The job of any government agency to defend the constitution. It's the job of the judicial branch. Furthermore, you actually expect a spy agency to protect the constitution? That's not even close to their job.
The naivete some have on this issue is rather surprising given the demographics of the site.
Employees at the NSA take an oath to defend the constitution. From the NSA's website:
NSA/CSS employees are Americans first, last, and always. We treasure the U.S. Constitution and the rights it secures for all the people. Each employee takes a solemn oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
It's not naivete, it's just expecting them to do what they SWORE TO DO.
Pretty much every retail employee on the planet already has to deal with this, but without the ability to have a mysterious hardware failure at (in)convenient times.
This. There are cameras in my office, if I went around cutting the wires to each camera I would no longer have a job and would probably be brought up on criminal charges. Our security department also has the ability to monitor my computer at any time. People in tons of different professions are monitored while they are working and many are tested to determine if they are doing company-prohibited activities while not at work. There is no reason why police should be excluded from the same kind of surveillance. In fact, many people would argue that there is a more compelling interest in monitoring police than almost any other profession.
That wasn't a case of cross-pollination at all, that was a case of a farmer (who normally used Monsanto seed and had a contract with them) buying soybeans intended for consumption, planting them and spraying them with roundup to kill any non-roundup ready stock, then using that seed stock year after year for planting. The supreme court ruled (9-0) that he was intentionally violating the patent that Monsanto holds on that variety of Soy. Bowman's defense was "patent exhaustion", basically the right to sell something that you had previously bought. The courts found that this was not the case and ruled that Bowman was creating new copies of a patented invention and so patent exhaustion did not apply. From the Supreme Court decision:
the purchaser of that article could make and sell endless copies, the patent would effectively protect the invention for just a single sale. Bowman himself disputes none of this analysis as a general matter: He forthrightly acknowledges the “well settled” principle “that the exhaustion doctrine does not extend to the right to ‘make’ a new product.” Brief for Petitioner 37 (citing Aro, 365 U. S., at 346). Unfortunately for Bowman, that principle decides this case against him. Under the patent exhaustion doctrine, Bowman could resell the patented soybeans he purchased from the grain elevator; so too he could consume the beans himself or feed them to his animals. Monsanto, although the patent holder, would have no business interfering in those uses of Roundup Ready beans. But the exhaustion doctrine does not enable Bowman to make additional patented soybeans without Monsanto’s permission (either express or implied). And that is precisely what Bowman did. He took the soybeans he purchased home; planted them in his fields at the time he thought best; applied glyphosate to kill weeds (as well as any soy plants lacking the Roundup Ready trait); and finally harvested more (many more) beans than he started with. That is how “to ‘make’ a new product,” to use Bowman’s words, when the original product is a seed.
So not only did you not provide what was asked (an example of accidental cross-pollination where Monsanto sued a farmer who did not take specific steps to exploit the accident) but the example you did provide the farmer is clearly in the wrong. If the SC rules unanimously against your case, there is not a ton of ambiguity on the merits.
Perhaps people oppose Monsanto because of this tactic:
1) Claim a patent on seeds Monsanto makes. 2) Get some farmers to buy the seeds. 2 a) Lock the farmers in by stipulating that they can't take any seeds the plant produces and plant them again next year... like people have done for thousands of years! 3) Find a nearby farmer who isn't buying Monsanto and claim they they've planted Monsanto. 4) Find one instance of their plants growing on that farmer's land. (Ignore that seeds travel by air/animals and spread... like seeds have done for millions of years!) 5) Tie up the farmer in court until they either agree to buy Monsanto or they go bankrupt. 6) Repeat 2a - 5.
Your steps seem accurate up to #3. In the only case I have seen about this (the Percy Schmeiser case in Canada) the farmer intentionally killed the part of his crop that was not contaminated so that he could identify the plants that had been cross contaminated with the monsanto genes. He then planted ONLY THAT SEED for the express purpose of using Roundup pesticide on the resulting crop. This wasn't a case of "find one instance of their plants growing on that farmer's land", it was a case of the farmer taking specific steps to isolate the roundup-ready seeds and use them for their pesticide resistance. Here is a story from NPR that discusses that case, hardly a source that would be biased for Monsanto. Monsanto specifically addresses the issue on their site as well, claiming "Monsanto has never sued a farmer when trace amounts of our patented seeds or traits were present in the farmer’s field as an accident or as a result of inadvertent means.". If you have a source to refute that claim then please provide it.
