Assuming they don't use some sort of anti radar/optical material/scifi cloaking... they should be detectable if we have a full radar/optical map of the whole solar system. This is more a problem of computation then anything. You get a series of cameras and radar receivers and they all take regular scans of the whole solar system. Anything "ship" sized should be logged and fed into a model of the solar system. Anything that deviates from one scan to the next was either influenced by something the model did not account for or is operating under its own power.
three parts metallic to one part black matte. The specific paints are actually important as there is a lot of trial and error that goes into this sort of thing. If you look around or do a web search you should be able to get some recipes. All the paints you need can be found at home depot if you're interested in going the super DIY route.
Another critical issue, the surface you paint on should be FLAT. You might want to buy a cheap material that is utterly flat, glue that to the wall, and then paint on top of that. That helps sometimes.
There are a lot of different options.
There is the black diamond screens that you can just buy... they cost about 5000 dollars.
Then there is the specially formulated paint that you can get for about 500 dollars.
Then there is the super DIY route which will probably end up costing you about 50 dollars.
There are pros and cons outside of the cost. The Black Diamond screens are supposed to give a really good picture but they have limited viewing angles like some LCDs. You really need to be facing them for them to work properly.
The special paint probably offers the best screen but it is expensive if you screw up because it is 500 dollars for one quart and 700 or so for two. Big savings to buy two and really you might need two. And even then it just sucks to spend that kind of money when you're going to mess it up the first time probably. That said, it probably has the best screen if you do it right.
The super DIY route is highly variable depending on the recipe you go with because some of them work really well and some of them have issues. You might find that you have to do a lot of trial and error even if you are working from a recipe. The recipe could be bad... it is just people's opinions up there. What you'll find from most of the recipes is that they often are painting on a specific kind of surface. Sometimes those surfaces are important meaning if you want to use that recipe you need to get whatever material they're painting on and some of those materials are either hard to get or expensive or both.
We're in early days with this stuff. In 20 years all the home screens will probably be black.
And again, you'll probably want TWO screens as the black screens really are best when there is light in the room. But if your room is totally dark, the white screens are actually the best.
If you're at all curious, you can look into Warren Buffet's corporate empire. The man has built his entire corporate structure around not paying taxes. And yet he's generally thought well of by the tax and spend crowd.
For one thing he owns insurance companies. Insurance companies pay no capital gains taxes. Those taxes you pay when you buy a thing then sell a thing at a profit. Such as buying and selling stocks or bonds. By doing that buying and selling through his insurance companies he avoids that tax entirely.
The next thing he likes to do is buy to own rather then to sell. On longer term investments he'll just own a thing rather then buying and selling from it. When he wants to draw money from it, he'll borrow against its value. The interest rate for a secured loan is tiny. We're talking about a fraction of a percent. Compare that the tax if that money were income. What is more, debts are tax deductible. So not only does he not pay tax on the income from things he does not sell but he can actually use the profits to offset taxes he cannot avoid.
Then he owns various charities etc which allows him to throw big parties for his friends etc and deduct those expenses from other taxes owed.
And those are just the three main ways I know of that he is going out of his way to not pay taxes. His whole empire is based on the notion of not paying them.
And that is only possible because the taxes are complicated. If the taxes were simple then you wouldn't be able to avoid them. The problem with simple taxes is the same as the advantage. And many people like people to pay more and some to pay less. The result is that the poor generally pay nothing. The rich pay pretty much whatever they want to pay. And the middle class gets shafted because they have enough money to be taxed without the sophistication to game the system.
And who does all that benefit? Politicians mostly. They get to tell the numerous poor that they're sticking it to the man. They get to give a knowing wink to the elites that know where all the loopholes are... and the dump saps in the middle don't even realize what is going on.
Only way people in the middle are helped is if the job market is protected and the taxes are kept simple. The more regulations you create, the more small businesses get shut out of existence which is the primary means for people to raise themselves up in a capitalist society. You do it by making your own business. What is more, the largest employer in practically every economy is small business. They are the primary mechanism for social and economic mobility and the primary employer of everyone. And yet... the least powerful in any congress or parliament in the world.
Unlikely. The expenses for such services are negligible. We only pay the costs we do because we lack competition in the marketplace which allows monopolists to charge whatever they like. VPNs enjoy no monopolies and so are subject to market forces which drive costs down.
People so ignorant of our society and economy that they have yet to grasp even the most rudimentary concept such as that old invisible hand do not understand that nearly every problem you have with any company is the result of a lack of competition.
Go into any situation where everyone selling knows that the customer can pick someone else and the prices crash, the quality sours, and the quantity meets demand. When these things stop happening it is because somewhere along the line the fundamentals are getting fucked with... and when you fuck with the fundamentals they fuck you back.
At the end of the day, you want to make sure your taxes are not so high that you lose more business by raising the taxes then you gained in additional revenue.
What is more, when you make complex taxes that only apply in certain circumstances and not in other then you encourage people to do things in just such a way that they don't pay those taxes. Often this just requires filling out some paper work to declare one thing or another under some provision of some law rather then another. And all of that legal and financial finesse costs money because you have to hire people that know how to play the game then pay them to play it for you.
In the end, it mostly just hurts small businesses and medium sized businesses that can't thread the needle. And that is in many cases the point. Kills competition which allows established companies to operate largely unopposed because no one can handle the paperwork required to eliminate the taxes AND run the company at the same time from scratch.
