Plus trying to sell the idea that people should pay tax on money they lost in the market is going to be at tough one.
Huh? You already pay income tax before investing a penny into the stock market. How is apt-tax forcing you to pay tax on money lost in the market? You pay the tax at time of a transaction...
Is that why the USPS can't deliver on Saturday anymore? My guess is that it has more to do with their refusal to do layoffs. I agree with Obama: "It's the Post Office that's always having problems." We need to remove the laws that protect USPS from competition. If we did, maybe they would have some real competition. Maybe their competitors would start offering service seven days a week, without the junk mail, for the right price.
While layoffs are hard (and even closing/consolidating offices), what is relatively easy in most cases is just a hiring freeze. Then, through retirements, the workforce gets reduced over time.
So cutting Saturday delivery could be a step towards the every other day delivery.
As a classical liberal, I never understood the libertarian antipathy towards the Post Office. I know the privatized post offices around the world and they are awful - ours is one of the safest and that's due to the PO workers being well paid and the stiff penalties for messing with the mail and special postal police.
Besides, for all the focus on the Post Office needing support from the Federal Government from time to time, it's 90-95% self-sufficient with only needing a helping hand here and there. Compared to most government offices, that's damn impressive, and I contend they grease the wheels of commerce 1000x more than hinder it.
And it's actually a Constitutional appointed obligation of the federal government, unlike the majority of the crap they do these days.
Of course, for $17 a month, I get endicia and just label print my postage/tracking/optional_services and almost never have to deal with the Post Office counter (though they are friendly in my area) which makes them much more convenient.
State and local gasoline taxes are more than enough to upkeep roads in most cases. They also usually fund things that have nothing to do with roads. That's how it should be.
States always want more money. Once Amazon is taxed, that means all the small internet businesses have to be taxed as well. There are so many small municipalities, especially in CA, demanding their special rate of sale's tax, that it would be hard for a small merchant to file it all.
Of course, I'm for the apt tax replacing all this bullshit anyway, no loopholes. http://www.apttax.com/
I also have to say that "agreeing" part is a bit strong. When I buy something, I buy it, not agreeing to anything but to exchange my money in return for some product. I also don't sign anything. The end user license agreement isn't there at the point of sale and is often hidden in the box.
The end user license agreement isn't my idea of a "contract". It's more like a kick in the ass after you did the exchange.
Everything I have gotten the last 2 years is USPS. I usually get stuff with "free" super-saver shipping, often faster than UPS ground. USPS is great at small to medium boxes (large boxes seem to be more domain of UPS and FEDEX and we're talking 2ftx2ftx2ft at least). USPS also offers a special rate on books, DVDs, CDs, etcetera called Media Mail and the rate can't be beat - for example: a 2lb package across the country at Parcel Post is $8.09 and with Media Mail it's $2.77. Library Mail is even cheaper but restricted to institutions...
You also have to figure that on many products there are 3rd party vendors on Amazon and that they ship however they prefer with the shipping stipend Amazon gives them and they don't have the same UPS/Fedex deals Amazon has, so the USPS will be often the cheapest option to them by far.
And just have alternating days. That way one postal worker can take care of two routes. Let's face it, mail is only going to decrease. So let them do M-W-F on Route 1 and T-Th-Sa on Route 2, and flip that the next week. Express mail can be an exception. Priority mail not so much, depending on logistics.
The USPS has been good to me and my internet business, so I'd prefer them to do well in return. IMO, this is the only way to really future proof the service. People will bitch but the rest of society just has to adapt, imo.
> Oh well, I guess that makes it right and okay then.
Unconscionable terms are unenforceable. You're still a fool for agreeing to unread terms, though.
You can call me a fool yet how many end user licenses have you fully read through? All of your products and services? I know I would have no time to work or play if I had to read (and understand each one). And that's what we're talking about. I read through contracts that I have to go through the whole nine yards and sign....