I know that spelling out the facts for you probably won't change your mind on this issue but maybe if someone is actually looking for actual truths instead of strawmen it will help them. I hate Monsanto as much as the next guy, but there are plenty of legitimate reasons to hate them - you don't have to resort to claims that aren't supported by facts.
I really wish people would stop with the assumption that every possible job out there must support a family of four as the sole income source.
This. How many of the lower-paid Walmart workers are the primary breadwinners for their family? And what skills to they bring to the table that they should be paid more?
The reason they are not paid very much is because it is a very low-skill job that pretty much anybody can do. This means that they are easily replacable so they have no negotiating power when considering salary. If these people want to earn more money they should develop skills that would be worth more to an employer than their current skillset which seems to consist of "able to breathe oxygen".
According to page 43 of this study, men drive about 50% more miles per year than women.
The GP's link shows that men account for 2.5x as many traffic fatalities.
So men are clearly still worse according to these statistics. But why trust these numbers? Insurance companies make their money by having teams of extremely smart, highly trained statisticians pore over more data than you'll see in a lifetime, and they charge women less. I don't see how anyone could rationally argue that women are worse drivers while knowing that fact.
Women have more more accidents overall and much more likely to have an injury accident than men per mile driven (source). Males, particularly young males are much more likely to take risks than females. Young males are 2.1 more likely to be in a fatal accident but the rates start converging and by age 60 there isn't a difference in the fatal accident rate. But for non-fatal accidents females consistently are more likely to be involved. I couldn't find any data on insurance rates by gender, do you have a source for that?
And, come on now, tell the whole story. For AT&T to be able to deliver Netflix's data all the way to the home routers of their customers, they also have to maintain arrangements with other carriers to handle that data as it comes in from Netflix. Those peering arrangements are not free, just like maintaining that last mile to their end user customers isn't free.
Nope, those peering arrangements are not free, generally AT&T gets paid since it is a tier 1 network. They are also already getting paid by their customer (and also by the government) for maintaining the last mile infrastructure.
Meanwhile, the guy who buys bandwidth and uses it for a less Netflix/YouTube-centric array of connections absolutely is going to be asked to contribute to his neighbor's entertainment costs if the GP has his way and AT&T raises their rates across the board to deal with the behavior of a subset of users and remote content sources.
Companies and people have been screaming about this for years, well before Netflix was a company. Unless the industry switches (back) to a usage model it will always be this way. AT&T is free to bill their customers (and their network peers) whatever and however they like, but they shouldn't be able to charge their customer's customer.
I think the reason many people have a problem with this is because they are already getting gouged by these companies for internet, cable TV and phone service. The cablecos provide terrible customer service, little network maintenance and a product where you are forced to buy a bundle of crap you don't want to get a few things you want (A la carte pricing, anyone?) and in exchange for this they have been granted monopolies and a captive customer base. They are making money hand-over-fist with enviable margins and the greedy fuckers want MORE? Fuck them.
AT&T & Comcast don't own the road, they only own part of the road. They have a deal with another road system (Cogent) that cars from their systems can drive on Cogent's roads and cars from Cogent's system can drive on their roads. Netflix already pays Cogent for their road access and the end-user already pays AT&T for road access. If AT&T has a beef, it is either with their customer or Cogent, not with Netflix.
This isn't telephony. It's a data communications issue, upon which rides both time-sensitive data (audio, video) and non-time sensitive data. AT&T's arrogance is that of Southwestern Bell's (remember, this is not the AT&T of old) vision for profits.
It's a monopolistic view. It's the old "we own the highway" versus "we gave you rights of way because you were a municipal and regional utility". I say we reclaim the rights of way, and meter AT&T for their belligerence. That'll fix it for everyone.
