Oh dang, you're right. Here I had thought I had seen something honest... I had made a mental note to myself: "Today, I have seen an honest endorsement on the internet. This may not be a momentous event, but it's an unexpected marker that there's still good in the world." It was briefly uplifting.::sigh::
US companies have had no difficulty competing internationally - the US corporate tax rate is what it is because US companies have done so well, and can afford it. The story in question is about Apple, the most profitable company in the world, who would still have $120bn in cash even if they paid their taxes. The only reason why they're not paying those taxes is because they don't really need the money. They're so rich that they can afford to just leave the money there, because it isn't needed for their operations.
In other words, if anything their taxes should be higher. Stockpiling money, stockpiling anything, is detrimental to the economy and needs to be discouraged (though taxes aren't the only way to do this).
You sure they both used the same thread? That's typical when you compare silk sutures to nylon sutures - the silk gets absorbed, so they don't have to cut it off, but it causes inflammation as that happens, which is painful. Two weeks is expected.
Not so much a factor of experience though, there are plenty of experienced doctors who will use silk just because it's less work.
The expectation is that this will be a very nasty election. Both Trump and Hillary have high disapproval ratings, and the common wisdom is that is very difficult to turn around. So instead of trying to turn around opinion on yourself, because that's difficult, you attack your opponent.
The trouble is that a campaign like that tends to disenfranchise voters, suppressing voter turnout.
Many Hillary supporters said they would never vote for Obama back in 2008, but once the primaries were done they had a roughly 75% conversion rate. More or less the same is expected from Sanders supporters in this election.
Like the AC said, Patrick Moore wasn't a founder - he was the president of Greenpeace Canada for some years. That's all. Unsurprisingly, Greenpeace has a statement about him.
It's also worth noting that Greenpeace isn't a monolithic organization. Greenpeace USA is different from Greenpeace Canada and Greenpeace International, etc. GP USA, for example, has a rather poor reputation as a rubber stamp for corporate interests.
Some people have the idea that self-driving cars should not be totally self-driving, but occupy some nebulous intermediary region. This, of course, completely invalidates the point of having self-driving cars, but these people are more fearful of robots of unknown incompetence than they are of human drivers of proven incompetence.
I doubt that you know the ins and outs of nuclear safety regulations, I suspect that you're saying that because nuclear power plants are dangerous and you're taking the "more safety is better safety" approach to that problem. I don't know the the particulars of nuclear safety regulations either, but I can certainly see how it might be possible that some are unnecessary (though I doubt that the parent knows anything about this).
From my layman's perspective though, the safety problem which most often seems to arise with nuclear plants is the fact that they're kept running past their expiration date. Politicians are always looking to cut corners when it comes to spending money, and as many reassurances and regulations as we might get from the politicians of today, the politicians of tomorrow are just going to overturn them to keep the plant running for "just a little longer." It might be possible to engineer a partial solution for this, but I can't believe that the problem can be solved by technical means. And in this case, that means that the problem can't be solved at all.
So yeah, I"m with you: these incredibly expensive nuclear plants are not the answer. Solar maybe, wind maybe, tidal, geothermal - all possible solutions, and we have made some great strides on those lines in recent years. The idea that nuclear is the only practical carbon-free option doesn't seem so assured anymore.
I've heard this line before, that the Humble Bundle is for charity. "Proceeds go to charity X." Bullshit. They can, if that's what you choose in the checkout section, but by default only 15% of the purchase goes to charity. Many many stores will allow ask for a donation to some charity at checkout, the only extra-charitable thing about the Humble Bundle is that option to divert a greater portion of your purchase to charity if you so choose.
I don't want to denigrate that, that's good, but the Humble Bundle is not for charity. It's a for-profit store with an odd business model.
It's not racist, it's opportunist. They have a chance to exploit a legal loophole in order to reduce the cost of their workforce, and they have no compunctions, so they do it.
Have you played NintendoLand on the Wii U? That's got the best VR experience I've seen. Rather than going with a nausea inducing head-mounted display, they use the Wii U gamepad like a window that you can move around. No nausea, no awkward thing to strap on your head, easy to pause and put down... The Wii U is easily my favorite of the current-gen consoles, largely for this kind of stuff. I wish it had had a chance to flourish a little more, maybe get some of that ridiculous occulous hype.
This certainly does represent a distortion of the process... One of the points the Sad Puppies make is that typical voting for the Hugos is only 5,000 people out of the millions who read these books. With their campaigning they have more than doubled that, so it's no wonder that they're dominating the list of nominees. The point they make is that such a small voting pool can't possibly represent the views of the readership at large, but of course flooding the voting pool isn't exactly representative either.
