I'm not sure if I'd like to swallow a pill every day for authentication.
Doesn't have to be every day. The pill thing would be most useful for temporary authentication procedures. Issued to authorize someone for a limited time only. I could see some circumstances where the pill thing could be useful. I could see it being used as a second factor id for military, etc. Think similar to a visitor badge but harder to lose.
I would have assumed some third party would have held the money in escrow until delivery and confirmation of the parts meeting spec. Is there no method to do that?
Of course it can be done but it is expensive and not as easy as you might think. For that to work you have to have a very detailed specification and the ability to inspect the product to ensure it meets the specification. Sometimes the only real way to do that is to actually see it being made. If you are doing serious amounts of business in China you pretty much have to have your own people there to manage things and ensure stuff is done properly.
So you paid before you got a sample? or the first delivery?
Not unusual to have to pay in advance for a product made in China unless you are a big player. I wouldn't ship to a company in another country without cash up front no matter what the quantity was.
That seems fraught with peril.
That would be correct. Doing business in China is a genuinely risky proposition. I used to do work in global sourcing and have spent a lot of time trying to buy parts in Mexico, India and China. You do so at your own risk.
And when defects are discovered, confidentiality agreements often keep the manufacturer’s identity secret, making accountability in the industry all the more difficult.
Kind of irrelevant. When you buy something, the person who sold it to you is the responsible party. If they want to keep their supplier a secret (more on that later) that's up to them but the seller is the responsible party. If they don't know who they are buying from, then they are fools and deserve whatever problems they get.
The curious bit is that I don't really see how the players in the supply chain could be kept a secret from an interested large purchaser. I run a small manufacturing company. One of the parts we make goes into a General Motors vehicle and we are a Tier 4 supplier meaning we sell to a company who sells to another company who sells to another company who sells to GM. If GM wanted to find out who made that part, I absolutely guarantee you that they could find out even if we had a confidentiality agreement in place with our customer. If the solar panel industry is unable or unwilling to do this then it means they have insufficient control of their supply chain which is a BIG problem. It means they don't really know what they are buying or how it is made.
So tens of thousands of deaths each year (source CDC) is not a major cause of death? What do you consider a major cause of death? And hundreds of thousands of non-lethal infections. Even ignoring the pain and suffering component the financial cost is enormous.
Unless you are working on a surgical field where near absolute sterility is required, using the hand sanitizer after every patient contact and washing your hands after a few rounds of the hand sanitizer works as well as OCD hand washing.
The effectiveness of alcohol based hand sanitizers is debatable and they are known to be less effective than hand washing.
Then there are a number of other vectors for microbial transmission that this 1984-esque system doesn't address - stethoscopes and other instruments, pens, ties, lab coats.
All true but hand transmission is the biggest among them and we know that hand washing is an effective mitigation technique.
However, once you where finished washing, you had to pull open the bathroom door by a fairly greasy/grimy handle.... Made me glad to be able to knee the door open when entering, just before I was about to handle my privates.
I typically use a paper towel to open the door and then throw it in the nearest trash receptacle afterwards. If the company doesn't provide them you can of course keep some napkins in your desk for the purpose. A tad OCD I'll admit but I know a lot of doctors who recommend the practice. Of course a better solution is to design entrances and exits that don't require touching a door like you see in modern airports these days. The less I have to touch in a public space the better.
20 years ago hospitals could hand out antibiotics like candy to deal with bacterial infections.
You seem to be implying that just prescribing antibiotics solved the problem 20 years ago. Not true. This was every bit as big a problem 20 years ago. The only difference was that we didn't pay as much attention to the problem back then. Sure there are some new complications relating to antibiotic resistance now but that was part of the equation back then too. The problem is one of prevention, not treatment. No amount of antibiotics can solve the problem and even if they could, prevention is MUCH cheaper and more effective.
But... hang on a bit... how come 20 years ago this wasn't an issue?
It WAS an issue 20 years ago. This has been a huge issue for a long time. It also turns out to be a shockingly difficult problem to solve. I've actually worked in an infection control department (about 10 years ago) at a hospital and seen first hand the difficulty they had in getting people to take basic hygiene measures to control hospital transmitted infections. Part of the problem is economic, part is attention, part is habits, part is social, part is work process design. Kind of like spam there seems to be no simple and universally effective solution to the problem.
Apple is now Just Another Tech Company run by MBAs and Marketing jackwads. If Steve were here, he would tear the entire iTunes team a new asshole and then fire them all.
Without Saint Steve they are lost. Clearly no one else had anything to do with the success of Apple. Those other 70,000 employees had nothing at all to do with the company's success and the company culture died the moment they buried their Dear Leader. [/sarcasm]
Isn't that the Chinese factory where the working conditions are notoriously awful?
Not to defend Foxconn per se but do you think the working conditions in the fields for Chinese farmers are any better? Working conditions might be pretty bad to our eye but chances are that for many the alternatives available aren't especially wonderful either. Quite possible that Foxconn is the least worst alternative for many people. Sometimes a shitty job is the best alternative available at the time. That's not to excuse any abuses that might be occurring (Foxconn might be pure evil) but we should view with the larger societal context in mind. If you want something that has a high labor content built for the lowest possible price then that requires working conditions that cut expenses to the bone. This necessarily means long hours, low wages, low overhead and little/nothing in the way of benefits. As bad as that sounds, sometimes it is a step up from something like subsistence farming where starvation is a serious concern.
