On this side of the pond, I pay nothing when I buy the PC and pay nothing when I drop it off at the recycling station. A bunch of nerds sit outside in the hot sun all day (southern florida) for the privilege of collecting my junk. Strange as it may seem, it works.
I believe the following method would be simple and effective -
Election officials should provide a paper ballot and indelible marker and request a voter ID. The voter's name is then checked off of the voter registration book. The voter marks the ballot and prints a (optional) password on the ballot. The ballot is electronically scanned and counted and the voter is given a printed time stamp. Since only one ballot is counted at a time at any precinct, a voter could provide his precinct, password and timestamp to determinet the vote count before and after voting. If the election is contested, there is a paper trail and anyone can count the ballots.
Nothing on the ballot connects the voter to the ballot. Nothing connects a specific voter to his request for a vote tally. Since the password is optional, any voter could deny giving a password and coersion, to reveal how one voted, would be difficult.
Not much has been said about the IRS and tax preparation. Virtually every detail of your life has to be revealed if you use a third party to prepare your taxes. Typical questions include all financial and real estate transactions, marital status (alimony payments), address, SSN, number and age of dependents, medical costs, stock, bond and mutual fund status, and employment history. And that's just the start. As Major T.J. "King" Kong once said, "Shoot, a fella' could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff."
Yeah, and back in my day we didn't even have books. We had stone tablets. And we had to carry them 5 miles to and from class over gravel in our bare feet.
These are some of the problems that I see with the theories of evolution.
The first living thing, from which all others evolved, had to have a discriminating membrane, transmit genetic information to its offspring, had to be able to process that information, had to acquire and use energy to process that information, had to reproduce, grow and repair itself when necessary, react to its surrounding, and adapt to its environment. This living thing had to be formed from nonliving things. No experiment has ever been devised to show how this could occur.
The mathematical improbability. Human cells contain two sets of chromosomes, one set from each parent. Each set has 22 autosomes and an X or Y sex chromosome. The determined length (in base pairs) of the 23 chromosomes is >2.832*10^9 in men and >2.957*10^9 in women. To function correctly, each cell depends on thousands of proteins to function in the right place at the right time. Molecular analysis of DNA have determined that cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia and predispositions to cancer and many other physical and mental disorders are the result of mutations. In other words, mutations tend towards lethal effects on the organism. The probability that this complex, functionally interdependent and self-repairing set of molecules could have risen by chance without lethal mutations is so exceedingly small that it must be accepted on faith and not on fact.
Evolution must hold as a central tenant that the basic mechanism by which the gene pool changes over time is without limits. No limit in existing characteristics and no limit in appearance. However, carefully controlled breeding experiments have consistently run into severe limitations.
Asexual vs sexual reproduction. Sexual reproduction is dominate, yet it has serious disadvantages in natural selection and survival. A mutation that would cause females to produce only daughters will initially double in every generation and quickly swamp out the ability for sexual reproducers to find mates. Yet this has not happened. Sexual reproduction had to not only evolve but evolve many different times in many different ways. At the same time, asexual reproduction, by mutation from sexual reproduction had to not occur in every species.
The two sexes of every species had to evolve compatibly at exactly the same time, find each other and mate. All of the advanced mechanisms for sexual reproduction had to be in place without ever being used. Therefore, if the two sexes of every species did not evolve at exactly the same time, one or the other or both (if they could not find each other) had to maintain a means of reproduction sexually and asexually. Extinction is the only alternative.
Self-replicating macromolecules are necessary to the theories of evolution. However, they do not occur spontaneously and they have not been produced in the lab.
Thanks for reading through this. I look forward to your answers.
Anecdotal experience leads me to believe that if you stay on at a "burger flipper" job for more than a year you could be the manager. My son went to work for a pizza place to earn money while at college. The turnover was so high that he learned all the positions in 6 months. When the assistant manager quit, he got that job. When the manager quit he got that job. By the end of 18 months he was offered stock and a position in their corporate IT department.
I also have a friend who started at McDonalds and now owns four McD's - so it can happen.
I can't speak for other religions but coming to faith in Christ is all about personal responsibility. Jesus said, "Go and sin no more". Peter said, "Prepare you minds for action; be self controlled." Solomon said, "Have the wisdom to show restraint". The message of personal responibility is woven throughout the Bible.
What features would you really like to see in TiVo? TiVo has seriously fallen behind the technology curve and little software and marketing bandaids are not getting the job done.
Evolution, is by definition, not goal oriented (Gould, 1989). Therefore, how can it speed up or slow down based on "pressure"? Species examples please.
"Minimum wage is a fucking joke...Nobody can actually live off of minimum wage."
