There is a huge black market that uses Cash. And I am not talking about drugs, but rather a whole sub-economic system that is run on cash. People buying and selling with cash as a means to barter. All of these transactions avoid the drain of taxes and therefore, are much more profitable. No sales tax, no income tax, no social security tax, no unemployment insurance (tax)...
These people live and work "off the grid" economically. Imagine doing work and making an extra 25% WHILE charging less. I told one of my customers that if they file a 1099 for my side work, I'll have to double my rates simply because I can't afford to do work that is reported to the IRS for less than double my normal rates.
People in government don't realize how much taxes impact commerce. ALL taxes are regressive. Avoid them by doing "cash only" business.
Well, to be honest, this is not a Left or Right problem, this is a problem with not understanding what crime actually is. Wearing a mask, during a crime is not a crime, or even an extension of crime. They added a penalty because it makes it harder to identify the criminals. Boo fucking hoo.
But people want to punish the evildoers.... so we get crappy laws that make crimes that aren't crimes.
The question is, "WHY does the beta suck?" I can point to a few key points.
1) White Space is noisy. As Noisy as overly dense is. Hard to read, hard to navigate... hard on eyes.
2) Dumbing down the interface is Dumb. What the beta does, is take take away the information needed to be intelligent. We don't need that, as we are (typically, mostly) bright, intelligent, capable people. We aren't your "http://www.nbcnews.com/" who wants pretty pictures. STOP IT.
3) Removing information is dumb. For example (glaring IMHO) my comments section, the difference between the old site and the new site pretty much makes the new site unusable. I know what I wrote, I want to see what the response is THAT is important information to me. I realize that there is a "selfie" craze going on, but I am not that self centered. I need to know what it is modded to, how many responded etc. As it is in the Beta, none of that information is anywhere near available. Useless.
In short, I don't need a dumb blonde site, I need an intelligent site who can have a conversation with me, on multiple subjects, THIS is what/. was for me.
Sort of. My view is that FIOS to the home, should be LOCAL control, because it uses local Right of Ways and such to get there. It is Public Infrastructure, like sewers, water, electricity. BUT unlike Water, Electricity, FIOS provides more capability / tailoring based on customer needs. Perhaps all I need is ISP (internet) Services, as I have my own VOIP, use Netflix and Hulu, and don't need CATV. You may need CATV. Or Fred might want to subscribe only to ESPN and HOTNEWCABLE CORP has a la carte pricing for CATV channels that offers it at $5 month.
If you bring FIOS to the home, from a localized COLO facility, which offers Comcast, ATT, HOTNEWCABLE, and a couple other companies that specialize in boutique services, THEN the competition and innovation in Services takes place. It ceases to be "last mile" problem and becomes the service providers problem.
That way, if Comcast wants to charge you and Netflix extra, they can, but ATT or HOTNEWCABLE bundles it free, guess what happens? The market will decide what survives and what doesn't.
Technically, you are correct. But that is NOT how Comcast and the other ISPs are making their case, nor how the idiots making the laws view it. They believe that Comcast should charge you, and Netflix to deliver Netflix to you.
I didn't say there was a law. I said it was possible to have a law like this. The problem is, we have gutless Republicrats and Demicans in office, who get a large chunk of campaign funds from non-person entities.
I'm a libertarian, and the greatest threat to our democratic republic has been from campaign contributions by people/entities ineligible to vote for a candidate / Proposition. My solution for this would be to require ALL campaign contributions be from ONLY people eligible to vote for said candidate/ballot measure. I wouldn't prevent XYZ Corp or ABC Union from campaigning, just not directly giving money to the candidate. I would also make campaign contributions unlimited if they are by eligible voters in the election.
Sure you can stop them. You can revoke their Incorporation Charter.
One thing we seem to have forgotten is that Corporations are creations of the state, and thus subservient to the state (ostensibly).