What this demonstrates is that democracy doesn't work when voter participation is too low, but I don't think that's a revelation. Unless the book publishers start sticking pre-addressed voting card inserts into their books, I'm not sure what the Hugos can do about this.
The Rabid Puppies are something else. They seized on this idea and decided to make it more political - I'm not sure that calling them right-wing is accurate, more like anti left-wing, but these are separate groups with separate goals.
The advantage is that you don't have to push a button here. It seems trivial, but if you start a video and then sit back to watch... only to realize that you need to interact with the stupid advertisement... I like this. I especially like this if it replaces the other more annoying advertising options, like those pop-ups that both require you to click on them and play during the video. Those are the worst.
If he's paying 50% of his income in taxes, I can't believe that he's taking advantage of every possible loophole for himself, no. As for the rest: as was pointed out above, the companies that you mention avoid taxes at the expense of others, mostly small businesses and individuals not rich enough to have loopholes of their own. So no, not every other business out there is doing the same.
More to the point: Apple is certainly special to Woz, I don't find it at all surprising that he would single out Apple in his criticism.
This has to be somewhere in between those extremes. There's a difference between someone setting up cameras to track you, and you publishing your information for anyone to read.
I'm going to be something bad here: I'm going to mention Gamergate. Setting aside the vitriol and the conspiracy theories, Gamergate was about the complicated relationship between journalists and the people who they report on. There was a game developer who befriended some journalists and eventually started to date one and who, independent of that, got some favorable press for her game. The question raised was: just how independent of that relationship was the press that she received? The individual who she dated stayed away from writing anything about her himself, but even if we give maximum credit to the integrity of his coworkers, a friendship, even a casual friendship, will influence a person's perspective on the subject and people who they write about.
Journalistic integrity on this matter is blurry. A journalist is expected to maintain relationships with sources, but to somehow keep those relationships from perverting their perspective.
So... this was my thought immediately upon reading the summary here. We want industry representatives to stay out of Washington, but we need our legislators to act from an informed position. There needs to be some kind of relationship there, but exactly what that should look like is blurry. We've recently had a very public and very nasty "debate" over something very similar (though much less influential) and that's what immediately sprung to mind when I read this. Is there any chance that the debate here will be more civil?::sigh:: No, of course not.
Okay, I appreciate the follow-up. In that case I can see how perhaps that applied to people and companies in the past, but part of the fallout from the Citizen's United decision is that companies are now free to make campaign donations to political action committees. In other words, they are now meddling in other people's affairs, in fact are the largest of those meddlers, and are well equipped for that.
My take on this whole thing: I don't see that the rate at which companies are taxed and the rate at which individuals are taxed should be connected but, well, meh. I'm just not seeing any compelling arguments here one way or the other. I can see why Woz would be a little appalled by Apple's behavior, but saying "Apple should pay at least as much as I pay." is simplistic and not necessarily the best reasoning.
This? If that's the case, what the GP seems to be suggesting above is that companies are smarter than people - they have the wisdom of artisans without the foolishness.... How does that apply to taxes?
Obviously it's a tax on profits and, as such, has no influence on the solvency of the company. The only negative impacts are on cash reserves and on dividends to shareholders.
For your other stuff: "The tax rate" (total tax revenue) in the US is not high, it is 59th among countries worldwide and almost at the bottom among first world countries - only South Korea and Australia are lower and neither are much lower. There's a big difference in how that tax burden is distributed though, with the middle class in the US taking most of it. This leads to a perception of high taxes.
It is true that companies which have the ability (large companies) will exploit tax loopholes wherever they can, at the expense of smaller companies and other tax payers (the aforementioned middle class). Numerous efforts have been made to close those loopholes but they, like everything else, do not get past congress. This suggestion of a 50% tax is basically just another one of those - like many of the other such suggestions, it could be crafted in a way which would prevent companies from dodging it but the real challenge would be in getting congress to pass it.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh dang, you're right. Here I had thought I had seen something honest... I had made a mental note to myself: "Today, I have seen an honest endorsement on the internet. This may not be a momentous event, but it's an unexpected marker that there's still good in the world." It was briefly uplifting. ::sigh::
US companies have had no difficulty competing internationally - the US corporate tax rate is what it is because US companies have done so well, and can afford it. The story in question is about Apple, the most profitable company in the world, who would still have $120bn in cash even if they paid their taxes. The only reason why they're not paying those taxes is because they don't really need the money. They're so rich that they can afford to just leave the money there, because it isn't needed for their operations.