There is no correlation between an arbitrary standard of living and what a person should be paid.
In a free market, a person gets paid what they're worth. If one's skills are insufficient to live off of, then one needs better skills.
In my personal experience and in the experience of my children, anyone who shows up for work on time and does a good job at most any service industry (fast food, hotel, retail store) for just 3 months will not be working for minimum wage. Anyone who sticks with it for a year has a good chance of being promoted to manager.
File an extension, so you can legally postpone your tax return filing beyond April 15th You can legally postpone filing but you can't postpone paying the tax.
You can't pay the tax (accurately) unless you do the work necessary to file. Either way you're screwed.
"And all the information you can possible (sic) need is available from the IRS." True enough. All 54846 pages of it. With its continuous growth and morphing, it's too hideous to behold.
Taxes are just one of your many responsibilities as a business owner.
Most (all?) states have annual incorporation filing fees and other mandatory annual supplications you must perform.
Penalties for screwing these up are stiff because politicians get votes for dumping on "evil" corporations. If you think you're under the radar because you haven't gotten any notifications, remember that bureaucratic wheels turn very slowly but when the start to turn they have nearly unlimited resources to grind you into dust.
Call them (after April 15th) and interview them just as you would any other employee. Find someone with small business experience who you will enjoy working with. Expect them to ask questions too and if your business is really a hobby, it will only take a good CPA a few minutes to make that determination.
Joe should spend the money he would pay for insurance on a good time. Then commit a felony that would get him incarcerated for about a year. Have the operation at taxpayers' expense while in jail and use the rest of the time to rehab and work out in the gym.
Examples of failed systems - To legally own a firearm (in Massachusetts) inherited from my father, I had to submit to questioning and three sets of fingerprints by the local police. Why three sets? Because when I went back to renew my license after four years they had "lost" the other two. When renting ski equipment, the rental agency asked for my drivers license. For most Massachusetts residents the drivers license number is also their social security number. With all of the information on the drivers license (name, address, height, race, social security number) and a google search, to determine a few additional personal facts, it would be trivial for a weekend employee at the rental agency to steal ID's. What is moral of the story? ID systems fail, whether they are "high security" (finger prints and police interviews) or low security (drivers license). The failure rate is high and the consequences can be huge - up to five years in prison in Massachusetts for not properly registering a gun.
I made a decision back then that when I started my own company, no-one's getting screwed.
When you start your own company you will quickly see that you are the one who will get screwed. The employer's (i.e. you) contribution to federal and state unemployment taxes, medicare, social security and a myriad of other state and local taxes for your employees are mandatory even if you pay yourself nothing. The tax on the first dollar earned for most self-employed is more than 70% and, in certain cases, can exceed 100%. You are absolutely correct. Screwing the people who generate the revenue is counterproductive. Unfortunately, most politicians haven't figured that out.
"HP also makes electronic measurement equipment.."
Proving the point that HP got the spinoff exactly backwards. The test and measurement business should have retained the Hewlett Packard name. At least then the spirit of Bill and Dave could have lived on in the business they founded.
If Agilent made the PC's and printers it would just be another dot-com equivalent gone bust. To watch the namesake of the founders of silicon valley go down at the hands of Carly is just too sad for words.
Conduit is an excellent suggestion. 10 years from now you'll want something you didn't put in the wall.
In 1988, I built a house and put an infrared receiver in the ceiling of every room. The receivers were wired back to a closet in the center of the house that was large enough to hold a server. Cables were run from the closet to the study. The only change I would make would be to run the cables in conduit.
In 1979 I designed a real-time intensive care (ekg, temperature, pressure) patient monitoring system for Hewlett Packard that used the Z80A (4MHz). The system used 3 Z80's for the built-in real-time measurements and could accept three addtional Z80's for other measurements as needed. The entire system could reconfigure itself as plug-ins were "hot swapped" at the patient's bedside. Information was passed between processors using a shared memory system and one processor also handled serial communications with the ICU central station and remote offices.
Much of the architecture was made possible by two Z80 features - auto DRAM refresh and the block move instruction. Both innovative for their time.
By the way - our home-grown operating system was very reliable. The information being supplied was critical to a patient's health. A Windows "blue screen of death" might have been just that.
Re:The fallacy of this story
on
Coder or Architect?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I once worked with a "grizzled veteran" who welcomed people into his cubicle with the statement, "I'm glad to help you - but at no time does your problem become my problem." Those were some of the wisest words I've ever heard.
Think you're good? Develop a business plan and set out on your own. Your customers will give you the most objective review you will ever receive.
If you're as good as you say you are you'll make 10X as much as working for any employer. If you're not, you'll come back a little older and a little wiser.
