It already is, AFAIK, the problem is that it is subject to manipulation. For example, Microsoft and Google, earn a huge chunk of their profits in Ireland. MS does it by:
1) Licensing software (mostly developed in the US) to its Irish subsidiary at low rates 2) The Irish company then re-licences to third countries at much higher rates.
MS then pays Irish corporate tax at 10% on these profits. Ireland is very useful for this as it is a tax haven within the EU.
As for taxing off-shoring, how do you classify it? Is all contracting of work abroad off-shoring? Are imports off-shoring? If you increase tax on off-shoring through subsidiaries, then its easy to off-shore through contracting.
How does he intend to deal with the WTO rules on all this? Renegotiating the treaties is going to take years, and simply breaking them would be highly disruptive and damaging....
Do you think it is really about fighting terrorism?
The British government justified spying powers "to fight terrorism", but they were actually used to fight minor offences (dog fouling, fly-tipping, government employee false sickness claims).
Just like the British government, the Indian government cannot really say they need to compromise human rights to make it cheaper to police minor offences, or too keep an eye on people doing perfectly legal things the government and police disapprove of (which also happened in Britain).
Getting rid of technical vocabulary often means being either more long winded, or over-simplifying, or risking being misunderstood.
Being more long-winded will not get you anywhere with the mass-media
Anything complex has the same problems. Finance, for example, is frequently very inaccurately reported. (I mean things like newspaper coverage of corporate earnings that fail to distinguish between underlying profits or losses and an impairment of goodwill).
It is not entirely clear to me why the US is so fundamentalist, but one possible explanation is that it is a rich country, and the particular fundamentalist version of Christianity so popular in the US rejects the core Christian belief that it is bad to be rich ("it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle...." and "give all you have to the poor", etc.), and often actually reverses it.
I cannot think of any example of Christians forcing their religion on others in the same way that other religions, and officially atheist countries do (i.e. mean countries that are officially state atheist, not countries that do not have an officially religion, which is as it should be).
Can you name one country that has laws that make it a criminal offence for a Christian to convert to another religion? There are Hindu, Muslim, and Jewish that have laws of that type, and at least one Buddhist country is likely to introduce them. As for atheism, try importing some Bibles into China outside approved channels, or try joining the Catholic church there.
Does anyone in the mid-west force you to practice Christianity, or to follow Christian moral rules? Are any non-Christian publications banned? Is non-Christian worship restricted in any way? You are living in the most fundamentalist Christian place in the entire world, and you have complete religious freedom and complete freedom to live your live as you like. Can you say the same of any other religion (or state atheism)?
How exactly have your human rights been attacked? The major attack on human rights in the US has been a secular one based on fear of terrorism etc.
Certainly, there a a small but vocal group of fringe Christians, whose ideas have been soundly rejected by the mainstream, has some weird ideas, and want to influence the education system. As long as you have a state-controlled education system various lobby groups will try to influence what is taught, and any large group of people is bound to contain a few nutters.
Really? Evidence please. I live in a Buddhist country which: 1) has just finished an extremely vicious civil war with at least 200,000 dead, and a disregar for civilian casualties. 2) It definite overtones of a religious war, with Buddhists on one side. In fact, many soldiers felt they were defending their religion. 3) Christian churches have frequently been burned down by Buddhist fundamentalists. Schools have had to cancel nativity plays because of threats. 4) Sodomy is a criminal offence, and the general attitude to homosexuality is that it is a decadent western practice. 5) There is a strong lobby, with substantial support in parliament, to restrict religious freedom, by making it a criminal offence for a Buddhist to join another religion. 6) It is is criminal offence to "insult the Buddha". This can mean, for example, putting a Buddha statue in an inappropriate place such as a bar. Buddha Bar CDs are banned, as are various other bits of western pop-culture with Buddhist references.
Putting my tin foil hat on, they may be very happy with that result: people who think for themselves are, potentially, far more disruptive than any terrorist.
More likely, they have limited sympathy for such people, because they think them weird trouble makers - "if you want a pastime, watch TV like everyone else"
I am not a gamer, but I found Wesnoth incredibly addictive. It is easy to learn, but strategy is fairly complex, it is involving, it is just plain fun.
Jesux is a spoof, and a very clever and funny one. It sends up the attitudes of American, right wing, fundamentalist weirdos, extremely well, and is almost believable.
I wish I had thought of it.
If there is a distro holy war, it should be between UCE and Ubuntu Satanic Edition.
I remember reading the Foundation series as a teenager and thinking it a bit silly, and it does not help that it is not particularly well written.
I read it last year and thought it insightful, and, given when it was written, prophetic.
Re:Plagiarism? or Ghost writing? Outsourcing?
on
Plagiarism Inc.
·
· Score: 1
It is not what we usually mean by plaigarism, because the author is compensated, and agrees to, the deceptive attribution. What it is, is simply cheating.
Can someone please tell me the difference between morality and ethics? The OED definition of ethical is "morally correct" (OK it can mean a precription drug as well, but that is clearly not what we mean in this content).