Well, I believe your VAT is paid by people that buy things there and your sales taxes should also be paid. Whether they owe you income taxes on top of that is debatable.
Lets say I am a company in the US and you call me up on the phone from England and order whatever it is I sell... I work out the import fees, and see to it that you pay sales tax... do I owe your government income tax as well? I don't think I do.
Now you might say "but amazon has warehouses and people that work for them in the UK which makes that part of it a UK company"... and to that I'd point out that they pay property taxes, fuel taxes, their employees pay income tax, and there are all sorts of taxes and fees that that portion of the company pays. So I don't think it is reasonable on top of that to ask for an income tax when the shareholders are already paying that.
Again, the income tax as applied to corporations doesn't make a lot of sense. Again... everyone knows it. Which is why no one tries to rake companies too hard over the coals for it. Its a dumb tax.
And there are a lot of dumb taxes. A lot of the economic problems we're suffering in the US and in Europe are the result of dumb taxes. A lot of the reason we lost so much business to china is because their taxes are a lot less dumb. The wage differences are relevant as well sometimes but it is mostly a matter of pointless regulation that forces companies to employ huge numbers of people just to fill out government documents that no one reads.
Did you ever see the movie Office Space? Remember how their bosses were obsessed with TPS reports to such an extent that they were more important then any work that actually got done? Well, our governments are doing the same thing.
In the average US hospital the upper THREE flours of the hospital are filled with accountants, lawyers, and various people that process hospital paper work. All of that has to be paid for by the patients and the insurance companies and the government via the subsidies. It is a huge waste of time and money. SOME paper work does need to be done but it should be what is needed and nothing more because every bit you require beyond that simply makes everything more expensive.
The US companies set up in Ireland because the Irish were willing to have reasonable tax policies in return for getting a lot of jobs.
Any country not willing to do that is going to lose jobs to countries that do.
Tax policy actually makes no sense at all. The income tax itself is problematic. And it is especially problematic when you tax a business twice.
If corporations paid taxes the way that individuals paid taxes that would mean 60 percent or so of the corporate income would go to the government and then from that remaining 40 percent you'd pay out dividends or invest in further corporate growth etc. It doesn't work.
Which is why corporate income tax tends to be very very very low. Everyone understands that the whole double taxation concept is a stupid one.
That said, the income tax system is itself problematic. Worse is the estate tax or as it is better known the "death tax" which is the reason corporations have taken over. Corporations pay no death tax. A family business has to sell off half their value every generation just to pay the estate tax. It is ruinous.
There are a lot of aspects of the taxation system that are simply stupid.
The US Federal government used to fund itself almost entirely with a tariff. The issue is controversial but there are some really nice features of that tax. One, it is very easy to collect and very simple. Two, tax fraud is smuggling and smuggling is tax fraud. And that means the IRS etc has a great interest under such a system to control the borders otherwise they'll lose revenue to smuggling. That means the borders are policed and the US Federal government will care deeply about what crosses the border because that is how they get paid. You'll note that the modern US government says they can't police the US borders. Do you believe that? Really? If that was how they generated the revenue that kept the lights on, they would probably find out how to do it.
Here you'll point out quite sensibly that the Feds couldn't possibly fund all the things they do with a straight tariff and that is quite right. However, practically everything they couldn't fund with that either shouldn't exist or should be done by the states. And the states have another good tax which is the property tax.
beyond that, I'm well aware of it and I don't especially blame you. Customers that hire developers to do special contracts are frequently two faced in negotiations. The developer will bend over backwards to get the contract and then after they've given away the best bits as an inducement the client will change their mind and go with someone else... taking your contribution with them. Writing a contract that will stop them from doing that and worse getting them to sign such a thing is very hard. Easier to exploit their ignorance to hold them to a provision of the contract they didn't even know was there.
People can say what they like about that, but I feel it is reasonable so long as you're not greedy about it. As they say "you can be a pig but you can't be a hog." You take enough that you can run your business without going into the poor house and as much as possible try to make sure they don't notice what you've done or why you did it.
One of the things great about this practice is that it is deniable. It isn't obvious why you did it.
How many companies deal in proprietary widgets that force you to buy their licensed products or the thing doesn't work.
If the big corporations can think that way then why can't the small development houses or independent contractors?
And where does the big company tell you that "you can only use our licensed products" in their advertising? No where. You ask the salesperson and they'll say "well, we just want to make sure you get the highest quality so we ensure only our validated products are used."
Ever used an ink jet printer or any product from apple? Why would they be the only people trying that tactic.
And the problem with kidnapping someone's dog is that is illegal. Writing in brainf** however is completely legal. Which means if someone writes in brainf** they're not a criminal. And you if you kidnap their dog then you are a criminal.
It helps if your business practices don't break the law. And its even more advantageous when you can find out ways to violate the spirit of a law without actually breaking a law. Ask the investment banking world about that. They're geniuses at finding new ways to do everything they're not supposed to do by doing it a slightly different way. And the smart ones walk away with lots of money not because they did a good thing or came up with a good service but found a new way to break the law without going to jail.
And why would they be the only ones to think that way?
Explain why you'd code in a non-standard language for marginal gains? There are huge advantages in using a standardized language. Use some weird language that five people know how to code in and you're FUCKED if you have a falling out or the weasels decide to start raking you over the coals. What are you going to do? Code the whole thing from scratch?
The IRS still has programs written in COBOL that they've been using since LBJ. I know of many major companies that still use DOS databases and various dos programs that were custom made for them practically a generation ago.
