Then permanently separate road tax from fuel for everyone. Bottom line - fuel efficient vehicles need to provide a financial benefit to their owners.
Bingo. The only reason road funding from gasoline taxes worked in the first place is that, once upon a time, most cars weighed about the same and got close enough to the same mileage that road usage was roughly proportional to gasoline usage. Now even among gas-fueled vehicles that's not true, and it'll only get worse as the percentage of non-gasoline cars increases.
Road infrastructure serves a common good outside of personal usage. It facilitates the free flow of goods and services that allow our society to function. It allows Fry's Groceries or Safeway to constantly get shipments of fresh meat and produce. It allows UPS to deliver that nifty new Amazon or Newegg item that you got with "free" shipping. It allows the ambulance or the fire engine to get to your house. It allows pretty flower-covered monstrosities to get pulled slowly down Pasadena streets so that ABC and CBS have viewers to sell to advertisers.
Perhaps the gasoline "road use" is obsolete and should be abolished, with road funding coming from from general taxes. Of course this would piss off the tax-gasoline-out-of-existence people and so has no chance of happening.
Great. Tell it to a judge. If that's true, then he hasn't broken the law. If he's lying, only feigning ignorance when really he knew (or should have known -- the "reasonable person" standard) then he has broken the law. The burden is on the prosecution to show that a reasonable person would have known, or even better that he really did know and that he's lying now to cover his ass. If they can't do that then he goes free.
You know that, right? You know that's how the law works, right? I mean, I'm not teaching you anything new here am I? Is anything I'm saying less than totally obvious?
And he's out of business/broke/incurred tremendous debts due to the practically unlimited funds available to prosecute and the fact that even if found not guilty on all counts a defendant has to pay for his own defense. That's why it's standard operating procedure to charge a suspect with the kitchen sink and then plea bargain to one or a handful of guilty pleas. A poor person has no choice but to accept. A middle class person may be able to win, but will then be a poor person. Only the wealthy can really fight in court, and this isn't a problem with wealth but a problem with our court system. (IMHO, if the prosecution loses it should pay the defendant's legal costs.)
This is only one step from the movie Brazil where suspects are charged for their interrogation.
If a government doesn't like something you're doing they can find something to charge you with even if they know that a conviction's unlikely. This is the government equivalent of a SLAPP suit.
There's no need to elaborate, is there? The analogies you conjur up in your mind are sufficient to tell you just how stupid an idea this is.
I agree it's stupid, but strictly as a devil's advocate what about lawsuits and/or charges against bar owners & bartenders where a patron gets drunk and drives and kills someone? There have also been periodic attempts to sue firearms manufacturers because of criminal use of their legal products.
These "well they should know" examples are pretty much the same as someone who knowingly writes software used to run gambling sites. His customers apparently, unknown to him, using his product for "criminal" activity.
(IMHO, my only problem with online gambling is insuring that the games are fair and that payoffs occur.)
After you use a few different coding standards an experienced developer doesn't care _what_ the actual standards (such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indent_style ) , just as long as EVERYONE follows them.
It would be nice if the coding standards weren't changed every few years.
At my last company before taking the telecommuting job, there was only one bathroom for all ~200 people at that location (well, one set of bathrooms, but most employees were male), and I had to actually walk the entire length of the company's offices and leave the company's office suite to get to it. Total PITA.
When they got rid of the half-penny, the penny (the newly lowest denomination) was worth $.23 in today's money. There's nothing inherently specially about the $.01 value. If I had it my way I'd get rid of everything up to the dime and replace the dollar bill with a coin. But then, I think spending $.025 on making pennies, and $.11 on nickels is ridiculous. And wasting money on reprinting worn out $1 bills when coins would last much longer equally so.
It is the message that is important, not the messenger. Why, after 11 years of using this site, should I register an account? My words stay the same. All it would be good for is group validation through karma whoring. I'd rather be ignored out of irrational bias than lauded for conforming to groupthink.
You know all those gaps in Google's Usenet archive? That's where the oxide flaked off and that data is just plain extinct. No, tapes sucked but then, as now, expensive dick drives had outstanding longevity.
I saw this back during the SOPA trial. During the hearings the people on the left did everything they could to try to push it through, the people on the right were more or less the only ones speaking out against it.
One has to wonder why the $2 trillion+ in taxes we pay every year don't buy us as much influence over the legislative process as $100,000 in campaign contributions by various corporate interests. Why aren't election campaigns funded by tax dollars instead of private donations?
Maybe you should ask the first President to refuse matching funds and who thinks (or used to) he can raise a Billion Dollars for this election why elections are funded by however much you can raise instead of a fraction of that in taxpayer money.
The answer is obvious. There's a massive donation collection system in place ran by the two major parties and their surrogates that can raise an order of magnitude more money than taxpayers would (rightfully so) be willing to spend. And, when you consider that only half of the taxpayers actually pay income tax (yes, everyone pays sales, FICA, etc, but those wouldn't fund something like this) then you are forcing half the people to support candidates they may or may not want elected while the other half don't have to pay anything.
