There are already reasons why the whole practice of collecting taxes from companies should be stopped. For one thing, a company isn't a person, it's just a legal relationship between people who work together. Taxing the company is like taxing married individuals and then separately taxing the marriage itself. For another, business taxes aren't paid by the business, they're paid by the customers. Any tax levied on a company is just another expense that gets built into the price of the final product. We pay this at the cash register even though we don't know how much it is. The impossibility of figuring out how much of the price of any given product is tax makes business tax essentially a secret tax, which is not cool at all.
When people use Windows 7 sales numbers to show how successful and popular Windows 7 is, I keep reminding them that the numbers primarily reflect PC sales. Windows 7 just happens to be there. Sales of new cars automatically implies sales of new tires, not that the tires themselves are a hit with consumers. What we're seeing in Windows phone sales is an example of the dismal performance of most Microsoft products when they actually have to compete on an equal footing.
I don't see how banning sales of some games to minors will cause an exodus of game developer talent. No matter where the games are made they will still be subject to the same ban.
The only comfort I take in the Global Economy is that eventually every part of the world will be industrialized and we'll run out of cheap labor hellholes to have our gadgets made in. I still remember in the 60s when Made in Japan was synonymous with cheap plastic crap. The process that has taken place in Japan since WWII is repeating at a faster pace in places like China and Mexico. Now those countries have a growing consumer class that is looking for cheap labor in other places. After the cycle happens across South America and Africa, the party will be over and so will the culture of endless business growth based on cheap labor.
So maybe this woman is camera shy and she's just holding up her hand so as not to be photographed. I don't actually see anything gripped in her hand, just the shadow of her fingers on her face.
She might have just been shielding her eyes from the glare of the sun. I don't really see anything in her hand. It looks like the shadow of her fingers are falling on her face but I see no box-like object.
I chalk this up largely to the modern American practice of government-by-fear. When they want to get away with something, the standard procedure is to give the public something to be scared of and then promise to protect us from it. There's no consideration of the various downsides of having a nation full of people afraid of their own shadows. The biggest one is probably that once the fear reflex is ingrained, anybody can use it.
I'm curious about their overall track record. Making a judgement about them based on the fact that they missed one particular prediction is no smarter than believing everything they say.
This article explains it a little better. The rail launcher's job is just to get a scramjet vehicle off the ground by hurling it into the air at 600 mph. Then the scramjets take over and accelerate it to Mach 10. Then at 60,000 ft a second stage lifts the payload into orbit using rocket engines. They're just trying to eliminate the humongous first stage that currently comprises most of a typical rocket's weight.
After some online research into Gartner Group accuracy I haven't been able to find any analysis whatsoever. A couple years ago one of their analysts commented that they periodically review their accuracy and issue reports listing some of their hits and misses. Given the number of managers who take Gartner's word as gospel, that doesn't seem like enough. I'm surprised that this question hasn't come up more often.
Yeah, I was going to say I thought people with piercings already did Java programming. But then you can't expect a corporate VP to know that. He probably still thinks leet-speak is kewl.
"But with the revelations that there have been major cyber attacks aimed at human rights activists, both in China and in the West, it's hard to see how Google could have remained silent."
Actually it's not hard at all. They could have just kept doing business as usual, like most big companies. My hat's off to Google management for remembering that they're human beings first and business people second.
Blaming the problem on one thing is Limbaugh-esque simplemindedness. Kids don't need overprotective parents to make them think something's wrong with them. Modern advertising hammers that message home hundreds of times a day, because telling people they're okay the way they are doesn't sell products. The whole structure of our society today is different from 1938. Kids whose original parents are still together are in the minority. Large families were the norm in 1938, but today most kids have at most one sibling to emulate, learn from and commiserate with. The majority of today's moms work outside of the home, whereas they didn't in 1938. People make and do far fewer things for themselves today, from food preparation to car maintenance. Solitary activities like web surfing and computer games have replaced most family time. Parents seem to have plenty of time for their careers and very little for their kids. Maybe the preoccupation with child safety is an attempt to compensate for that. But what do I know? Do I look like a psychiatrist? Get off my lawn!
