A really good deed that would have helped the country out would be for the NGO's to hire local ISPs for their connection. Restarts the local economy while taking advantage of people who've already solved most of the same problems you're going to have.
The gold bug is a particular type of troll. Some of them eventually give up on it, after losing vast sums of money investing in gold. Some don't. There's nothing you can do to hurry along any transition that may occur, so don't feed them.
Value is what someone will pay, inputs determine whether you can produce it at a profit. You can turn lead into gold in a particle accelerator at fantastic expense, but when you get done it's worth no more than gold from the ground.
An iPhone may have a total cost of ownership approaching $1800 over two years, but most of that is money spent on the plan, not on the phone. It's disingenuous to ascribe costs to the phone that are part of a plan you would have bought anyway - it's not as though the plan goes down in cost when your contract ends. If you have a smartphone in the US, you are going to pay a lot for it - a data-only plan from AT&T is $60/mo. T-mobile offers unlimited messaging and data with limited minutes starting at $60/mo, and they're the cheapest option (with coverage that often matches the price). $60/mo is $1440 over two years, plus the cost of the phone.
So it does take a lot of money to own a smartphone - any smartphone - in the US for two years. But the iPhone isn't a standout; the cost for a Droid, or a Nexus One, or a Blackberry is about the same. (I carry a Droid, because AT&T had no service where I work. That's since changed, but I don't like the iPhone or dislike the Droid enough to switch.)
My dad was self-employed, so yes, I do know taxes come due quarterly. So what? You still don't get back an overpayment until you file, 12 months later.
As for interest, I had a reason for phrasing it the way I did, but for the life of me I can't figure it out now. Probably a thought along the lines of how even if interest is 0%, it's better to have money now than later.
Really? It's reprehensible behavior, but the video is less disgusting than a lot of pus videos that are out there. It's just a guy getting his head bashed in. YMMV: I'm a doctor, I took gross anatomy, and I have personally sawed a woman in half between the pelvis and abdomen, cut the legs free from one another, and washed out the formaldehyde-preserved contents of her rectum. NOTHING shocks me. (Smells are still disgusting.)
The government does not pay interest on over-withholding. If you overpay by $100/mo, you've made an interest-free loan to the government. Ignoring interest, though, there's still the value of having that money now instead of 12 months from now. That's what he meant.
Social networking is a way to keep in touch with all those people you knew in high school or college as you drift through life. It's actually pretty cool, as I get to see what happens in the lives of people that would otherwise have fallen off my mental map. And the Rolodex effect is great - those people update their own addresses and phone numbers as they move.
You may well consider it overpriced; you're certainly entitled to your opinion. My comment was offered in response to the statement that an iPhone cost $1800. It doesn't; for the typical smartphone user in the US, it's more like $99 up front + (maybe) $10/mo for life of contract, because that user was going to get a pimped-out plan to begin with. At that rate, it's $340 over the life of the contract, which is in fact less than the unsubsidized price.
Please note the currencies involved. Nested-9-deep isn't the place for a full-on rant against US cell companies, but typical US plans break down as $30/mo for data, $20/mo for unlimited texting (although you can usually get 500 texts for $5, 1000 for $10, etc. - and that counts sent and received texts), and a minimum of $30/mo or even $40/mo for phone service. You can get $50/mo unlimited everything through prepaid like Boost Mobile, but you have to use their phones.
iPhone plans are expensive, but the last time I checked they were only $10/mo more expensive than the same data/voice/text option on, for example, a RAZR. And they're the same price as the Blackberry plans.
Well, it's worth noting that regardless of the phone used, most people with a smartphone will subscribe to a talk+data+text plan costing in the neighborhood of $100/mo. So, if you're going to pay that much anyway...
If it's in the interests of the common people, then why is it also in the interests of the liberal elite? Does it ever make you wonder, when people with net worths over $10M are advocating socialism and redistribution, just who it is that they expect the redistribution to come from?
While interesting for this specific case, does this really change the broader point? Parent didn't mention how MS pays property tax on all its corporate land and buildings.
You're concerned about corporate influence in elections? What about unions, and nonprofits, and all the other groups out there? What about media companies, which always get to publish what they want?
Democracy has a lot of problems, especially with rent-seeking and regulatory capture. Keeping everything except media companies from making political commentary doesn't keep the money out of politics, it just grants extraordinary power to the media companies.
