Self professed atheists have been responsible for more violence and death than self professed religious people of all faiths throughout history (Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, Castro).
Nonsense. Colonial genocides by Christian western countries dwarf your examples. Add in the modern pogroms like the Holocaust and it is not close.
Searching a car is very different from being forced to testify. You are not being forced to act as a witness against yourself. The whole process for that is laid out in law and the Constitution recognizes a process for it to happen.
A locked briefcase is the same as a safe or a car. The only thing unlocking it does is prevent the property damage that would occur if the police pried the lock open.
The audio was crummy, very few movies with surround sound and the selection was miserable. Less than 10% of the movies in my queue could be streamed. From time to time streamable content would disappear too,
I was pissed when they offered streaming only but not disk only.
With this new model I get to drop streaming and my costs actually go down. So I'm getting what I really want at a lower price.
1. The police can obviously force open the safe on their own. The only thing at stake here is avoidance of property damage which is not Fifth Amendment territory.
2. Searching a car is not the same as compelling someone to give self-incriminating testimony.
This is a pretty bright line. It will be very bad IMHO if passwords can be forced.
That is a commonly held belief that is not correct. The Social Security reform that was put into place in the 1980's recognized the generational population issue, and adjusted payroll rates and retirement ages so the fund would run a surplus funded by that generation and accumulate reserves in a trust fund to pay for that generation.
It is quite interesting to read the reports regarding that adjustment that were written in the 1980s.
Section 2 - Authorization For Use of United States Armed Forces
(a) IN GENERAL- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.
A lot of that has to do with the quarterly reports that go to Wall Street. The stock prices of high price to earnings ratio companies are mercilessly punished on the stock market if they put out a bad quarterly report, and many types of mutual funds that actively trade stocks depend on rapid trend following so they too are punished when one of their holdings does poorly.
CEO wealth is heavily tied to their stock option values, and with the tenure of many CEOs being relatively short it makes for a very short term business orientation.
Ultimately the problem is about the way compensation happens. I don't think engineers running companies will be immune to it.
I also don't think the average American has this mind-set. Most have become so disgusted with the volatility of the stock market, or have the attitude that it is rigged against the small guy that they don't invest in stocks any more.
And you know what? There is a lot of truth to the idea that the market is rigged, It isn't so much the values of the stocks are manipulated, but rather that most investment industry products are set up so it is the company offering the product that profits rather than the investor.
There is a famous book about the investment industry written in the 1940s titled "Where are the customer's yachts?"
The title refers to an ancient story (which the author finds is probably at least 100 years old by now) about a visitor to New York who admired the yachts that the bankers and brokers had in the harbor. Naively, he then asked where the customers' yachts were. Naturally, there were no customers' yachts.
One very important thing to realize if you do start investing in the stock market is that a stock broker receives far more training as a salesman than he does as an investor, His job is commission based, and not based on the success of your investments.
My grandfather owned a farm which had no electricity, running water, telephone etc. It was essentially a 19th century lifestyle except with the addition of a car which was used to drive the 18 miles into town to pick up mail and ice every couple of days.
For the first 16 years of my life I spent my summers living on this farm.
The parent claimed that the patent system is the biggest impediment to invention in all of history, yet we have the greatest time of invention in history occurring at the same time the patent system was instated.
Now we can say correlation does not imply causation, however LACK of correlation DOES imply LACK of causation.
Now the case you describe is missing several other factors surrounding patents. Yes, the existence of a patent does slow improvements to the patented invention. HOWEVER the presence of a patent system provides a huge incentive for the development of inventions that are patentable. So you are incentivising real breakthrough inventions rather than incremental improvements.
There are other important aspects as well. Patents are essentially a contract between the inventor and government where for a full disclosure of the invention's principles the inventor gets exclusivity for a period of time. At the time the patent system was instated all sorts of dodges were being used to keep technologies secret; a huge obstacle to progress.
The SSA has been making a large push to direct deposit. I am sure this is saving them far more than the statements that they have been mailing every few years.
The fact is that correcting the imbalance will not take a major change in the tax/benefit ratio. Simply removing the income cap on payroll taxes would be enough.
The system is actually quite sustainable. The deal right now is that there is an unusually large generation moving through the plan. Back when Reagan was President payroll taxes and retirement ages were increased in order to account for the post war cohort. Some adjustment is now needed again to fine tune things. Once the boomers start dying off in large numbers I would think we will see some payroll tax cuts.
A big issue that is screwing things up is that the SS Trust Fund holds something like 3 Trillion in T Bills and the process of cashing them in will increase Federal borrowing costs. Basically what happened is that the Republicans (Bush + Reagan) used the payroll tax revenues as a way of partly financing the tax cuts that they put in place for the wealthy. Now of course that doesn't work as SS revenues are less than expenditures.