What do you think happens when they go searching for someone to patch one of these dinosaurs? They quickly realize that its cheaper to pay a programmer that knows the code to patch the existing code then it is to hire someone to write the whole thing from scratch in a new language.
Which is how programs stay in effect from LBJ to today. That's just legacy code. But you can get the same effect instantly by just using an odd language now. Bingo... customer for life. You can't be too greedy about it. But you have some additional job security. It is very unlikely that someone is going to walk in off the street or cold call them and have the resources on hand to fix their problem. They'll have to engage in a long search and who knows how effective that will be. Or they can just work with the person they know... just easier.
Very few people have a problem with paying to help people out. The problem is the secondary and tertiary consequences.
Lets say my drug addict cousin needs money because he's homeless and hungry... I should give him money right? I mean, he's homeless and hungry.
Problem with that is that he'll spend the money on drugs instead of food or housing. Which means rather then pay for him to live like a human being I am subsidizing his addiction.
An enormous portion of the homeless population in the US is addicted to something or literally insane.
Does that mean I'm advocating giving them nothing? No... I'm advocating for the random homeless person the same thing I would offer my own blood in the same situation... Reform and I'll help you. Refuse to reform and you get nothing. That is a reasonable response to addicts.
To the insane, if you are so crazy that you can't even work a minimum wage job to afford the cheapest of appartments... if you are so crazy that you can't live in a half way house where portions of your expenses are subsidized under controlled conditions... if you are so crazy that all you can do is wander around the streets begging for what you need and likely being addicted to something... then I would offer them asylum. Literally you can live in a controlled community isolated from the rest of society where people will be paid to take care of you and see to your needs. In return, you forfeit your freedoms beyond the asylum and must live within those confines. Do not throw "one flew over the cuckoo's nest" at me. Obviously that is unacceptable. I am suggesting asylum not sadistic abuse.
I could lay what I feel is an appropriate response beyond that. But the point is that these systems should be structured in such a way that they strengthen society and do not beggar it. We have an absurd number of Americans on "disability" these days. The vast majority of these people can work just fine. They simply find it easier to cash the checks then work. I don't blame them. It is a rational choice. You can either get paid a lot of money to do nothing or work really hard to possibly get less. Why would I do anything but collect the checks. And that would be fine only the money comes from some place and there is only so much of it.
Add to that, immigration policies which encourage the world's poor to flock to wealthy socialist societies all over the world, get fast tracked into citizenship, and then immediately collect welfare. It is common in the EU, Canada, and the US. Less common in Australia and New Zealand currently because they've been pretty rational on the subject. But who knows how long that will last.
Now... tell me I'm evil. That judgement wounds me so.
Calm down... what I'm wondering here is if in part the point is to use obscure languages. What if the issue is not some new feature of the language but rather the fact that no one really uses it? Maybe it is a job security thing? Maybe it is a way for a company under contract to keep a client using them? If I code a program for a company in some weird language and they contractually own the source code they're still going to be more inclined to contract with me again because they can't find another developer that can use that code.
Are you worried about coming up with a good idea and then having your client contract with some cheap development house out of India or something? Code it in a language that no one else understands and they won't be able to do that.
What is more, it is the sort of thing that some clients are going to miss. They might slyly note that they're not obligated to use you for patches and updates for the program going forward. The significance of coding it in a weird language might slip by them. And thus you or your company gains leverage going forward.
Whether this is the primary reason people like these weird languages, you have to admit that you'd have more leverage to compel clients to use you in the future to maintain and add to those programs since it will be harder for them to replace you then if you used a more popular language.
Outside of this issue, I'm actually having a hard time grasping why there is such a profusion of languages when most of them do the same thing. Yes, they've some advantages over each other but that is more a way of saying they're different from each other then saying they're actually better. Conditionally, pretty much anything can be better then anything else. I mean, a bathing suit is better for taking a dip in the pool then a heavy down coat... but if I were walking through the snow I'd rather have the coat. Neither one is really better then the other. They're just conditionally superior.
Boys are not told that girls are bad at math and engineering. I never heard that growing up and I am simply baffled at where you think that is coming from.
What I did know was that girls don't like to obsessively work on projects alone or suffer uncompromising criticism from peers or superiors.
The culture of the literal world where things are right or wrong is not one that a lot of girls tend to aspire to. I'm not sure why that is but it is.
They stay away from most jobs where doing the wrong thing is black and white WRONG. How many female surgeons are there? Largely male dominated you will find. Lots of female doctors though. They just tend to be diagnosticians or something where they aren't using a scalpel to cut tumors out with their own hands. And that's despite the fact that women are supposed to have better fine coordination.
It hardly stops there. Look at the world of investment finance where a wrong move costs millions in an instant. Right and wrong.
Same in engineering, most of the hard sciences outside of biology, and much of computer science.
Maybe I'm finding the wrong pattern here but you will notice that all those jobs have a very clear and uncompromising notion of right and wrong. Now, consider jobs that women tend to dominate as a comparison... how many of them have absolute measures of right and wrong built into them?
Here, I suspect you'll say that all those jobs I listed are sexist and full of a hostile anti woman atmosphere that rejects women. But do you really think an investment bank gives a flying fuck who is managing accounts if they're making money? They don't. You could be a two headed dog from the moon for all they care. Do you think either the man under the knife of the hospital cares so long as the surgeon saves lives? Nope. How about companies that hire engineers or the people that buy the products made by those companies? Do they go "eww girls made this!"... nope. It either works and is a good design or it isn't and no one cares either way. Do you know or care who made your car or your washing machine or the jet engine in your airplane? No one cares so long as the work was done properly.