The real moral problem I can see here is that someone argues that it is legal, therefore it is OK even though it is inethical - i.e. do anything you can get away with and stuff the ethics of it.
The easiest thing is for gays to wake up to this fact and abandon Christianity en masse and join a more tolerant religion.
Like what? In practice Christianity is the most tolerant of homosexuality of the major religions, except possibly Judaism (well, some types of Judaism anyway).
I live in a Buddhist country and sodomy is a criminal offence here. In Hindu India cinema's huge protests were made against a film (Fire) that depicted Indian lesbians. As for most Muslim countries.... I am not sure what they do to gays in Saudi, but I am sure its not nice.
Once you really understand what religion preaches, there's really no point in continuing the charade; you just need to dump it completely.
Anyway, like most Atheists, you are illogical. You cannot conclude that something is true of false because you dislike its conclusions. You needed to start by examining premises and then arguments.
That said, Christians disagree about homosexuality. I am undecided, but I know a good many gay Christians, including one of the best priests I have ever met.
1) A free market has nothing to do with democracy of freedom of speech - look at Singapore, which has free markets but limited political freedom, or look India in the 1970s which had democracy and free speech with state control of the economy (huge state sector, tightly regulated markets). 2) A free market can leave people in poverty because the greater total wealth is unevenly distributed.
However, they are not the most important issues in China now. In order to fix that, we have to fix poor and hunger now. And the scale of governing is totally different from any other countries, since we have 1.5 billion
India has a population that is almost as large, and it has fairly free speech, democracy, and it is dealing with poverty about as effectively. The EU has a population of about 500 million, which is significantly small but still on a similar scale.
As for obeying national laws, laws may be moral or immoral. Consider a business dealing with South Africa in the apartheid era: would it have been right for them to obey or break the law?
That is certainly true for Fark (I know its supposed to be humorous, but its not actually funny). The site he gave as an example of a failure was not actually too bad.
What is wrong with a graphical wrapper around latex (by which I assume you mean Lyx)? My only problem with it is that there is no easy way (easier than the LaTex way) of creating new document classes.
Slashdot Mirror
It already is, AFAIK, the problem is that it is subject to manipulation. For example, Microsoft and Google, earn a huge chunk of their profits in Ireland. MS does it by:
1) Licensing software (mostly developed in the US) to its Irish subsidiary at low rates
2) The Irish company then re-licences to third countries at much higher rates.
MS then pays Irish corporate tax at 10% on these profits. Ireland is very useful for this as it is a tax haven within the EU.
As for taxing off-shoring, how do you classify it? Is all contracting of work abroad off-shoring? Are imports off-shoring? If you increase tax on off-shoring through subsidiaries, then its easy to off-shore through contracting.
How does he intend to deal with the WTO rules on all this? Renegotiating the treaties is going to take years, and simply breaking them would be highly disruptive and damaging....
Do you think it is really about fighting terrorism?
The British government justified spying powers "to fight terrorism", but they were actually used to fight minor offences (dog fouling, fly-tipping, government employee false sickness claims).
Just like the British government, the Indian government cannot really say they need to compromise human rights to make it cheaper to police minor offences, or too keep an eye on people doing perfectly legal things the government and police disapprove of (which also happened in Britain).
The best bit from the article the parent quoted:
I had spent the better part of two hours talking about the Father, the Son and the Holy Duck (Anden as opposed to Anden).
Wrong: it was only written to create employment for journalists. Why do you think media studies graduates are employable?
The produce lock-in is very strong, so the costs of switching are far higher than the cost of the upgrade.
Getting rid of technical vocabulary often means being either more long winded, or over-simplifying, or risking being misunderstood.
Being more long-winded will not get you anywhere with the mass-media
Anything complex has the same problems. Finance, for example, is frequently very inaccurately reported. (I mean things like newspaper coverage of corporate earnings that fail to distinguish between underlying profits or losses and an impairment of goodwill).
It is not entirely clear to me why the US is so fundamentalist, but one possible explanation is that it is a rich country, and the particular fundamentalist version of Christianity so popular in the US rejects the core Christian belief that it is bad to be rich ("it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle...." and "give all you have to the poor", etc.), and often actually reverses it.
I cannot think of any example of Christians forcing their religion on others in the same way that other religions, and officially atheist countries do (i.e. mean countries that are officially state atheist, not countries that do not have an officially religion, which is as it should be).
Can you name one country that has laws that make it a criminal offence for a Christian to convert to another religion? There are Hindu, Muslim, and Jewish that have laws of that type, and at least one Buddhist country is likely to introduce them. As for atheism, try importing some Bibles into China outside approved channels, or try joining the Catholic church there.
Does anyone in the mid-west force you to practice Christianity, or to follow Christian moral rules? Are any non-Christian publications banned? Is non-Christian worship restricted in any way? You are living in the most fundamentalist Christian place in the entire world, and you have complete religious freedom and complete freedom to live your live as you like. Can you say the same of any other religion (or state atheism)?