Only to find out after the fact that it has an end-user license dictating what cylinders you can put in (it has a propietary attachment) and all the like. I think we're all fools for putting up with it.
They asked you in the Terms of Service you agreed to when you used the Android Market for the first time.
AT&T asked for my 1st born and 10 years indentured servitude in their TOS. It was 900 pages so I didn't read it. Oh well, I guess that makes it right and okay then.
But will current android apps with this port? In other words, are apps interpreted or binary?
If they are binary, then google has to make sure developers make a universal binary, like apple did with their PPC->intel transistion.... or this effort will be DOA.
Yeah, I really don't get this. With the relative sophistication of fios set-top boxes, you'd think they'd gather every channel change, data link is taken care of, and Verizon would be frothing at the mouth to sell some of this data, no?
Not sure why the world is still relying on Nielsen ratings in this day and age.
Copyright was in the original constitution, free speech was not: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
However, unlike what this ruling seems to say, the Constitution gives congress no authority to reassign ownership of works and I'm pretty sure "limited time" is now is nowhere near what the founders had in mind.
Is it? Or do the old-timers just not get new technology?
Steve Wozniak seems to get new technology all the time. It's not a matter of age, but of attitude.
Just because someone's young doesn't mean they get computers either.
Besides, most people over 40 don't want to spend 60hours+/week at work.
Hours =\= productivity. I hear all the time on/. that workers are spending a good chunk of time on games and the internet. I'd rather have a worker 8 hours a day just be mentally at work, than pushing them for 12 hour days and they spend half of it distracted. I'm not saying this is the case for young workers or that older workers are more productive, but there is way too much emphasize on having a body in a seat for X amount of hours rather than what they get done.
What they need to do is uncouple phone from the network -- to the point that the subsidized phone contract is seperate from the phone plan (allowing a customer to switch from month to month) and to stop distinguishing between different types of data -- like texts vs emails and the like. It's all just data. Perhaps even make voice and data seperate, allowing you to purchase seperate plans from different companies for either.
Of course, the push has to come from the people and legislated. The phone companies are never going to give up the status quo.
They should really stop advertising "unlimited" in America. If there was an ounce of consumer protection in the government, they should hammer such terms as what it is, fraud.
You would see that in 1995 it was 10%. In 2001, beginning of Bush2's term, it finally broke 50%. Now it's 75%. Now, back in 1995, I assume 90% of anybody who had a computer connected it to the internet. That means there was an explosion of computer users as well!
So if the internet is the killer app, meaning that without it people wouldn't have bought a computer, then this was inevitable because today's laptops have easily the power to run any browser.
This type of article is no different than declaring the death of PCs because consoles make up a bigger and bigger market each generation (my video game store hardlly even has two shelves for PC games, around 2000, it was closer to 1/3 to 40% of the store IIRC). But that conclusion would be off the mark as well, because this concerns packaging and the console is just a computer packaged in a way to optimize the overall game experience from installation to playing it, as well as doing more with less hardware just because it's a specific purpose machine instead of a general purpose one.
Now, smartphones are just computers again but yet smaller packaging omitting things like keyboards for size. I'm sure they stole more than laptop sale -- because they are people who need mobile internet but don't need a keyboard. I know my own notebook usage went down. But does that mean notebooks are going to die? No, they'll always be a significant portion of people who need them. Same with desktops. The marketshare is only shrinking because the killer app was not the desktop itself but rather the internet, and since people have been using the killer app, it's delivery has branched into other form factor that are more convenient for their needs. But the desktop has uses that these devices can't address well - compiling code, rendering polygons whether it's for games are animation for movies, CAD, and the like. That core will always stay.
I read the reasoning and much of it was infrastructure rather than it not being there or straight out infeasible in all instances. China will swoop in sometime (not necessarily waiting until we leave) and invest in the good mines, as they are doing all over Africa and other parts of the world while our government is investing in failed banks and overunionized industries.