Same with coding. How often do you think people go through and find out who made their program? They probably know the name of the company that made it but they're unlikely to know the name of the CEO much less anyone on the team of coders that slapped the program together.
Neither your sex nor gender matters when the work gets serious. The distinction is irrelevant and arbitrary to the task. If your genitals aren't going to do the work then who cares if you stand up to pee, sit down, do it through a tube that goes into a bag tied to your leg, or whatever creative way you've figured out how to make water. It really doesn't matter. And no serious professional gives a shit what you have between your legs unless it is relevant to the work. So if you're a prostitute... perhaps it is relevant... otherwise... no. Perhaps once people cared... but today... no.
You're fighting old battles that were already won a generation ago. This whole thing is like some sad misguided Renascence fair only with the 60s being the time to reenact. Its a stupid game. Lets all wear tie dyed shirts, put on blue tinted sun glasses, make some hand painted signs, and throw peace signs around.
Let me make this deal with you... I'll not pretend you're a dragon/orc/evil knight that I have to slay in mortal combat for my liege lord... and you don't bore me with your nonsense. It isn't real. Accept that you are living in the year 2015. Girls and boys make their own choices and if girls and boys want to be treated like adults and not children... then they had best accept their choices as theirs.
Too true. My father for example despises the paper yet he subscribes to it because he comes from a generation where if you didn't read the NYTs you'd miss something. He's literally afraid not to read the fucking thing because despite the fact that he reads blogs, internet news sources, etc he still doesn't quite trust it. And so he subscribes.
yes... and how many studies are written in a year? And how many of those studies that are written reach any newspaper of note what so ever?
So I'm afraid the publishing source is quite relevant. If I picked a couple studies to talk about every year would the person "I" am be relevant at all or would you say "no only the studies are valuable."
Obviously fucking not. So you can jam that little comment up your backside sideways.
And while you're doing that, would you mind telling me if they actually learned anything amongst all this studying? Because according to the article it didn't appear they had learned a fucking thing that any child on the internet doesn't already know.
Sorry if that was rude... backsides and sideways... but you weren't being very friendly either, eh chum? Don't be a dick, please.
I mean, if everyone writes their program in their own little language then its pretty god damn frustrating for a rival to steal it from them unless they either want to learn that language or rewrite the whole thing.
Ultimately, this might be the best copyright protection. Hard to steal what you can't understand.
Hard to understand why any of this is complicated in a real full out war.
Smash the enemy communications networks and they're not on the internet at all at that point. What is left is whatever your own military hardened communications networks are... and all you have to do there is keep the battered remnants of the enemy out of your own systems.
That is assuming a small engagement.
Assuming a big one... the issue is best left to communications specialists that will be tasked with keeping systems linked to the internet properly firewalled.
Simply being detectable doesn't make the sub as exposed as a surface ship.
First it is literally below the surface of the sea. A weapon has to be specifically designed to target them down there. And it is generally a lot harder to kill things down there then it is on the surface of the sea.
Simply being down there is a strong defensive positive.
Second, these detection systems are going to be the first elements of an enemy's defensive grid to get trashed. Just as the airforce makes a point of trashing enemy radar before they send in heavy bombers, these detection systems are going to be the first causalities of any engagement. At which point, the subs are going to be hard to detect again.
Third, arms races are all about the race between offensive and defensive technologies. So you've got some new detection gear? Okay. But have we heard from the engineers about how they'll mitigate it? Nope. That's silly. They could jam enemy detection, change the shape of hulls so they don't reflect strong sonar returns, etc.
You're saying dimorphism exists but can be totally discounted.
That is also unsupportable.
I don't have to agree with every prehistorical culture about how things must be to hold the argument that dimorphism exists and is relevant.
As to not knowing what the result will actually be of dimorphism, that is a two way street. Merely by acknowledging that you open the door for it to be employed in various situations where statistical discrepancies become apparent. And the door opened, when you complain about some gender imbalance, the burden of proof is upon you to show that there is actual bigotry rather then any of a thousand consequences of different behavior, capability, or life choice.
Men for example tend to over work. They will without additional pay put in more time where as women tend to go home when their work day is through. Companies and bosses notice that.
That is just one of about ten major differences between the way men and women tend to work. And regardless as to whether it is biological or not... it is the defacto reality.
Your entire premise rests on the assumption that all the statistical differences in employment are due entirely to bias, bigotry, prejudice, and "culture". You don't have enough evidence to sustain that argument. And given that the people pushing your agenda are political agents that generally don't care about truth, you're unlikely to ever have the information because the people backing you will never care enough to collect it.
That being the case... I am fairly confident that I can deflect this point from you for the foreseeable future... mostly because you're almost certainly exaggerating your position into actual error. And also because your faction is more interested in group think and submission to dogma then it is interested in actual science, the truth, or having an actual fucking point.
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Assuming they don't use some sort of anti radar/optical material/scifi cloaking... they should be detectable if we have a full radar/optical map of the whole solar system. This is more a problem of computation then anything. You get a series of cameras and radar receivers and they all take regular scans of the whole solar system. Anything "ship" sized should be logged and fed into a model of the solar system. Anything that deviates from one scan to the next was either influenced by something the model did not account for or is operating under its own power.
three parts metallic to one part black matte. The specific paints are actually important as there is a lot of trial and error that goes into this sort of thing. If you look around or do a web search you should be able to get some recipes. All the paints you need can be found at home depot if you're interested in going the super DIY route.
