"They retain their arrest powers even when off duty -- in truth, they are never off the job. "
Any reasonable citizen of this country has those same arrest powers - Citizen's Arrest.
Except a citizen that performs a "Citizen's Arrest" potentially open themselves to civil and criminal charges; they don't enjoy many of the protections that a police officer has when carrying out their official duties.
You could, for example face assault charges if you try to use force in making your arrest; and civil liability if you arrest the wrong person.
This post isn't trolling. Obama admitted in his book "Dreams From My Father" that he had used both cocaine and pot. That would disqualify him from any security clearance.
Actually, it doesn't. Failing to disclose it could.
I don't think people are going to go back to rolling their own in the embedded market - anyone with any experience in embedded software development will tell you that Linux makes life a hell of a lot easier because all of a sudden a lot of things you would otherwise have to write from scratch are basically included. And it can be a lot of work to port a userland package developed for Linux to something like VxWorks.
The key part of the embedded market is that it is teh device and support, not the software per se, that is valuable. TIVO offers a user experience that's worth $14 a month to many people; even if I rolled my own TIVO the cost to replicate that experience is so high that it makes no sense to try to compete with them. Similarly a controller is often a critical part of a process system, and companies want assurances it will work properly; and aren't interested in the cheap knockoff with the same software. So Linux gives companies an inexpensive way to create a product where the value is in what they add, not the software. As a result, the GPL requirements are a small price to pay in exchange for its advantages in software development. In addition, there's nothing from preventing a company from mixing GPL and proprietary software in a product; they just need to keep each properly separate to avoid license violations.
Coming at it from another angle, every couple of years there's an article about how even in the Western world, some absurdly large proportion of companies use pirated software. What makes you think that the GPL will make them suddenly compliant?
Lawsuits; although I prefer education - many companies may not understand the GPL and need to learn what it requires. I'm amazed at the ignorance out there around such issues - for seem reason people equate found on the internet with free to use however I want.
I know currently a loan is not... but it could be taxed as a sale and amortized over the life of the loan.
I'm not concerned with the "Fair Tax". I'm talking about a flat sales tax.
I realize that; and use the "Fair Tax" as that is what proponents call their national sales tax; I thought you might be referring to it as well.
The problem with a national sales tax to replace income tax is how do you define sale and selling price?
My example of debt assumptions goes right to one way to minimize selling price, and thus taxes, without impacting profits.
Fair Taxers exempt used goods and sales to businesses as well; which opens up a new set of loopholes and issues. Personally, I think the whole Fair Tax idea is no better than the current system.
One could argue that you purchased a loan of a taxable value, just like a home purchase, you'd have to pay taxes on the purchase value of said item. If you buy a home worth $100,000 in either cash or loan value, you'd be asked to pay $125,000, with $25,000 going to the government.
A loan is different from assuming debt; in your example the loan is a separate transaction, you are not assuming any of the liabilities of the person that built the home (liens notwithstanding and special deals notwithstanding). In mine you are assuming debt as part of the purchase. In the later, a $10 item, which has $9 in debt, the assumption of $9 in debt results in a purchase price of $1; not $10.
I'm not sure what you are saying by altering the Employer/Employee relationship... as in people will feel like they are being paid better for the work they do? That's all I can think of in that regard. That's a good aspect of a sales tax.
Much of the Fair Tax revolves around businesses not paying taxes on purchase; the idea is that the cost is just passed on to the consumer. So if instead of being an employee, I become an independent contractor, making much of what I buy now a business expense and hence non-taxable. Couple that with a revised health insurance model and you have a very new way of looking at employment; at least until Congress tries to close that loophole as well.
Name one. You walk into a store, buy a product and you are taxed. You buy a car and you are taxed. The only loophole would be a company violating tax collection protocols, which I would hope would be stiffly penalized.
As I pointed out in my other reply to you, it depends on how you structure the deal.
I pick up a $1 candy bar. I hand it to the cashier and they charge me $1.25. That's a 25% tax. Now tell me, ow could you change the price of that candy bar and improve profits without increasing the taxes?
Simple, actually:
I sell you the candy bar for 1 cent, and you assume a $1.10 loan that must be paid as part of the transaction. The sale price is a penny, and you get a debt to pay.
While the candy bar example is extreme, for higher priced items it makes sense. It's a revival of the monetized Morris trust - a way to do a tax free transfer of assets.
While Congress outlaw this (again)? Probably, but my point is a Fair Tax is note going to be any simpler than the current one as people find ways to avoid paying taxes. It also has the potential to significantly alter the employer - employee relationship; which IMHO could be very beneficial long term.
Bullshit. This is propaganda perpetrated by republicrats to maintain their current stranglehold on my balls.