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On this side of the pond, I pay nothing when I buy the PC and pay nothing when I drop it off at the recycling station. A bunch of nerds sit outside in the hot sun all day (southern florida) for the privilege of collecting my junk. Strange as it may seem, it works.
Meetings are called to establish and sustain the peeking order.
I believe the following method would be simple and effective -
Election officials should provide a paper ballot and indelible marker and request a voter ID. The voter's name is then checked off of the voter registration book. The voter marks the ballot and prints a (optional) password on the ballot. The ballot is electronically scanned and counted and the voter is given a printed time stamp. Since only one ballot is counted at a time at any precinct, a voter could provide his precinct, password and timestamp to determinet the vote count before and after voting. If the election is contested, there is a paper trail and anyone can count the ballots.
Nothing on the ballot connects the voter to the ballot. Nothing connects a specific voter to his request for a vote tally. Since the password is optional, any voter could deny giving a password and coersion, to reveal how one voted, would be difficult.
Not much has been said about the IRS and tax preparation. Virtually every detail of your life has to be revealed if you use a third party to prepare your taxes. Typical questions include all financial and real estate transactions, marital status (alimony payments), address, SSN, number and age of dependents, medical costs, stock, bond and mutual fund status, and employment history. And that's just the start. As Major T.J. "King" Kong once said, "Shoot, a fella' could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff."
Yeah, and back in my day we didn't even have books. We had stone tablets. And we had to carry them 5 miles to and from class over gravel in our bare feet.
These are some of the problems that I see with the theories of evolution.
The first living thing, from which all others evolved, had to have a discriminating membrane, transmit genetic information to its offspring, had to be able to process that information, had to acquire and use energy to process that information, had to reproduce, grow and repair itself when necessary, react to its surrounding, and adapt to its environment. This living thing had to be formed from nonliving things. No experiment has ever been devised to show how this could occur.
The mathematical improbability. Human cells contain two sets of chromosomes, one set from each parent. Each set has 22 autosomes and an X or Y sex chromosome. The determined length (in base pairs) of the 23 chromosomes is >2.832*10^9 in men and >2.957*10^9 in women. To function correctly, each cell depends on thousands of proteins to function in the right place at the right time. Molecular analysis of DNA have determined that cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia and predispositions to cancer and many other physical and mental disorders are the result of mutations. In other words, mutations tend towards lethal effects on the organism. The probability that this complex, functionally interdependent and self-repairing set of molecules could have risen by chance without lethal mutations is so exceedingly small that it must be accepted on faith and not on fact.
Evolution must hold as a central tenant that the basic mechanism by which the gene pool changes over time is without limits. No limit in existing characteristics and no limit in appearance. However, carefully controlled breeding experiments have consistently run into severe limitations.
Asexual vs sexual reproduction. Sexual reproduction is dominate, yet it has serious disadvantages in natural selection and survival. A mutation that would cause females to produce only daughters will initially double in every generation and quickly swamp out the ability for sexual reproducers to find mates. Yet this has not happened. Sexual reproduction had to not only evolve but evolve many different times in many different ways. At the same time, asexual reproduction, by mutation from sexual reproduction had to not occur in every species.
The two sexes of every species had to evolve compatibly at exactly the same time, find each other and mate. All of the advanced mechanisms for sexual reproduction had to be in place without ever being used. Therefore, if the two sexes of every species did not evolve at exactly the same time, one or the other or both (if they could not find each other) had to maintain a means of reproduction sexually and asexually. Extinction is the only alternative.
Self-replicating macromolecules are necessary to the theories of evolution. However, they do not occur spontaneously and they have not been produced in the lab.
Thanks for reading through this. I look forward to your answers.
Anecdotal experience leads me to believe that if you stay on at a "burger flipper" job for more than a year you could be the manager. My son went to work for a pizza place to earn money while at college. The turnover was so high that he learned all the positions in 6 months. When the assistant manager quit, he got that job. When the manager quit he got that job. By the end of 18 months he was offered stock and a position in their corporate IT department.
I also have a friend who started at McDonalds and now owns four McD's - so it can happen.
I can't speak for other religions but coming to faith in Christ is all about personal responsibility. Jesus said, "Go and sin no more". Peter said, "Prepare you minds for action; be self controlled." Solomon said, "Have the wisdom to show restraint". The message of personal responibility is woven throughout the Bible.
What features would you really like to see in TiVo?
TiVo has seriously fallen behind the technology curve and little software and marketing bandaids are not getting the job done.
Evolution, is by definition, not goal oriented (Gould, 1989). Therefore, how can it speed up or slow down based on "pressure"? Species examples please.