In other words, if anything their taxes should be higher. Stockpiling money, stockpiling anything, is detrimental to the economy and needs to be discouraged (though taxes aren't the only way to do this).
You sure they both used the same thread? That's typical when you compare silk sutures to nylon sutures - the silk gets absorbed, so they don't have to cut it off, but it causes inflammation as that happens, which is painful. Two weeks is expected.
Not so much a factor of experience though, there are plenty of experienced doctors who will use silk just because it's less work.
True. You can't realistically ask for a nice-guy supervillain.
The expectation is that this will be a very nasty election. Both Trump and Hillary have high disapproval ratings, and the common wisdom is that is very difficult to turn around. So instead of trying to turn around opinion on yourself, because that's difficult, you attack your opponent.
The trouble is that a campaign like that tends to disenfranchise voters, suppressing voter turnout.
Many Hillary supporters said they would never vote for Obama back in 2008, but once the primaries were done they had a roughly 75% conversion rate. More or less the same is expected from Sanders supporters in this election.
Like the AC said, Patrick Moore wasn't a founder - he was the president of Greenpeace Canada for some years. That's all. Unsurprisingly, Greenpeace has a statement about him.
It's also worth noting that Greenpeace isn't a monolithic organization. Greenpeace USA is different from Greenpeace Canada and Greenpeace International, etc. GP USA, for example, has a rather poor reputation as a rubber stamp for corporate interests.
Some people have the idea that self-driving cars should not be totally self-driving, but occupy some nebulous intermediary region. This, of course, completely invalidates the point of having self-driving cars, but these people are more fearful of robots of unknown incompetence than they are of human drivers of proven incompetence.
I doubt that you know the ins and outs of nuclear safety regulations, I suspect that you're saying that because nuclear power plants are dangerous and you're taking the "more safety is better safety" approach to that problem. I don't know the the particulars of nuclear safety regulations either, but I can certainly see how it might be possible that some are unnecessary (though I doubt that the parent knows anything about this).
From my layman's perspective though, the safety problem which most often seems to arise with nuclear plants is the fact that they're kept running past their expiration date. Politicians are always looking to cut corners when it comes to spending money, and as many reassurances and regulations as we might get from the politicians of today, the politicians of tomorrow are just going to overturn them to keep the plant running for "just a little longer." It might be possible to engineer a partial solution for this, but I can't believe that the problem can be solved by technical means. And in this case, that means that the problem can't be solved at all.
So yeah, I"m with you: these incredibly expensive nuclear plants are not the answer. Solar maybe, wind maybe, tidal, geothermal - all possible solutions, and we have made some great strides on those lines in recent years. The idea that nuclear is the only practical carbon-free option doesn't seem so assured anymore.
The article headline is, "What is the most expensive object on Earth?"
I've heard this line before, that the Humble Bundle is for charity. "Proceeds go to charity X." Bullshit. They can, if that's what you choose in the checkout section, but by default only 15% of the purchase goes to charity. Many many stores will allow ask for a donation to some charity at checkout, the only extra-charitable thing about the Humble Bundle is that option to divert a greater portion of your purchase to charity if you so choose.
I don't want to denigrate that, that's good, but the Humble Bundle is not for charity. It's a for-profit store with an odd business model.
Larger number. One mile of hair weighs less than a pound. (I assume, I don't actually know.) Surprised they didn't use kilometers though.
It's not racist, it's opportunist. They have a chance to exploit a legal loophole in order to reduce the cost of their workforce, and they have no compunctions, so they do it.
Have you played NintendoLand on the Wii U? That's got the best VR experience I've seen. Rather than going with a nausea inducing head-mounted display, they use the Wii U gamepad like a window that you can move around. No nausea, no awkward thing to strap on your head, easy to pause and put down... The Wii U is easily my favorite of the current-gen consoles, largely for this kind of stuff. I wish it had had a chance to flourish a little more, maybe get some of that ridiculous occulous hype.
This certainly does represent a distortion of the process... One of the points the Sad Puppies make is that typical voting for the Hugos is only 5,000 people out of the millions who read these books. With their campaigning they have more than doubled that, so it's no wonder that they're dominating the list of nominees. The point they make is that such a small voting pool can't possibly represent the views of the readership at large, but of course flooding the voting pool isn't exactly representative either.