I think many things we presume to be rights are simply things we've gotten used to because authority structures have never had a reason to take them away. For example, years ago we had the "right" to take sharp objects aboard airplanes. Did we ever really have that right, or did we just get away with it because until recently it wasn't a problem? The idea of public safety constraining individual behavior is almost as old as civilization, and seems to me like a much more basic principle than any individual right or freedom.
That's a great idea. Adding an information display to something that needs to be transparent, like a car windshield, seems like a much better application than making something transparent that shouldn't be, like a laptop screen. I'm surprised Samsung didn't learn anything from the public's reaction to transparent GUI windows. They're kind of cool as a novelty for about 5 minutes, but nobody really wants to use them.
Injecting the water mist at the top require first pumping the water to the top of the tower. I don't see how you could get more energy out of letting the water fall back down without invoking perpetual motion. Is it because the mist cools the air mass and induces it to fall?
3) All changes to the lengths of copyrights shall apply only to materials created after the enactment of the law.
The copyright framework that existed when Walt created Mickey was sufficient to motivate him to do his creative work. He had the choice to withhold his work until copyright law was more to his liking, or to publish it under current law. Walt made his decision freely, and the law under which he operated was a contract between Walt and the public. The public agreed not to infringe on his work for a given time, and Walt agreed to relinquish his rights at the end of that time.
When Congress comes in and changes these terms, it undermines the whole foundation of contracts.
Control over past material seems to be the nub of this whole issue. Each new piece of material competes for the public's attention with everything that already exists. When media companies acquire each other they gain control over the entire past history of the company they've acquired. In a system where copyrights are essentially infinite, this might be a larger motivation for acquisitions than the profitability of the material itself. Rarely has the public been placed in the position of being limited on their use of their own culture. Sometimes when one culture conquers another, the original language and customs of the conquered culture are outlawed. The ability to make older material unavailable and forbid its transfer seems like a strong parallel to this.
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There are already reasons why the whole practice of collecting taxes from companies should be stopped. For one thing, a company isn't a person, it's just a legal relationship between people who work together. Taxing the company is like taxing married individuals and then separately taxing the marriage itself. For another, business taxes aren't paid by the business, they're paid by the customers. Any tax levied on a company is just another expense that gets built into the price of the final product. We pay this at the cash register even though we don't know how much it is. The impossibility of figuring out how much of the price of any given product is tax makes business tax essentially a secret tax, which is not cool at all.
When people use Windows 7 sales numbers to show how successful and popular Windows 7 is, I keep reminding them that the numbers primarily reflect PC sales. Windows 7 just happens to be there. Sales of new cars automatically implies sales of new tires, not that the tires themselves are a hit with consumers. What we're seeing in Windows phone sales is an example of the dismal performance of most Microsoft products when they actually have to compete on an equal footing.
Copyright Infringement.
It's like Communism, only newer.
I don't see how banning sales of some games to minors will cause an exodus of game developer talent. No matter where the games are made they will still be subject to the same ban.
The only comfort I take in the Global Economy is that eventually every part of the world will be industrialized and we'll run out of cheap labor hellholes to have our gadgets made in. I still remember in the 60s when Made in Japan was synonymous with cheap plastic crap. The process that has taken place in Japan since WWII is repeating at a faster pace in places like China and Mexico. Now those countries have a growing consumer class that is looking for cheap labor in other places. After the cycle happens across South America and Africa, the party will be over and so will the culture of endless business growth based on cheap labor.
So maybe this woman is camera shy and she's just holding up her hand so as not to be photographed. I don't actually see anything gripped in her hand, just the shadow of her fingers on her face.
She might have just been shielding her eyes from the glare of the sun. I don't really see anything in her hand. It looks like the shadow of her fingers are falling on her face but I see no box-like object.
I chalk this up largely to the modern American practice of government-by-fear. When they want to get away with something, the standard procedure is to give the public something to be scared of and then promise to protect us from it. There's no consideration of the various downsides of having a nation full of people afraid of their own shadows. The biggest one is probably that once the fear reflex is ingrained, anybody can use it.
By "creative industries" they mean of course, "businesses that sell copies of other people's work and pay the creators a tiny portion."
I'm curious about their overall track record. Making a judgement about them based on the fact that they missed one particular prediction is no smarter than believing everything they say.