"Minimum wage is a fucking joke. ..Nobody can actually live off of minimum wage."
There is no correlation between an arbitrary standard of living and what a person should be paid.
In a free market, a person gets paid what they're worth. If one's skills are insufficient to live off of, then one needs better skills.
In my personal experience and in the experience of my children, anyone who shows up for work on time and does a good job at most any service industry (fast food, hotel, retail store) for just 3 months will not be working for minimum wage. Anyone who sticks with it for a year has a good chance of being promoted to manager.
File an extension, so you can legally postpone your tax return filing beyond April 15th
You can legally postpone filing but you can't postpone paying the tax.
You can't pay the tax (accurately) unless you do the work necessary to file. Either way you're screwed.
"And all the information you can possible (sic) need is available from the IRS."
True enough. All 54846 pages of it. With its continuous growth and morphing, it's too hideous to behold.
Taxes are just one of your many responsibilities as a business owner.
Most (all?) states have annual incorporation filing fees and other mandatory annual supplications you must perform.
Penalties for screwing these up are stiff because politicians get votes for dumping on "evil" corporations. If you think you're under the radar because you haven't gotten any notifications, remember that bureaucratic wheels turn very slowly but when the start to turn they have nearly unlimited resources to grind you into dust.
Get professional help fast.
Call them (after April 15th) and interview them just as you would any other employee. Find someone with small business experience who you will enjoy working with. Expect them to ask questions too and if your business is really a hobby, it will only take a good CPA a few minutes to make that determination.
Joe should spend the money he would pay for insurance on a good time.
Then commit a felony that would get him incarcerated for about a year.
Have the operation at taxpayers' expense while in jail and use the rest of the time to rehab and work out in the gym.
Examples of failed systems - To legally own a firearm (in Massachusetts) inherited from my father, I had to submit to questioning and three sets of fingerprints by the local police. Why three sets? Because when I went back to renew my license after four years they had "lost" the other two. When renting ski equipment, the rental agency asked for my drivers license. For most Massachusetts residents the drivers license number is also their social security number. With all of the information on the drivers license (name, address, height, race, social security number) and a google search, to determine a few additional personal facts, it would be trivial for a weekend employee at the rental agency to steal ID's.
What is moral of the story? ID systems fail, whether they are "high security" (finger prints and police interviews) or low security (drivers license). The failure rate is high and the consequences can be huge - up to five years in prison in Massachusetts for not properly registering a gun.
As always, the real test is to see if a school without a major football team can reproduce the results.
I made a decision back then that when I started my own company, no-one's getting screwed.
When you start your own company you will quickly see that you are the one who will get screwed. The employer's (i.e. you) contribution to federal and state unemployment taxes, medicare, social security and a myriad of other state and local taxes for your employees are mandatory even if you pay yourself nothing. The tax on the first dollar earned for most self-employed is more than 70% and, in certain cases, can exceed 100%.
You are absolutely correct. Screwing the people who generate the revenue is counterproductive. Unfortunately, most politicians haven't figured that out.
It really hits the nail on several points.
I like my metaphores stirred not mixed.
Proving the point that HP got the spinoff exactly backwards. The test and measurement business should have retained the Hewlett Packard name. At least then the spirit of Bill and Dave could have lived on in the business they founded.
If Agilent made the PC's and printers it would just be another dot-com equivalent gone bust. To watch the namesake of the founders of silicon valley go down at the hands of Carly is just too sad for words.
In 1988, I built a house and put an infrared receiver in the ceiling of every room. The receivers were wired back to a closet in the center of the house that was large enough to hold a server. Cables were run from the closet to the study. The only change I would make would be to run the cables in conduit.
In 1979 I designed a real-time intensive care (ekg, temperature, pressure) patient monitoring system for Hewlett Packard that used the Z80A (4MHz). The system used 3 Z80's for the built-in real-time measurements and could accept three addtional Z80's for other measurements as needed. The entire system could reconfigure itself as plug-ins were "hot swapped" at the patient's bedside. Information was passed between processors using a shared memory system and one processor also handled serial communications with the ICU central station and remote offices.
Much of the architecture was made possible by two Z80 features - auto DRAM refresh and the block move instruction. Both innovative for their time.
By the way - our home-grown operating system was very reliable. The information being supplied was critical to a patient's health. A Windows "blue screen of death" might have been just that.
I once worked with a "grizzled veteran" who welcomed people into his cubicle with the statement, "I'm glad to help you - but at no time does your problem become my problem." Those were some of the wisest words I've ever heard.
If you're as good as you say you are you'll make 10X as much as working for any employer. If you're not, you'll come back a little older and a little wiser.