Bill Gates is truly a great man. During his tenure with Microsoft, he was a great big douchebag who harmed the world and reaped untold riches off the gullibility of people who should have known better. Now, he is a great big philanthropist who helps the least of humanity, and is on track to fulfill his promise to gift away the vast majority of his treasure.
That's how greatness usually works -- greatly good, and greatly bad -- and it's often unclear whether the sum of all works of a great person is net positive or negative.
I can't quite tell. Can you clarify whether you are joking? Your comment is indistinguishable from a troll, but you never know -- some trolls really mean it.
Yes, but another way to say that is "the real world sucks, and a lot of people and businesses are assholes. Despite this, we want the common recourse to be disassociating from the assholes, and not griping in courts of law. Only egregious or slam-dunk cases should be brought before judges. For everything else, just stop being that person's friend, neighbor, customer, or employee. Our society is litigious enough."
It's a sliding scale. The balance is hard to find because there are no bright lines.
My opinion is that encryption is (or, should be) so easy that to do it universally would substantially improve the usefulness of encrypting the parts that do need it. Yeah, I don't go around whispering all the time, but I would if whispering were as "cheap" as data encryption.
And yet, here I am, not encrypting (most of) my web sessions. Still, I would if it were made as easy as it could be.
I'm glad you say you like it. I just ordered one and haven't received it yet. I didn't get the keyboard attachment -- should I worry that the tablet itself doesn't have a USB port? How hard would it have been for them just to put a micro-USB port on the thing?
For that matter, how hard would it be to just charge over USB? Anyway, yeah I looked around and the Transformer seemed like the most compelling Android tablet. I'm excited for mine, especially because it's a "business expense" for me, which means it sort-of cost me 20% less, because I didn't pay income taxes on the money used to buy it.
Uh, America hasn't led in space since around the time I was in third grade, in the 80s. Sorry to burst your bubble NASA, but you've been irrelevant and anachronistic since the end of the Apollo program. America hasn't led in space since that time because nobody has led in space since that time.
If America wants to lead in space, it should remember: HUMANS ON OTHER WORLDS, OR NOTHING. Low-earth orbit doesn't count. Telescopes don't count. Robots on Mars, though cool, don't count.
"How"? By force of law, I suppose. California passed a law which applied to Amazon, and they are obliged to follow the law. And they are following the law, by pulling out of California. If Amazon wants to do business "in" California (where "in" is defined by law), then it has to pay all lawful taxes. So, Amazon has changed its footprint so that it is no longer "in" California. Amazon has to decide whether or not it makes more money from these dropped California affiliates than it would pay to collect the California sales taxes. It's a business decision. In the end, Amazon has a good point that this is a federal issue. Pretty much everything on the internet is a federal issue. If the federal government wants to go on allowing Amazon to freeload, then that's the federal policy.
Thank you, I appreciate that. Yes, California (which obviously means Californian taxpayers -- where else do tax revenues come from?) pays more to the feds than the feds pay to California. I'm happy that I have convinced you of this point. Have a good one.
So your private schools didn't receive any public funds? Are you sure about that? Are you willing to say the name of the school, so we can try to point out how wrong you are, and how much public money it in fact gets?
California pays more to the federal government than the federal government pays to California. Therefore, California supports the federal services that you cite Amazon as enjoying. Therefore, you are exactly wrong.
Also, just as "question authority" means to question the legitimacy of authority, it does not mean "reject authority". You should question authority, and with an open mind determine whether or not it benefits you. And the answer is yes, the current authorities benefit you, on balance, although they could do better.
That is the opposite of the truth. If free markets, low taxes, and libertarian politics led to economic prosperity, then we'd all be marveling at the incredible GDP of Darfur and Afghanistan.
Economic prosperity and high standards of living are created by big government, supported by high taxes. If that weren't true, then you could point to a counter-example.
I just want to know why it is that when times are tough everyone except the government is expected to make due with less.
Probably because that would be a bad idea. In a world of generally expanding economies, governments rightly act as countervailing economic weights: they should pull back during good times and spend extra during hard times. Not that they ever actually accomplish the first half of that, but if they could we'd all be better off. In any case, economic prosperity is positively correlated with tax rates, so we would expect from historical precedent that raising taxes would help the economic recovery.
Facebook raises ire amongst its "customers"? Really? So, amongst the corporations to which it sells aggregate advertising data? Huh, I wouldn't have expected those customers to be so upset.
Yes I agree with that. In the end, the service offered by groupon is "worth" maybe five or ten percent of actual coupon-based sales, not fifty percent of all coupons sold. I'm sure it will survive, but not with anything close to the current parameters.
I don't actually know the law in question, but the summary makes it sound like only "secret" recording is illegal, such as recording a private conversation. If you are in public, with no expectation of privacy, then recording that can't possibly be secret, because we all know we are always being recorded by various means in public. Open and shut, wham ban thank you ma'am.
The only people dumb enough not to understand this obvious logic is 6 of the 9 Supreme Court justices. Let's hope two of those six somehow manage to come to the right decision.
Oh! Gosh, I thought he actually meant "right" the unjust laws, meaning to undo them, but then the rest of his post didn't make sense unless he was Skeletor or something.
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Bill Gates is truly a great man. During his tenure with Microsoft, he was a great big douchebag who harmed the world and reaped untold riches off the gullibility of people who should have known better. Now, he is a great big philanthropist who helps the least of humanity, and is on track to fulfill his promise to gift away the vast majority of his treasure.
That's how greatness usually works -- greatly good, and greatly bad -- and it's often unclear whether the sum of all works of a great person is net positive or negative.
I can't quite tell. Can you clarify whether you are joking? Your comment is indistinguishable from a troll, but you never know -- some trolls really mean it.