Who is "we"? The people? The people have no power, how are they going to reclaim these rights of way? The government? The government won't do anything because of the way campaigns are financed and the corrupting influence of power. The government gave the telcos BILLIONS of the people's dollars to build out high-speed networks - which they have obviously failed to do.
The problem is that nobody (outside of the narrow/. demographic) gives a shit about this. Heck, we can't even make them care about the NSA listening to their fucking phone calls, do you really think you can make enough people care about this issue to exert political pressure?
"In the Bible, Christ preaches that his followers should pay their taxes. You know 'Render unto Rome what is Rome's...". I believe that fundamentalist christian churches should volutarily be paying taxes, even if the law does not require it. "
First, churches are not their followers... the followers do pay taxes.
Not on money they give to their church. So it's really 2 tax exemptions, the one for the individual deducting money given to the church and one for income to the church not being taxed. If the church were a business (it's not, it's a virus - the only goal of a church is to grow) it would have had to pay taxes on the income and the individual would have to pay taxes as well, Meanwhile, the rest of us pick up that tax shortfall (and pay for the "quiverfull" families).
TrueCrypt is decent, but it can't hurt to have a utility that is updated and maintained with similar functionality. Truecrypt is going over two years without an update. It is a very good program, but PGP has a lot of functionality (public/private key exchange and upkeep, web of trust, etc.) that TC doesn't have.
Of course, one can use GNUpg and TrueCrypt. The command line works well, but GUI-wise, Symantec Encryption Desktop Professional (i.e. PGP Desktop) is just a lot easier to get around in.
One side note -- PGP Desktop isn't officially supported on Windows 8 and 8.1... but it does work.
Symantec has a very kick-ass opportunity right now. They can capitalize on the general concern of both businesses and people and sell not just PGP Desktop, but a complete infrastructure going past BitLocker where a cryptographic token would be required for the OS to load. Not just a file on a USB flash drive, but a token where the key is well protected even from physical attack.
Huh? PGP Desktop has long supported using a token or smart card to authenticate to an encrypted disk at boot. Yes, it supports the "file on a flash drive" approach as well but also supports cryptographic tokens from a lot of different manufacturers.
Yep, I think it is about time we weed out those like Einstein who were mediocre all through their preteens and teens. We only want the brightest and we aim to determine who they are early on so any late bloomers should have thought twice before sitting on their arses all those years.
"In September 1896, he passed the Swiss Matura with mostly good grades, including a top grade of 6 in physics and mathematical subjects, on a scale of 1-6, and, though only seventeen, enrolled in the four-year mathematics and physics teaching diploma program at the Zurich Polytechnic." Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...
For example, I seem to recall that Albert Einstein was not very good in his classes which is why he took the job as a Patent Inspector.
Just because you seem to recall that doesn't mean it is true. Einstein did very in school, particularly in his mathematics and physics classes. From Wikipedia: "In September 1896, he passed the Swiss Matura with mostly good grades, including a top grade of 6 in physics and mathematical subjects, on a scale of 1-6"
When he took the job at the patent office he was looking for a teaching position, having already graduated from school. Many people point to Einstein and say "See? Doing poorly in school doesn't mean I am stupid, even Einstein didn't do well in school!" when the actual reason they do poorly in school is because they don't have the same level of intellect as the other students. Sure, it is possible to be a genius and still get bad grades but it is far more likely one's bad grades and test scores are due to their incompetence rather than their genius.
So you are saying if someone should happen to get lucky that the state should take it away from them because it's not you?
It's not only the super rich that inherit things. Farms that have been in families for generations are being sold off to pay the taxes when the farmer tries to pass it to his children. These farms may have millions of dollars in the equipment alone so the state sees these kids as inheriting millions of dollars. These are not "lottery" winners. These are people that have worked a farm their entire lives only to have it ripped from their hands because of class-envy assholes like you think they are getting away with something. How 'bout trying to mind your own damn business for a change.
I didn't see your farm example but you did give the example of a father wanting to pass on a Taco Hut business to his heirs. Wikipedia says unless the Taco Hut is worth more than $5,340,000 your heirs would have to pay nothing. You act like every poor dirt farmer is getting burned by this tax but in reality it is only estates that are worth many millions of dollars that are subject to this tax and even then, they are only taxed on the amount of the estate in excess of the exemption.
