that online resellers can reference, either managed state by state or at the federal level (something that *actually* falls under regulating interstate commerce).
It is a very challenging problem to solve. I don't even want to think about what would be involved in disbursing collected taxes back to local governments-- as you've mentioned there are significantly more than 50 tax jurisdictions-- there is the potential of sending a few dollars to thousands (and thousands?) of local governments.
duh, just take them from the other molecules moran!
Eh, only time I spent more than $100 on concert tickets it has been for multi-day festivals. Like you, I don't understand why anybody would fork over that much cash to see a single band a single evening, but apparently people are willing to do it. More power to them I suppose. I can't personally fault them for what they charge for concerts. I *can* (and do) sit back and hope the concert is a flop with no attendees, but it seems folks are willing to pay.
What *really* irks me is trying to see a concert with a nominal 30-60 dollar ticket price, finding the tickets are sold out, then finding vast swaths of the same damn seats available through third party "premium" resellers at ridiculous markups. Most often those several hundred dollar tickets are due to these resellers, not the initial cost at the venue. This practice has turned me off to concerts in general.
Burma Shave.
Does it seem wrong to you that the very first link on a search for Cridi trees is a home mortgage company?
Using day trading to justify the existence of GS... This is an interesting angle, have you considered writing a book?
If you don't like the terms of the contract, shop somewhere else? Certainly you have the right to be upset, but why would you give hundreds of dollars a year to a company you're upset with?