In the end SS is fixable with some moderate tweaks.
Medicare though - that one is SERIOUSLY broken and I would not be surprised to see some horrific outcomes with that. The only real way to keep Medicare is socialize medical care in the US, and boy that is going to be a rocky road.
Ultimately though having an economy where 20% of GDP is spent on health care where everybody else spends 10% puts you in a big non-competitive hole that can't work long term.
Lots of cell towers use VOIP over microwave or copper backhaul.
Internet QOS for streaming services like VOIP is rapidly improving because so much of the traffic is video which has higher requirements than voice. It is unlikely that VOIP QOS will be a problem in 2018.
Verizon already disconnects your copper when you sign up for FIOS so you can't go back to POTS.
Ultimately the reason I moved to VOIP was because my POTS connection got so noisy and unreliable due to poor maintenance it was unusable. I called to complain about it and they basically blew me off.
I gave up on fax a long time ago because the technology just doesn't work reliably on VOIP, and you can't tell who has VOIP. E-mail is so superior to fax it isn't funny. So as far as I am concerned fax is dead already.
As far as cost of PSTN business lines, I bet if you took a look at their tariffs you would find that they can get Internet connectivity at a lot less than 4x the cost of a PSTN line.
There never was any surplus. Even when Clinton was running around claiming a surplus that calculation included using the Social Security tax revenues for general expenditures and writing IOUs for the trust fund.
The fact is that the Bush Reagan tax cuts were subsidised by Social Security taxes.
Now that SS expenditures are exceeding revenues the Grim Reaper is at the door asking for the repayment of the loans made to the trust fund.
Hopefully that will be done by insisting on repayment of the tax cuts.
Slashdot Mirror
How's that debt ceiling coming? I'd like to have mine raised. The mortgage is due tomorrow.
What you really want is for the Federal Reserve to buy 0% interest 30 year bonds that you issue.
My SonicWALL has this feature.
Self professed atheists have been responsible for more violence and death than self professed religious people of all faiths throughout history (Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, Castro).
Nonsense. Colonial genocides by Christian western countries dwarf your examples. Add in the modern pogroms like the Holocaust and it is not close.
I call bullshit. While Texas creates more jobs than any other state it DOES NOT create more jobs than the other states combined.
The problem is also how to do this without the low levels of educational attainment and high levels of poverty that plague Texas.
Searching a car is very different from being forced to testify. You are not being forced to act as a witness against yourself. The whole process for that is laid out in law and the Constitution recognizes a process for it to happen.
A locked briefcase is the same as a safe or a car. The only thing unlocking it does is prevent the property damage that would occur if the police pried the lock open.
The audio was crummy, very few movies with surround sound and the selection was miserable. Less than 10% of the movies in my queue could be streamed. From time to time streamable content would disappear too,
I was pissed when they offered streaming only but not disk only.
With this new model I get to drop streaming and my costs actually go down. So I'm getting what I really want at a lower price.
1. The police can obviously force open the safe on their own. The only thing at stake here is avoidance of property damage which is not Fifth Amendment territory.
2. Searching a car is not the same as compelling someone to give self-incriminating testimony.
This is a pretty bright line. It will be very bad IMHO if passwords can be forced.
They used to be able to do all that in about 8-12 weeks. Why 7 months this time?
That is a commonly held belief that is not correct. The Social Security reform that was put into place in the 1980's recognized the generational population issue, and adjusted payroll rates and retirement ages so the fund would run a surplus funded by that generation and accumulate reserves in a trust fund to pay for that generation.
It is quite interesting to read the reports regarding that adjustment that were written in the 1980s.
Do you believe those airliners slamming into the World Trade Center were backed by any form of international law?
Actually there is a law. It is the "Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists" act passed by Congress Sept 18 2001.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Military_Force_Against_Terrorists
Section 2 - Authorization For Use of United States Armed Forces
(a) IN GENERAL- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.
A lot of that has to do with the quarterly reports that go to Wall Street. The stock prices of high price to earnings ratio companies are mercilessly punished on the stock market if they put out a bad quarterly report, and many types of mutual funds that actively trade stocks depend on rapid trend following so they too are punished when one of their holdings does poorly.
CEO wealth is heavily tied to their stock option values, and with the tenure of many CEOs being relatively short it makes for a very short term business orientation.
Ultimately the problem is about the way compensation happens. I don't think engineers running companies will be immune to it.
I also don't think the average American has this mind-set. Most have become so disgusted with the volatility of the stock market, or have the attitude that it is rigged against the small guy that they don't invest in stocks any more.
And you know what? There is a lot of truth to the idea that the market is rigged, It isn't so much the values of the stocks are manipulated, but rather that most investment industry products are set up so it is the company offering the product that profits rather than the investor.