Let me take a look....Yes, right now, in my company, there are 2 women, and 50 men. I agree with you, i should not have believed my eyes, but some obscure funny organization to tell me what is right and what is wrong.
Absolutely. The plural of anecdote is not data, actual data is much more useful than your anecdote. Plus, this story and the parent post to which you are replying have nothing to do with the number of women at your company, they have to do with how much women in the tech field get paid relative to men.
That said, women also spend far more money preparing for those dates. When you include things like makeup, hair maintenance, clothes, etc. I would be surprised if men actually pay more money overall during the dating process.
So women spend money on themselves, and men spend money on women. Not to mention the fact that for 2 of the 3 categories you listed (hair maintenance and clothes) men also have costs. I don't know why anyone would have a problem with this, seems perfectly equitable.
My request wasn't to get the numbers as I did a similar search and know the numbers, it was to help you realize that welfare is a small portion of the budget. I obviously failed in this as rather than looking at the number and saying "gee, that isn't that much money in the context we are talking about" you attempted to insult my intelligence. When I ask for fact to substantiate your nebulous assertions you return with insults and no facts. I assume this is because the facts don't support your specious argument.
No... the money will just be spent on food stamps and welfare.
The real complex in the US is the welfare-entitlement complex. And it is devouring my country.... cracking the bones and sucking the marrow out.
They'll never have enough money. They're already spending far more then we take in tax revenue... and so they're cutting things.
Why do you think our infrastructure is crumbling? Because they took the money ear marked for infrastructure and spent it on welfare and entitlements... public unions and pensions.
Can you provide some numbers that back up that assertion? What percentage of the federal budget is spent on welfare? On pensions?
Considering how many people text while driving, it might PREVENT one!
I don't think I'd like an update to happen while I'm away from home, let alone moving. If I'm at home and the car fails on the installation update or to work afterwards I have my bike and public transportation options. When I was 400 miles from home and needed car repair I was stuck in a hotel for 3 days, the novelty, even of having a loner car, wore off pretty fast.
Well, if they have a WiFi option to connect rather than a cellular network connection you could only set it up for your home WiFi so it couldn't get an update unless you were at home. As long as manufacturers let the end-user have some control over this process I don't see anything wrong with delivering updates directly to the car rather than the dealer.
Steve Jobs had a salary of $ 1 per year. He shared in the success of the company because he owned a good chunk of it.
That, I have no problem with.
Yes, but that salary structure wasn't because of some nebulous "belief in the company" it was structured that way to avoid taxes and for public relations purposes. link
They can use that to investigate crimes (who was in area X) (if you said your alibi was Y, why were you driving the other way?). If your goal is to prevent crime and to make investigation in the aftermath of an attack easier, you want this.
It does, obviously, come at a privacy cost. But realistically, we're already living with it, and they're not going to stop unless a court orders them to--which is somewhat unlikely.
Sure, and it would be easier to solve crimes if every citizen had a chip implanted that would track all their movements and record everything they do. To some people, freedom is a lot more important than solving every crime or "feeling safe" from terrorists. Unfortunately, the American people as a whole do not feel that way. They welcome more government survellience, take a look at polls conducted after the Snowden revelations - the majority doesn't see a problem with it because they think the NSA is making them safe from terrorism. One's chances of being injured or killed in a terrorist attack are very low but we spend billions and billions of dollars to fight this near non-existent threat. For the price we are paying for DHS we could do things that would actually make people safer instead of just making them feel safer.
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The job of any government agency to defend the constitution. It's the job of the judicial branch. Furthermore, you actually expect a spy agency to protect the constitution? That's not even close to their job.
The naivete some have on this issue is rather surprising given the demographics of the site.
Employees at the NSA take an oath to defend the constitution. From the NSA's website:
NSA/CSS employees are Americans first, last, and always. We treasure the U.S. Constitution and the rights it secures for all the people. Each employee takes a solemn oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
It's not naivete, it's just expecting them to do what they SWORE TO DO.
