I think most people that distinguish between cults and religions actually use "cult" to mean a worship group that seems to have a negative impact on the members lives.
I'd rather just have single payer than spend all my time worrying about whether or not my insurance company was effective in its attempts to correctly estimate the risks of doing business with me.
I always end up thinking about information restriction being a way of advocating that costs be socialized inside of that insurance pool.
The lesson they learn won't be about the consequences of 'restricting free speech', it will be about the consequences of operating their business on a network that is exposed to the internet at large.
Or, infrastructure tends to fail occasionally and someone is throwing this out there for some attention (as to whether it is someone who has operated as 'part' of Anonymous in the past or someone just trying to make them look bad, who knows).
I don't think the military is that radicalized and I doubt that they will sit something like you describe out (I think it is rather obvious that the non-action of the military has played a big role the last few weeks).
I expect a big factor in the expense is that they are a niche service. If there were thousands of online businesses demanding sales tax rates based on location, I would expect the cost of such a service to plummet.
That isn't to say that I particularly advocate such a thing, I just think that most the talk about how hard it would be is wailing.
It doesn't seem super difficult to have the purchaser either choose the jurisdiction or simply use the billing address (with the presumption that it provides the correct tax jurisdiction). States could work to harmonize laws regarding the selection of jurisdiction.
Figuring the tax shouldn't be that hard, and it is likely that small businesses would be able to purchase it as a service, at reasonable rates (if Amazon had to set it up for themselves, they would likely decide to sell it as a service, among others).
So it is a little bit messy, but it seems like it is perfectly workable, and it would probably be nicer to listen to people bitching about the sales taxes that they have to pay, rather than listening to them bitch about the sales tax businesses don't pay while they quietly fail to pay their use tax.
Someone who doesn't use a lot of voice minutes can buy a Virgin Mobile phone with 300 minutes / month and phone data and text for about $475 a year in the U.S. (less if you choose to keep a phone for more than 1 year...).
That limits them to Sprint towers (Sprint owns Virgin Mobile and this is part of the reason that Virgin costs less than Sprint), but there are quite a few offers with unlimited phone data that are about $50 a month (so with a $300 phone, that's $900 a year the first year), but that price also includes a lot of voice minutes.
Unlimited voice with long distance costs about $50 these days (in the U.S.). So depending on whether a cell phone is a convenient replacement for a landline, you might be able to save money with a smartphone...
As a percentage of transaction volume, it isn't that big a problem.
Of course, that is from the perspective of the card companies, and they are currently able to make the merchants responsible for fraudulent use of their individually numbered cards, so the card companies have little incentive to try to make it difficult to fraudulently use a card.
(The gas pump thing is weird, I think I (in Michigan) have had to punch my zip in only once or twice in the last 5 years...)
I don't think they are too worried about the segment of their userbase that refuses to carry a cell phone but wants to check their email from random restaurants.
Maybe. It is a little problematic to forecast the solvency of a country when the only test of the solvency of a country is whether it can borrow sufficient money to finance the debt it already has (with maybe some hand waving there about "at reasonable rates").
Of course, massive deficits and debts don't really seem to do anything good for the economy of a country (especially when much of it seems to be on spending $2 today on programs that cost $4 tomorrow and return $1 of value).
Slashdot Mirror
I think most people that distinguish between cults and religions actually use "cult" to mean a worship group that seems to have a negative impact on the members lives.
I'd rather just have single payer than spend all my time worrying about whether or not my insurance company was effective in its attempts to correctly estimate the risks of doing business with me.
I always end up thinking about information restriction being a way of advocating that costs be socialized inside of that insurance pool.
You don't want effective targeted advertising?
I dream of it, advertisers knowing I am a miserly crank, not directing resources at me at all.
It does not use speech recognition, it receives the 'answers' as text.
The i tags still make it into the html, the problem is that there is a line like
* {font-style: inherit;}
In the css. And you are right that it is a consistency problem, the font style for b tags is explicitly set.
As if a life lived under an authoritarian yoke is not a disaster.
Like cholera?
The lesson they learn won't be about the consequences of 'restricting free speech', it will be about the consequences of operating their business on a network that is exposed to the internet at large.
How does it compare to bup?
Or, infrastructure tends to fail occasionally and someone is throwing this out there for some attention (as to whether it is someone who has operated as 'part' of Anonymous in the past or someone just trying to make them look bad, who knows).
I don't think the military is that radicalized and I doubt that they will sit something like you describe out (I think it is rather obvious that the non-action of the military has played a big role the last few weeks).
I expect a big factor in the expense is that they are a niche service. If there were thousands of online businesses demanding sales tax rates based on location, I would expect the cost of such a service to plummet.
That isn't to say that I particularly advocate such a thing, I just think that most the talk about how hard it would be is wailing.
Click the score to see the moderation. I sort of like that a single moderation is no longer used to describe a comment.
It doesn't seem super difficult to have the purchaser either choose the jurisdiction or simply use the billing address (with the presumption that it provides the correct tax jurisdiction). States could work to harmonize laws regarding the selection of jurisdiction.
Figuring the tax shouldn't be that hard, and it is likely that small businesses would be able to purchase it as a service, at reasonable rates (if Amazon had to set it up for themselves, they would likely decide to sell it as a service, among others).
So it is a little bit messy, but it seems like it is perfectly workable, and it would probably be nicer to listen to people bitching about the sales taxes that they have to pay, rather than listening to them bitch about the sales tax businesses don't pay while they quietly fail to pay their use tax.
You mentioned something involving politics.
Why would you expect a response to have anything to do with what you said?
I pretty much addressed everything you said in the part of my comment that you didn't quote.
I even said "might".
Someone who doesn't use a lot of voice minutes can buy a Virgin Mobile phone with 300 minutes / month and phone data and text for about $475 a year in the U.S. (less if you choose to keep a phone for more than 1 year...).
That limits them to Sprint towers (Sprint owns Virgin Mobile and this is part of the reason that Virgin costs less than Sprint), but there are quite a few offers with unlimited phone data that are about $50 a month (so with a $300 phone, that's $900 a year the first year), but that price also includes a lot of voice minutes.
One thing to watch out for is that Virgin Mobile is limited to Sprint-owned cell towers, so the coverage can be spotty.
Unlimited voice with long distance costs about $50 these days (in the U.S.). So depending on whether a cell phone is a convenient replacement for a landline, you might be able to save money with a smartphone...
As a percentage of transaction volume, it isn't that big a problem.
Of course, that is from the perspective of the card companies, and they are currently able to make the merchants responsible for fraudulent use of their individually numbered cards, so the card companies have little incentive to try to make it difficult to fraudulently use a card.
(The gas pump thing is weird, I think I (in Michigan) have had to punch my zip in only once or twice in the last 5 years...)
The merchant is allowed to inspect the card, so I'm not sure how you would prevent them from reading the cvv.
I don't think they are too worried about the segment of their userbase that refuses to carry a cell phone but wants to check their email from random restaurants.
Maybe. It is a little problematic to forecast the solvency of a country when the only test of the solvency of a country is whether it can borrow sufficient money to finance the debt it already has (with maybe some hand waving there about "at reasonable rates").
Of course, massive deficits and debts don't really seem to do anything good for the economy of a country (especially when much of it seems to be on spending $2 today on programs that cost $4 tomorrow and return $1 of value).
I wouldn't cut a chip into my hand, but how about a proximity device in my watch that used some cryptographic stuff for authentication?
Then the attacker 'just' has to physically extract the contents of the non volatile memory.
Of course, that isn't going to be especially easy, but if the data on the phone is that important, why not just protect it with a boot password?