The flat and fair tax assures that everyone pays their taxes, including illegal immigrants, tax cheaters and people paid under the table who currently pay _nothing_.
Actually, it doesn't. All it will do is open anew set of loopholes and ways to avoid taxes taht Congress will try to plug. Of course, its proponents gloss over those problems.
Or you could move to a sales tax instead, giving the consumer everything they make and letting them make the decision on which company is actually giving them a better product to spend their money on. Domestic and Foreign students all have to buy goods and services and nobody would be left out. Government would have to encourage business to keep the money coming in. Capitalism can start working again. Businesses won't have to hire teams of accountants to figure out which tax brackets every employee falls in and which deductions they need to take. I believe some people call this the flat tax... or is it the fair tax?
(Also, reducing govt. overhead so we aren't paying 50% sales tax would help.)
Your confusing the sales price with profit; you could very well structure sales so that the taxable amount is low but the profit is high.
People arguing for the "Fair Tax" claim, amongst other things, that it will simplify the tax code when all it will do is open another set of loopholes that Congress will try to fix; resulting in a complicated tax code that no one likes. Sound familiar?
Museum of Science and Industry - U505, captured by Dan Gallery's jeep carrier on the high seas in the Atlantic during WWII. A full size Boeing aircraft (727?), coal mine, and more. Plus it's free on Thursdays (or was in 98. A number of Chicago museums have a free day each week) Take time to walk around teh U of C next door - birthplace of the atom bomb, and a few good free museums on campus. Plus the Robie House (Frank Loyd Wright - if you really liek architecture take an architecture tour of downtown Chicago)
Field Museum. Simply first rate, and the Shed Aquarium is next door.
Washington DC
Everyone's heard of the Smithsonian and the Udvar - Hazy Air Space museum (hint - take the 5a Metro Bus from the Roswell metro station to Dulles airport if you use public transportation); but if you are interested in technology take the US Mint tour, stop by the Navy Museum at the Navy Yard or the International Spy Museum, 800 F St. NW (both are also Metro accessible)
Fort Meade, MD National Cryptological Museum - NSA's museum, complete with an Ultra device. Located just north of DC at I295 and MD 32.
Baltimore MD
B&O railroad museum if you are a train fanatic, then stop by the Inner harbor, grab some seafood at Phillips and see the Constellation, Submarine USS Tang and the USCG ship and lightship there. (If you really like submarines, there's the Navy Submarine Museum, home of the Nautilus in New London, Conn as well.)
Dayton, OH
Wright Patterson AFB museam - palnes, planes, and more planes
Pensacola FL
Naval Aviation Museum, more planes and some of the best beaches in the world. Home of Officer and a Gentleman.
As a side note, check out the major military bases near your routes - many have museums on base as well that are very good if you like military history. For example, Aberdeen, MD has the Ordnance museum, complete with a large tank park, V2 and German Railway Gun. Fort Bragg has the special forces museum, Fort Knox the armor museum.
If anything, I suspect that the Nigerian scammers are, on the whole, smart, motivated and fairly unprincipled, guys working in a tough competitive market.
And the difference between those people and Goldman's employees is?
Compensation. A good G-S banker wouldn't let their limo back out of the driveway for 60k/month.
Ford still gets to sell the car and they don't have to carry a 0% loan on the books for 36-48 months.
Except GM is giving a zero percent loan either - instead of say, $3000 in rebates you get a "no interest" loan. What you are doing of course is paying all the interest up front; buyers of course are suckered into believing they're getting a good deal because they're paying no interest.
It's even worse. Ford (or more accurately, CEO Alan Mulally) saw the impending doom and got ahold of as much cash and lines of credit as they could and were able to avoid bankruptcy. Car companies (especially GM!) don't make money by selling cars so much as they do by financing car sales. GMAC was also the recipient of multiple rounds of government financing and has FDIC backing and access to below-market government financing. In order to increase GM sales, GMAC lowered their standards (sound familiar?) and offers 0% loans. Meanwhile, Ford Motor Credit needs to borrow money on the open market at rates of 10% or so.
Ford's failure to declare bankruptcy put it a disadvantage - GM reduced debt costs and other costs via the courts; giving it a decided financial advantage. It's sad but Ford would probably be better of doing the same in order to stay competitive. My guess is they are renegotiating as much as possible with the threat of bankruptcy in the background.
Those 0% interest car loans are really just GM et. al. buying down the loan interest rate with the rebates they offer- you can do the same thing on many loans if you want - pay more points up front and get a better rate. The rate is separate from the underwriting standards.