Yes, but another way to say that is "the real world sucks, and a lot of people and businesses are assholes. Despite this, we want the common recourse to be disassociating from the assholes, and not griping in courts of law. Only egregious or slam-dunk cases should be brought before judges. For everything else, just stop being that person's friend, neighbor, customer, or employee. Our society is litigious enough."
It's a sliding scale. The balance is hard to find because there are no bright lines.
My opinion is that encryption is (or, should be) so easy that to do it universally would substantially improve the usefulness of encrypting the parts that do need it. Yeah, I don't go around whispering all the time, but I would if whispering were as "cheap" as data encryption.
And yet, here I am, not encrypting (most of) my web sessions. Still, I would if it were made as easy as it could be.
I'm glad you say you like it. I just ordered one and haven't received it yet. I didn't get the keyboard attachment -- should I worry that the tablet itself doesn't have a USB port? How hard would it have been for them just to put a micro-USB port on the thing?
For that matter, how hard would it be to just charge over USB? Anyway, yeah I looked around and the Transformer seemed like the most compelling Android tablet. I'm excited for mine, especially because it's a "business expense" for me, which means it sort-of cost me 20% less, because I didn't pay income taxes on the money used to buy it.
Ahhh! I've also been to all the states except North Dakota. But I've also been to Alaska and Hawaii..
Everyone tells me, North Dakota is a good place to be last on the list. The only thing I've ever heard is "Yeah, I went to Fargo once."
Well, basically because I'm not a robot. It's an emotional argument.
I would like to see any major space-related progress that NASA and/or the shuttle didn't play a part in since the 80s.
I'm saying there wasn't any major space-related progress since the 80s. All there was, was minor space-related progress.
I want human feet walking on asteroids, planets, and moons -- or save the money for other endeavors.
Holy shit, Plait reads Slashdot? Wow, that's a real injection of relevance for this shady corner of the old Internet.
Uh, America hasn't led in space since around the time I was in third grade, in the 80s. Sorry to burst your bubble NASA, but you've been irrelevant and anachronistic since the end of the Apollo program. America hasn't led in space since that time because nobody has led in space since that time.
If America wants to lead in space, it should remember: HUMANS ON OTHER WORLDS, OR NOTHING. Low-earth orbit doesn't count. Telescopes don't count. Robots on Mars, though cool, don't count.
That is a great point, with which I completely agree, and which is totally irrelevant to the conversation.
"How"? By force of law, I suppose. California passed a law which applied to Amazon, and they are obliged to follow the law. And they are following the law, by pulling out of California. If Amazon wants to do business "in" California (where "in" is defined by law), then it has to pay all lawful taxes. So, Amazon has changed its footprint so that it is no longer "in" California. Amazon has to decide whether or not it makes more money from these dropped California affiliates than it would pay to collect the California sales taxes. It's a business decision. In the end, Amazon has a good point that this is a federal issue. Pretty much everything on the internet is a federal issue. If the federal government wants to go on allowing Amazon to freeload, then that's the federal policy.
Thank you, I appreciate that. Yes, California (which obviously means Californian taxpayers -- where else do tax revenues come from?) pays more to the feds than the feds pay to California. I'm happy that I have convinced you of this point. Have a good one.
Oh, you mean the big-government high-regulation Hong Kong, here on planet earth? Or do you mean some other Hong Kong?
You can't fix a deficit that big by adding a new tax
Actually, you can.
So, now you know, I hope that helps inform your opinions.
So your private schools didn't receive any public funds? Are you sure about that? Are you willing to say the name of the school, so we can try to point out how wrong you are, and how much public money it in fact gets?
California pays more to the federal government than the federal government pays to California. Therefore, California supports the federal services that you cite Amazon as enjoying. Therefore, you are exactly wrong.
Also, just as "question authority" means to question the legitimacy of authority, it does not mean "reject authority". You should question authority, and with an open mind determine whether or not it benefits you. And the answer is yes, the current authorities benefit you, on balance, although they could do better.
That is the opposite of the truth. If free markets, low taxes, and libertarian politics led to economic prosperity, then we'd all be marveling at the incredible GDP of Darfur and Afghanistan.
Economic prosperity and high standards of living are created by big government, supported by high taxes. If that weren't true, then you could point to a counter-example.
I just want to know why it is that when times are tough everyone except the government is expected to make due with less.
Probably because that would be a bad idea. In a world of generally expanding economies, governments rightly act as countervailing economic weights: they should pull back during good times and spend extra during hard times. Not that they ever actually accomplish the first half of that, but if they could we'd all be better off. In any case, economic prosperity is positively correlated with tax rates, so we would expect from historical precedent that raising taxes would help the economic recovery.
Facebook raises ire amongst its "customers"? Really? So, amongst the corporations to which it sells aggregate advertising data? Huh, I wouldn't have expected those customers to be so upset.
So why were people so quick to make fun of those who didn't believe the government's claim that Osama was killed?
I don't know for sure, but I would guess evidence.
The Yes Men did this with re-Burger long ago.
Yes I agree with that. In the end, the service offered by groupon is "worth" maybe five or ten percent of actual coupon-based sales, not fifty percent of all coupons sold. I'm sure it will survive, but not with anything close to the current parameters.
I don't actually know the law in question, but the summary makes it sound like only "secret" recording is illegal, such as recording a private conversation. If you are in public, with no expectation of privacy, then recording that can't possibly be secret, because we all know we are always being recorded by various means in public. Open and shut, wham ban thank you ma'am.
The only people dumb enough not to understand this obvious logic is 6 of the 9 Supreme Court justices. Let's hope two of those six somehow manage to come to the right decision.
Oh! Gosh, I thought he actually meant "right" the unjust laws, meaning to undo them, but then the rest of his post didn't make sense unless he was Skeletor or something.