"Consumption" was an old name for tuberculosis. TB is normally transferred through the air, not food contamination.
From the CDC:
"Before the invention and acceptance of pasteurization, raw milk was a common source of the bacteria that cause tuberculosis, ..."
Pretty much every retail employee on the planet already has to deal with this, but without the ability to have a mysterious hardware failure at (in)convenient times.
This. There are cameras in my office, if I went around cutting the wires to each camera I would no longer have a job and would probably be brought up on criminal charges. Our security department also has the ability to monitor my computer at any time. People in tons of different professions are monitored while they are working and many are tested to determine if they are doing company-prohibited activities while not at work. There is no reason why police should be excluded from the same kind of surveillance. In fact, many people would argue that there is a more compelling interest in monitoring police than almost any other profession.
Pedantry is alive and well, it seems. I understood him just fine. Perhaps you should of not been so pedantic.
Well done sir! [sounds of applause]
Here it is:
Monsanto using MPAA and RIAA tactics (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Tue Apr 08, '14 06:24 PM (#46700087)
Monsanto and Cargil do some really shitty things with their IP when it comes to their seeds - like suing farmers for having Monsanto's crops growing in their fields when they weren't purchased and suing seed washers for alleged violations of IP.
That wasn't a case of cross-pollination at all, that was a case of a farmer (who normally used Monsanto seed and had a contract with them) buying soybeans intended for consumption, planting them and spraying them with roundup to kill any non-roundup ready stock, then using that seed stock year after year for planting. The supreme court ruled (9-0) that he was intentionally violating the patent that Monsanto holds on that variety of Soy. Bowman's defense was "patent exhaustion", basically the right to sell something that you had previously bought. The courts found that this was not the case and ruled that Bowman was creating new copies of a patented invention and so patent exhaustion did not apply. From the Supreme Court decision:
the purchaser of that article could make and sell endless copies, the patent would effectively protect the invention for just a single sale. Bowman himself disputes none of this analysis as a general matter: He forthrightly acknowledges the “well settled” principle “that the exhaustion doctrine does not extend to the right to ‘make’ a new product.” Brief for Petitioner 37 (citing Aro, 365 U. S., at 346).
Unfortunately for Bowman, that principle decides this case against him. Under the patent exhaustion doctrine, Bowman could resell the patented soybeans he purchased from the grain elevator; so too he could consume the beans himself or feed them to his animals. Monsanto, although the patent holder, would have no business interfering in those uses of Roundup Ready beans. But the exhaustion doctrine does not enable Bowman to make additional patented soybeans without Monsanto’s permission (either express or implied). And that is precisely what Bowman did. He took the soybeans he purchased home; planted them in his fields at the time he thought best; applied glyphosate to kill weeds (as well as any soy plants lacking the Roundup Ready trait); and finally harvested more (many more) beans than he started with. That is how “to ‘make’ a new product,” to use Bowman’s words, when the original product is a seed.
So not only did you not provide what was asked (an example of accidental cross-pollination where Monsanto sued a farmer who did not take specific steps to exploit the accident) but the example you did provide the farmer is clearly in the wrong. If the SC rules unanimously against your case, there is not a ton of ambiguity on the merits.
Perhaps people oppose Monsanto because of this tactic:
1) Claim a patent on seeds Monsanto makes.
2) Get some farmers to buy the seeds.
2 a) Lock the farmers in by stipulating that they can't take any seeds the plant produces and plant them again next year... like people have done for thousands of years!
3) Find a nearby farmer who isn't buying Monsanto and claim they they've planted Monsanto.
4) Find one instance of their plants growing on that farmer's land. (Ignore that seeds travel by air/animals and spread... like seeds have done for millions of years!)
5) Tie up the farmer in court until they either agree to buy Monsanto or they go bankrupt.
6) Repeat 2a - 5.