Another critical issue, the surface you paint on should be FLAT. You might want to buy a cheap material that is utterly flat, glue that to the wall, and then paint on top of that. That helps sometimes.
There are a lot of different options.
There is the black diamond screens that you can just buy... they cost about 5000 dollars.
Then there is the specially formulated paint that you can get for about 500 dollars.
Then there is the super DIY route which will probably end up costing you about 50 dollars.
There are pros and cons outside of the cost. The Black Diamond screens are supposed to give a really good picture but they have limited viewing angles like some LCDs. You really need to be facing them for them to work properly.
The special paint probably offers the best screen but it is expensive if you screw up because it is 500 dollars for one quart and 700 or so for two. Big savings to buy two and really you might need two. And even then it just sucks to spend that kind of money when you're going to mess it up the first time probably. That said, it probably has the best screen if you do it right.
The super DIY route is highly variable depending on the recipe you go with because some of them work really well and some of them have issues. You might find that you have to do a lot of trial and error even if you are working from a recipe. The recipe could be bad... it is just people's opinions up there. What you'll find from most of the recipes is that they often are painting on a specific kind of surface. Sometimes those surfaces are important meaning if you want to use that recipe you need to get whatever material they're painting on and some of those materials are either hard to get or expensive or both.
We're in early days with this stuff. In 20 years all the home screens will probably be black.
And again, you'll probably want TWO screens as the black screens really are best when there is light in the room. But if your room is totally dark, the white screens are actually the best.
Hackers existed before the maker thing and they're not even remotely the same thing.
Call them the makers or anything else not already claimed by something else.
It's twice as expensive as some other options.
If you're at all curious, you can look into Warren Buffet's corporate empire. The man has built his entire corporate structure around not paying taxes. And yet he's generally thought well of by the tax and spend crowd.
For one thing he owns insurance companies. Insurance companies pay no capital gains taxes. Those taxes you pay when you buy a thing then sell a thing at a profit. Such as buying and selling stocks or bonds. By doing that buying and selling through his insurance companies he avoids that tax entirely.
The next thing he likes to do is buy to own rather then to sell. On longer term investments he'll just own a thing rather then buying and selling from it. When he wants to draw money from it, he'll borrow against its value. The interest rate for a secured loan is tiny. We're talking about a fraction of a percent. Compare that the tax if that money were income. What is more, debts are tax deductible. So not only does he not pay tax on the income from things he does not sell but he can actually use the profits to offset taxes he cannot avoid.
Then he owns various charities etc which allows him to throw big parties for his friends etc and deduct those expenses from other taxes owed.
And those are just the three main ways I know of that he is going out of his way to not pay taxes. His whole empire is based on the notion of not paying them.
And that is only possible because the taxes are complicated. If the taxes were simple then you wouldn't be able to avoid them. The problem with simple taxes is the same as the advantage. And many people like people to pay more and some to pay less. The result is that the poor generally pay nothing. The rich pay pretty much whatever they want to pay. And the middle class gets shafted because they have enough money to be taxed without the sophistication to game the system.
And who does all that benefit? Politicians mostly. They get to tell the numerous poor that they're sticking it to the man. They get to give a knowing wink to the elites that know where all the loopholes are... and the dump saps in the middle don't even realize what is going on.
Only way people in the middle are helped is if the job market is protected and the taxes are kept simple. The more regulations you create, the more small businesses get shut out of existence which is the primary means for people to raise themselves up in a capitalist society. You do it by making your own business. What is more, the largest employer in practically every economy is small business. They are the primary mechanism for social and economic mobility and the primary employer of everyone. And yet... the least powerful in any congress or parliament in the world.
Unlikely. The expenses for such services are negligible. We only pay the costs we do because we lack competition in the marketplace which allows monopolists to charge whatever they like. VPNs enjoy no monopolies and so are subject to market forces which drive costs down.
People so ignorant of our society and economy that they have yet to grasp even the most rudimentary concept such as that old invisible hand do not understand that nearly every problem you have with any company is the result of a lack of competition.
Go into any situation where everyone selling knows that the customer can pick someone else and the prices crash, the quality sours, and the quantity meets demand. When these things stop happening it is because somewhere along the line the fundamentals are getting fucked with... and when you fuck with the fundamentals they fuck you back.
if you wanted to opt out of being tracked, it would be cheaper to get an anonymizing VPN and run all your trackable traffic through that.
I've seen some VPNs as cheap as 5 USD a month.
At the end of the day, you want to make sure your taxes are not so high that you lose more business by raising the taxes then you gained in additional revenue.
What is more, when you make complex taxes that only apply in certain circumstances and not in other then you encourage people to do things in just such a way that they don't pay those taxes. Often this just requires filling out some paper work to declare one thing or another under some provision of some law rather then another. And all of that legal and financial finesse costs money because you have to hire people that know how to play the game then pay them to play it for you.
In the end, it mostly just hurts small businesses and medium sized businesses that can't thread the needle. And that is in many cases the point. Kills competition which allows established companies to operate largely unopposed because no one can handle the paperwork required to eliminate the taxes AND run the company at the same time from scratch.
In any case... good day to you.