Buying sales with credit is a double edge sword for the car companies - banks and credit unions are happy to take teh best credit risks and leave them with the B and C risks - so do you write A level loans to B and C to keep sales up and risk having the loans go sour later? Sometimes, if you can take in enough to cover depreciation so when you repo the car you don't lose money it's a strategy worth looking at; but if you lose more on the repo than you make on the sale then it's a sure way to bankruptcy.
I think the problem here is that you didn't read up on the backstory which shows that they did not consider Red Hat or any company that wasn't Microsoft.
According to the article, it was a reissue of an existing contract; so not having a tender is not necessarily unusual. If the current vendor / supplier is performing satisfactorily then they are often kept in place since ripping everything out an starting new is likely to be more expensive and introduce a while new set of problems.
Is that right? It depends on the context and how the renewal was negotiated. From the article the Swiss government's actions do not appear unreasonable; and the response by the other vendors is the typical one from those that don't get a contract. Nothing new or exciting here, other than it involves open source which is a hot button here.
I don't expect newspapers to be available for free on the internet--at least I don't expect anything that resembles the sunday print edition of the NYT to be there for free. The problem is that there is no effective way to charge for them the way there is for physical newspapers. Sure you can do authenticated logins and accounts--but all you've done is made electronic versions of the old way of doing it, and nothing has changed then. In fact, it is a step backwards for the flow of information if you could actually make that work--no more borrowing the paper from the guy in the next cubicle. So what you seem to be advocating is a move to a world with even less freedom of information than we had two decades ago.
Another way is for the ISP's to bundle access to pay websites with internet access - and maybe offer tiers of access; similar to cable.
You've also pointed out one problem with electronic distribution - it's less convenient to share; I can't give my electronic WSJ to a friend or share it with someone, it's tied to me and my compute.
The internet is designed to move information from place to place as cheaply as possible. Trying to artificially inflate the price won't work. We can't make computers that aren't good at copying information (they wouldn't be computers then).I don't know what business model they should come up with. There might not be one, period. Oh well. There wasn't one before the printing press either.
You are correct in pointing out that the internet is merely a distribution system, and just like the printing press changed how news was distributed which gave rise to the concept of the "press" as a profession. As people became more literate, newstands and corner newspapers replaced the town criers as the source of information. The distribution system is separate from the content; but it does not replace the underlying service provided. While a cheaper distribution system lessens part of the costs it doesn't remove the cost of producing the content.
Prior to the printing press news was collected and recorded by hand and only the wealthy could afford hard copies; that business model evolved as mass production became easier and more people were capable of reading.
Technology giveth, and technology taketh away. Buggy makes don't have a business model anymore, neither do the people who made player-piano rolls. Nor flint-lock manufacturers. There's a ton of Benedictian monks out of work thanks to the printing press. Just try finding someone to make a good Roman piss-pot for you these days.
In each case, technology created a new way of accomplishing the same fundamental tasks as cars replaced buggies, the gramophone replaced the player piano, and repeating rifle replaced the flintlock. People still pay for the new technology because it fulfills a need.
The Benedictines did not cease to exist; they moved on to other things.
For some reason, people assume the new technology is a game changer and the old rules no longer apply; while technology certainly changes the environment and gives rise to many new ways of doing things; it's still the old needs and desires being satisfied in a different way.
What I don't understand is why you think it is a bad thing that this might happen. The de-corporatization of news media is the BEST possible thing that could happen to this country right now. We should not be looking for ways to preserve corporate control of information.
The problem is not with the corporations being replaced; it's that the essential function of a news gathering organization - reporting facts and providing informed commentary - is being replaced with a vast sea of information of greatly varying amounts of accuracy and that is often designed to push a certain POV and as such ignores anything that does not agree to that POV.
As a result, the value of that information has dropped dramatically an
I don't think advertising has any impact on ratings unless the nature of the advertisement is mature content and the game is rated for everyone. I haven't seen the ad yet so we'll have to see.
Not the point - they've changed the content so the rating should no longer be valid until it is reviewed again; and every time a new ad is added.
Who knows what they'll advertise; and who cares? I'd contact my representatives in DC and complain - not that there are ads but that you are concerned about the potential content of the ads. After all, you wouldn't want your underage child to see a condom ad (shudder), would you? Think of the children; and make the fight for their sake against the depraved entertainment industry. Remember, it's not about the issue but about winning or losing. If enough representatives get even a handful of letters they may notice.
We can't let Hollywood (I know... Silicon Valley but Hollywood is more of a hot button) do an endrun around a ratings system tehy adopted to avoid Congressional action, could we?
But, that is not what he was asked, was it, Ray? You, a lawyer, should know that, but you want to spin it.
What was actually said? Let's take a look:
"This is me. I'm here to answer," said Tenenbaum. "I used the computer. I uploaded and downloaded music. This is how it is. I did it," he testified before a packed courtroom, whose spectators included an all-star cast of Harvard Law School copyright scholars: Lawrence Lessig, John Palfrey, and Jonathan Zittrain.
