Party of the idea behind cash is that regulations would be difficult to enforce. Not impossible, because if you're buying stuff with cash then you still need a delivery address. But difficult.
I could go on, but the point is that none of this is new with Bitcoin. Cash, which has been around a lot longer without society collapsing, has all the same regulatory problems.
And the appropriate way to treat it is like cash. Can you do untraceable cash deals and avoid taxes? Yes, but it's not legal to do so. Bitcoin is the same. I believe that the law already covers this anyway, technically you must pay tax even when bartering. Will people abuse this? Of course, but no more so than they do with cash today.
The thing is, I don't see why any new law is needed. If I pay you cash to fix my sink, tax is supposed to be paid, likewise, if I trade you supper for you fixing my sink, legally tax is supposed to be paid on the value of the meal. So why do they think a new law is needed just because it's Bitcoin? Do they need to write another law for litecoin separately? How about one for the next currency that comes along tomorrow? There are already laws, use them.
I was asked once to power up one of my radios, batteries were dead so it wouldn't power up, luckily it used AA batteries so I borrowed some from my girlfriend's Discman (this was a few years ago...) and although those batteries were also quite dead it was enough to get a "beep" out of the radio which seemed good enough for the people at the checkpoint. Not entirely sure if this was before or after 9/11, I suspect after, but I can't say for certain.
They need the agreements so that they can hash out how to allow trade for large multi-national corporations, while forbidding it to all private individuals, because allowing individuals to import things without barriers would lead to anarchy... or something like that.... For example, In Canada our auto manufacturers can produce their cars anywhere in the world and ship them in to the country, due to various free trade agreements they can often do this without any tariffs getting in their way. However as a consumer it is illegal for me to buy a car in a different country and import it myself. (with some small exceptions for cars from the USA, however even then the auto manufacturers write the list of which cars are allowed to be imported) We have similar rules for many different industries, automotive is just one of the most obvious ones. Remember, "Free" trade is never the goal of any of these agreements, increased regulation for consumers, coupled with job movement to lower cost jurisdictions, combined with fewer trade barriers for multi-national corporations is what you can expect every single time.
This really is simple. If you believe in creationism you are not scientifically literate, saying that some of these people got the other questions right doesn't change the fact that they proved in the one question that they do not take science seriously. That said, belief in evolution, does not preclude scientific illiteracy, this is a topic with enough publicity that people who are clueless may still come down on the right side.
[quote] Will the Nissan Leaf Take On the Tesla Model S At Half the Price?[/quote] Falf the price, and at the batteries they're considering, half the range.
[quote] So it looks like the Leaf might get up to 150 miles of range, possibly by the 2016 model year. The range increase will come from a larger battery pack, possibly 36 or 42 kWh, and more energy-dense cells.[/quote] The Tesla comes with a 60 or 85 kWh pack, looks great, and is a luxury sports sedan. The upgraded leaf will still have half the range of the Tesla, and none of it's style.
There's only one reason people choose the leaf over the Tesla, and that's because they can't afford the Tesla. I understand, it's not cheap, but you can't claim that the two are in the same category any more than you can compare the Nissan Sentra to the Mercedes S class.
CarPlay is likely to assume integration with an iphone. fewer consumers have iphones than have non-iphones. Why do you think most people would demand a system that is unlikely to work well with their phones?
Some women recover okay, but others find themselves with a lifelong trauma that leaves them unable to form healthy relationships, leaves them scared to leave their homes, and then others just outright commit suicide. Pretending it's something that just happens and then that's it, it's over and you carry on as normal is probably one of the most stupid things I've ever seen modded up on Slashdot.
I never once said it's something that just happens and then that's it. I said it's a horrible, horrible crime. You even agree with my point in that quote, you say that "some women recover okay". Please show me even one murder victim that has "recovered okay". I'm well aware that people (not just women!) can be highly traumatized and have massive psychological problems following a rape, and for years, or decades later, sometimes for their whole life, in fact I have met several of these people, and even provided medical care for some of them. That said, they get to do that because they are still alive. If you ask many rape victims what they were thinking during the rape it is frequently along the lines of "please don't kill me!"
I think rape is one of the worst crimes possible. But it is not murder, and considering it as such does nobody any favours.