There's no reason that Microsoft has to have its headquarters in Washington, and I imagine that they have enough money to fund a bevy of extraordinarily intelligent lawyers for an indefinitely long period of time. Therefore, they do have the option of moving the corporate operations elsewhere while keeping development in WA, and expending a great deal of court time to make sure that the income doesn't occur anywhere in WA. This is not without cost, but corporations can do extremely expensive things when doing so will save truly staggering amounts of money.
It's a pretty ridiculous tax that claims that all income that Microsoft earns is Washington income. (It's on par with the US government's claim that all money earned by US citizen is taxable, no matter where earned.) But yeah, other than that, you're right.
Even at Microsoft, do you think $100 million/year goes unnoticed? It's easy to look at your own life, realize that an additional 0.5% tax would be almost negligible (about the cost of a 20 oz drink a day for someone making $100k/yr), and assume that the same thing holds true for major corporations, but it's not so.
So what? You want to argue that union workers=great product. They don't. They might be good, they might suck. Detroit had a real problem in the 70s not just with underpowered, uninspired, inefficient designs, but with terrible build quality. The former is management; the latter is labor. There's a really interesting anecdote about this in Sabotage in the American Workplace, about a line worker who claims that he and all his co-workers used to do anything possible to make the cars not work so that people would quit buying from the company they hated.
its a bad thing that they don't hire unproductive workers?
Well, yes - it's bad for the less-productive (not unproductive) workers who don't get hired. In an open shop, those guys get hired at lower wages; in a closed shop, they just don't get hired. (This is also the theoretical economic basis for libertarian opposition to the minimum wage - there are people whose labor isn't worth $7.25/hr, and a minimum makes them unemployable.)
Again, that's true if you have a land line that's in the white pages. Cell phones aren't in that directory, especially not prepaid ones, and neither are VOIP lines - those are in E911, but not in the white pages.
You could switch zoom levels and go from mapping to aerial to both, and back, at the flick of a mouse, on your USGS products? Terraserver was an amazing beast for the time.
Slashdot Mirror
A really good deed that would have helped the country out would be for the NGO's to hire local ISPs for their connection. Restarts the local economy while taking advantage of people who've already solved most of the same problems you're going to have.
The gold bug is a particular type of troll. Some of them eventually give up on it, after losing vast sums of money investing in gold. Some don't. There's nothing you can do to hurry along any transition that may occur, so don't feed them.
Value is what someone will pay, inputs determine whether you can produce it at a profit. You can turn lead into gold in a particle accelerator at fantastic expense, but when you get done it's worth no more than gold from the ground.
An iPhone may have a total cost of ownership approaching $1800 over two years, but most of that is money spent on the plan, not on the phone. It's disingenuous to ascribe costs to the phone that are part of a plan you would have bought anyway - it's not as though the plan goes down in cost when your contract ends. If you have a smartphone in the US, you are going to pay a lot for it - a data-only plan from AT&T is $60/mo. T-mobile offers unlimited messaging and data with limited minutes starting at $60/mo, and they're the cheapest option (with coverage that often matches the price). $60/mo is $1440 over two years, plus the cost of the phone.
So it does take a lot of money to own a smartphone - any smartphone - in the US for two years. But the iPhone isn't a standout; the cost for a Droid, or a Nexus One, or a Blackberry is about the same. (I carry a Droid, because AT&T had no service where I work. That's since changed, but I don't like the iPhone or dislike the Droid enough to switch.)
My dad was self-employed, so yes, I do know taxes come due quarterly. So what? You still don't get back an overpayment until you file, 12 months later.
As for interest, I had a reason for phrasing it the way I did, but for the life of me I can't figure it out now. Probably a thought along the lines of how even if interest is 0%, it's better to have money now than later.
Really? It's reprehensible behavior, but the video is less disgusting than a lot of pus videos that are out there. It's just a guy getting his head bashed in. YMMV: I'm a doctor, I took gross anatomy, and I have personally sawed a woman in half between the pelvis and abdomen, cut the legs free from one another, and washed out the formaldehyde-preserved contents of her rectum. NOTHING shocks me. (Smells are still disgusting.)
The government does not pay interest on over-withholding. If you overpay by $100/mo, you've made an interest-free loan to the government. Ignoring interest, though, there's still the value of having that money now instead of 12 months from now. That's what he meant.
