Sure - there are some diffiuculties to pulling this off.
Do you think there are some difficulties with pulling off a hack where a bad guy turns a knob and the ILS glideslope moves downward as a whole 100 or 200 feet? Really? That's what they did in the movie. They didn't change the slope, they changed the intercept, in terms of a linear equation.
Say you do nothing until the plane is about 400' AGL and then send 90hz and the plane is flying a coupled approach.
So the GS goes fully offscale in a fraction of a second and the flight computer faithfully follows it, even though it is no longer providing course guidance. And the GS receiver doesn't notice that it is no longer receiving the other tone?
But - once again - a lot of people seem to think the airplane uses some kind of DF gear to aim itself at the antenna.
I said nothing of the kind, so arguing with me about it is ridiculous.
BTW - ever get a false glide slope? Sometimes you get a 6, 9, 12, 15, etc. degree reflections that result in an incredible descent rate if you try and follow them.
This is precisely the reason for the FAF and/or glideslope intercept information on the approach plate. Yes, you can find the sidelobes from the directional antennas, but guess where the INTERCEPT still is. Right -- at the TDZ and the TDZE. And guess what, too? If you've been properly trained you'll notice that you are having to descend much faster than you should be or have pulled the power back too much and you'll know something is wrong well before you hit the ground. "Gee, in this aircraft I pull the power back to 1800 RPM and descend at 500 fpm at 90 knots to keep the normal glideslope on an ILS, but today I'm at 1500 rpm and 1000 fpm at 100 knots. I guess everything is ok..."
I guess a major part of the problem might be, that there is no penalty for blocking too much.
Did you miss that this block is on one IP address? That there are 1215 virtual hosts running at this one address? How can you block less than one IP address at a router? You'd have to do deep enough packet inspection to look at the virtual hostname header in any HTTP request, and the RCPT TO in any SMTP transaction. Should there be packet filtering at that level?
since we don't even know what content triggered the blocking. And that may actually be the largest problem with this sort of blocking.
That's right, we don't know which of the 1215 domain names hosted the content that justified the block. But we can know that the fact that YOU personally don't know what the content was isn't really the largest problem with blocking things.
You realize that foreign students fund the American education system, right? They don't get government-backed loans. They pay the full price out of their pocket.
They pay a higher price than many students because they pay out-of-state tuition rates, but they certainly don't pay the full cost out of their own pocket. The taxpayer is still kicking in the difference just like they pay the difference for any other out-of-state student.
And when you consider graduate students, they typically get stipends from either grants or state money (taxpayers), so they are paying no more for their education than any other out-of-state grad student, and since some universities classify stipend-funded graduate students as in-state they pay quite a bit less than the other out-of-state-ers.
So, no, foreign students do NOT fund the education system, the taxpayers do. Foreign students tend to pay out-of-state rates which, while higher, still aren't paying the whole cost.
Actually, she is kicking herself out. She was allowed to come here by accepting the condition that her stay could not exceed 6 years. Now the six years are up and it is time to fulfill the final condition of her original entry permit. It's sad, but she chose this option.
We're in a period of unemployment. The fact she has a $50k job and is paying taxes is nice, but if she leaves perhaps someone already here will get the job, make $50k (or more) a year, pay taxes, and stop getting unemployment insurance payments. This local will not have the limit of working for just one company, can use this job as a step to a better, higher taxpaying one, and then reopen this job for another local to pay taxes on their income. At worst, any training this local gets isn't going to be forced to leave the country after 3 or 6 years and will stay in-country. As a local, he'll be a better role model for local students than "one of them foreigners comin' here to take all the jobs" would be.
If we're going to base our immigration policy on "has a job and pays taxes", then immigrants will lose every time.
Claiming that pilots are going to 'freak out' and perform "extreme measures" whenever they get a traffic conflict advisory certainly is trying to create fear, uncertainty and doubt. They've been trained how to deal with this. It isn't a 'freak out' kind of situation by any means.
Yes, part of the current training is to "follow the TCAS and ignore the human controller", but that's not "freaking out".
You could grab the antenna and point it higher or lower to change the slope or you could just send a strong 90 Hz modulated signal and the cockpit indication will always be "descend - you are high" even at ground level.