It wasn't me who compared the USA to China, Mexico, and Russia, countries with massive social problems, including poverty like you have never seen or experienced.
I wanted to give the USA the benefit of the doubt and compare them to countries with very similar demographics, diversity, and physical characteristics. You decided that was too much to aspire to, and that the USA should be content because it's better then China, Mexico, and Russia. Use whatever terms you want to describe it, but I think you could aim higher.
You talk about diversity, Canada and many parts of Europe are just as diverse as the US, the difference lies in less of an "us vs them" mentality (there are no "african-canadians" "italian-canadians" etc, they're all just Canadian)
You talk about large geography. Canada and Australia both have that covered. You talk about urban density. Europe has you beat. You talk about rural areas. Canada and Australia have you beat. You talk about illegal immigrants from poor nations adjacent. Australia has a huge problem here with boatloads of people trying to sneak in from nearby Asian countries, Much of europe shares borders with countries rife with poverty.
You're making excuses because you don't want to fix your mess.
But god forbid (sometimes literally) that you do anything to solve these issues by helping make education and healthcare more accessible to the poor, or work on the huge income inequality problems, or limit access to firearms...
And yet the simple solutions to these problems are ignored and shunned by americans. "Blacks" kill more people because they are on average poorer, with less access to a quality education and limited access to health care (three of the top 4 items I listed that are different in the USA from the rest of the developed world)
"preventing crime" does NOT mean more cops or more guns, it does not mean more laws, or "tough on crime" legislation, it means getting to the root of the problems and solving those.
You could check with the rest of the western world though that have a murder rate less than half of that in the US despite large rural areas, dense urban areas, rich people, and poor people. Seems everyone except America can figure this out to some extent, maybe see what the rest of the western world does differently than the US (most likely accessible education, universal health care, less inequality, and that dreaded gun control)
Afghanistan actually was doing better than the USA until 2012. And Iran is still better. As is Egypt. So I'm actually thinking it's more like: [Places where there are wars or massive corruption, including the USA] [The rest of the world]
Too bad Americans fight tooth and nail against anything that could help improve their odds. (Education, health care, income equality, gun control)
The US murder rate is more than double that of the rest of the western world. Despite the four points I listed being the biggest differences between your country and the other Western democracies. Your personal refusal to even consider any possible improvement in that situation is endemic of the problem that causes your chance of being murdered to be more than double that of any other western citizen.
I'm glad you're OK with your odds, after all, you choose them.
If you read my post, I didn't point the blame "just at guns", in fact they were last on my list after education, health care, and inequality. However now that you bring it up,. Evidence from the rest of the world indicates that guns are a problem, not a solution. I'm not willing to say how much of an effect they have, as I believe that it is the culture, more than the firearms themselves that is the problem, the guns are just a symptom of that culture. Why the USA is so determined to avoid universal health care and good, accessible, education, is beyond me though, those four items I listed are the biggest differences between the USA and the rest of the western world where murder rates are less than half what they are in the USA, trying to follow those good examples set elsewhere could only help Americans, it's too bad Americans don't want the help.
Rape is a horrible, horrible crime. But for all of that, the victim, can live a full and normal life after the fact. A Murder victim, by definition, can not. There are however some good reasons for studying murder rates specifically. Many crimes are reported very differently from one jurisdiction to the next, making comparison extremely difficult, rape is actually very difficult that way because in many of the worst places for it the reporting would show almost no cases due to lack of reportjng, or in some cases lack of an actual crime in that jurisdiction's system of laws. murder is much less prone to this issue. The same problem shows up for "violent crime" some places consider the mere possession of a weapon during a crime to make it "violent" others require the use of the weapon, others require an actual injury, others will only classify one or two specific crimes in the category at all. Using murder rate as a proxy for violence in general has it's flaws, but it is still quite enlightening to look at.