Well, I believe your VAT is paid by people that buy things there and your sales taxes should also be paid. Whether they owe you income taxes on top of that is debatable.
Lets say I am a company in the US and you call me up on the phone from England and order whatever it is I sell... I work out the import fees, and see to it that you pay sales tax... do I owe your government income tax as well? I don't think I do.
Now you might say "but amazon has warehouses and people that work for them in the UK which makes that part of it a UK company"... and to that I'd point out that they pay property taxes, fuel taxes, their employees pay income tax, and there are all sorts of taxes and fees that that portion of the company pays. So I don't think it is reasonable on top of that to ask for an income tax when the shareholders are already paying that.
Again, the income tax as applied to corporations doesn't make a lot of sense. Again... everyone knows it. Which is why no one tries to rake companies too hard over the coals for it. Its a dumb tax.
And there are a lot of dumb taxes. A lot of the economic problems we're suffering in the US and in Europe are the result of dumb taxes. A lot of the reason we lost so much business to china is because their taxes are a lot less dumb. The wage differences are relevant as well sometimes but it is mostly a matter of pointless regulation that forces companies to employ huge numbers of people just to fill out government documents that no one reads.
Did you ever see the movie Office Space? Remember how their bosses were obsessed with TPS reports to such an extent that they were more important then any work that actually got done? Well, our governments are doing the same thing.
In the average US hospital the upper THREE flours of the hospital are filled with accountants, lawyers, and various people that process hospital paper work. All of that has to be paid for by the patients and the insurance companies and the government via the subsidies. It is a huge waste of time and money. SOME paper work does need to be done but it should be what is needed and nothing more because every bit you require beyond that simply makes everything more expensive.
The US companies set up in Ireland because the Irish were willing to have reasonable tax policies in return for getting a lot of jobs.
Any country not willing to do that is going to lose jobs to countries that do.
Choose carefully.
You had me until corporate taxes.
Tax policy actually makes no sense at all. The income tax itself is problematic. And it is especially problematic when you tax a business twice.
If corporations paid taxes the way that individuals paid taxes that would mean 60 percent or so of the corporate income would go to the government and then from that remaining 40 percent you'd pay out dividends or invest in further corporate growth etc. It doesn't work.
Which is why corporate income tax tends to be very very very low. Everyone understands that the whole double taxation concept is a stupid one.
That said, the income tax system is itself problematic. Worse is the estate tax or as it is better known the "death tax" which is the reason corporations have taken over. Corporations pay no death tax. A family business has to sell off half their value every generation just to pay the estate tax. It is ruinous.
There are a lot of aspects of the taxation system that are simply stupid.
The US Federal government used to fund itself almost entirely with a tariff. The issue is controversial but there are some really nice features of that tax. One, it is very easy to collect and very simple. Two, tax fraud is smuggling and smuggling is tax fraud. And that means the IRS etc has a great interest under such a system to control the borders otherwise they'll lose revenue to smuggling. That means the borders are policed and the US Federal government will care deeply about what crosses the border because that is how they get paid. You'll note that the modern US government says they can't police the US borders. Do you believe that? Really? If that was how they generated the revenue that kept the lights on, they would probably find out how to do it.
Here you'll point out quite sensibly that the Feds couldn't possibly fund all the things they do with a straight tariff and that is quite right. However, practically everything they couldn't fund with that either shouldn't exist or should be done by the states. And the states have another good tax which is the property tax.
first, poe's law. ;)
beyond that, I'm well aware of it and I don't especially blame you. Customers that hire developers to do special contracts are frequently two faced in negotiations. The developer will bend over backwards to get the contract and then after they've given away the best bits as an inducement the client will change their mind and go with someone else... taking your contribution with them. Writing a contract that will stop them from doing that and worse getting them to sign such a thing is very hard. Easier to exploit their ignorance to hold them to a provision of the contract they didn't even know was there.
People can say what they like about that, but I feel it is reasonable so long as you're not greedy about it. As they say "you can be a pig but you can't be a hog." You take enough that you can run your business without going into the poor house and as much as possible try to make sure they don't notice what you've done or why you did it.
One of the things great about this practice is that it is deniable. It isn't obvious why you did it.
How many companies deal in proprietary widgets that force you to buy their licensed products or the thing doesn't work.
If the big corporations can think that way then why can't the small development houses or independent contractors?
And where does the big company tell you that "you can only use our licensed products" in their advertising? No where. You ask the salesperson and they'll say "well, we just want to make sure you get the highest quality so we ensure only our validated products are used."
Ever used an ink jet printer or any product from apple? Why would they be the only people trying that tactic.
And the problem with kidnapping someone's dog is that is illegal. Writing in brainf** however is completely legal. Which means if someone writes in brainf** they're not a criminal. And you if you kidnap their dog then you are a criminal.
It helps if your business practices don't break the law. And its even more advantageous when you can find out ways to violate the spirit of a law without actually breaking a law. Ask the investment banking world about that. They're geniuses at finding new ways to do everything they're not supposed to do by doing it a slightly different way. And the smart ones walk away with lots of money not because they did a good thing or came up with a good service but found a new way to break the law without going to jail.
And why would they be the only ones to think that way?
Explain why you'd code in a non-standard language for marginal gains? There are huge advantages in using a standardized language. Use some weird language that five people know how to code in and you're FUCKED if you have a falling out or the weasels decide to start raking you over the coals. What are you going to do? Code the whole thing from scratch?