There have been a lot of sensationalist stories regarding Foxconn and other contract manufacturers and it isn't especially clear what the truth is about them. Might really be a little slice of hell on earth or it might not be so bad. All the information we have is 3rd hand at best so it's a little hard to be certain what level of indignation is appropriate. I've been to China and seen factories that have working conditions I would generously describe as unpleasant. I've seen parts made for Dell monitors in a factory near Chengdu with gravel floors. Most americans would describe the conditions as poor but it wasn't anything unusually bad by local standards.
Because that is the right metric, because it shows growth, which is kind of what you want in a acquisition
Growth without a path to profits becomes a path to bankruptcy. Now Hulu may become wildly profitable in time, I honestly have no idea. But the ONLY argument Yahoo can make for doing such an acquisition without profits is for strategic reasons. Even then, they must have some idea how this thing might turn a profit in the future. The purpose of a business is to make a profit, not to just grow.
In November 2006, YouTube, LLC was bought by Google for US$1.65 billion(the largest at the time). Its argued today its worth $45.7 Billion
The link you posted puts the value of Youtube at an implied value of around $8.7 billion. The $45 billion number comes from (inappropriately) applying implied multiples for Facebook which have little relevance to Youtube. Frankly the assumptions the author used to get to the $8.7 billion number are a iffy at best.
Is Yahoo a money laundering operation? How the fuck did they have $1Bn lying around to begin with?
Yahoo is quite profitable and has about $3 billion in cash on their balance sheet as of the end of last quarter. They also generate around $1 billion in profits (excluding one time asset sales) on $5 billion or so in sales. Yahoo is quite profitable and has cash to throw around. Whether they do so wisely is another matter altogether.
Yahoo spent 1.1billion of 1.2billion in cash reserves to buy Tumblr. Where is this $200 million coming from?
Yahoo has about $3 billion in cash and equivalents as of their last quarterly statement. Additionally, purchases don't have to be made in cash on hand. The company could be bought using cash, stock, options or some combination of the above. Additionally the company could issue debt to raise the capital to fund the acquisition. Also they could partner with someone on the buyout.
For what it is worth, $300 million was last quarter's profit for Yahoo.
Also, 300million seems low considering Hulu actually has decent revenue compared to Yahoo's other acquisitions which have lower revenue and were purchased for far more.
Is it 1999 again? I thought the dotcom bubble burst. Here's why revenue doesn't matter. I can generate vast amounts of revenue selling $2 bills for $1. I'll have huge sales doing so. I'll also be bankrupt faster than you can say "Chapter Eleven". The only reason to use a revenue multiple for a buyout is because the company is not profitable and has limited prospects of becoming so.
The amount of revenue they generate is irrelevant unless it leads to profits. I've seen reports that Hulu has turned a profit though it is unclear how much or what the future prospects might be. Revenue without profits can only be a short term situation. Sometimes doing so makes sense for strategic reasons (see Amazon) but there MUST be a path to profitability. Either Hulu must be strategically vital or it must have future profit opportunities Yahoo is aware of and I am not.
Hopefully, Hulu will refuse to be bought by a company so irresponsible with its money, or for an amount less than half of its yearly revenue.
It's quite possible that a price of 0.5X revenue is a fair price. It might also be too high or too low. Typical multiples of revenue for buyouts are between 0.6X and 1.2X annual revenue for a profitable company. Varies by industry. Depending on Hulu's future prospects, a 0.5X revenue multiple might be a fantastic price for its shareholders. However that also likely means it is a questionable deal for Yahoo financially.
The town I live in has no debt of any sort, and to the best of my knowledge never has.
Sounds like you live in a smallish town with a stable population. That is an unusual situation. If your town ever grows, I promise you that there will eventually be a need to issue bonds to fund some sort of project. Maybe for waste treatment, or roads, or bridge(s), or new schools, etc. There is nothing wrong with financing a purchase provided you do it responsibly. In fact if interest rates are low enough (like now) there are are plenty of cases where not financing would be dumb. A dollar tomorrow is most likely going to be worth less than a dollar today so if you can get a low interest rate and pay with tomorrow's dollars (offset interest with inflation) then it is pretty easy to show cases where financing makes sense.
I make most of my purchases on a credit card which I pay off each month. Sure, I could pay it all at the time of purchase but I am needlessly limiting my options by doing so. By letting the credit card company provide me float I hold on to the cash which earns me interest for the extra month I get to hold it. Over time that adds up. I also gain the ability to utilize that cash for more emergent purposes should the need ever arise. What I don't do is pay unnecessary interest or buy things I can't afford just because I have the ability to do so.
Other things being equal, debt is bad, the product of deliberate short-sighted greed.
So no one in your town has a mortgage or a car payment or any credit card debt? Are people greedy for financing those things? Things are rarely equal. Debt is neither bad nor good by itself - it's how you use it that matters. Sometimes you need to fund things that it is difficult to arrange for all the financing in advance. You might need some road repair today and waiting a few years isn't really a feasible option. That doesn't mean you finance things just because you can - you still have to live within your means. But the need for cash is sometimes more immediate than the ability to acquire it and that is ok as long as you are responsible.
Most people in the US could have the IRS prepare their taxes based on income, interest, and other factors that are already reported to the IRS. I know the IRS could prepare most of my taxes with me just adding a few details.