"Are you admitting liability for all 30 sound recordings" on which the record labels brought suit, asked the plaintiffs' attorney Tim Reynolds.
"Yes," said Tenenbaum..
"Are you admitting liability for all 30 sound recordings" is not asking "Are you liable", it is asking "Are you doing what you seem to be doing". Completely different questions and you should know that. The fun part comes in that dumbass could have answered "No, I am not saying that".
I think Ray has it right - the defendant was asked if he was admitting liability - and since liability means legal responsibility for your actions - he essentially said yes I committed the acts the plaintiffs allege and am responsible for the damages; so the only question is what are the damages?
So I agree with Ray that his attorneys should have acted to prevent the answer; and anticipated that line of questioning and prepped hm on how to answer.
I think it's great to see new nuclear power coming online, but it's too bad this is simply the completion of a project begun in the 1970's. There hasn't been enough work done in the US to advance the design of nuclear power stations in the last few decades. I wonder how much more efficiently these stations could be built and run today if we had been focused on the problem all this time.
Actually, there's been a lot of work on reactor designs over the last decade o so:
GE has the ABWR and SBWR plants, and ABWRs have been built in Japan,
Westinghouse has the AP-600 (now AP-1000), and
CE had the System 80+
Of these, the SBWR and AP-1000 are probably the most advanced, in the sense of passive safety systems and i teh SBWR's case, natural circulation. Both are attempts to simply construction and operation to reduce costs and increase safety.
The AP-1000 and SBWR will probably be the next generation of US plats, built at existing sites where multiple units were planned but not built; since those sites have already passed NRC site approval.
Not to mention that the photographers do maintain their copyright. Only a permissive license to use the image is required, and then only for the image uploaded to Wikipedia, not the original work.
The world is filled with control freaks, it seems.
Well, it's the permissive aspect that is problematic - they are no doubt afraid that the image will become the image of choice of the celebrity; for which they will get no money.
Not that I agree with that, but most photographers are very protective of their copyright protections around usage; simply because that's how they make their money.
Of course, most of them aren't going to create the iconic image; more likely the real reason a Wiki photo would be used a lot is it is free. In the photographer's mind however, each use translates to ost money, never mind that the demand curve for the image approaches zero as teh price becomes non-zero.
What most people don't realize is for a professional photographer, if they are luck 1 out of 10 photos are useable for sale. Why don't they sell the 1st rate photos to the tabloids, and then release a 2nd rate photo with minimal or no resale value (which is probably much better than an amateur photo)to Wikipedia. They can have their cake and eat it too.
I disagree. Pros care about the quality of their images, and their ability to produce and sell first rate ones is why they are pros and not simply "Dads with cameras." A pro makes money based on reputation, releasing second rate photos risks damaging their reputation as upsetting the subject with a second rate image. A no win for the pro.
Not an issue for celebrities. They have fewer privacy rights (because it is assumed that they voluntarily gave them up in a trade for publicity when they purposefully and deliberately thrust themselves into the public spotlight).
It's not a privacy right but the right to control how their images are used, primarily commercially,
'To me the problem is the Wikipedia rule of public use,' says Jerry Avenaim, a celebrity photographer. 'If they truly wanted to elevate the image on the site, they should allow photographers to maintain the copyright.'"
Dear Jerry,
If photographers truly wanted to get their images seen in the biggest free encyclopedia in the world and reap the exposure and free credit, they should donate their works.
There. Fixed that for ya.
Photographers have been hearing that line long before Wikipedia and even the web. People have always wanted free photographs in exchange for "exposure." which for the photographer translates to making no money of the photograph and not getting more paid work to compensate.
It's a losing game. Do you really think someone will look at a photograph in Wikipedia and say "Hmm - I want to hire the photographer?" More likely, they'll use the photo for free and then email the photographer for additional free photographs, and then get all indignant when teh photographer actually wants to charge for more. After all, the one on Wiki is free, so why aren't the others is the thought process that occurs.
It's not jut teh photographer who has rights to consider; it's also the model. They have rights in their images, and a CC license would require them to relinquish those rights as well. One concern may well be that the Wiki photo could then be used in ways the celebrity would not want their image used and leave them wih little recourse.
So it's not just the photographer who has to agree to the CC license.
Slashdot Mirror
"They retain their arrest powers even when off duty -- in truth, they are never off the job. "
Any reasonable citizen of this country has those same arrest powers - Citizen's Arrest.
Except a citizen that performs a "Citizen's Arrest" potentially open themselves to civil and criminal charges; they don't enjoy many of the protections that a police officer has when carrying out their official duties.