I don't see this as a bad thing, China is growing and they'll need copper from somewhere. And I don't think it's cost effective to keep the military there, what are we spending on Afghan will exceed $72B so that's 15 years max at the estimates.... and extracting that stuff isn't free nor is it ours.
Hmmm, pretty much sounds like Christianity as well.
Of course it does. In it's early days, mainstream Christian Church killed 10s of thousands of Gnostic Christians who were well known for their extreme religious tolerance but got the ire of the church for their unorthodox views like that the God of the old Testament was evil and writing the Gospel of Judas. Not too mention everything since then. It sounds the same because it's inherently the same type of social structure with the same basic aims.
Of course, Christianity has splintered since then just like Islam has. Splintering doesn't mean automatically being more progressive -- the Puritans and countless other Christian sects were even more strict and worse than the Catholic Church in many ways and as oppressive against women and other things as bad as the most radical Islamic groups.
In fact, the basic attitudes between the groups are the same, which is why embracing religion will never work out. The only two ways to overcome that is to teach a different interpration of the religion or to forgo all pretense and drop it completely in order to change majority's attitudes about religion -- and that usually means converting them young and waiting for the next generation to come into power. (It's said that controversial scientific theories were often the same way, there were adherents that you would never convert despite all the evidence in the world, you just wait for them to die off).
What do you really expect for a religion literally meaning "submission" and where the very founder spread it at the point of a sword. As a society, we all want to have a very PC belief that all religions are created equal, have good intentions, at their core are always good messages and what not and it's only the bad people that pervert them.... but I think that's naive and I'm saying this as an agnostic. Treating unsubstantiated beliefs as sacred and taboo will always be a bad thing because you can't challenge a good or bad interpretation with logic and clearly any and all belief systems set up by man for various agendas will have downsides - some more than others.
I have automatic notifications turned off and a few other settings and yet my 3GS battery will go down more than half during the day without any usage. Come on, an iPad has 30 days standby - and while I understand a phone always has to be listening, it seems awfully short.
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Huh? You already pay income tax before investing a penny into the stock market. How is apt-tax forcing you to pay tax on money lost in the market? You pay the tax at time of a transaction...
While layoffs are hard (and even closing/consolidating offices), what is relatively easy in most cases is just a hiring freeze. Then, through retirements, the workforce gets reduced over time.
So cutting Saturday delivery could be a step towards the every other day delivery.
As a classical liberal, I never understood the libertarian antipathy towards the Post Office. I know the privatized post offices around the world and they are awful - ours is one of the safest and that's due to the PO workers being well paid and the stiff penalties for messing with the mail and special postal police.
Besides, for all the focus on the Post Office needing support from the Federal Government from time to time, it's 90-95% self-sufficient with only needing a helping hand here and there. Compared to most government offices, that's damn impressive, and I contend they grease the wheels of commerce 1000x more than hinder it.
And it's actually a Constitutional appointed obligation of the federal government, unlike the majority of the crap they do these days.
Of course, for $17 a month, I get endicia and just label print my postage/tracking/optional_services and almost never have to deal with the Post Office counter (though they are friendly in my area) which makes them much more convenient.
State and local gasoline taxes are more than enough to upkeep roads in most cases. They also usually fund things that have nothing to do with roads. That's how it should be.
States always want more money. Once Amazon is taxed, that means all the small internet businesses have to be taxed as well. There are so many small municipalities, especially in CA, demanding their special rate of sale's tax, that it would be hard for a small merchant to file it all.
Of course, I'm for the apt tax replacing all this bullshit anyway, no loopholes.
http://www.apttax.com/
I also have to say that "agreeing" part is a bit strong. When I buy something, I buy it, not agreeing to anything but to exchange my money in return for some product. I also don't sign anything. The end user license agreement isn't there at the point of sale and is often hidden in the box.
The end user license agreement isn't my idea of a "contract". It's more like a kick in the ass after you did the exchange.