The IRS still has programs written in COBOL that they've been using since LBJ. I know of many major companies that still use DOS databases and various dos programs that were custom made for them practically a generation ago.
What do you think happens when they go searching for someone to patch one of these dinosaurs? They quickly realize that its cheaper to pay a programmer that knows the code to patch the existing code then it is to hire someone to write the whole thing from scratch in a new language.
Which is how programs stay in effect from LBJ to today. That's just legacy code. But you can get the same effect instantly by just using an odd language now. Bingo... customer for life. You can't be too greedy about it. But you have some additional job security. It is very unlikely that someone is going to walk in off the street or cold call them and have the resources on hand to fix their problem. They'll have to engage in a long search and who knows how effective that will be. Or they can just work with the person they know... just easier.
Instantly no competition.
Very few people have a problem with paying to help people out. The problem is the secondary and tertiary consequences.
Lets say my drug addict cousin needs money because he's homeless and hungry... I should give him money right? I mean, he's homeless and hungry.
Problem with that is that he'll spend the money on drugs instead of food or housing. Which means rather then pay for him to live like a human being I am subsidizing his addiction.
An enormous portion of the homeless population in the US is addicted to something or literally insane.
Does that mean I'm advocating giving them nothing? No... I'm advocating for the random homeless person the same thing I would offer my own blood in the same situation... Reform and I'll help you. Refuse to reform and you get nothing. That is a reasonable response to addicts.
To the insane, if you are so crazy that you can't even work a minimum wage job to afford the cheapest of appartments... if you are so crazy that you can't live in a half way house where portions of your expenses are subsidized under controlled conditions... if you are so crazy that all you can do is wander around the streets begging for what you need and likely being addicted to something... then I would offer them asylum. Literally you can live in a controlled community isolated from the rest of society where people will be paid to take care of you and see to your needs. In return, you forfeit your freedoms beyond the asylum and must live within those confines. Do not throw "one flew over the cuckoo's nest" at me. Obviously that is unacceptable. I am suggesting asylum not sadistic abuse.
I could lay what I feel is an appropriate response beyond that. But the point is that these systems should be structured in such a way that they strengthen society and do not beggar it. We have an absurd number of Americans on "disability" these days. The vast majority of these people can work just fine. They simply find it easier to cash the checks then work. I don't blame them. It is a rational choice. You can either get paid a lot of money to do nothing or work really hard to possibly get less. Why would I do anything but collect the checks. And that would be fine only the money comes from some place and there is only so much of it.
Add to that, immigration policies which encourage the world's poor to flock to wealthy socialist societies all over the world, get fast tracked into citizenship, and then immediately collect welfare. It is common in the EU, Canada, and the US. Less common in Australia and New Zealand currently because they've been pretty rational on the subject. But who knows how long that will last.
Now... tell me I'm evil. That judgement wounds me so.
Agreed.
Calm down... what I'm wondering here is if in part the point is to use obscure languages. What if the issue is not some new feature of the language but rather the fact that no one really uses it? Maybe it is a job security thing? Maybe it is a way for a company under contract to keep a client using them? If I code a program for a company in some weird language and they contractually own the source code they're still going to be more inclined to contract with me again because they can't find another developer that can use that code.
Are you worried about coming up with a good idea and then having your client contract with some cheap development house out of India or something? Code it in a language that no one else understands and they won't be able to do that.
What is more, it is the sort of thing that some clients are going to miss. They might slyly note that they're not obligated to use you for patches and updates for the program going forward. The significance of coding it in a weird language might slip by them. And thus you or your company gains leverage going forward.
Whether this is the primary reason people like these weird languages, you have to admit that you'd have more leverage to compel clients to use you in the future to maintain and add to those programs since it will be harder for them to replace you then if you used a more popular language.
Outside of this issue, I'm actually having a hard time grasping why there is such a profusion of languages when most of them do the same thing. Yes, they've some advantages over each other but that is more a way of saying they're different from each other then saying they're actually better. Conditionally, pretty much anything can be better then anything else. I mean, a bathing suit is better for taking a dip in the pool then a heavy down coat... but if I were walking through the snow I'd rather have the coat. Neither one is really better then the other. They're just conditionally superior.
Boys are not told that girls are bad at math and engineering. I never heard that growing up and I am simply baffled at where you think that is coming from.
What I did know was that girls don't like to obsessively work on projects alone or suffer uncompromising criticism from peers or superiors.
The culture of the literal world where things are right or wrong is not one that a lot of girls tend to aspire to. I'm not sure why that is but it is.
They stay away from most jobs where doing the wrong thing is black and white WRONG. How many female surgeons are there? Largely male dominated you will find. Lots of female doctors though. They just tend to be diagnosticians or something where they aren't using a scalpel to cut tumors out with their own hands. And that's despite the fact that women are supposed to have better fine coordination.
It hardly stops there. Look at the world of investment finance where a wrong move costs millions in an instant. Right and wrong.
Same in engineering, most of the hard sciences outside of biology, and much of computer science.
Maybe I'm finding the wrong pattern here but you will notice that all those jobs have a very clear and uncompromising notion of right and wrong. Now, consider jobs that women tend to dominate as a comparison... how many of them have absolute measures of right and wrong built into them?