If your taxes are that simple then the IRS has some very simple forms. A 1040-EZ is not an especially difficult exercise even without computer assistance. However the IRS has to define income for ALL citizens and these days most have more sources of income than you are thinking of. Salary, bonuses, tips, dividends, interest, capital gains, deferred income, inheritance, gambling winnings, gifts, prizes, pensions, social security, insurance payouts, deferred income, stock options, payment-in-kind, etc. The list is shockingly long. If the tax code does not address each and every one of them as a form of income then people WILL utilize that loophole. My point is that defining income for tax purposes is more complicated than most people think.
Now don't get me wrong, our tax code does have too much absurd and needless complexity. I truly don't know why we need to provide tax breaks for mortgage interest or federal student loan interest (just lower the interest rate) or why we pay tax to fund social security and then the government taxes the check they send back to us. Wouldn't it be simpler and less complex to just to send a smaller check in the first place? The list goes on and on. I know why congress does it (easier to pass a tax reduction than a funding increase even though they have the same net effect) but much of it is bad policy.
The current deficit situation is probably caused by special entities not paying as much tax as they once did.
The current deficit is caused by too much expenditures (primarily medicare/medicaid and defense) without tax revenues to match. Everyone wants benefits and most want a strong military and no one wants to pay the additional taxes that they cost. Any serious discussion about the debts HAS to involve either cuts to Medicare and defense or increased taxes or some combination of the two. (I exclude Social Security because it is funded a bit differently and separately and is easily fixed by comparison) Frankly I think we could cut our military expenditures in half or more without seriously impairing our nation's ability to defend itself. We spend more than the next 15 or so nations combined and somehow they manage to survive.
The ability to control the money supply (either directly, or indirectly through the Fed) is a weapon with no good uses.
My eyes are rolling so hard I think I just got a good look at my brain stem. If you're going to make bold assertions that seem unsupported by actual facts, you need to back them up.
It's the reason that the dollar is worth less than 2% of what it was worth 100 years ago.
$1 in 2013 was worth a little over $0.04 in 1913 if you adjust for inflation using the CPI and our ability to acquire dollars has increased at an even faster rate than inflation. The fact that inflation takes place doesn't mean much by itself. What matters is prices relative to the value of cash AND the amount of cash held. It's prices relative to the ability to acquire assets that matters. Buy a hamburger today or in 20 years and you are buying the same asset. If I have $100 and buy a hamburger for $1 today or I have $200 and buy a hamburger for $2 tomorrow, the cost to me is the same either way - it is costing me 1% of my assets. It's more complicated than my trivial example obviously but the basic point stands. Inflation (or deflation) is meaningless unless you compare it to income and previously acquired wealth. The dollar today is worth less but our ability to acquire them has greatly increased. There is a reason we adjust prices to account for inflation when comparing between different points in time.
The best situation is for money to have as near a constant value as freedom allows, which means something like a gold standard
Ahh, I understand now. You're one of the idiots who thinks there is something magical about gold and precious metals as an asset. Sigh... Gold is no different from any other asset. It has value because people believe it has value just like EVERY OTHER ASSET. The price of gold is volatile, just like every other asset. Tying the value of one asset (cash) to the value of another (gold) doesn't keep the value of either constant, it just makes the financing more difficult. In times of financial crisis there could be no lender of last resort because governments would be powerless to make money available where needed. Our recent financial crisis was a crisis of liquidity - no one could be sure who was safe to borrow from. The only party that everyone could be sure was a safe counter-party was the government. Had we been tied to a gold standard we would almost certainly be in the midst of the second great depression at this very moment. Virtually all economists blame the gold standard for greatly worsening the Great Depression because monetary policy could not be used as a tool.
There should be 3 lines on your tax forms, how much you make, the percentage of that you have to pay in taxes, and your signature. No more subsidies, loopholes, nothing.
Agreed in principle. In practice what you are proposing is absurd and unworkable. Why? Because defining income is actually rather complicated. (Hint, it's more than just the salary you get from your job) While we could do a lot (and should) to reduce the complexity of taxes by removing a bunch of needless cruft, an income tax will NEVER be anywhere close to as simple as you propose. The problem just isn't that simple.
The government should not be attempting to manipulate private citizens into spending a certain way. Every such program in history has ended in disaster.
The job of the government is to govern. That by definition involves manipulation of private citizens. Tax policy is just a tool. I'd agree it's a clumsy and overused tool but there is nothing fundamentally wrong with judicious use of it. And your hyperbole about every program ending in disaster is demonstrably untrue. You had a fair point up until there.
You pay taxes on what you earn, when you spend, on the roads you drive, the gas you buy, to register your car... that all needs to die. There should be a national sales tax. That's it, nothing else. You should not be charged for earning, saving or investing money.
I think you may not have thought through the consequences of your proposal. Sales taxes are rather volatile forms of taxation by themselves much like income tax. They also are a regressive form of taxation (hurts the poor more than the rich). A diversified set of tax streams is (or at least can be) good policy. As an example, a lot of local municipalities get most of their tax revenue from property taxes and not much else. Works fine until you have a housing bubble burst like in 2008-09. Diversification isn't just for personal stock portfolios. Furthermore is is also good policy to match tax revenues with the expenditures whenever possible. Taxing gasoline to fund road construction makes sense because the two are linked. If we use the roads more taxes will automatically rise to match. Reverse if the roads get used less. Now taxing gas to fund something like schools makes less sense because there is little direct relationship between the two.