The problem is, that when HARM is done, we have never simply revoked Corporate Charters. If we start doing that, then CxOs and boards will take their fiduciary responsibility a little more seriously.
So, your whole premise is that competition eliminates competition, but you support government intervention to eliminate competition because competition eliminates competition.
Actually, if you ask a Tea Party person, they would like government out of regulations to the point of letting the market decide. The fundamental problem is, Comcast wants to charge Netflix et. al. for carrying content on their network, simply because Netflix eats all their bandwidth.
The real fix, is to allow competition for Comcast in your town/locality. Right now, Comcast, has a near monopoly to the home, so they think they are entitled to charging more than they should for a product that doesn't improve much over time.
The problem isn't the free market, it is a closed (oligopoly) markets. My fix would require local municipalities to operate the Fiber to the home, and bring it all into a COLO facility that provides Service Providers access to the FIOS lines. The COLO facility would be paid for by the Service Providers, based how many customers there were servicing.
We wouldn't need legislation, and the competition would create an environment that would drive down prices or provide better service (options) to the end users. Imagine a service provider that operated all "on demand", instead of broadcast channels. Instead of searching through 356 channels of crap, you just search for the shows you want to see. Current Marketplace is being disrupted by technology, and should be. We don't need legislation to protect the current formula, we need legislation that gives new players opportunity to create new markets, that users are demanding.
I made that exact point in another post on this same article. The comment was in response to some AC troll trying to be funny and making a joke about Republicans and how they hate "deaf people" or some such thing. Because only Liberals think the Government should fix a problem that isn't really a problem.
Actually, I'm not sure how successful this kind of thing really is.
How about an Obama Phone and using TXT messaging for the deaf? Or a Smart Phone. Or, we could develop a TXT only device for EBS.
There are a dozen other ways, off the top of my head, that they could accomplish the goals without spending a dime of tax payer money to solve the problem. ALL cheaper than whatever they are spending on re-inventing the wheel.
Only Democrats look at a problem and think it is a problem that Tax dollars need to solve, when there are already very good, or even marginal alternatives available. Because that is the first AND ONLY thought a stupid liberal has "Government needs to fund this, because otherwise it won't happen, and it makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside when we spend other peoples money on things only we see as problems."
Abortion. Dehumanizing the baby inside. And a de facto sacrament of the Progressive Movement. When the progressive left stops dehumanizing babies, so they can kill them, let me know, and we'll talk about how "name calling" doesn't dehumanize anyone.
Well, if you're going to go there, all of humanity is flawed. Atheists killed millions in Russia and China, and still kill to this day. Large Governments kill all the time, usually in the form of "war on terrorism". Humans kill. Even "peaceful Buddhists" on occasion.
Science doesn't kill, but scientists who are wrong do end up killing people with their mistakes. There is a whole slew of devices, medicines and weapons built on science that kill. Again, it is people.
Neglecting those deaths because you "believe" in science makes you no better than the people you "hate". People are the weak link in our society, perhaps if we just get rid of all those pesky people who aren't like us, the world will be better. Right?
The PCjr has the distinction of the first IBM PC to be able to use more than 640k, due to the weirdness of the Video BIOS location. The anomaly is also the reason why people had to buy programs that said "PCjr Compatible". If I recall, my Dad's PCjr could address nearly 768k, without a Memory Manager doing funky stuff to jam TSR's into the space between 640k and 1mb.
Some people think bitcoin is deflationary because there is a cap to the supply.
BitCoin is deflationary, because of limited supply. INFLATION occurs when Money supply increases faster than the economy creates products. Our current monetary policy wants an minor inflationary currency. This is why the FED is printing more and more $. And then turning around and buying them up at the other end of the equation, and calling it "Quantitative Easing". This explains why the rich are getting richer, but nobody else is (inflation).
BitCoins WERE inflationary early in the game, when more Coins were mined than were demanded by the market. However, now that the mining has slowed down, the time for deflationary trends is starting to pick up.