Your steps seem accurate up to #3. In the only case I have seen about this (the Percy Schmeiser case in Canada) the farmer intentionally killed the part of his crop that was not contaminated so that he could identify the plants that had been cross contaminated with the monsanto genes. He then planted ONLY THAT SEED for the express purpose of using Roundup pesticide on the resulting crop. This wasn't a case of "find one instance of their plants growing on that farmer's land", it was a case of the farmer taking specific steps to isolate the roundup-ready seeds and use them for their pesticide resistance. Here is a story from NPR that discusses that case, hardly a source that would be biased for Monsanto. Monsanto specifically addresses the issue on their site as well, claiming "Monsanto has never sued a farmer when trace amounts of our patented seeds or traits were present in the farmer’s field as an accident or as a result of inadvertent means.". If you have a source to refute that claim then please provide it.
I know that spelling out the facts for you probably won't change your mind on this issue but maybe if someone is actually looking for actual truths instead of strawmen it will help them. I hate Monsanto as much as the next guy, but there are plenty of legitimate reasons to hate them - you don't have to resort to claims that aren't supported by facts.
I really wish people would stop with the assumption that every possible job out there must support a family of four as the sole income source.
This. How many of the lower-paid Walmart workers are the primary breadwinners for their family? And what skills to they bring to the table that they should be paid more?
The reason they are not paid very much is because it is a very low-skill job that pretty much anybody can do. This means that they are easily replacable so they have no negotiating power when considering salary. If these people want to earn more money they should develop skills that would be worth more to an employer than their current skillset which seems to consist of "able to breathe oxygen".
According to page 43 of this study, men drive about 50% more miles per year than women.
The GP's link shows that men account for 2.5x as many traffic fatalities.
So men are clearly still worse according to these statistics. But why trust these numbers? Insurance companies make their money by having teams of extremely smart, highly trained statisticians pore over more data than you'll see in a lifetime, and they charge women less. I don't see how anyone could rationally argue that women are worse drivers while knowing that fact.
Women have more more accidents overall and much more likely to have an injury accident than men per mile driven (source). Males, particularly young males are much more likely to take risks than females. Young males are 2.1 more likely to be in a fatal accident but the rates start converging and by age 60 there isn't a difference in the fatal accident rate. But for non-fatal accidents females consistently are more likely to be involved. I couldn't find any data on insurance rates by gender, do you have a source for that?
And, come on now, tell the whole story. For AT&T to be able to deliver Netflix's data all the way to the home routers of their customers, they also have to maintain arrangements with other carriers to handle that data as it comes in from Netflix. Those peering arrangements are not free, just like maintaining that last mile to their end user customers isn't free.
Nope, those peering arrangements are not free, generally AT&T gets paid since it is a tier 1 network. They are also already getting paid by their customer (and also by the government) for maintaining the last mile infrastructure.
Meanwhile, the guy who buys bandwidth and uses it for a less Netflix/YouTube-centric array of connections absolutely is going to be asked to contribute to his neighbor's entertainment costs if the GP has his way and AT&T raises their rates across the board to deal with the behavior of a subset of users and remote content sources.
Companies and people have been screaming about this for years, well before Netflix was a company. Unless the industry switches (back) to a usage model it will always be this way. AT&T is free to bill their customers (and their network peers) whatever and however they like, but they shouldn't be able to charge their customer's customer.
I think the reason many people have a problem with this is because they are already getting gouged by these companies for internet, cable TV and phone service. The cablecos provide terrible customer service, little network maintenance and a product where you are forced to buy a bundle of crap you don't want to get a few things you want (A la carte pricing, anyone?) and in exchange for this they have been granted monopolies and a captive customer base. They are making money hand-over-fist with enviable margins and the greedy fuckers want MORE? Fuck them.
AT&T & Comcast don't own the road, they only own part of the road. They have a deal with another road system (Cogent) that cars from their systems can drive on Cogent's roads and cars from Cogent's system can drive on their roads. Netflix already pays Cogent for their road access and the end-user already pays AT&T for road access. If AT&T has a beef, it is either with their customer or Cogent, not with Netflix.
This isn't telephony. It's a data communications issue, upon which rides both time-sensitive data (audio, video) and non-time sensitive data. AT&T's arrogance is that of Southwestern Bell's (remember, this is not the AT&T of old) vision for profits.