We need temporary tax increases until we get out of debt.
Our government has been out of debt precisely once in 230+ years, during the Andrew Jackson's administration if my memory serves. SOME debt is fine and actually is quite useful and not at all harmful to the economy. Essentially all governments have some amount of debt and that is actually a good thing. But just like having a credit card you can have too much debt if you aren't careful.
Then we need to make it illegal for our governments to borrow money except in times of war.
Again, you are proposing something that would actually hurt the economy badly. The ability to control the money supply is critically important. The way we control the money supply is by selling debt or buying it back. Without the ability to borrow we cannot adjust the money supply which makes it very difficult to combat inflation, encourage (or discourage) lending, or deal with volatile tax revenues. SOME borrowing is fine and even beneficial.
Personally I like the idea that Warren Buffet proposed. If we are not in a declared war and the US debt exceeds 10% of GDP then all members of congress and the senate should be ineligible for re-election until such time as the debt is brought back to an appropriate level.
Well, is this such a bad thing? I mean, the 'nut jobs' will be selecting themselves right out of the gene pool, right?
I know you are joking but yes it really is such a bad thing. The problem is that some people cannot get vaccinated due to things like allergies to vaccine components, a weakened immune system or other health issues. The more people that get vaccinated the stronger the herd immunity and the less chance an unvaccinated person has of exposure. These idiots who don't get vaccinated increase the risk to both themselves and the people who through no fault of their own cannot have the vaccine administered. If I may be so crude, they are basically peeing in the gene pool and endangering others in the process.
Plus you have to consider that most vaccines are administered to minor children who legally cannot decide for themselves whether to get the vaccine or not. So basically a scientifically illiterate adult is preventing them from receiving standard medical care. Personally I think that amounts to reckless endangerment of a child and in some cases where the child gets ill and dies I think it is basically manslaughter.
McAfee says that the destruction of his compound was no accident.
Remind me why we care about this guy? Just because his name is on some software that he is no longer involved with doesn't make it relevant. Every story I've had the misfortune of coming across regarding this guy leads me to believe he is a (possibly paranoid) publicity seeker who is telling a bunch of tall tales in order to get attention. Enough already.
On the other hand, zero celcius is the boundary line between dealing with frozen water (as ice or snow) and dealing with liquid water (as flooding or rain). That's incredibly convenient when travelling.
Not that I'm in favor of fahrenheit (I'm not) but water freezing at 32F isn't any more difficult to deal with than 0C. Both are arbitrarily chosen chosen scales. Celsius has the nice round numbers but from a practical day to day usage standpoint that matters not at all. I know that water freezes below 32F and that doesn't take up any more room in my brain than 0C. The only real problem is that I have to remember two scales instead of one. Since Celsius is the more widely used scale, I wish we would switch to that one.
My exerience with a recent Nook made me wish I had a stylus for something as simple as closing tabs on a web browser. The amount of failure involved using my fingers on that device was just completely frustrating.
That sounds like a design flaw with the interface rather than an indication of the need for a stylus to do basic navigation. Frankly if you need a stylus for navigation, something is broken in the design. I have an iPhone and I can reliably push very small buttons with my fingers with good accuracy. (Not recommending it just observing that it is possible to have precise finger input)
I think the reason finger interfaces have worked well so far is that Apple and Google have made it intentionally difficult to use stylus and keyboards and mice which has forced the OS and application designers to spend some actual effort thinking about how best to design the application for finger input. Sometimes limiting options actually makes for a better product. The same thing need to happen with a stylus. If the OS limits it to drawing only (at least for a while) then it might start to be used for what it is actually good for software engineers will have to actually think about the interface instead of just treating it like a funny shaped mouse.
Most of my friends have viable home laptops with no remaining battery of which to speak. And these were solid industrial models. Does that mean the whole thing should be thrown out and replaced?
No, it means they need to fork over the $ for a new battery which is normal for a laptop. Rechargable batteries only have a finite number of cycles in them and the ones in laptops typically show signs of wearing out after 2-3 years, less if the battery is used heavily. I've never seen one older than 3 years that held anywhere near the charge it did when new. Presuming the battery will last the lifetime of the computer is incorrect.
This is why batteries need to be serviceable. They do not need to be hot swappable or even modular for most people but if you plan to keep the computer for more than 2-3 years there is a high probability you should plan on a battery swap at some point. It's typically not hard to find a replacement, especially if the battery pack is modular. Sometimes you need to get out ye-olde-screwdriver (and occasionally a soldering iron) and crack the case open.
Ethical behavior is incompatible with the pursuit of profit.
Nonsense. Pursuit of profit *can* lead to unethical behavior but it does not follow that pursuit of profit *must* lead to unethical behavior. Buying something and then selling it to someone else for a higher price has no component that is fundamentally unethical. If you have a good I need and I'm willing to pay a price for it (a price that is low enough that it does not cause me injury) then we both get something we want/need and both are better off. There is nothing unethical about that exchange.
I won't even get in to the question of what you consider unethical behavior or why. Ethics are societal conventions and standards which differ between people and groups, not immutable laws of the universe. Perhaps you do consider pursuit of profit to be unethical. That does not mean that the rest of society must consider it so.
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I'm not sure if I'd like to swallow a pill every day for authentication.