Everything I have gotten the last 2 years is USPS. I usually get stuff with "free" super-saver shipping, often faster than UPS ground. USPS is great at small to medium boxes (large boxes seem to be more domain of UPS and FEDEX and we're talking 2ftx2ftx2ft at least). USPS also offers a special rate on books, DVDs, CDs, etcetera called Media Mail and the rate can't be beat - for example: a 2lb package across the country at Parcel Post is $8.09 and with Media Mail it's $2.77. Library Mail is even cheaper but restricted to institutions...
You also have to figure that on many products there are 3rd party vendors on Amazon and that they ship however they prefer with the shipping stipend Amazon gives them and they don't have the same UPS/Fedex deals Amazon has, so the USPS will be often the cheapest option to them by far.
And just have alternating days. That way one postal worker can take care of two routes. Let's face it, mail is only going to decrease. So let them do M-W-F on Route 1 and T-Th-Sa on Route 2, and flip that the next week. Express mail can be an exception. Priority mail not so much, depending on logistics.
The USPS has been good to me and my internet business, so I'd prefer them to do well in return. IMO, this is the only way to really future proof the service. People will bitch but the rest of society just has to adapt, imo.
You can call me a fool yet how many end user licenses have you fully read through? All of your products and services? I know I would have no time to work or play if I had to read (and understand each one). And that's what we're talking about. I read through contracts that I have to go through the whole nine yards and sign....
But I buy a product, say this Soda Stream maker:
http://www.amazon.com/SodaStream-Soda-Seltzer-Maker-Starter/dp/B002SKHQS4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1277472294&sr=8-1
Only to find out after the fact that it has an end-user license dictating what cylinders you can put in (it has a propietary attachment) and all the like. I think we're all fools for putting up with it.
AT&T asked for my 1st born and 10 years indentured servitude in their TOS. It was 900 pages so I didn't read it. Oh well, I guess that makes it right and okay then.
Foxconn is considering pulling out of China and just automating of bunch of their operations:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=foxconn+pulling+out+of+china
ARM has been in laptops previously:
http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/home/index.htm (btw, this came out last year)
Seems to work fine:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Snlp1yTmeyM&feature=related
But will current android apps with this port? In other words, are apps interpreted or binary?
If they are binary, then google has to make sure developers make a universal binary, like apple did with their PPC->intel transistion.... or this effort will be DOA.
Yeah, I really don't get this. With the relative sophistication of fios set-top boxes, you'd think they'd gather every channel change, data link is taken care of, and Verizon would be frothing at the mouth to sell some of this data, no?
Not sure why the world is still relying on Nielsen ratings in this day and age.
Copyright was in the original constitution, free speech was not:
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
However, unlike what this ruling seems to say, the Constitution gives congress no authority to reassign ownership of works and I'm pretty sure "limited time" is now is nowhere near what the founders had in mind.
As far as I'm concerned, what should be focused on here is the ban on passing Ex Post Facto laws in the Constitition:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law#United_States
This seems like such a breach.
Source?
And no, I'm not at work right now:)
Google translate between western languages I encountered are pretty good, but they need a lot of work on the asian languages imo.
Don't you mean dead in a ditch somewhere?
Steve Wozniak seems to get new technology all the time. It's not a matter of age, but of attitude.
Just because someone's young doesn't mean they get computers either.
Hours =\= productivity. I hear all the time on /. that workers are spending a good chunk of time on games and the internet. I'd rather have a worker 8 hours a day just be mentally at work, than pushing them for 12 hour days and they spend half of it distracted. I'm not saying this is the case for young workers or that older workers are more productive, but there is way too much emphasize on having a body in a seat for X amount of hours rather than what they get done.
What?
What they need to do is uncouple phone from the network -- to the point that the subsidized phone contract is seperate from the phone plan (allowing a customer to switch from month to month) and to stop distinguishing between different types of data -- like texts vs emails and the like. It's all just data. Perhaps even make voice and data seperate, allowing you to purchase seperate plans from different companies for either.
Of course, the push has to come from the people and legislated. The phone companies are never going to give up the status quo.