Social networking is a way to keep in touch with all those people you knew in high school or college as you drift through life. It's actually pretty cool, as I get to see what happens in the lives of people that would otherwise have fallen off my mental map. And the Rolodex effect is great - those people update their own addresses and phone numbers as they move.
You may well consider it overpriced; you're certainly entitled to your opinion. My comment was offered in response to the statement that an iPhone cost $1800. It doesn't; for the typical smartphone user in the US, it's more like $99 up front + (maybe) $10/mo for life of contract, because that user was going to get a pimped-out plan to begin with. At that rate, it's $340 over the life of the contract, which is in fact less than the unsubsidized price.
Please note the currencies involved. Nested-9-deep isn't the place for a full-on rant against US cell companies, but typical US plans break down as $30/mo for data, $20/mo for unlimited texting (although you can usually get 500 texts for $5, 1000 for $10, etc. - and that counts sent and received texts), and a minimum of $30/mo or even $40/mo for phone service. You can get $50/mo unlimited everything through prepaid like Boost Mobile, but you have to use their phones.
iPhone plans are expensive, but the last time I checked they were only $10/mo more expensive than the same data/voice/text option on, for example, a RAZR. And they're the same price as the Blackberry plans.
Well, it's worth noting that regardless of the phone used, most people with a smartphone will subscribe to a talk+data+text plan costing in the neighborhood of $100/mo. So, if you're going to pay that much anyway...
Hint: you can't outdo the US government. Your only protection is against them using the information against you in court.
If it's in the interests of the common people, then why is it also in the interests of the liberal elite? Does it ever make you wonder, when people with net worths over $10M are advocating socialism and redistribution, just who it is that they expect the redistribution to come from?
While interesting for this specific case, does this really change the broader point? Parent didn't mention how MS pays property tax on all its corporate land and buildings.
You're concerned about corporate influence in elections? What about unions, and nonprofits, and all the other groups out there? What about media companies, which always get to publish what they want?
Democracy has a lot of problems, especially with rent-seeking and regulatory capture. Keeping everything except media companies from making political commentary doesn't keep the money out of politics, it just grants extraordinary power to the media companies.
There's no reason that Microsoft has to have its headquarters in Washington, and I imagine that they have enough money to fund a bevy of extraordinarily intelligent lawyers for an indefinitely long period of time. Therefore, they do have the option of moving the corporate operations elsewhere while keeping development in WA, and expending a great deal of court time to make sure that the income doesn't occur anywhere in WA. This is not without cost, but corporations can do extremely expensive things when doing so will save truly staggering amounts of money.
It's a pretty ridiculous tax that claims that all income that Microsoft earns is Washington income. (It's on par with the US government's claim that all money earned by US citizen is taxable, no matter where earned.) But yeah, other than that, you're right.
Even at Microsoft, do you think $100 million/year goes unnoticed? It's easy to look at your own life, realize that an additional 0.5% tax would be almost negligible (about the cost of a 20 oz drink a day for someone making $100k/yr), and assume that the same thing holds true for major corporations, but it's not so.
limited liability is quite valuable.
Er, you know what LLC stands for, right? They have limited liability; what they don't have is the ability to sell stock to raise money.
by the 3rd gen, it'll be a success
I'm waiting on the third generation myself.
My 2003 Mercedes was made by union workers.
So what? You want to argue that union workers=great product. They don't. They might be good, they might suck. Detroit had a real problem in the 70s not just with underpowered, uninspired, inefficient designs, but with terrible build quality. The former is management; the latter is labor. There's a really interesting anecdote about this in Sabotage in the American Workplace, about a line worker who claims that he and all his co-workers used to do anything possible to make the cars not work so that people would quit buying from the company they hated.
its a bad thing that they don't hire unproductive workers?
Well, yes - it's bad for the less-productive (not unproductive) workers who don't get hired. In an open shop, those guys get hired at lower wages; in a closed shop, they just don't get hired. (This is also the theoretical economic basis for libertarian opposition to the minimum wage - there are people whose labor isn't worth $7.25/hr, and a minimum makes them unemployable.)
Again, that's true if you have a land line that's in the white pages. Cell phones aren't in that directory, especially not prepaid ones, and neither are VOIP lines - those are in E911, but not in the white pages.
Have you tried signing in to Google? It has Promote and Remove buttons for each search result, if you're logged in.
You could switch zoom levels and go from mapping to aerial to both, and back, at the flick of a mouse, on your USGS products? Terraserver was an amazing beast for the time.