Doesn't have to be every day. The pill thing would be most useful for temporary authentication procedures. Issued to authorize someone for a limited time only. I could see some circumstances where the pill thing could be useful. I could see it being used as a second factor id for military, etc. Think similar to a visitor badge but harder to lose.
I would have assumed some third party would have held the money in escrow until delivery and confirmation of the parts meeting spec. Is there no method to do that?
Of course it can be done but it is expensive and not as easy as you might think. For that to work you have to have a very detailed specification and the ability to inspect the product to ensure it meets the specification. Sometimes the only real way to do that is to actually see it being made. If you are doing serious amounts of business in China you pretty much have to have your own people there to manage things and ensure stuff is done properly.
So you paid before you got a sample? or the first delivery?
Not unusual to have to pay in advance for a product made in China unless you are a big player. I wouldn't ship to a company in another country without cash up front no matter what the quantity was.
That seems fraught with peril.
That would be correct. Doing business in China is a genuinely risky proposition. I used to do work in global sourcing and have spent a lot of time trying to buy parts in Mexico, India and China. You do so at your own risk.
From TFA
And when defects are discovered, confidentiality agreements often keep the manufacturer’s identity secret, making accountability in the industry all the more difficult.
Kind of irrelevant. When you buy something, the person who sold it to you is the responsible party. If they want to keep their supplier a secret (more on that later) that's up to them but the seller is the responsible party. If they don't know who they are buying from, then they are fools and deserve whatever problems they get.
The curious bit is that I don't really see how the players in the supply chain could be kept a secret from an interested large purchaser. I run a small manufacturing company. One of the parts we make goes into a General Motors vehicle and we are a Tier 4 supplier meaning we sell to a company who sells to another company who sells to another company who sells to GM. If GM wanted to find out who made that part, I absolutely guarantee you that they could find out even if we had a confidentiality agreement in place with our customer. If the solar panel industry is unable or unwilling to do this then it means they have insufficient control of their supply chain which is a BIG problem. It means they don't really know what they are buying or how it is made.
It is by no means "a major cause of death".
So tens of thousands of deaths each year (source CDC) is not a major cause of death? What do you consider a major cause of death? And hundreds of thousands of non-lethal infections. Even ignoring the pain and suffering component the financial cost is enormous.
Unless you are working on a surgical field where near absolute sterility is required, using the hand sanitizer after every patient contact and washing your hands after a few rounds of the hand sanitizer works as well as OCD hand washing.
The effectiveness of alcohol based hand sanitizers is debatable and they are known to be less effective than hand washing.
Then there are a number of other vectors for microbial transmission that this 1984-esque system doesn't address - stethoscopes and other instruments, pens, ties, lab coats.
All true but hand transmission is the biggest among them and we know that hand washing is an effective mitigation technique.
However, once you where finished washing, you had to pull open the bathroom door by a fairly greasy/grimy handle.... Made me glad to be able to knee the door open when entering, just before I was about to handle my privates.
I typically use a paper towel to open the door and then throw it in the nearest trash receptacle afterwards. If the company doesn't provide them you can of course keep some napkins in your desk for the purpose. A tad OCD I'll admit but I know a lot of doctors who recommend the practice. Of course a better solution is to design entrances and exits that don't require touching a door like you see in modern airports these days. The less I have to touch in a public space the better.
20 years ago hospitals could hand out antibiotics like candy to deal with bacterial infections.
You seem to be implying that just prescribing antibiotics solved the problem 20 years ago. Not true. This was every bit as big a problem 20 years ago. The only difference was that we didn't pay as much attention to the problem back then. Sure there are some new complications relating to antibiotic resistance now but that was part of the equation back then too. The problem is one of prevention, not treatment. No amount of antibiotics can solve the problem and even if they could, prevention is MUCH cheaper and more effective.
But... hang on a bit... how come 20 years ago this wasn't an issue?
It WAS an issue 20 years ago. This has been a huge issue for a long time. It also turns out to be a shockingly difficult problem to solve. I've actually worked in an infection control department (about 10 years ago) at a hospital and seen first hand the difficulty they had in getting people to take basic hygiene measures to control hospital transmitted infections. Part of the problem is economic, part is attention, part is habits, part is social, part is work process design. Kind of like spam there seems to be no simple and universally effective solution to the problem.
Apple is now Just Another Tech Company run by MBAs and Marketing jackwads. If Steve were here, he would tear the entire iTunes team a new asshole and then fire them all.
Without Saint Steve they are lost. Clearly no one else had anything to do with the success of Apple. Those other 70,000 employees had nothing at all to do with the company's success and the company culture died the moment they buried their Dear Leader. [/sarcasm]
Isn't that the Chinese factory where the working conditions are notoriously awful?
Not to defend Foxconn per se but do you think the working conditions in the fields for Chinese farmers are any better? Working conditions might be pretty bad to our eye but chances are that for many the alternatives available aren't especially wonderful either. Quite possible that Foxconn is the least worst alternative for many people. Sometimes a shitty job is the best alternative available at the time. That's not to excuse any abuses that might be occurring (Foxconn might be pure evil) but we should view with the larger societal context in mind. If you want something that has a high labor content built for the lowest possible price then that requires working conditions that cut expenses to the bone. This necessarily means long hours, low wages, low overhead and little/nothing in the way of benefits. As bad as that sounds, sometimes it is a step up from something like subsistence farming where starvation is a serious concern.