They should really stop advertising "unlimited" in America. If there was an ounce of consumer protection in the government, they should hammer such terms as what it is, fraud.
I agree with you 100%. If you look at internet users as percentage of population:
http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=it_net_user_p2&idim=country:USA&dl=en&hl=en&q=internet+usage+america
You would see that in 1995 it was 10%. In 2001, beginning of Bush2's term, it finally broke 50%. Now it's 75%. Now, back in 1995, I assume 90% of anybody who had a computer connected it to the internet. That means there was an explosion of computer users as well!
So if the internet is the killer app, meaning that without it people wouldn't have bought a computer, then this was inevitable because today's laptops have easily the power to run any browser.
This type of article is no different than declaring the death of PCs because consoles make up a bigger and bigger market each generation (my video game store hardlly even has two shelves for PC games, around 2000, it was closer to 1/3 to 40% of the store IIRC). But that conclusion would be off the mark as well, because this concerns packaging and the console is just a computer packaged in a way to optimize the overall game experience from installation to playing it, as well as doing more with less hardware just because it's a specific purpose machine instead of a general purpose one.
Now, smartphones are just computers again but yet smaller packaging omitting things like keyboards for size. I'm sure they stole more than laptop sale -- because they are people who need mobile internet but don't need a keyboard. I know my own notebook usage went down. But does that mean notebooks are going to die? No, they'll always be a significant portion of people who need them. Same with desktops. The marketshare is only shrinking because the killer app was not the desktop itself but rather the internet, and since people have been using the killer app, it's delivery has branched into other form factor that are more convenient for their needs. But the desktop has uses that these devices can't address well - compiling code, rendering polygons whether it's for games are animation for movies, CAD, and the like. That core will always stay.
I read the reasoning and much of it was infrastructure rather than it not being there or straight out infeasible in all instances. China will swoop in sometime (not necessarily waiting until we leave) and invest in the good mines, as they are doing all over Africa and other parts of the world while our government is investing in failed banks and overunionized industries.
I don't see this as a bad thing, China is growing and they'll need copper from somewhere. And I don't think it's cost effective to keep the military there, what are we spending on Afghan will exceed $72B so that's 15 years max at the estimates.... and extracting that stuff isn't free nor is it ours.
http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home
Of course it does. In it's early days, mainstream Christian Church killed 10s of thousands of Gnostic Christians who were well known for their extreme religious tolerance but got the ire of the church for their unorthodox views like that the God of the old Testament was evil and writing the Gospel of Judas. Not too mention everything since then. It sounds the same because it's inherently the same type of social structure with the same basic aims.
Of course, Christianity has splintered since then just like Islam has. Splintering doesn't mean automatically being more progressive -- the Puritans and countless other Christian sects were even more strict and worse than the Catholic Church in many ways and as oppressive against women and other things as bad as the most radical Islamic groups.
In fact, the basic attitudes between the groups are the same, which is why embracing religion will never work out. The only two ways to overcome that is to teach a different interpration of the religion or to forgo all pretense and drop it completely in order to change majority's attitudes about religion -- and that usually means converting them young and waiting for the next generation to come into power. (It's said that controversial scientific theories were often the same way, there were adherents that you would never convert despite all the evidence in the world, you just wait for them to die off).
What do you really expect for a religion literally meaning "submission" and where the very founder spread it at the point of a sword. As a society, we all want to have a very PC belief that all religions are created equal, have good intentions, at their core are always good messages and what not and it's only the bad people that pervert them.... but I think that's naive and I'm saying this as an agnostic. Treating unsubstantiated beliefs as sacred and taboo will always be a bad thing because you can't challenge a good or bad interpretation with logic and clearly any and all belief systems set up by man for various agendas will have downsides - some more than others.
I have automatic notifications turned off and a few other settings and yet my 3GS battery will go down more than half during the day without any usage. Come on, an iPad has 30 days standby - and while I understand a phone always has to be listening, it seems awfully short.