Most of the places where this is a problem are the less developed countries, ones where the data is already suspect for different reasons anyway, and where the numbers are often already high. The really enlightening bits are comparing the first world countries, all of whom have a very similar definition of murder (this is actually much better than generic"violent crime" stats where definitions do vary largely) What really stands out is that most of the first world countries fall in a range of 1-2 murders per 100000 people per year, except the USA which is more than double that. Always amazing to see how different the USA is than other countries that should be so similar (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, even England) and how the public opinion in the USA is so against any efforts at improving the situation (better education. Health care for all, less inequality, gun control, all the things that have proven to work in the rest of the western world)
While I am a fan of micro USB in general, I don't see why"axial connectors don't work" it's only 4 pins. Not that hard to do on an axial connector. In fact the other common connector on phones (headset) has the same number of pins and doesn't require any orientation.
Speaking of power, those wall outlets supplying mains voltage also require orienting them correctly, as do ethernet cords, even fibre optic cords are designed to require proper orientation (though that one has always struck me as odd) people seem to manage all of these in their daily lives without issues, yet as soon as you put it on a phone it confounds them.
Or you know, you could look at what Tesla actually does...
It's a combination of the fact that Teslas require only a minute fraction of the service of a normal internal combustion engine car, and that Tesla already provides better service than any dealership in existence. They have service centres all over the place (who cares if it's in the same place as the store if it's no further away) and you don't even have to go to the service centre because they will either send a mechanic to your doorstep, or pick up the car from your home or office for you (and replace it with a loaner if service will take longer than you can wait)
So why would I want to force their stores (best located in high foot traffic areas like malls) to be co-located with their service centres (best located in low rent areas like industrial parks) when it doesn't do anything to help me as a consumer? The only thing that it would do is either increase costs (paid in the end by the consumer) or decrease convenience (again at the expense of the consumer)
This law doesn't look at what the most advantageous model is for the consumer, it looks at what the existing business model is of the dealerships and forces everyone in to that mould effectively prohibiting any improvement to it.
They should actually be grateful it all comes from one source, it's an incredible opportunity for them to buy local caching from netflix to save on bandwidth. if the same volume came from 1000 sources they'd actually have to upgrade their outgoing links which could prove to be much more expensive.
Or they could act like every other abusive monopoly and try to double dip and get paid twice for the same service... which of course is the option they chose...
Slashdot Mirror
Party of the idea behind cash is that regulations would be difficult to enforce. Not impossible, because if you're buying stuff with cash then you still need a delivery address. But difficult.
I could go on, but the point is that none of this is new with Bitcoin. Cash, which has been around a lot longer without society collapsing, has all the same regulatory problems.
And the appropriate way to treat it is like cash. Can you do untraceable cash deals and avoid taxes? Yes, but it's not legal to do so. Bitcoin is the same. I believe that the law already covers this anyway, technically you must pay tax even when bartering. Will people abuse this? Of course, but no more so than they do with cash today.
The thing is, I don't see why any new law is needed. If I pay you cash to fix my sink, tax is supposed to be paid, likewise, if I trade you supper for you fixing my sink, legally tax is supposed to be paid on the value of the meal. So why do they think a new law is needed just because it's Bitcoin? Do they need to write another law for litecoin separately? How about one for the next currency that comes along tomorrow? There are already laws, use them.
I was asked once to power up one of my radios, batteries were dead so it wouldn't power up, luckily it used AA batteries so I borrowed some from my girlfriend's Discman (this was a few years ago...) and although those batteries were also quite dead it was enough to get a "beep" out of the radio which seemed good enough for the people at the checkpoint. Not entirely sure if this was before or after 9/11, I suspect after, but I can't say for certain.
They need the agreements so that they can hash out how to allow trade for large multi-national corporations, while forbidding it to all private individuals, because allowing individuals to import things without barriers would lead to anarchy... or something like that.... For example, In Canada our auto manufacturers can produce their cars anywhere in the world and ship them in to the country, due to various free trade agreements they can often do this without any tariffs getting in their way. However as a consumer it is illegal for me to buy a car in a different country and import it myself. (with some small exceptions for cars from the USA, however even then the auto manufacturers write the list of which cars are allowed to be imported)
We have similar rules for many different industries, automotive is just one of the most obvious ones. Remember, "Free" trade is never the goal of any of these agreements, increased regulation for consumers, coupled with job movement to lower cost jurisdictions, combined with fewer trade barriers for multi-national corporations is what you can expect every single time.
This really is simple. If you believe in creationism you are not scientifically literate, saying that some of these people got the other questions right doesn't change the fact that they proved in the one question that they do not take science seriously. That said, belief in evolution, does not preclude scientific illiteracy, this is a topic with enough publicity that people who are clueless may still come down on the right side.