There have been a lot of sensationalist stories regarding Foxconn and other contract manufacturers and it isn't especially clear what the truth is about them. Might really be a little slice of hell on earth or it might not be so bad. All the information we have is 3rd hand at best so it's a little hard to be certain what level of indignation is appropriate. I've been to China and seen factories that have working conditions I would generously describe as unpleasant. I've seen parts made for Dell monitors in a factory near Chengdu with gravel floors. Most americans would describe the conditions as poor but it wasn't anything unusually bad by local standards.
Because that is the right metric, because it shows growth, which is kind of what you want in a acquisition
Growth without a path to profits becomes a path to bankruptcy. Now Hulu may become wildly profitable in time, I honestly have no idea. But the ONLY argument Yahoo can make for doing such an acquisition without profits is for strategic reasons. Even then, they must have some idea how this thing might turn a profit in the future. The purpose of a business is to make a profit, not to just grow.
In November 2006, YouTube, LLC was bought by Google for US$1.65 billion(the largest at the time). Its argued today its worth $45.7 Billion
The link you posted puts the value of Youtube at an implied value of around $8.7 billion. The $45 billion number comes from (inappropriately) applying implied multiples for Facebook which have little relevance to Youtube. Frankly the assumptions the author used to get to the $8.7 billion number are a iffy at best.
Is Yahoo a money laundering operation? How the fuck did they have $1Bn lying around to begin with?
Yahoo is quite profitable and has about $3 billion in cash on their balance sheet as of the end of last quarter. They also generate around $1 billion in profits (excluding one time asset sales) on $5 billion or so in sales. Yahoo is quite profitable and has cash to throw around. Whether they do so wisely is another matter altogether.
Yahoo spent 1.1billion of 1.2billion in cash reserves to buy Tumblr. Where is this $200 million coming from?
Yahoo has about $3 billion in cash and equivalents as of their last quarterly statement. Additionally, purchases don't have to be made in cash on hand. The company could be bought using cash, stock, options or some combination of the above. Additionally the company could issue debt to raise the capital to fund the acquisition. Also they could partner with someone on the buyout.
For what it is worth, $300 million was last quarter's profit for Yahoo.
Also, 300million seems low considering Hulu actually has decent revenue compared to Yahoo's other acquisitions which have lower revenue and were purchased for far more.
Is it 1999 again? I thought the dotcom bubble burst. Here's why revenue doesn't matter. I can generate vast amounts of revenue selling $2 bills for $1. I'll have huge sales doing so. I'll also be bankrupt faster than you can say "Chapter Eleven". The only reason to use a revenue multiple for a buyout is because the company is not profitable and has limited prospects of becoming so.
The amount of revenue they generate is irrelevant unless it leads to profits. I've seen reports that Hulu has turned a profit though it is unclear how much or what the future prospects might be. Revenue without profits can only be a short term situation. Sometimes doing so makes sense for strategic reasons (see Amazon) but there MUST be a path to profitability. Either Hulu must be strategically vital or it must have future profit opportunities Yahoo is aware of and I am not.
Hopefully, Hulu will refuse to be bought by a company so irresponsible with its money, or for an amount less than half of its yearly revenue.
It's quite possible that a price of 0.5X revenue is a fair price. It might also be too high or too low. Typical multiples of revenue for buyouts are between 0.6X and 1.2X annual revenue for a profitable company. Varies by industry. Depending on Hulu's future prospects, a 0.5X revenue multiple might be a fantastic price for its shareholders. However that also likely means it is a questionable deal for Yahoo financially.
The town I live in has no debt of any sort, and to the best of my knowledge never has.
Sounds like you live in a smallish town with a stable population. That is an unusual situation. If your town ever grows, I promise you that there will eventually be a need to issue bonds to fund some sort of project. Maybe for waste treatment, or roads, or bridge(s), or new schools, etc. There is nothing wrong with financing a purchase provided you do it responsibly. In fact if interest rates are low enough (like now) there are are plenty of cases where not financing would be dumb. A dollar tomorrow is most likely going to be worth less than a dollar today so if you can get a low interest rate and pay with tomorrow's dollars (offset interest with inflation) then it is pretty easy to show cases where financing makes sense.
I make most of my purchases on a credit card which I pay off each month. Sure, I could pay it all at the time of purchase but I am needlessly limiting my options by doing so. By letting the credit card company provide me float I hold on to the cash which earns me interest for the extra month I get to hold it. Over time that adds up. I also gain the ability to utilize that cash for more emergent purposes should the need ever arise. What I don't do is pay unnecessary interest or buy things I can't afford just because I have the ability to do so.
Other things being equal, debt is bad, the product of deliberate short-sighted greed.
So no one in your town has a mortgage or a car payment or any credit card debt? Are people greedy for financing those things? Things are rarely equal. Debt is neither bad nor good by itself - it's how you use it that matters. Sometimes you need to fund things that it is difficult to arrange for all the financing in advance. You might need some road repair today and waiting a few years isn't really a feasible option. That doesn't mean you finance things just because you can - you still have to live within your means. But the need for cash is sometimes more immediate than the ability to acquire it and that is ok as long as you are responsible.
Most people in the US could have the IRS prepare their taxes based on income, interest, and other factors that are already reported to the IRS. I know the IRS could prepare most of my taxes with me just adding a few details.