You could, for example face assault charges if you try to use force in making your arrest; and civil liability if you arrest the wrong person.
This post isn't trolling. Obama admitted in his book "Dreams From My Father" that he had used both cocaine and pot. That would disqualify him from any security clearance.
Actually, it doesn't. Failing to disclose it could.
I don't think people are going to go back to rolling their own in the embedded market - anyone with any experience in embedded software development will tell you that Linux makes life a hell of a lot easier because all of a sudden a lot of things you would otherwise have to write from scratch are basically included. And it can be a lot of work to port a userland package developed for Linux to something like VxWorks.
The key part of the embedded market is that it is teh device and support, not the software per se, that is valuable. TIVO offers a user experience that's worth $14 a month to many people; even if I rolled my own TIVO the cost to replicate that experience is so high that it makes no sense to try to compete with them. Similarly a controller is often a critical part of a process system, and companies want assurances it will work properly; and aren't interested in the cheap knockoff with the same software. So Linux gives companies an inexpensive way to create a product where the value is in what they add, not the software. As a result, the GPL requirements are a small price to pay in exchange for its advantages in software development. In addition, there's nothing from preventing a company from mixing GPL and proprietary software in a product; they just need to keep each properly separate to avoid license violations.
Coming at it from another angle, every couple of years there's an article about how even in the Western world, some absurdly large proportion of companies use pirated software. What makes you think that the GPL will make them suddenly compliant?
Lawsuits; although I prefer education - many companies may not understand the GPL and need to learn what it requires. I'm amazed at the ignorance out there around such issues - for seem reason people equate found on the internet with free to use however I want.
I know currently a loan is not... but it could be taxed as a sale and amortized over the life of the loan.
I'm not concerned with the "Fair Tax". I'm talking about a flat sales tax.
I realize that; and use the "Fair Tax" as that is what proponents call their national sales tax; I thought you might be referring to it as well.
The problem with a national sales tax to replace income tax is how do you define sale and selling price?
My example of debt assumptions goes right to one way to minimize selling price, and thus taxes, without impacting profits.
Fair Taxers exempt used goods and sales to businesses as well; which opens up a new set of loopholes and issues. Personally, I think the whole Fair Tax idea is no better than the current system.
One could argue that you purchased a loan of a taxable value, just like a home purchase, you'd have to pay taxes on the purchase value of said item. If you buy a home worth $100,000 in either cash or loan value, you'd be asked to pay $125,000, with $25,000 going to the government.
A loan is different from assuming debt; in your example the loan is a separate transaction, you are not assuming any of the liabilities of the person that built the home (liens notwithstanding and special deals notwithstanding). In mine you are assuming debt as part of the purchase. In the later, a $10 item, which has $9 in debt, the assumption of $9 in debt results in a purchase price of $1; not $10.
I'm not sure what you are saying by altering the Employer/Employee relationship... as in people will feel like they are being paid better for the work they do? That's all I can think of in that regard. That's a good aspect of a sales tax.
Much of the Fair Tax revolves around businesses not paying taxes on purchase; the idea is that the cost is just passed on to the consumer. So if instead of being an employee, I become an independent contractor, making much of what I buy now a business expense and hence non-taxable. Couple that with a revised health insurance model and you have a very new way of looking at employment; at least until Congress tries to close that loophole as well.
Name one. You walk into a store, buy a product and you are taxed. You buy a car and you are taxed. The only loophole would be a company violating tax collection protocols, which I would hope would be stiffly penalized.
As I pointed out in my other reply to you, it depends on how you structure the deal.
I pick up a $1 candy bar. I hand it to the cashier and they charge me $1.25. That's a 25% tax. Now tell me, ow could you change the price of that candy bar and improve profits without increasing the taxes?
Simple, actually:
I sell you the candy bar for 1 cent, and you assume a $1.10 loan that must be paid as part of the transaction. The sale price is a penny, and you get a debt to pay.
While the candy bar example is extreme, for higher priced items it makes sense. It's a revival of the monetized Morris trust - a way to do a tax free transfer of assets.
While Congress outlaw this (again)? Probably, but my point is a Fair Tax is note going to be any simpler than the current one as people find ways to avoid paying taxes. It also has the potential to significantly alter the employer - employee relationship; which IMHO could be very beneficial long term.
Bullshit. This is propaganda perpetrated by republicrats to maintain their current stranglehold on my balls.
The flat and fair tax assures that everyone pays their taxes, including illegal immigrants, tax cheaters and people paid under the table who currently pay _nothing_.
Actually, it doesn't. All it will do is open anew set of loopholes and ways to avoid taxes taht Congress will try to plug. Of course, its proponents gloss over those problems.