Knowing how to work within the system to change the system seems brilliant to me.
[quote] Will the Nissan Leaf Take On the Tesla Model S At Half the Price?[/quote]
Falf the price, and at the batteries they're considering, half the range.
[quote] So it looks like the Leaf might get up to 150 miles of range, possibly by the 2016 model year. The range increase will come from a larger battery pack, possibly 36 or 42 kWh, and more energy-dense cells.[/quote]
The Tesla comes with a 60 or 85 kWh pack, looks great, and is a luxury sports sedan. The upgraded leaf will still have half the range of the Tesla, and none of it's style.
There's only one reason people choose the leaf over the Tesla, and that's because they can't afford the Tesla. I understand, it's not cheap, but you can't claim that the two are in the same category any more than you can compare the Nissan Sentra to the Mercedes S class.
I wish, but the Canadian government doesn't have a track record of using anything but strong words against the US in these sorts of disputes.
CarPlay is likely to assume integration with an iphone. fewer consumers have iphones than have non-iphones. Why do you think most people would demand a system that is unlikely to work well with their phones?
Some women recover okay, but others find themselves with a lifelong trauma that leaves them unable to form healthy relationships, leaves them scared to leave their homes, and then others just outright commit suicide. Pretending it's something that just happens and then that's it, it's over and you carry on as normal is probably one of the most stupid things I've ever seen modded up on Slashdot.
I never once said it's something that just happens and then that's it. I said it's a horrible, horrible crime. You even agree with my point in that quote, you say that "some women recover okay". Please show me even one murder victim that has "recovered okay". I'm well aware that people (not just women!) can be highly traumatized and have massive psychological problems following a rape, and for years, or decades later, sometimes for their whole life, in fact I have met several of these people, and even provided medical care for some of them. That said, they get to do that because they are still alive. If you ask many rape victims what they were thinking during the rape it is frequently along the lines of "please don't kill me!"
I think rape is one of the worst crimes possible. But it is not murder, and considering it as such does nobody any favours.
It wasn't me who compared the USA to China, Mexico, and Russia, countries with massive social problems, including poverty like you have never seen or experienced.
I wanted to give the USA the benefit of the doubt and compare them to countries with very similar demographics, diversity, and physical characteristics. You decided that was too much to aspire to, and that the USA should be content because it's better then China, Mexico, and Russia. Use whatever terms you want to describe it, but I think you could aim higher.
You talk about diversity, Canada and many parts of Europe are just as diverse as the US, the difference lies in less of an "us vs them" mentality (there are no "african-canadians" "italian-canadians" etc, they're all just Canadian)
You talk about large geography. Canada and Australia both have that covered.
You talk about urban density. Europe has you beat.
You talk about rural areas. Canada and Australia have you beat.
You talk about illegal immigrants from poor nations adjacent. Australia has a huge problem here with boatloads of people trying to sneak in from nearby Asian countries, Much of europe shares borders with countries rife with poverty.
You're making excuses because you don't want to fix your mess.
But god forbid (sometimes literally) that you do anything to solve these issues by helping make education and healthcare more accessible to the poor, or work on the huge income inequality problems, or limit access to firearms...
And yet the simple solutions to these problems are ignored and shunned by americans. "Blacks" kill more people because they are on average poorer, with less access to a quality education and limited access to health care (three of the top 4 items I listed that are different in the USA from the rest of the developed world)
"preventing crime" does NOT mean more cops or more guns, it does not mean more laws, or "tough on crime" legislation, it means getting to the root of the problems and solving those.
My bad, I'll stop confusing the USA with a first world country.
You could check with the rest of the western world though that have a murder rate less than half of that in the US despite large rural areas, dense urban areas, rich people, and poor people. Seems everyone except America can figure this out to some extent, maybe see what the rest of the western world does differently than the US (most likely accessible education, universal health care, less inequality, and that dreaded gun control)
Afghanistan actually was doing better than the USA until 2012. And Iran is still better. As is Egypt. So I'm actually thinking it's more like:
[Places where there are wars or massive corruption, including the USA]
[The rest of the world]
Too bad Americans fight tooth and nail against anything that could help improve their odds. (Education, health care, income equality, gun control)
The US murder rate is more than double that of the rest of the western world. Despite the four points I listed being the biggest differences between your country and the other Western democracies. Your personal refusal to even consider any possible improvement in that situation is endemic of the problem that causes your chance of being murdered to be more than double that of any other western citizen.