If your taxes are that simple then the IRS has some very simple forms. A 1040-EZ is not an especially difficult exercise even without computer assistance. However the IRS has to define income for ALL citizens and these days most have more sources of income than you are thinking of. Salary, bonuses, tips, dividends, interest, capital gains, deferred income, inheritance, gambling winnings, gifts, prizes, pensions, social security, insurance payouts, deferred income, stock options, payment-in-kind, etc. The list is shockingly long. If the tax code does not address each and every one of them as a form of income then people WILL utilize that loophole. My point is that defining income for tax purposes is more complicated than most people think.
Now don't get me wrong, our tax code does have too much absurd and needless complexity. I truly don't know why we need to provide tax breaks for mortgage interest or federal student loan interest (just lower the interest rate) or why we pay tax to fund social security and then the government taxes the check they send back to us. Wouldn't it be simpler and less complex to just to send a smaller check in the first place? The list goes on and on. I know why congress does it (easier to pass a tax reduction than a funding increase even though they have the same net effect) but much of it is bad policy.
The current deficit situation is probably caused by special entities not paying as much tax as they once did.
The current deficit is caused by too much expenditures (primarily medicare/medicaid and defense) without tax revenues to match. Everyone wants benefits and most want a strong military and no one wants to pay the additional taxes that they cost. Any serious discussion about the debts HAS to involve either cuts to Medicare and defense or increased taxes or some combination of the two. (I exclude Social Security because it is funded a bit differently and separately and is easily fixed by comparison) Frankly I think we could cut our military expenditures in half or more without seriously impairing our nation's ability to defend itself. We spend more than the next 15 or so nations combined and somehow they manage to survive.
The ability to control the money supply (either directly, or indirectly through the Fed) is a weapon with no good uses.
My eyes are rolling so hard I think I just got a good look at my brain stem. If you're going to make bold assertions that seem unsupported by actual facts, you need to back them up.
It's the reason that the dollar is worth less than 2% of what it was worth 100 years ago.
$1 in 2013 was worth a little over $0.04 in 1913 if you adjust for inflation using the CPI and our ability to acquire dollars has increased at an even faster rate than inflation. The fact that inflation takes place doesn't mean much by itself. What matters is prices relative to the value of cash AND the amount of cash held. It's prices relative to the ability to acquire assets that matters. Buy a hamburger today or in 20 years and you are buying the same asset. If I have $100 and buy a hamburger for $1 today or I have $200 and buy a hamburger for $2 tomorrow, the cost to me is the same either way - it is costing me 1% of my assets. It's more complicated than my trivial example obviously but the basic point stands. Inflation (or deflation) is meaningless unless you compare it to income and previously acquired wealth. The dollar today is worth less but our ability to acquire them has greatly increased. There is a reason we adjust prices to account for inflation when comparing between different points in time.
The best situation is for money to have as near a constant value as freedom allows, which means something like a gold standard
Ahh, I understand now. You're one of the idiots who thinks there is something magical about gold and precious metals as an asset. Sigh... Gold is no different from any other asset. It has value because people believe it has value just like EVERY OTHER ASSET. The price of gold is volatile, just like every other asset. Tying the value of one asset (cash) to the value of another (gold) doesn't keep the value of either constant, it just makes the financing more difficult. In times of financial crisis there could be no lender of last resort because governments would be powerless to make money available where needed. Our recent financial crisis was a crisis of liquidity - no one could be sure who was safe to borrow from. The only party that everyone could be sure was a safe counter-party was the government. Had we been tied to a gold standard we would almost certainly be in the midst of the second great depression at this very moment. Virtually all economists blame the gold standard for greatly worsening the Great Depression because monetary policy could not be used as a tool.
There should be 3 lines on your tax forms, how much you make, the percentage of that you have to pay in taxes, and your signature. No more subsidies, loopholes, nothing.
Agreed in principle. In practice what you are proposing is absurd and unworkable. Why? Because defining income is actually rather complicated. (Hint, it's more than just the salary you get from your job) While we could do a lot (and should) to reduce the complexity of taxes by removing a bunch of needless cruft, an income tax will NEVER be anywhere close to as simple as you propose. The problem just isn't that simple.
The government should not be attempting to manipulate private citizens into spending a certain way. Every such program in history has ended in disaster.
The job of the government is to govern. That by definition involves manipulation of private citizens. Tax policy is just a tool. I'd agree it's a clumsy and overused tool but there is nothing fundamentally wrong with judicious use of it. And your hyperbole about every program ending in disaster is demonstrably untrue. You had a fair point up until there.
You pay taxes on what you earn, when you spend, on the roads you drive, the gas you buy, to register your car... that all needs to die. There should be a national sales tax. That's it, nothing else. You should not be charged for earning, saving or investing money.
I think you may not have thought through the consequences of your proposal. Sales taxes are rather volatile forms of taxation by themselves much like income tax. They also are a regressive form of taxation (hurts the poor more than the rich). A diversified set of tax streams is (or at least can be) good policy. As an example, a lot of local municipalities get most of their tax revenue from property taxes and not much else. Works fine until you have a housing bubble burst like in 2008-09. Diversification isn't just for personal stock portfolios. Furthermore is is also good policy to match tax revenues with the expenditures whenever possible. Taxing gasoline to fund road construction makes sense because the two are linked. If we use the roads more taxes will automatically rise to match. Reverse if the roads get used less. Now taxing gas to fund something like schools makes less sense because there is little direct relationship between the two.
We need temporary tax increases until we get out of debt.