Here is a quick "example" of what each means: Bob wants a widget, and today, the cost of a widget is $10. With Inflation, the cost of that widget in 10 years (all other things equal) will be $12 or so. And in 20 years, perhaps $16.... With Deflation, that same widget in 10 years will be $8, and in twenty may be $7.
What makes deflation interesting, is that it rewards work done today, savings done today (all other things equal), "Penny saved is a Penny Earned". Today, with inflationary currency it rewards spending (and debt) and punishes simple savings.
The problem with Deflationary currency is that it punishes surplus production, and rewards false scarcity.
In Many (most??) Public Schools are teaching Islam Tolerance and how great Islam is, with the help of CAIR. Including Field Trips to Mosques where they teach students to pray to Allah.
I know the big leftwing teaching the is the "Evils of Christianity", while teaching "Islam is a peaceful religion" in a kind of over compensating sort of Liberal "can't we all get along" sort of way. BUT the fact is, Islam will kill the pver sexualizing liberals first, when they get power. You best be praying to Cthulhu that will kill everyone first.
In short, if they ever did create a map of Islamic Teaching in America, CAIR would protest and it would be revoked.
There are plenty of satisfactory to excellent teachers out there. The problem isn't these teachers who work hard and are underpaid, and it never will be. The problem is the relatively few, but numerous enough to affect everyone, that are just horrible. You cannot dodge the rain.
And teachers complain about poor pay, well I don't want to pay the crappy teachers a nickel, but we have to pay them something, so the Union Negotiates rules and regulations protecting the crappy teachers equally with the excellent ones. THUS, if teachers want better pay, as a whole, then I want better teachers, as a whole. Again, this is not a slam against most teachers, it is a slam against the Unions that protect their members to the point of harming the vast majority of their membership.
Our failing schools are failing because of three things: Lack of caring parents (society can't fix this), Bad Teachers, enough to sour the whole profession, and funding models that reward failure and punish success. We can fix two out of three, and this will likely impact the third.
it is a tale, Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
He moved to another. And the problem was solved. I've used OpenSource Software that stopped being supported and eventually stopped working on new systems. Guess what, Open Source didn't fix it for me either. Yes, I could have spent untold hours learning the software, fixing it, having to support it not working right on other people's systems, or I could simply move on, I chose move on. It happens.
And BitKeeper ended up shooting themselves in the foot, several times in the process. I am not even sure they exist any more. Too lazy to look.
I defend the right of the Programmer to do whatever he wants. This means even making "proprietary" software or licensing it however he wants (BSD, GPL etc). Proprietary software doesn't harm me, especially if I don't choose to use it.
MOST users only want a product that works, and people like RMS sees something like TiVO and create a GPL 3 license which basically says, You can do anything you want, as long as we allow it, which ironically is exactly what he is supposedly fighting against. The only difference between GPL3 and proprietary licenses is the degree of restriction. TiVO fully complied with the GPL2, and it was not good enough for the likes of RMS.
And in the end, the AVERAGE user is harmed, no longer able to use TiVO (as it was) because RMS didn't like how his software was being used. Tell me how this is increased freedom for the user, and how is it better than before? Oh, and Hackers never got what they wanted out of the deal either. Good Job RMS! GPL3 proved to me that he is just another Hypocrite, who wants freedom, but only on terms that are acceptable to them.
Slashdot Mirror
There is a huge black market that uses Cash. And I am not talking about drugs, but rather a whole sub-economic system that is run on cash. People buying and selling with cash as a means to barter. All of these transactions avoid the drain of taxes and therefore, are much more profitable. No sales tax, no income tax, no social security tax, no unemployment insurance (tax) ...
These people live and work "off the grid" economically. Imagine doing work and making an extra 25% WHILE charging less. I told one of my customers that if they file a 1099 for my side work, I'll have to double my rates simply because I can't afford to do work that is reported to the IRS for less than double my normal rates.