I'm glad you're OK with your odds, after all, you choose them.
If you read my post, I didn't point the blame "just at guns", in fact they were last on my list after education, health care, and inequality. However now that you bring it up,. Evidence from the rest of the world indicates that guns are a problem, not a solution. I'm not willing to say how much of an effect they have, as I believe that it is the culture, more than the firearms themselves that is the problem, the guns are just a symptom of that culture.
Why the USA is so determined to avoid universal health care and good, accessible, education, is beyond me though, those four items I listed are the biggest differences between the USA and the rest of the western world where murder rates are less than half what they are in the USA, trying to follow those good examples set elsewhere could only help Americans, it's too bad Americans don't want the help.
Rape is a horrible, horrible crime. But for all of that, the victim, can live a full and normal life after the fact. A Murder victim, by definition, can not. There are however some good reasons for studying murder rates specifically. Many crimes are reported very differently from one jurisdiction to the next, making comparison extremely difficult, rape is actually very difficult that way because in many of the worst places for it the reporting would show almost no cases due to lack of reportjng, or in some cases lack of an actual crime in that jurisdiction's system of laws. murder is much less prone to this issue. The same problem shows up for "violent crime" some places consider the mere possession of a weapon during a crime to make it "violent" others require the use of the weapon, others require an actual injury, others will only classify one or two specific crimes in the category at all.
Using murder rate as a proxy for violence in general has it's flaws, but it is still quite enlightening to look at.
Most of the places where this is a problem are the less developed countries, ones where the data is already suspect for different reasons anyway, and where the numbers are often already high. The really enlightening bits are comparing the first world countries, all of whom have a very similar definition of murder (this is actually much better than generic"violent crime" stats where definitions do vary largely)
What really stands out is that most of the first world countries fall in a range of 1-2 murders per 100000 people per year, except the USA which is more than double that. Always amazing to see how different the USA is than other countries that should be so similar (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, even England) and how the public opinion in the USA is so against any efforts at improving the situation (better education. Health care for all, less inequality, gun control, all the things that have proven to work in the rest of the western world)
While I am a fan of micro USB in general, I don't see why"axial connectors don't work" it's only 4 pins. Not that hard to do on an axial connector. In fact the other common connector on phones (headset) has the same number of pins and doesn't require any orientation.
Speaking of power, those wall outlets supplying mains voltage also require orienting them correctly, as do ethernet cords, even fibre optic cords are designed to require proper orientation (though that one has always struck me as odd) people seem to manage all of these in their daily lives without issues, yet as soon as you put it on a phone it confounds them.
Or you know, you could look at what Tesla actually does...
It's a combination of the fact that Teslas require only a minute fraction of the service of a normal internal combustion engine car, and that Tesla already provides better service than any dealership in existence. They have service centres all over the place (who cares if it's in the same place as the store if it's no further away) and you don't even have to go to the service centre because they will either send a mechanic to your doorstep, or pick up the car from your home or office for you (and replace it with a loaner if service will take longer than you can wait)
So why would I want to force their stores (best located in high foot traffic areas like malls) to be co-located with their service centres (best located in low rent areas like industrial parks) when it doesn't do anything to help me as a consumer? The only thing that it would do is either increase costs (paid in the end by the consumer) or decrease convenience (again at the expense of the consumer)
This law doesn't look at what the most advantageous model is for the consumer, it looks at what the existing business model is of the dealerships and forces everyone in to that mould effectively prohibiting any improvement to it.
If they were willing to change their networks to accommodate things then the proposed solution wouldn't be needed in the first place.
They should actually be grateful it all comes from one source, it's an incredible opportunity for them to buy local caching from netflix to save on bandwidth. if the same volume came from 1000 sources they'd actually have to upgrade their outgoing links which could prove to be much more expensive.
Or they could act like every other abusive monopoly and try to double dip and get paid twice for the same service... which of course is the option they chose...