This article explains it a little better. The rail launcher's job is just to get a scramjet vehicle off the ground by hurling it into the air at 600 mph. Then the scramjets take over and accelerate it to Mach 10. Then at 60,000 ft a second stage lifts the payload into orbit using rocket engines. They're just trying to eliminate the humongous first stage that currently comprises most of a typical rocket's weight.
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After some online research into Gartner Group accuracy I haven't been able to find any analysis whatsoever. A couple years ago one of their analysts commented that they periodically review their accuracy and issue reports listing some of their hits and misses. Given the number of managers who take Gartner's word as gospel, that doesn't seem like enough. I'm surprised that this question hasn't come up more often.
The first step toward a truly autonomous robot will be when it says, "Fold your own damn towel."
Yeah, I was going to say I thought people with piercings already did Java programming. But then you can't expect a corporate VP to know that. He probably still thinks leet-speak is kewl.
Just knowing Windows is running in space kind of gives me the willies.
In a Civilized country the company would be fined and the CEO would collect his severance bonus and move to a different company at a higher salary.
"But with the revelations that there have been major cyber attacks aimed at human rights activists, both in China and in the West, it's hard to see how Google could have remained silent."
Actually it's not hard at all. They could have just kept doing business as usual, like most big companies. My hat's off to Google management for remembering that they're human beings first and business people second.
"May our tongues be gentle, our e-mails be simple and our websites be accessible."
"Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three."
Blaming the problem on one thing is Limbaugh-esque simplemindedness. Kids don't need overprotective parents to make them think something's wrong with them. Modern advertising hammers that message home hundreds of times a day, because telling people they're okay the way they are doesn't sell products. The whole structure of our society today is different from 1938. Kids whose original parents are still together are in the minority. Large families were the norm in 1938, but today most kids have at most one sibling to emulate, learn from and commiserate with. The majority of today's moms work outside of the home, whereas they didn't in 1938. People make and do far fewer things for themselves today, from food preparation to car maintenance. Solitary activities like web surfing and computer games have replaced most family time. Parents seem to have plenty of time for their careers and very little for their kids. Maybe the preoccupation with child safety is an attempt to compensate for that. But what do I know? Do I look like a psychiatrist? Get off my lawn!
I think many things we presume to be rights are simply things we've gotten used to because authority structures have never had a reason to take them away. For example, years ago we had the "right" to take sharp objects aboard airplanes. Did we ever really have that right, or did we just get away with it because until recently it wasn't a problem? The idea of public safety constraining individual behavior is almost as old as civilization, and seems to me like a much more basic principle than any individual right or freedom.
That's a great idea. Adding an information display to something that needs to be transparent, like a car windshield, seems like a much better application than making something transparent that shouldn't be, like a laptop screen. I'm surprised Samsung didn't learn anything from the public's reaction to transparent GUI windows. They're kind of cool as a novelty for about 5 minutes, but nobody really wants to use them.
Injecting the water mist at the top require first pumping the water to the top of the tower. I don't see how you could get more energy out of letting the water fall back down without invoking perpetual motion. Is it because the mist cools the air mass and induces it to fall?
3) All changes to the lengths of copyrights shall apply only to materials created after the enactment of the law.
The copyright framework that existed when Walt created Mickey was sufficient to motivate him to do his creative work. He had the choice to withhold his work until copyright law was more to his liking, or to publish it under current law. Walt made his decision freely, and the law under which he operated was a contract between Walt and the public. The public agreed not to infringe on his work for a given time, and Walt agreed to relinquish his rights at the end of that time.
When Congress comes in and changes these terms, it undermines the whole foundation of contracts.
Control over past material seems to be the nub of this whole issue. Each new piece of material competes for the public's attention with everything that already exists. When media companies acquire each other they gain control over the entire past history of the company they've acquired. In a system where copyrights are essentially infinite, this might be a larger motivation for acquisitions than the profitability of the material itself. Rarely has the public been placed in the position of being limited on their use of their own culture. Sometimes when one culture conquers another, the original language and customs of the conquered culture are outlawed. The ability to make older material unavailable and forbid its transfer seems like a strong parallel to this.