People in government don't realize how much taxes impact commerce. ALL taxes are regressive. Avoid them by doing "cash only" business.
what are the common values that bind all of the viewers?
For starters .. how about the near universal hatred of the Beta Site??
Well, to be honest, this is not a Left or Right problem, this is a problem with not understanding what crime actually is. Wearing a mask, during a crime is not a crime, or even an extension of crime. They added a penalty because it makes it harder to identify the criminals. Boo fucking hoo.
But people want to punish the evildoers .... so we get crappy laws that make crimes that aren't crimes.
The question is, "WHY does the beta suck?" I can point to a few key points.
1) White Space is noisy. As Noisy as overly dense is. Hard to read, hard to navigate ... hard on eyes.
2) Dumbing down the interface is Dumb. What the beta does, is take take away the information needed to be intelligent. We don't need that, as we are (typically, mostly) bright, intelligent, capable people. We aren't your "http://www.nbcnews.com/" who wants pretty pictures. STOP IT.
3) Removing information is dumb. For example (glaring IMHO) my comments section, the difference between the old site and the new site pretty much makes the new site unusable. I know what I wrote, I want to see what the response is THAT is important information to me. I realize that there is a "selfie" craze going on, but I am not that self centered. I need to know what it is modded to, how many responded etc. As it is in the Beta, none of that information is anywhere near available. Useless.
In short, I don't need a dumb blonde site, I need an intelligent site who can have a conversation with me, on multiple subjects, THIS is what /. was for me.
Thanks
Sort of. My view is that FIOS to the home, should be LOCAL control, because it uses local Right of Ways and such to get there. It is Public Infrastructure, like sewers, water, electricity. BUT unlike Water, Electricity, FIOS provides more capability / tailoring based on customer needs. Perhaps all I need is ISP (internet) Services, as I have my own VOIP, use Netflix and Hulu, and don't need CATV. You may need CATV. Or Fred might want to subscribe only to ESPN and HOTNEWCABLE CORP has a la carte pricing for CATV channels that offers it at $5 month.
If you bring FIOS to the home, from a localized COLO facility, which offers Comcast, ATT, HOTNEWCABLE, and a couple other companies that specialize in boutique services, THEN the competition and innovation in Services takes place. It ceases to be "last mile" problem and becomes the service providers problem.
That way, if Comcast wants to charge you and Netflix extra, they can, but ATT or HOTNEWCABLE bundles it free, guess what happens? The market will decide what survives and what doesn't.
Technically, you are correct. But that is NOT how Comcast and the other ISPs are making their case, nor how the idiots making the laws view it. They believe that Comcast should charge you, and Netflix to deliver Netflix to you.
I didn't say there was a law. I said it was possible to have a law like this. The problem is, we have gutless Republicrats and Demicans in office, who get a large chunk of campaign funds from non-person entities.
I'm a libertarian, and the greatest threat to our democratic republic has been from campaign contributions by people/entities ineligible to vote for a candidate / Proposition. My solution for this would be to require ALL campaign contributions be from ONLY people eligible to vote for said candidate/ballot measure. I wouldn't prevent XYZ Corp or ABC Union from campaigning, just not directly giving money to the candidate. I would also make campaign contributions unlimited if they are by eligible voters in the election.
Sure you can stop them. You can revoke their Incorporation Charter.
One thing we seem to have forgotten is that Corporations are creations of the state, and thus subservient to the state (ostensibly).
The problem is, that when HARM is done, we have never simply revoked Corporate Charters. If we start doing that, then CxOs and boards will take their fiduciary responsibility a little more seriously.
So, your whole premise is that competition eliminates competition, but you support government intervention to eliminate competition because competition eliminates competition.
Wow. 420 much?
The downside of this, is if people didn't have the vote then very, very evil people would take control.
Um, have you seen who the "people" have been electing?
Indeed!