What this demonstrates is that democracy doesn't work when voter participation is too low, but I don't think that's a revelation. Unless the book publishers start sticking pre-addressed voting card inserts into their books, I'm not sure what the Hugos can do about this.
It's not republicans, it's not conservatives, there's nothing right-wing about the Sad Puppies. I can't blame the submitter for the terrible summary, because it's just copied from the article, but maybe I can blame the submitter for linking to a terrible article? The Sad Puppies are just a group who felt that sci-fi was getting too preachy and wanted to promote some lighter fare. That's it. the website. I had a ridiculous time finding that, since the top search page is just full of articles talking about how awful these people are. It's appalling how one-sided the reporting on this is.
The Rabid Puppies are something else. They seized on this idea and decided to make it more political - I'm not sure that calling them right-wing is accurate, more like anti left-wing, but these are separate groups with separate goals.
The advantage is that you don't have to push a button here. It seems trivial, but if you start a video and then sit back to watch... only to realize that you need to interact with the stupid advertisement... I like this. I especially like this if it replaces the other more annoying advertising options, like those pop-ups that both require you to click on them and play during the video. Those are the worst.
If he's paying 50% of his income in taxes, I can't believe that he's taking advantage of every possible loophole for himself, no. As for the rest: as was pointed out above, the companies that you mention avoid taxes at the expense of others, mostly small businesses and individuals not rich enough to have loopholes of their own. So no, not every other business out there is doing the same.
More to the point: Apple is certainly special to Woz, I don't find it at all surprising that he would single out Apple in his criticism.
This has to be somewhere in between those extremes. There's a difference between someone setting up cameras to track you, and you publishing your information for anyone to read.
I did say that I was setting aside the vitriol and conspiracy theories.
I'm going to be something bad here: I'm going to mention Gamergate. Setting aside the vitriol and the conspiracy theories, Gamergate was about the complicated relationship between journalists and the people who they report on. There was a game developer who befriended some journalists and eventually started to date one and who, independent of that, got some favorable press for her game. The question raised was: just how independent of that relationship was the press that she received? The individual who she dated stayed away from writing anything about her himself, but even if we give maximum credit to the integrity of his coworkers, a friendship, even a casual friendship, will influence a person's perspective on the subject and people who they write about.
::sigh:: No, of course not.
Journalistic integrity on this matter is blurry. A journalist is expected to maintain relationships with sources, but to somehow keep those relationships from perverting their perspective.
So... this was my thought immediately upon reading the summary here. We want industry representatives to stay out of Washington, but we need our legislators to act from an informed position. There needs to be some kind of relationship there, but exactly what that should look like is blurry. We've recently had a very public and very nasty "debate" over something very similar (though much less influential) and that's what immediately sprung to mind when I read this. Is there any chance that the debate here will be more civil?
Jack Vance wrote one: To Live Forever
I liked it. I like pretty much everything he's written though.
Okay, I appreciate the follow-up. In that case I can see how perhaps that applied to people and companies in the past, but part of the fallout from the Citizen's United decision is that companies are now free to make campaign donations to political action committees. In other words, they are now meddling in other people's affairs, in fact are the largest of those meddlers, and are well equipped for that.
My take on this whole thing: I don't see that the rate at which companies are taxed and the rate at which individuals are taxed should be connected but, well, meh. I'm just not seeing any compelling arguments here one way or the other. I can see why Woz would be a little appalled by Apple's behavior, but saying "Apple should pay at least as much as I pay." is simplistic and not necessarily the best reasoning.
This? If that's the case, what the GP seems to be suggesting above is that companies are smarter than people - they have the wisdom of artisans without the foolishness. ... How does that apply to taxes?
Obviously it's a tax on profits and, as such, has no influence on the solvency of the company. The only negative impacts are on cash reserves and on dividends to shareholders.
For your other stuff: "The tax rate" (total tax revenue) in the US is not high, it is 59th among countries worldwide and almost at the bottom among first world countries - only South Korea and Australia are lower and neither are much lower. There's a big difference in how that tax burden is distributed though, with the middle class in the US taking most of it. This leads to a perception of high taxes.
It is true that companies which have the ability (large companies) will exploit tax loopholes wherever they can, at the expense of smaller companies and other tax payers (the aforementioned middle class). Numerous efforts have been made to close those loopholes but they, like everything else, do not get past congress. This suggestion of a 50% tax is basically just another one of those - like many of the other such suggestions, it could be crafted in a way which would prevent companies from dodging it but the real challenge would be in getting congress to pass it.