It's a monopolistic view. It's the old "we own the highway" versus "we gave you rights of way because you were a municipal and regional utility". I say we reclaim the rights of way, and meter AT&T for their belligerence. That'll fix it for everyone.
Who is "we"? The people? The people have no power, how are they going to reclaim these rights of way? The government? The government won't do anything because of the way campaigns are financed and the corrupting influence of power. The government gave the telcos BILLIONS of the people's dollars to build out high-speed networks - which they have obviously failed to do.
The problem is that nobody (outside of the narrow /. demographic) gives a shit about this. Heck, we can't even make them care about the NSA listening to their fucking phone calls, do you really think you can make enough people care about this issue to exert political pressure?
which attempts to education journalists in how to process
We should attempts to education the editors in how to process a story!
"In the Bible, Christ preaches that his followers should pay their taxes. You know 'Render unto Rome what is Rome's...". I believe that fundamentalist christian churches should volutarily be paying taxes, even if the law does not require it. "
First, churches are not their followers... the followers do pay taxes.
Not on money they give to their church. So it's really 2 tax exemptions, the one for the individual deducting money given to the church and one for income to the church not being taxed. If the church were a business (it's not, it's a virus - the only goal of a church is to grow) it would have had to pay taxes on the income and the individual would have to pay taxes as well, Meanwhile, the rest of us pick up that tax shortfall (and pay for the "quiverfull" families).
TrueCrypt is decent, but it can't hurt to have a utility that is updated and maintained with similar functionality. Truecrypt is going over two years without an update. It is a very good program, but PGP has a lot of functionality (public/private key exchange and upkeep, web of trust, etc.) that TC doesn't have.
Of course, one can use GNUpg and TrueCrypt. The command line works well, but GUI-wise, Symantec Encryption Desktop Professional (i.e. PGP Desktop) is just a lot easier to get around in.
One side note -- PGP Desktop isn't officially supported on Windows 8 and 8.1... but it does work.
Recent releases of PGP Desktop do support Windows 8/8.1: Symantec Encryption Desktop 10.3.2 compatibility with Microsoft Windows 8/8.1
Symantec has a very kick-ass opportunity right now. They can capitalize on the general concern of both businesses and people and sell not just PGP Desktop, but a complete infrastructure going past BitLocker where a cryptographic token would be required for the OS to load. Not just a file on a USB flash drive, but a token where the key is well protected even from physical attack.
Huh? PGP Desktop has long supported using a token or smart card to authenticate to an encrypted disk at boot. Yes, it supports the "file on a flash drive" approach as well but also supports cryptographic tokens from a lot of different manufacturers.
Yep, I think it is about time we weed out those like Einstein who were mediocre all through their preteens and teens. We only want the brightest and we aim to determine who they are early on so any late bloomers should have thought twice before sitting on their arses all those years.
"In September 1896, he passed the Swiss Matura with mostly good grades, including a top grade of 6 in physics and mathematical subjects, on a scale of 1-6, and, though only seventeen, enrolled in the four-year mathematics and physics teaching diploma program at the Zurich Polytechnic." Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...
Yeah, Einstein sure sounds like a mediocre teen.
For example, I seem to recall that Albert Einstein was not very good in his classes which is why he took the job as a Patent Inspector.
Just because you seem to recall that doesn't mean it is true. Einstein did very in school, particularly in his mathematics and physics classes. From Wikipedia:
"In September 1896, he passed the Swiss Matura with mostly good grades, including a top grade of 6 in physics and mathematical subjects, on a scale of 1-6"
When he took the job at the patent office he was looking for a teaching position, having already graduated from school. Many people point to Einstein and say "See? Doing poorly in school doesn't mean I am stupid, even Einstein didn't do well in school!" when the actual reason they do poorly in school is because they don't have the same level of intellect as the other students. Sure, it is possible to be a genius and still get bad grades but it is far more likely one's bad grades and test scores are due to their incompetence rather than their genius.
So you are saying if someone should happen to get lucky that the state should take it away from them because it's not you?