Actually, if you ask a Tea Party person, they would like government out of regulations to the point of letting the market decide. The fundamental problem is, Comcast wants to charge Netflix et. al. for carrying content on their network, simply because Netflix eats all their bandwidth.
The real fix, is to allow competition for Comcast in your town/locality. Right now, Comcast, has a near monopoly to the home, so they think they are entitled to charging more than they should for a product that doesn't improve much over time.
The problem isn't the free market, it is a closed (oligopoly) markets. My fix would require local municipalities to operate the Fiber to the home, and bring it all into a COLO facility that provides Service Providers access to the FIOS lines. The COLO facility would be paid for by the Service Providers, based how many customers there were servicing.
We wouldn't need legislation, and the competition would create an environment that would drive down prices or provide better service (options) to the end users. Imagine a service provider that operated all "on demand", instead of broadcast channels. Instead of searching through 356 channels of crap, you just search for the shows you want to see. Current Marketplace is being disrupted by technology, and should be. We don't need legislation to protect the current formula, we need legislation that gives new players opportunity to create new markets, that users are demanding.
I made that exact point in another post on this same article. The comment was in response to some AC troll trying to be funny and making a joke about Republicans and how they hate "deaf people" or some such thing. Because only Liberals think the Government should fix a problem that isn't really a problem.
Or TXT messages.
And radio only works if the radio tower wasn't hit by the hurricane or tornado.
Actually, I'm not sure how successful this kind of thing really is.
How about an Obama Phone and using TXT messaging for the deaf? Or a Smart Phone. Or, we could develop a TXT only device for EBS.
There are a dozen other ways, off the top of my head, that they could accomplish the goals without spending a dime of tax payer money to solve the problem. ALL cheaper than whatever they are spending on re-inventing the wheel.
Only Democrats look at a problem and think it is a problem that Tax dollars need to solve, when there are already very good, or even marginal alternatives available. Because that is the first AND ONLY thought a stupid liberal has "Government needs to fund this, because otherwise it won't happen, and it makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside when we spend other peoples money on things only we see as problems."
That sounds familiar. I can't believe you remembered it all. I didn't provide details, because they were lost in time.
"dehumanizing"
Abortion. Dehumanizing the baby inside. And a de facto sacrament of the Progressive Movement. When the progressive left stops dehumanizing babies, so they can kill them, let me know, and we'll talk about how "name calling" doesn't dehumanize anyone.
Posting AC IS cowardly.
Well, if you're going to go there, all of humanity is flawed. Atheists killed millions in Russia and China, and still kill to this day. Large Governments kill all the time, usually in the form of "war on terrorism". Humans kill. Even "peaceful Buddhists" on occasion.
Science doesn't kill, but scientists who are wrong do end up killing people with their mistakes. There is a whole slew of devices, medicines and weapons built on science that kill. Again, it is people.
Neglecting those deaths because you "believe" in science makes you no better than the people you "hate". People are the weak link in our society, perhaps if we just get rid of all those pesky people who aren't like us, the world will be better. Right?
The PCjr has the distinction of the first IBM PC to be able to use more than 640k, due to the weirdness of the Video BIOS location. The anomaly is also the reason why people had to buy programs that said "PCjr Compatible". If I recall, my Dad's PCjr could address nearly 768k, without a Memory Manager doing funky stuff to jam TSR's into the space between 640k and 1mb.
AHhhhh good times!
BTC-denominated savings accounts and CD
Some people think bitcoin is deflationary because there is a cap to the supply.
BitCoin is deflationary, because of limited supply. INFLATION occurs when Money supply increases faster than the economy creates products. Our current monetary policy wants an minor inflationary currency. This is why the FED is printing more and more $. And then turning around and buying them up at the other end of the equation, and calling it "Quantitative Easing". This explains why the rich are getting richer, but nobody else is (inflation).