Our government has been out of debt precisely once in 230+ years, during the Andrew Jackson's administration if my memory serves. SOME debt is fine and actually is quite useful and not at all harmful to the economy. Essentially all governments have some amount of debt and that is actually a good thing. But just like having a credit card you can have too much debt if you aren't careful.
Then we need to make it illegal for our governments to borrow money except in times of war.
Again, you are proposing something that would actually hurt the economy badly. The ability to control the money supply is critically important. The way we control the money supply is by selling debt or buying it back. Without the ability to borrow we cannot adjust the money supply which makes it very difficult to combat inflation, encourage (or discourage) lending, or deal with volatile tax revenues. SOME borrowing is fine and even beneficial.
Personally I like the idea that Warren Buffet proposed. If we are not in a declared war and the US debt exceeds 10% of GDP then all members of congress and the senate should be ineligible for re-election until such time as the debt is brought back to an appropriate level.
...warm yet visually efficient lighting...
What the heck is "visually efficient lighting"? Energy efficient I get. Warm I get. But visually efficient?
Well, is this such a bad thing? I mean, the 'nut jobs' will be selecting themselves right out of the gene pool, right?
I know you are joking but yes it really is such a bad thing. The problem is that some people cannot get vaccinated due to things like allergies to vaccine components, a weakened immune system or other health issues. The more people that get vaccinated the stronger the herd immunity and the less chance an unvaccinated person has of exposure. These idiots who don't get vaccinated increase the risk to both themselves and the people who through no fault of their own cannot have the vaccine administered. If I may be so crude, they are basically peeing in the gene pool and endangering others in the process.
Plus you have to consider that most vaccines are administered to minor children who legally cannot decide for themselves whether to get the vaccine or not. So basically a scientifically illiterate adult is preventing them from receiving standard medical care. Personally I think that amounts to reckless endangerment of a child and in some cases where the child gets ill and dies I think it is basically manslaughter.
Nobody will really believe that the AMS positron signal is from Dark Matter until we have discovered the Dark Matter itself.
Maybe the proof is on an island you can only find if you already know where it is. [/piratesofthecarribean]
McAfee says that the destruction of his compound was no accident.
Remind me why we care about this guy? Just because his name is on some software that he is no longer involved with doesn't make it relevant. Every story I've had the misfortune of coming across regarding this guy leads me to believe he is a (possibly paranoid) publicity seeker who is telling a bunch of tall tales in order to get attention. Enough already.
On the other hand, zero celcius is the boundary line between dealing with frozen water (as ice or snow) and dealing with liquid water (as flooding or rain). That's incredibly convenient when travelling.
Not that I'm in favor of fahrenheit (I'm not) but water freezing at 32F isn't any more difficult to deal with than 0C. Both are arbitrarily chosen chosen scales. Celsius has the nice round numbers but from a practical day to day usage standpoint that matters not at all. I know that water freezes below 32F and that doesn't take up any more room in my brain than 0C. The only real problem is that I have to remember two scales instead of one. Since Celsius is the more widely used scale, I wish we would switch to that one.
My exerience with a recent Nook made me wish I had a stylus for something as simple as closing tabs on a web browser. The amount of failure involved using my fingers on that device was just completely frustrating.
That sounds like a design flaw with the interface rather than an indication of the need for a stylus to do basic navigation. Frankly if you need a stylus for navigation, something is broken in the design. I have an iPhone and I can reliably push very small buttons with my fingers with good accuracy. (Not recommending it just observing that it is possible to have precise finger input)
I think the reason finger interfaces have worked well so far is that Apple and Google have made it intentionally difficult to use stylus and keyboards and mice which has forced the OS and application designers to spend some actual effort thinking about how best to design the application for finger input. Sometimes limiting options actually makes for a better product. The same thing need to happen with a stylus. If the OS limits it to drawing only (at least for a while) then it might start to be used for what it is actually good for software engineers will have to actually think about the interface instead of just treating it like a funny shaped mouse.
Most of my friends have viable home laptops with no remaining battery of which to speak. And these were solid industrial models. Does that mean the whole thing should be thrown out and replaced?
No, it means they need to fork over the $ for a new battery which is normal for a laptop. Rechargable batteries only have a finite number of cycles in them and the ones in laptops typically show signs of wearing out after 2-3 years, less if the battery is used heavily. I've never seen one older than 3 years that held anywhere near the charge it did when new. Presuming the battery will last the lifetime of the computer is incorrect.
This is why batteries need to be serviceable. They do not need to be hot swappable or even modular for most people but if you plan to keep the computer for more than 2-3 years there is a high probability you should plan on a battery swap at some point. It's typically not hard to find a replacement, especially if the battery pack is modular. Sometimes you need to get out ye-olde-screwdriver (and occasionally a soldering iron) and crack the case open.
Ethical behavior is incompatible with the pursuit of profit.
Nonsense. Pursuit of profit *can* lead to unethical behavior but it does not follow that pursuit of profit *must* lead to unethical behavior. Buying something and then selling it to someone else for a higher price has no component that is fundamentally unethical. If you have a good I need and I'm willing to pay a price for it (a price that is low enough that it does not cause me injury) then we both get something we want/need and both are better off. There is nothing unethical about that exchange.
I won't even get in to the question of what you consider unethical behavior or why. Ethics are societal conventions and standards which differ between people and groups, not immutable laws of the universe. Perhaps you do consider pursuit of profit to be unethical. That does not mean that the rest of society must consider it so.