As I already pointed out, if you do this then the pilot will be absolutely certain that there is a problem with the ILS because he will be told he's above the glideslope even before he intercepts it -- and he will always intercept the glideslope from below. It's part of the training for IFR pilots. Watch the needle on the GS to see it come down towards center and then start a descent to keep it there. If you haven't intercepted the GS yet and it says "too high", something is broken and you don't use the GS. If authorized, you can fly the ILS as a LOC approach and then you'll descend based on your altimeter reading. Even if somehow you get a bad BP setting* and your pressure altimeter is off, the radar altimeter will be telling you AGL and you'll know you are too low.
The error will become glaringly obvious when you reach the FAF. That's the point in space where you know your 3-D position based on ILS and another nav aid (compass locator/NDB/marker beacon/VOR radial) and you cross-check your altitude -- and if the ILS is wrong the altitude will be wrong, telling you that something isn't right.
* Yes, the bad guys could have hijacked the tower frequency and told you a new altimeter setting, but you will have gotten the current setting from the ATIS or approach controller well before you talk to the tower, and if the setting changes by a large amount you have good reason to question it. That still leaves the radar altimeter as a backup.
And in the case of DH2, bury the transmitter 100' below ground or something.
Easier to put it 1000' prior to the TDZ. That would put the TDZE below ground. And the point about ignoring the radar/pressure altimeter is also valid, as is one that they'd have to ignore the ILS FAF altitude (final approach fix, a 3-d point in space defined by glideslope, localizer and one other lateral fix) which has a published altitude and is part of the final approach checklist. And they'd have to ignore the DH, which is the altitude (radar or pressure) at which they must either have the runway/environment in sight or cannot descend further.
ILS is a fixed installation and must be physically moved to affect the glide slope.
Actually, I think you can change the angle (slope) of the glideslope by changing the modulation levels of the tones on the two radio beams, and theoretically there could be an obstruction that would intrude in the flight path if you lowered it a degree. I don't know the TERPS (approach designer) criteria for protected zones.
However, this would screw the glideslope intercept altitude shown on the approach and the pilot would know something is wrong if he's paying attention, and this is one of the points of the approach he's supposed to pay attention to. At least I was taught to verify that I was intercepting at the right altitude (or passing through that altitude at the marker/locator if I intercepted higher.)
Changing slope, maybe, but changing the intercept -- no. That's fixed at a point just past the antennas. Not at the antennas, since they are above ground and non-zero distance apart, but at a point following the glideslope angle behind them.
This would in return cause all sorts of alarms to go off and maybe cause the pilots to freak out and take extreme measures.
Thanks for the FUD. Pilots who fly aircraft with these systems have training to know how to deal with collision avoidance alerts and they don't "freak out" every time one happens, and the measures are rarely extreme.
They were executing a man in the middle attack against aircraft and their ground based navigation infrastructure.
A MITM attack requires intercepting the original message and replacing it with a modified version. That's not what was happening in DH2. In DH2 they were allegedly modifying the original message itself, in a way that is ridiculously impossible.
A MITM would have the black hats intercepting the ILS radio signals and modifying them. There would be no need to do that, since all you need is the ability to transmit your own ILS signal. That would have required the physical presence of a transmitter several hundred feet prior to the threshold in order to put the TDZE below ground. You cannot do that by simply changing the signals transmitted by the FAA ILS system itself.
Aaaaand they were moving the touchdown zone elevation below ground, which is not a function of the signals being transmitted but of the physical location of the transmitting antennas. In fact, the entire ILS system is based on the physical properties of the antennas (bolted in place).
Now, I suppose you could put the high beam audio onto the low beam and vice versa IF the transmitters were computer controlled (and they almost certainly aren't.). All that would do is create confusion as the pilot intercepted the glideslope and noticed that he was flying into the glideslope from below yet the instrument said he was intercepting it from above. I don't think that would flag the display, but it certainly would have the pilot ignoring the ILS at least, and going around as a precaution.
Was he reading something on the screen? Communication.
You know, sometimes, when you deal with the law, you actually have to read an entire sentence of words and connect them all together to get the real meaning of the law. You can't just look at the pages one word at a time. Sometimes, you even have to read two entire sentences. On rare occasions, an entire section. Like, sometimes, the law says "it is against the law to do A". And then the next subsection says "by 'doing A' we mean...." and then they spell it out. You don't get to interpret what they mean by "doing A" when the next sentence tells you what they mean by "doing A".