There is a famous book about the investment industry written in the 1940s titled "Where are the customer's yachts?"
The title refers to an ancient story (which the author finds is probably at least 100 years old by now) about a visitor to New York who admired the yachts that the bankers and brokers had in the harbor. Naively, he then asked where the customers' yachts were. Naturally, there were no customers' yachts.
One very important thing to realize if you do start investing in the stock market is that a stock broker receives far more training as a salesman than he does as an investor, His job is commission based, and not based on the success of your investments.
Internet? Pshaw.
My grandfather owned a farm which had no electricity, running water, telephone etc. It was essentially a 19th century lifestyle except with the addition of a car which was used to drive the 18 miles into town to pick up mail and ice every couple of days.
For the first 16 years of my life I spent my summers living on this farm.
I loved it. You had time to think.
The parent claimed that the patent system is the biggest impediment to invention in all of history, yet we have the greatest time of invention in history occurring at the same time the patent system was instated.
Now we can say correlation does not imply causation, however LACK of correlation DOES imply LACK of causation.
Now the case you describe is missing several other factors surrounding patents. Yes, the existence of a patent does slow improvements to the patented invention. HOWEVER the presence of a patent system provides a huge incentive for the development of inventions that are patentable. So you are incentivising real breakthrough inventions rather than incremental improvements.
There are other important aspects as well. Patents are essentially a contract between the inventor and government where for a full disclosure of the invention's principles the inventor gets exclusivity for a period of time. At the time the patent system was instated all sorts of dodges were being used to keep technologies secret; a huge obstacle to progress.
The SSA has been making a large push to direct deposit. I am sure this is saving them far more than the statements that they have been mailing every few years.
The fact is that correcting the imbalance will not take a major change in the tax/benefit ratio. Simply removing the income cap on payroll taxes would be enough.
The system is actually quite sustainable. The deal right now is that there is an unusually large generation moving through the plan. Back when Reagan was President payroll taxes and retirement ages were increased in order to account for the post war cohort. Some adjustment is now needed again to fine tune things. Once the boomers start dying off in large numbers I would think we will see some payroll tax cuts.
A big issue that is screwing things up is that the SS Trust Fund holds something like 3 Trillion in T Bills and the process of cashing them in will increase Federal borrowing costs. Basically what happened is that the Republicans (Bush + Reagan) used the payroll tax revenues as a way of partly financing the tax cuts that they put in place for the wealthy. Now of course that doesn't work as SS revenues are less than expenditures.
In the end SS is fixable with some moderate tweaks.
Medicare though - that one is SERIOUSLY broken and I would not be surprised to see some horrific outcomes with that. The only real way to keep Medicare is socialize medical care in the US, and boy that is going to be a rocky road.
Ultimately though having an economy where 20% of GDP is spent on health care where everybody else spends 10% puts you in a big non-competitive hole that can't work long term.
The reason it is still used is because the infrastructure is fully amortized. CAPEX = 0 so profit = revenues - operating costs.
As the infrastructure ages it will die out because nobody is going to invest in it.
Lots of cell towers use VOIP over microwave or copper backhaul.
Internet QOS for streaming services like VOIP is rapidly improving because so much of the traffic is video which has higher requirements than voice. It is unlikely that VOIP QOS will be a problem in 2018.
Verizon already disconnects your copper when you sign up for FIOS so you can't go back to POTS.
Ultimately the reason I moved to VOIP was because my POTS connection got so noisy and unreliable due to poor maintenance it was unusable. I called to complain about it and they basically blew me off.
I gave up on fax a long time ago because the technology just doesn't work reliably on VOIP, and you can't tell who has VOIP. E-mail is so superior to fax it isn't funny. So as far as I am concerned fax is dead already.
As far as cost of PSTN business lines, I bet if you took a look at their tariffs you would find that they can get Internet connectivity at a lot less than 4x the cost of a PSTN line.
There never was any surplus. Even when Clinton was running around claiming a surplus that calculation included using the Social Security tax revenues for general expenditures and writing IOUs for the trust fund.
The fact is that the Bush Reagan tax cuts were subsidised by Social Security taxes.
Now that SS expenditures are exceeding revenues the Grim Reaper is at the door asking for the repayment of the loans made to the trust fund.
Hopefully that will be done by insisting on repayment of the tax cuts.
I'd think Verizon would fund it all on their own. Just think of the roaming charges.
It took a while, but people are starting to realise that the US economy has been a pyramid scheme since Reagan's tax cuts went through.
Please then explain why the industrial revolution took off when England instated a patent system.
Natural rights arise from the evolutionary biology of the human brain which defines human social structures.
There isn't any need to adopt silly hypothesis like Gods etc. to justify their existence.