BitCoins WERE inflationary early in the game, when more Coins were mined than were demanded by the market. However, now that the mining has slowed down, the time for deflationary trends is starting to pick up.
Here is a quick "example" of what each means: Bob wants a widget, and today, the cost of a widget is $10. With Inflation, the cost of that widget in 10 years (all other things equal) will be $12 or so. And in 20 years, perhaps $16 .... With Deflation, that same widget in 10 years will be $8, and in twenty may be $7.
What makes deflation interesting, is that it rewards work done today, savings done today (all other things equal), "Penny saved is a Penny Earned". Today, with inflationary currency it rewards spending (and debt) and punishes simple savings.
The problem with Deflationary currency is that it punishes surplus production, and rewards false scarcity.
Not to mention the IRS and Eric Holder going after people. Oh wait, that was on FAUX news so it can't be true /rolleyes
In Many (most??) Public Schools are teaching Islam Tolerance and how great Islam is, with the help of CAIR. Including Field Trips to Mosques where they teach students to pray to Allah.
http://www.islaminourschools.c...
Oh, I know, Christian Fundamentalists gone WILD!!!!! Dismiss. FAUX news ... DISMISS!!!
http://www.sfgate.com/politics...
www.jewsnews.co.il/2013/08/08/tennessee-five-pillars-of-islam-in-public-school/
I know the big leftwing teaching the is the "Evils of Christianity", while teaching "Islam is a peaceful religion" in a kind of over compensating sort of Liberal "can't we all get along" sort of way. BUT the fact is, Islam will kill the pver sexualizing liberals first, when they get power. You best be praying to Cthulhu that will kill everyone first.
In short, if they ever did create a map of Islamic Teaching in America, CAIR would protest and it would be revoked.
DISCLAIMER: I work in Public education.
There are plenty of satisfactory to excellent teachers out there. The problem isn't these teachers who work hard and are underpaid, and it never will be. The problem is the relatively few, but numerous enough to affect everyone, that are just horrible. You cannot dodge the rain.
And teachers complain about poor pay, well I don't want to pay the crappy teachers a nickel, but we have to pay them something, so the Union Negotiates rules and regulations protecting the crappy teachers equally with the excellent ones. THUS, if teachers want better pay, as a whole, then I want better teachers, as a whole. Again, this is not a slam against most teachers, it is a slam against the Unions that protect their members to the point of harming the vast majority of their membership.
Our failing schools are failing because of three things: Lack of caring parents (society can't fix this), Bad Teachers, enough to sour the whole profession, and funding models that reward failure and punish success. We can fix two out of three, and this will likely impact the third.
it is a tale, Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
He moved to another. And the problem was solved. I've used OpenSource Software that stopped being supported and eventually stopped working on new systems. Guess what, Open Source didn't fix it for me either. Yes, I could have spent untold hours learning the software, fixing it, having to support it not working right on other people's systems, or I could simply move on, I chose move on. It happens.
And BitKeeper ended up shooting themselves in the foot, several times in the process. I am not even sure they exist any more. Too lazy to look.
I defend the right of the Programmer to do whatever he wants. This means even making "proprietary" software or licensing it however he wants (BSD, GPL etc). Proprietary software doesn't harm me, especially if I don't choose to use it.
MOST users only want a product that works, and people like RMS sees something like TiVO and create a GPL 3 license which basically says, You can do anything you want, as long as we allow it, which ironically is exactly what he is supposedly fighting against. The only difference between GPL3 and proprietary licenses is the degree of restriction. TiVO fully complied with the GPL2, and it was not good enough for the likes of RMS.
And in the end, the AVERAGE user is harmed, no longer able to use TiVO (as it was) because RMS didn't like how his software was being used. Tell me how this is increased freedom for the user, and how is it better than before? Oh, and Hackers never got what they wanted out of the deal either. Good Job RMS! GPL3 proved to me that he is just another Hypocrite, who wants freedom, but only on terms that are acceptable to them.