How exactly have your human rights been attacked? The major attack on human rights in the US has been a secular one based on fear of terrorism etc.
Certainly, there a a small but vocal group of fringe Christians, whose ideas have been soundly rejected by the mainstream, has some weird ideas, and want to influence the education system. As long as you have a state-controlled education system various lobby groups will try to influence what is taught, and any large group of people is bound to contain a few nutters.
The Dalai Lama is a god random sample of Buddhists, is he? Fine, lets take St Francis of Assisi as as our sample Christian then.
Really? Evidence please. I live in a Buddhist country which:
1) has just finished an extremely vicious civil war with at least 200,000 dead, and a disregar for civilian casualties.
2) It definite overtones of a religious war, with Buddhists on one side. In fact, many soldiers felt they were defending their religion.
3) Christian churches have frequently been burned down by Buddhist fundamentalists. Schools have had to cancel nativity plays because of threats.
4) Sodomy is a criminal offence, and the general attitude to homosexuality is that it is a decadent western practice.
5) There is a strong lobby, with substantial support in parliament, to restrict religious freedom, by making it a criminal offence for a Buddhist to join another religion.
6) It is is criminal offence to "insult the Buddha". This can mean, for example, putting a Buddha statue in an inappropriate place such as a bar. Buddha Bar CDs are banned, as are various other bits of western pop-culture with Buddhist references.
Putting my tin foil hat on, they may be very happy with that result: people who think for themselves are, potentially, far more disruptive than any terrorist.
More likely, they have limited sympathy for such people, because they think them weird trouble makers - "if you want a pastime, watch TV like everyone else"
I am not a gamer, but I found Wesnoth incredibly addictive. It is easy to learn, but strategy is fairly complex, it is involving, it is just plain fun.
Jesux is a spoof, and a very clever and funny one. It sends up the attitudes of American, right wing, fundamentalist weirdos, extremely well, and is almost believable.
I wish I had thought of it.
If there is a distro holy war, it should be between UCE and Ubuntu Satanic Edition.
I remember reading the Foundation series as a teenager and thinking it a bit silly, and it does not help that it is not particularly well written.
I read it last year and thought it insightful, and, given when it was written, prophetic.
It is not what we usually mean by plaigarism, because the author is compensated, and agrees to, the deceptive attribution. What it is, is simply cheating.
Can someone please tell me the difference between morality and ethics? The OED definition of ethical is "morally correct" (OK it can mean a precription drug as well, but that is clearly not what we mean in this content).
The real moral problem I can see here is that someone argues that it is legal, therefore it is OK even though it is inethical - i.e. do anything you can get away with and stuff the ethics of it.
The easiest thing is for gays to wake up to this fact and abandon Christianity en masse and join a more tolerant religion.
Like what? In practice Christianity is the most tolerant of homosexuality of the major religions, except possibly Judaism (well, some types of Judaism anyway).
I live in a Buddhist country and sodomy is a criminal offence here. In Hindu India cinema's huge protests were made against a film (Fire) that depicted Indian lesbians. As for most Muslim countries.... I am not sure what they do to gays in Saudi, but I am sure its not nice.
Once you really understand what religion preaches, there's really no point in continuing the charade; you just need to dump it completely.
Anyway, like most Atheists, you are illogical. You cannot conclude that something is true of false because you dislike its conclusions. You needed to start by examining premises and then arguments.
That said, Christians disagree about homosexuality. I am undecided, but I know a good many gay Christians, including one of the best priests I have ever met.
The free market can help economic growth, but:
1) A free market has nothing to do with democracy of freedom of speech - look at Singapore, which has free markets but limited political freedom, or look India in the 1970s which had democracy and free speech with state control of the economy (huge state sector, tightly regulated markets).
2) A free market can leave people in poverty because the greater total wealth is unevenly distributed.
However, they are not the most important issues in China now. In order to fix that, we have to fix poor and hunger now. And the scale of governing is totally different from any other countries, since we have 1.5 billion
India has a population that is almost as large, and it has fairly free speech, democracy, and it is dealing with poverty about as effectively. The EU has a population of about 500 million, which is significantly small but still on a similar scale.
As for obeying national laws, laws may be moral or immoral. Consider a business dealing with South Africa in the apartheid era: would it have been right for them to obey or break the law?
That is certainly true for Fark (I know its supposed to be humorous, but its not actually funny). The site he gave as an example of a failure was not actually too bad.
Except that:
1) the Flash spec is open, and there are OSS implementations
2) in practice, HTML 5 video is like to rely on a closed, patented, codec.
Not being up to date with legislation is no excuse for making up imaginary laws.
If they do not know something to be illegal, they should do nothing.
Firefox is not bloated of crash prone. It does not use noticeably more memory than than other browsers I have tried under similar usage.
Does that tell us something about Monsanto?
What is wrong with a graphical wrapper around latex (by which I assume you mean Lyx)? My only problem with it is that there is no easy way (easier than the LaTex way) of creating new document classes.