At least in the current system (except for matching funds) money is raised from people who actually support the candidate and want them to win. Nobody is forced under threat of fines or imprisonment to contribute via taxes to candidates that they don't support. Even unions are supposed to allow their members to opt out of the political portion of their dues.
BTW, President Obama and his supporting PACs will outspend Romney's campaign and PACs this year. The "fundraiser underdog" appeal is just that: a fundraising strategy. He raised Three-Quarters of a Billion Dollars for the 2008 election, nearly three times McCain's reported budget of $277 million (including matching funds) for primaries and the general election. Since McCain opted into matching funds and received (from what I can find) $84.1 million he was apparently limited to spending $168.2 million for the general election.
I'm pretty sure that if self-driving cars ever do become prevalent (and I'm skeptical, to say the least), they will all allow human manual override at any time.
I'm sure that there was a similar popular opinion for those silly, rich-boy toy jalopies becoming prevalent over that much-more-sensible horse-and-buggy, too.
My opinion is that they will dominate at some point in the future. All that time driving can be better spent on consuming media, right?:) I do agree that there will always need to be a for a human to take control, in case of malfunction if for no other reason.
IMHO you'll start with an HOV-type automated-only lane on longer-distance hauls, which will eventually switch to restricting manual vehicles to a single lane and finally to freeways for automated and back roads for manual-only vehicles. In the very long term manual-only vehicles will only be useful for off-road (rec & farm) and local street driving.
You could conceivably even have completely-automated long-haul trucking with human control from a remote "drone" site if necessary.
On a separate issue of Citizens United, keep in mind that the same thing applies to unions, non-profits etc and it is a bit disingenuous to only focus on for-profit corporations.
Unions had pretty much a free hand before while businesses were restricted. But since unions overwhelmingly support Democrats that was all well and good. God forbid if Republicans can get the same time of support. Also, some corporations (like Google, Apple, Ben & Jerry's, etc) tend/swerve/careen/warp-drive left and would likely support mostly Democrats anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
You can get a mobile phone signal on a Submarine? I didn't even know they'd licensed the ULF Range :)
You have to speak very slowly. It's really only suitable for Ents.
Then permanently separate road tax from fuel for everyone. Bottom line - fuel efficient vehicles need to provide a financial benefit to their owners.
Bingo. The only reason road funding from gasoline taxes worked in the first place is that, once upon a time, most cars weighed about the same and got close enough to the same mileage that road usage was roughly proportional to gasoline usage. Now even among gas-fueled vehicles that's not true, and it'll only get worse as the percentage of non-gasoline cars increases.
Road infrastructure serves a common good outside of personal usage. It facilitates the free flow of goods and services that allow our society to function. It allows Fry's Groceries or Safeway to constantly get shipments of fresh meat and produce. It allows UPS to deliver that nifty new Amazon or Newegg item that you got with "free" shipping. It allows the ambulance or the fire engine to get to your house. It allows pretty flower-covered monstrosities to get pulled slowly down Pasadena streets so that ABC and CBS have viewers to sell to advertisers.
Perhaps the gasoline "road use" is obsolete and should be abolished, with road funding coming from from general taxes. Of course this would piss off the tax-gasoline-out-of-existence people and so has no chance of happening.
Great. Tell it to a judge. If that's true, then he hasn't broken the law. If he's lying, only feigning ignorance when really he knew (or should have known -- the "reasonable person" standard) then he has broken the law. The burden is on the prosecution to show that a reasonable person would have known, or even better that he really did know and that he's lying now to cover his ass. If they can't do that then he goes free.
You know that, right? You know that's how the law works, right? I mean, I'm not teaching you anything new here am I? Is anything I'm saying less than totally obvious?
And he's out of business/broke/incurred tremendous debts due to the practically unlimited funds available to prosecute and the fact that even if found not guilty on all counts a defendant has to pay for his own defense. That's why it's standard operating procedure to charge a suspect with the kitchen sink and then plea bargain to one or a handful of guilty pleas. A poor person has no choice but to accept. A middle class person may be able to win, but will then be a poor person. Only the wealthy can really fight in court, and this isn't a problem with wealth but a problem with our court system. (IMHO, if the prosecution loses it should pay the defendant's legal costs.)
This is only one step from the movie Brazil where suspects are charged for their interrogation.
If a government doesn't like something you're doing they can find something to charge you with even if they know that a conviction's unlikely. This is the government equivalent of a SLAPP suit.
There's no need to elaborate, is there? The analogies you conjur up in your mind are sufficient to tell you just how stupid an idea this is.
I agree it's stupid, but strictly as a devil's advocate what about lawsuits and/or charges against bar owners & bartenders where a patron gets drunk and drives and kills someone? There have also been periodic attempts to sue firearms manufacturers because of criminal use of their legal products.
These "well they should know" examples are pretty much the same as someone who knowingly writes software used to run gambling sites. His customers apparently, unknown to him, using his product for "criminal" activity.
(IMHO, my only problem with online gambling is insuring that the games are fair and that payoffs occur.)
Exactly!
After you use a few different coding standards an experienced developer doesn't care _what_ the actual standards (such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indent_style ) , just as long as EVERYONE follows them.
It would be nice if the coding standards weren't changed every few years.