It's not only the super rich that inherit things. Farms that have been in families for generations are being sold off to pay the taxes when the farmer tries to pass it to his children. These farms may have millions of dollars in the equipment alone so the state sees these kids as inheriting millions of dollars. These are not "lottery" winners. These are people that have worked a farm their entire lives only to have it ripped from their hands because of class-envy assholes like you think they are getting away with something. How 'bout trying to mind your own damn business for a change.
I didn't see your farm example but you did give the example of a father wanting to pass on a Taco Hut business to his heirs. Wikipedia says unless the Taco Hut is worth more than $5,340,000 your heirs would have to pay nothing. You act like every poor dirt farmer is getting burned by this tax but in reality it is only estates that are worth many millions of dollars that are subject to this tax and even then, they are only taxed on the amount of the estate in excess of the exemption.
Let me take a look....Yes, right now, in my company, there are 2 women, and 50 men. I agree with you, i should not have believed my eyes, but some obscure funny organization to tell me what is right and what is wrong.
Absolutely. The plural of anecdote is not data, actual data is much more useful than your anecdote. Plus, this story and the parent post to which you are replying have nothing to do with the number of women at your company, they have to do with how much women in the tech field get paid relative to men.
That said, women also spend far more money preparing for those dates. When you include things like makeup, hair maintenance, clothes, etc. I would be surprised if men actually pay more money overall during the dating process.
So women spend money on themselves, and men spend money on women. Not to mention the fact that for 2 of the 3 categories you listed (hair maintenance and clothes) men also have costs. I don't know why anyone would have a problem with this, seems perfectly equitable.
My request wasn't to get the numbers as I did a similar search and know the numbers, it was to help you realize that welfare is a small portion of the budget. I obviously failed in this as rather than looking at the number and saying "gee, that isn't that much money in the context we are talking about" you attempted to insult my intelligence. When I ask for fact to substantiate your nebulous assertions you return with insults and no facts. I assume this is because the facts don't support your specious argument.
No... the money will just be spent on food stamps and welfare.
The real complex in the US is the welfare-entitlement complex. And it is devouring my country.... cracking the bones and sucking the marrow out.
They'll never have enough money. They're already spending far more then we take in tax revenue... and so they're cutting things.
Why do you think our infrastructure is crumbling? Because they took the money ear marked for infrastructure and spent it on welfare and entitlements... public unions and pensions.
Can you provide some numbers that back up that assertion? What percentage of the federal budget is spent on welfare? On pensions?
Considering how many people text while driving, it might PREVENT one!
I don't think I'd like an update to happen while I'm away from home, let alone moving. If I'm at home and the car fails on the installation update or to work afterwards I have my bike and public transportation options. When I was 400 miles from home and needed car repair I was stuck in a hotel for 3 days, the novelty, even of having a loner car, wore off pretty fast.
Well, if they have a WiFi option to connect rather than a cellular network connection you could only set it up for your home WiFi so it couldn't get an update unless you were at home. As long as manufacturers let the end-user have some control over this process I don't see anything wrong with delivering updates directly to the car rather than the dealer.
Steve Jobs had a salary of $ 1 per year. He shared in the success of the company because he owned a good chunk of it.
That, I have no problem with.
Yes, but that salary structure wasn't because of some nebulous "belief in the company" it was structured that way to avoid taxes and for public relations purposes. link
They can use that to investigate crimes (who was in area X) (if you said your alibi was Y, why were you driving the other way?). If your goal is to prevent crime and to make investigation in the aftermath of an attack easier, you want this.
It does, obviously, come at a privacy cost. But realistically, we're already living with it, and they're not going to stop unless a court orders them to--which is somewhat unlikely.
Sure, and it would be easier to solve crimes if every citizen had a chip implanted that would track all their movements and record everything they do. To some people, freedom is a lot more important than solving every crime or "feeling safe" from terrorists. Unfortunately, the American people as a whole do not feel that way. They welcome more government survellience, take a look at polls conducted after the Snowden revelations - the majority doesn't see a problem with it because they think the NSA is making them safe from terrorism. One's chances of being injured or killed in a terrorist attack are very low but we spend billions and billions of dollars to fight this near non-existent threat. For the price we are paying for DHS we could do things that would actually make people safer instead of just making them feel safer.