Or you could move to a sales tax instead, giving the consumer everything they make and letting them make the decision on which company is actually giving them a better product to spend their money on. Domestic and Foreign students all have to buy goods and services and nobody would be left out. Government would have to encourage business to keep the money coming in. Capitalism can start working again. Businesses won't have to hire teams of accountants to figure out which tax brackets every employee falls in and which deductions they need to take. I believe some people call this the flat tax... or is it the fair tax?
(Also, reducing govt. overhead so we aren't paying 50% sales tax would help.)
Your confusing the sales price with profit; you could very well structure sales so that the taxable amount is low but the profit is high.
People arguing for the "Fair Tax" claim, amongst other things, that it will simplify the tax code when all it will do is open another set of loopholes that Congress will try to fix; resulting in a complicated tax code that no one likes. Sound familiar?
Chicago, IL
Museum of Science and Industry - U505, captured by Dan Gallery's jeep carrier on the high seas in the Atlantic during WWII. A full size Boeing aircraft (727?), coal mine, and more. Plus it's free on Thursdays (or was in 98. A number of Chicago museums have a free day each week) Take time to walk around teh U of C next door - birthplace of the atom bomb, and a few good free museums on campus. Plus the Robie House (Frank Loyd Wright - if you really liek architecture take an architecture tour of downtown Chicago)
Field Museum. Simply first rate, and the Shed Aquarium is next door.
Washington DC
Everyone's heard of the Smithsonian and the Udvar - Hazy Air Space museum (hint - take the 5a Metro Bus from the Roswell metro station to Dulles airport if you use public transportation); but if you are interested in technology take the US Mint tour, stop by the Navy Museum at the Navy Yard or the International Spy Museum, 800 F St. NW (both are also Metro accessible)
Fort Meade, MD National Cryptological Museum - NSA's museum, complete with an Ultra device. Located just north of DC at I295 and MD 32. Baltimore MD
B&O railroad museum if you are a train fanatic, then stop by the Inner harbor, grab some seafood at Phillips and see the Constellation, Submarine USS Tang and the USCG ship and lightship there. (If you really like submarines, there's the Navy Submarine Museum, home of the Nautilus in New London, Conn as well.)
Dayton, OH
Wright Patterson AFB museam - palnes, planes, and more planes
Pensacola FL
Naval Aviation Museum, more planes and some of the best beaches in the world. Home of Officer and a Gentleman.
As a side note, check out the major military bases near your routes - many have museums on base as well that are very good if you like military history. For example, Aberdeen, MD has the Ordnance museum, complete with a large tank park, V2 and German Railway Gun. Fort Bragg has the special forces museum, Fort Knox the armor museum.
And the difference between those people and Goldman's employees is?
Compensation. A good G-S banker wouldn't let their limo back out of the driveway for 60k/month.
Ford still gets to sell the car and they don't have to carry a 0% loan on the books for 36-48 months.
Except GM is giving a zero percent loan either - instead of say, $3000 in rebates you get a "no interest" loan. What you are doing of course is paying all the interest up front; buyers of course are suckered into believing they're getting a good deal because they're paying no interest.
It's even worse. Ford (or more accurately, CEO Alan Mulally) saw the impending doom and got ahold of as much cash and lines of credit as they could and were able to avoid bankruptcy. Car companies (especially GM!) don't make money by selling cars so much as they do by financing car sales. GMAC was also the recipient of multiple rounds of government financing and has FDIC backing and access to below-market government financing. In order to increase GM sales, GMAC lowered their standards (sound familiar?) and offers 0% loans. Meanwhile, Ford Motor Credit needs to borrow money on the open market at rates of 10% or so.
Ford's failure to declare bankruptcy put it a disadvantage - GM reduced debt costs and other costs via the courts; giving it a decided financial advantage. It's sad but Ford would probably be better of doing the same in order to stay competitive. My guess is they are renegotiating as much as possible with the threat of bankruptcy in the background.
Those 0% interest car loans are really just GM et. al. buying down the loan interest rate with the rebates they offer- you can do the same thing on many loans if you want - pay more points up front and get a better rate. The rate is separate from the underwriting standards.
Buying sales with credit is a double edge sword for the car companies - banks and credit unions are happy to take teh best credit risks and leave them with the B and C risks - so do you write A level loans to B and C to keep sales up and risk having the loans go sour later? Sometimes, if you can take in enough to cover depreciation so when you repo the car you don't lose money it's a strategy worth looking at; but if you lose more on the repo than you make on the sale then it's a sure way to bankruptcy.
I think the problem here is that you didn't read up on the backstory which shows that they did not consider Red Hat or any company that wasn't Microsoft.
According to the article, it was a reissue of an existing contract; so not having a tender is not necessarily unusual. If the current vendor / supplier is performing satisfactorily then they are often kept in place since ripping everything out an starting new is likely to be more expensive and introduce a while new set of problems.