Is that like tossing dwarfs?
At my last company before taking the telecommuting job, there was only one bathroom for all ~200 people at that location (well, one set of bathrooms, but most employees were male), and I had to actually walk the entire length of the company's offices and leave the company's office suite to get to it. Total PITA.
FWP
When they got rid of the half-penny, the penny (the newly lowest denomination) was worth $.23 in today's money. There's nothing inherently specially about the $.01 value. If I had it my way I'd get rid of everything up to the dime and replace the dollar bill with a coin. But then, I think spending $.025 on making pennies, and $.11 on nickels is ridiculous. And wasting money on reprinting worn out $1 bills when coins would last much longer equally so.
I'm holding out for Bottle Caps...
Tits, eh? Giving up on the eagle?
Why not both? Eagle with tits? Surely we can come up with a compromise.
That's called a Harpy.
You should never care if it is an AC.
It is the message that is important, not the messenger. Why, after 11 years of using this site, should I register an account? My words stay the same. All it would be good for is group validation through karma whoring. I'd rather be ignored out of irrational bias than lauded for conforming to groupthink.
Yeah. It's too late to get a low number anyway...
In other words, it's sort of like AOL.
I just got to have a little somethin' to jump-start the morning and a little somethin' else to shut down the night.
-- Sonny Clemonds
We Don't Go to Righthaven
I was shocked, too. It was the first think that I thought of.
Thank God It's Only a Motion Picture!
No, turned out that if you ground it up it's pure poison.
Darn. When I really want them I have no moderator points.
Eight-year-olds, Dude.
You know all those gaps in Google's Usenet archive? That's where the oxide flaked off and that data is just plain extinct. No, tapes sucked but then, as now, expensive dick drives had outstanding longevity.
Heh heh. He said "dick". Heh heh.
SETEC Astronomy
So, is Schrödinger's cat safer during a flare?
I saw this back during the SOPA trial. During the hearings the people on the left did everything they could to try to push it through, the people on the right were more or less the only ones speaking out against it.
One has to wonder why the $2 trillion+ in taxes we pay every year don't buy us as much influence over the legislative process as $100,000 in campaign contributions by various corporate interests. Why aren't election campaigns funded by tax dollars instead of private donations?
Maybe you should ask the first President to refuse matching funds and who thinks (or used to) he can raise a Billion Dollars for this election why elections are funded by however much you can raise instead of a fraction of that in taxpayer money.
The answer is obvious. There's a massive donation collection system in place ran by the two major parties and their surrogates that can raise an order of magnitude more money than taxpayers would (rightfully so) be willing to spend. And, when you consider that only half of the taxpayers actually pay income tax (yes, everyone pays sales, FICA, etc, but those wouldn't fund something like this) then you are forcing half the people to support candidates they may or may not want elected while the other half don't have to pay anything.
At least in the current system (except for matching funds) money is raised from people who actually support the candidate and want them to win. Nobody is forced under threat of fines or imprisonment to contribute via taxes to candidates that they don't support. Even unions are supposed to allow their members to opt out of the political portion of their dues.
BTW, President Obama and his supporting PACs will outspend Romney's campaign and PACs this year. The "fundraiser underdog" appeal is just that: a fundraising strategy. He raised Three-Quarters of a Billion Dollars for the 2008 election, nearly three times McCain's reported budget of $277 million (including matching funds) for primaries and the general election. Since McCain opted into matching funds and received (from what I can find) $84.1 million he was apparently limited to spending $168.2 million for the general election.
I'm pretty sure that if self-driving cars ever do become prevalent (and I'm skeptical, to say the least), they will all allow human manual override at any time.
I'm sure that there was a similar popular opinion for those silly, rich-boy toy jalopies becoming prevalent over that much-more-sensible horse-and-buggy, too.
My opinion is that they will dominate at some point in the future. All that time driving can be better spent on consuming media, right? :) I do agree that there will always need to be a for a human to take control, in case of malfunction if for no other reason.
IMHO you'll start with an HOV-type automated-only lane on longer-distance hauls, which will eventually switch to restricting manual vehicles to a single lane and finally to freeways for automated and back roads for manual-only vehicles. In the very long term manual-only vehicles will only be useful for off-road (rec & farm) and local street driving.
You could conceivably even have completely-automated long-haul trucking with human control from a remote "drone" site if necessary.
You're forgetting hookers and blow.
Fine! I'll go build my own lunar lander, with blackjack and hookers. In fact, forget the lunar lander and the blackjack. Ahh, screw the whole thing!
After all, don't they keep it pure?
Or, if you believe Futurama, it'll be a dead language in a thousand years...
On a separate issue of Citizens United, keep in mind that the same thing applies to unions, non-profits etc and it is a bit disingenuous to only focus on for-profit corporations.
Unions had pretty much a free hand before while businesses were restricted. But since unions overwhelmingly support Democrats that was all well and good. God forbid if Republicans can get the same time of support. Also, some corporations (like Google, Apple, Ben & Jerry's, etc) tend/swerve/careen/warp-drive left and would likely support mostly Democrats anyway.
Scanners, for one, are notorious for lacking support from one version of Windows to another.