Here, I suspect you'll say that all those jobs I listed are sexist and full of a hostile anti woman atmosphere that rejects women. But do you really think an investment bank gives a flying fuck who is managing accounts if they're making money? They don't. You could be a two headed dog from the moon for all they care. Do you think either the man under the knife of the hospital cares so long as the surgeon saves lives? Nope. How about companies that hire engineers or the people that buy the products made by those companies? Do they go "eww girls made this!"... nope. It either works and is a good design or it isn't and no one cares either way. Do you know or care who made your car or your washing machine or the jet engine in your airplane? No one cares so long as the work was done properly.
Same with coding. How often do you think people go through and find out who made their program? They probably know the name of the company that made it but they're unlikely to know the name of the CEO much less anyone on the team of coders that slapped the program together.
Neither your sex nor gender matters when the work gets serious. The distinction is irrelevant and arbitrary to the task. If your genitals aren't going to do the work then who cares if you stand up to pee, sit down, do it through a tube that goes into a bag tied to your leg, or whatever creative way you've figured out how to make water. It really doesn't matter. And no serious professional gives a shit what you have between your legs unless it is relevant to the work. So if you're a prostitute... perhaps it is relevant... otherwise... no. Perhaps once people cared... but today... no.
You're fighting old battles that were already won a generation ago. This whole thing is like some sad misguided Renascence fair only with the 60s being the time to reenact. Its a stupid game. Lets all wear tie dyed shirts, put on blue tinted sun glasses, make some hand painted signs, and throw peace signs around.
Let me make this deal with you... I'll not pretend you're a dragon/orc/evil knight that I have to slay in mortal combat for my liege lord... and you don't bore me with your nonsense. It isn't real. Accept that you are living in the year 2015. Girls and boys make their own choices and if girls and boys want to be treated like adults and not children... then they had best accept their choices as theirs.
Too true. My father for example despises the paper yet he subscribes to it because he comes from a generation where if you didn't read the NYTs you'd miss something. He's literally afraid not to read the fucking thing because despite the fact that he reads blogs, internet news sources, etc he still doesn't quite trust it. And so he subscribes.
yes... and how many studies are written in a year? And how many of those studies that are written reach any newspaper of note what so ever?
So I'm afraid the publishing source is quite relevant. If I picked a couple studies to talk about every year would the person "I" am be relevant at all or would you say "no only the studies are valuable."
Obviously fucking not. So you can jam that little comment up your backside sideways.
And while you're doing that, would you mind telling me if they actually learned anything amongst all this studying? Because according to the article it didn't appear they had learned a fucking thing that any child on the internet doesn't already know.
Sorry if that was rude... backsides and sideways... but you weren't being very friendly either, eh chum? Don't be a dick, please.
I mean, if everyone writes their program in their own little language then its pretty god damn frustrating for a rival to steal it from them unless they either want to learn that language or rewrite the whole thing.
Ultimately, this might be the best copyright protection. Hard to steal what you can't understand.
It didn't appear that they figured anything out that any moron on the internet wouldn't simply take for granted.
It is painful... why does the new york times exist? They still are obviously baffled by the internet.
Hard to understand why any of this is complicated in a real full out war.
Smash the enemy communications networks and they're not on the internet at all at that point. What is left is whatever your own military hardened communications networks are... and all you have to do there is keep the battered remnants of the enemy out of your own systems.
That is assuming a small engagement.
Assuming a big one... the issue is best left to communications specialists that will be tasked with keeping systems linked to the internet properly firewalled.
Simply being detectable doesn't make the sub as exposed as a surface ship.
First it is literally below the surface of the sea. A weapon has to be specifically designed to target them down there. And it is generally a lot harder to kill things down there then it is on the surface of the sea.
Simply being down there is a strong defensive positive.
Second, these detection systems are going to be the first elements of an enemy's defensive grid to get trashed. Just as the airforce makes a point of trashing enemy radar before they send in heavy bombers, these detection systems are going to be the first causalities of any engagement. At which point, the subs are going to be hard to detect again.
Third, arms races are all about the race between offensive and defensive technologies. So you've got some new detection gear? Okay. But have we heard from the engineers about how they'll mitigate it? Nope. That's silly. They could jam enemy detection, change the shape of hulls so they don't reflect strong sonar returns, etc.
You're saying dimorphism exists but can be totally discounted.
That is also unsupportable.
I don't have to agree with every prehistorical culture about how things must be to hold the argument that dimorphism exists and is relevant.
As to not knowing what the result will actually be of dimorphism, that is a two way street. Merely by acknowledging that you open the door for it to be employed in various situations where statistical discrepancies become apparent. And the door opened, when you complain about some gender imbalance, the burden of proof is upon you to show that there is actual bigotry rather then any of a thousand consequences of different behavior, capability, or life choice.
Men for example tend to over work. They will without additional pay put in more time where as women tend to go home when their work day is through. Companies and bosses notice that.
That is just one of about ten major differences between the way men and women tend to work. And regardless as to whether it is biological or not... it is the defacto reality.
Your entire premise rests on the assumption that all the statistical differences in employment are due entirely to bias, bigotry, prejudice, and "culture". You don't have enough evidence to sustain that argument. And given that the people pushing your agenda are political agents that generally don't care about truth, you're unlikely to ever have the information because the people backing you will never care enough to collect it.
That being the case... I am fairly confident that I can deflect this point from you for the foreseeable future... mostly because you're almost certainly exaggerating your position into actual error. And also because your faction is more interested in group think and submission to dogma then it is interested in actual science, the truth, or having an actual fucking point.
As such... Good day, sir.
It is effective when selling to people that don't know any better.
yes they are...