Is that right? It depends on the context and how the renewal was negotiated. From the article the Swiss government's actions do not appear unreasonable; and the response by the other vendors is the typical one from those that don't get a contract. Nothing new or exciting here, other than it involves open source which is a hot button here.
I don't expect newspapers to be available for free on the internet--at least I don't expect anything that resembles the sunday print edition of the NYT to be there for free. The problem is that there is no effective way to charge for them the way there is for physical newspapers. Sure you can do authenticated logins and accounts--but all you've done is made electronic versions of the old way of doing it, and nothing has changed then. In fact, it is a step backwards for the flow of information if you could actually make that work--no more borrowing the paper from the guy in the next cubicle. So what you seem to be advocating is a move to a world with even less freedom of information than we had two decades ago.
Another way is for the ISP's to bundle access to pay websites with internet access - and maybe offer tiers of access; similar to cable.
You've also pointed out one problem with electronic distribution - it's less convenient to share; I can't give my electronic WSJ to a friend or share it with someone, it's tied to me and my compute.
The internet is designed to move information from place to place as cheaply as possible. Trying to artificially inflate the price won't work. We can't make computers that aren't good at copying information (they wouldn't be computers then).I don't know what business model they should come up with. There might not be one, period. Oh well. There wasn't one before the printing press either.
You are correct in pointing out that the internet is merely a distribution system, and just like the printing press changed how news was distributed which gave rise to the concept of the "press" as a profession. As people became more literate, newstands and corner newspapers replaced the town criers as the source of information. The distribution system is separate from the content; but it does not replace the underlying service provided. While a cheaper distribution system lessens part of the costs it doesn't remove the cost of producing the content.
Prior to the printing press news was collected and recorded by hand and only the wealthy could afford hard copies; that business model evolved as mass production became easier and more people were capable of reading.
Technology giveth, and technology taketh away. Buggy makes don't have a business model anymore, neither do the people who made player-piano rolls. Nor flint-lock manufacturers. There's a ton of Benedictian monks out of work thanks to the printing press. Just try finding someone to make a good Roman piss-pot for you these days.
In each case, technology created a new way of accomplishing the same fundamental tasks as cars replaced buggies, the gramophone replaced the player piano, and repeating rifle replaced the flintlock. People still pay for the new technology because it fulfills a need.
The Benedictines did not cease to exist; they moved on to other things.
For some reason, people assume the new technology is a game changer and the old rules no longer apply; while technology certainly changes the environment and gives rise to many new ways of doing things; it's still the old needs and desires being satisfied in a different way.
What I don't understand is why you think it is a bad thing that this might happen. The de-corporatization of news media is the BEST possible thing that could happen to this country right now. We should not be looking for ways to preserve corporate control of information.
The problem is not with the corporations being replaced; it's that the essential function of a news gathering organization - reporting facts and providing informed commentary - is being replaced with a vast sea of information of greatly varying amounts of accuracy and that is often designed to push a certain POV and as such ignores anything that does not agree to that POV.
As a result, the value of that information has dropped dramatically an
I don't think advertising has any impact on ratings unless the nature of the advertisement is mature content and the game is rated for everyone. I haven't seen the ad yet so we'll have to see.
Not the point - they've changed the content so the rating should no longer be valid until it is reviewed again; and every time a new ad is added.
Who knows what they'll advertise; and who cares? I'd contact my representatives in DC and complain - not that there are ads but that you are concerned about the potential content of the ads. After all, you wouldn't want your underage child to see a condom ad (shudder), would you? Think of the children; and make the fight for their sake against the depraved entertainment industry. Remember, it's not about the issue but about winning or losing. If enough representatives get even a handful of letters they may notice.
We can't let Hollywood (I know... Silicon Valley but Hollywood is more of a hot button) do an endrun around a ratings system tehy adopted to avoid Congressional action, could we?
Have you seen most of the people who attend these conferences?
Most of them can't do a single push-up, and you expect them to work in the military?
It's the Air Force. No need to do pushups.
Seriously, if the military needs certain skills they find ways to get people in. Not every job requires raw strength.
Oh, and Go Navy.
But, that is not what he was asked, was it, Ray? You, a lawyer, should know that, but you want to spin it.
What was actually said? Let's take a look:
"This is me. I'm here to answer," said Tenenbaum. "I used the computer. I uploaded and downloaded music. This is how it is. I did it," he testified before a packed courtroom, whose spectators included an all-star cast of Harvard Law School copyright scholars: Lawrence Lessig, John Palfrey, and Jonathan Zittrain.
"Are you admitting liability for all 30 sound recordings" on which the record labels brought suit, asked the plaintiffs' attorney Tim Reynolds.
"Yes," said Tenenbaum..
"Are you admitting liability for all 30 sound recordings" is not asking "Are you liable", it is asking "Are you doing what you seem to be doing". Completely different questions and you should know that. The fun part comes in that dumbass could have answered "No, I am not saying that".
I think Ray has it right - the defendant was asked if he was admitting liability - and since liability means legal responsibility for your actions - he essentially said yes I committed the acts the plaintiffs allege and am responsible for the damages; so the only question is what are the damages?
So I agree with Ray that his attorneys should have acted to prevent the answer; and anticipated that line of questioning and prepped hm on how to answer.
'a likely and uncontrolled fall in profits for the core telecom operators,'
Yeah, I bet the horse shoe manufacturers lobbied hard against the introduction of the self-propelled carriage too.
Actually, that's a fundamental part of economic theory - companies use regulation to limit competition and maintain higher profits.
By making it more difficult for competitors to enter you protect your market. A highly regulated industry tends to be a profitable one.
And absolutely nothing has been done to solve the nuclear waste problem. My claim is that's because it can't be solved.
Actually, reprocessing solves a good bit of it; and the actual amount is small. It's a political, not technical, problem.
I think it's great to see new nuclear power coming online, but it's too bad this is simply the completion of a project begun in the 1970's. There hasn't been enough work done in the US to advance the design of nuclear power stations in the last few decades. I wonder how much more efficiently these stations could be built and run today if we had been focused on the problem all this time.
Actually, there's been a lot of work on reactor designs over the last decade o so:
GE has the ABWR and SBWR plants, and ABWRs have been built in Japan,
Westinghouse has the AP-600 (now AP-1000), and
CE had the System 80+
Of these, the SBWR and AP-1000 are probably the most advanced, in the sense of passive safety systems and i teh SBWR's case, natural circulation. Both are attempts to simply construction and operation to reduce costs and increase safety.
The AP-1000 and SBWR will probably be the next generation of US plats, built at existing sites where multiple units were planned but not built; since those sites have already passed NRC site approval.
Not to mention that the photographers do maintain their copyright. Only a permissive license to use the image is required, and then only for the image uploaded to Wikipedia, not the original work.
The world is filled with control freaks, it seems.
Well, it's the permissive aspect that is problematic - they are no doubt afraid that the image will become the image of choice of the celebrity; for which they will get no money.
Not that I agree with that, but most photographers are very protective of their copyright protections around usage; simply because that's how they make their money.
Of course, most of them aren't going to create the iconic image; more likely the real reason a Wiki photo would be used a lot is it is free. In the photographer's mind however, each use translates to ost money, never mind that the demand curve for the image approaches zero as teh price becomes non-zero.
What most people don't realize is for a professional photographer, if they are luck 1 out of 10 photos are useable for sale. Why don't they sell the 1st rate photos to the tabloids, and then release a 2nd rate photo with minimal or no resale value (which is probably much better than an amateur photo)to Wikipedia. They can have their cake and eat it too.
I disagree. Pros care about the quality of their images, and their ability to produce and sell first rate ones is why they are pros and not simply "Dads with cameras." A pro makes money based on reputation, releasing second rate photos risks damaging their reputation as upsetting the subject with a second rate image. A no win for the pro.
Not an issue for celebrities. They have fewer privacy rights (because it is assumed that they voluntarily gave them up in a trade for publicity when they purposefully and deliberately thrust themselves into the public spotlight).
It's not a privacy right but the right to control how their images are used, primarily commercially,
'To me the problem is the Wikipedia rule of public use,' says Jerry Avenaim, a celebrity photographer. 'If they truly wanted to elevate the image on the site, they should allow photographers to maintain the copyright.'"
Dear Jerry,
If photographers truly wanted to get their images seen in the biggest free encyclopedia in the world and reap the exposure and free credit, they should donate their works.
There. Fixed that for ya.
Photographers have been hearing that line long before Wikipedia and even the web. People have always wanted free photographs in exchange for "exposure." which for the photographer translates to making no money of the photograph and not getting more paid work to compensate.
It's a losing game. Do you really think someone will look at a photograph in Wikipedia and say "Hmm - I want to hire the photographer?" More likely, they'll use the photo for free and then email the photographer for additional free photographs, and then get all indignant when teh photographer actually wants to charge for more. After all, the one on Wiki is free, so why aren't the others is the thought process that occurs.
It's not jut teh photographer who has rights to consider; it's also the model. They have rights in their images, and a CC license would require them to relinquish those rights as well. One concern may well be that the Wiki photo could then be used in ways the celebrity would not want their image used and leave them wih little recourse.
So it's not just the photographer who has to agree to the CC license.