And sometimes, you'll find a later section that says "the part about it being illegal to do A doesn't apply if...", so even if you interpret the first two sentences together, you need the third sentence or fourth to know that someone isn't guilty of "doing A" because he's exempt from the prohibition. (That means, the law says he can do it.)
And then, sometimes, you have to realize that if the law doesn't say "it is against the law" to do what you just did, it really isn't against the law. So, if the law doesn't say "it is illegal to look at a navigation display on an cellphone", then it really isn't illegal to look at a navigating display on a cellphone.
So, maybe he was "communicating" when he looked at a GPS. Maybe the GPS was showing him text (probably not). But he was not communicating with a person, and the law is explicit in defining the action that it prohibits.
You may disagree with the conclusion, but your argument is using logic that the law does not recognize and cannot consider.
You're saying that "the law" cannot read "the law" and consider "the law" when determining guilt of an accused party. That's pathetic. "My argument" is based on reading the law; your's is based on reading word by word and saying that any word that fits means he's guilty.
I happen to agree with your conclusion -- that this is something that should be fixed.
Now I know you're making things up. I did not come up with the conclusion that the law needs to be fixed. I think the law is fine as it stands. It's the JUDGE that needs to smack with a two by four to get him to pay attention to his job and the law as it is written. Not just one word at a time, but the entire section.
How would it look if Gumshoe Freddy tried to hack a cell phone tower and crapped an entire communities' access? 911 calls that go nowhere, customer service lines jammed, people stranded because their GPS glitched out...
If Gumshoe Freddy was able to hack a cellphone tower and cause somone's GPS to "glitch out", I'd say Gumshoe Freddy was a remarkably skilled hacker. GPS and cellphones use entirely different sets of frequencies, and I doubt that you could coerce a cellphone tower into transmitting on a GPS frequency no matter how good you are at it. Maybe those cell transmitters have a DDS system that can go where the GPS lives, but I doubt the amps or combiners would pass the signal. They kinda have to be selective enough so that the transmitted signal doesn't block the received one, so transmitting out of band is not going to be highly efficient if possible at all.
For what? I can walk into a cell phone store and get a cell phone "mini cell" to put in my house to help with reception. FCC approved. I don't need a license to do that. Unless he's causing harmful interference to a licensed broadcaster and the broadcaster reports it, the FCC isn't going to do anything.
You can buy a type certificated cell phone mini cell because the cell phone companies have agreed to allow it and the FCC has created a specification for what they can do and manufacturers have to meet that spec. They aren't just deciding on their own say so that they can do this.
You don't have to be causing interference to a licensed broadcaster before the FCC cares, all you have to be doing is causing interference. True, most cases come to the attention of the FCC because the licensee complains, but the FCC can act without a complaint. You don't think Verizon or any of the other cell phone companies would complain about someone creating interference publicly?
The FCC is an administrative government entity. It is not really law enforcement in any meaningful sense.
That would be news to the FCC Enforcement Bureau, and the people to whom they've issued notices of apparent liability and levied fines.
The judge is only allowed to look at the relevant law, and decide whether a given set of circumstances meets that or not. In this case, the judge is not over-stepping.
Did you actually read the law? Here's the primary prohibitive statement from that law:
23123.5. (a) A person shall not drive a motor vehicle while using an electronic wireless communications device to write, send, or read a text-based ( )1 communication,...
Was the defendant using a device to write, send or read a text-based communication? No. Therefore, he cannot be guilty of violation of this section of the law. Period. End of consideration.
But he was doing something with text, right? Here's the relevant definition of "text-based communication":
(b) As used in this section "write, send, or read a text-based communication" means using an electronic wireless communications device to manually communicate with any person...
Was he communicating with a person? No. He does not meet the definition of "text-based communication". Not guilty.
The law, as written, doesn't account for other uses of a phone, possibly owing to the fact that the people who wrote it didn't have the modern phone in mind when they wrote it. The law is out of date,
Now I know you didn't read the law. It was amended effective Jan. 1, 2013. That's three months ago, plus a few days. That's what you call "out of date"? You don't think they had "modern phones" four months ago? Maybe 12 months when they wrote the law or the amendments? I know, it is California, but I think they have reasonably modern technology available there. After all, we're talking about someone using a GPS in a phone, in California.
The judge is only there to apply those laws, not question their sanity, relevance, or modernity.
The law clearly covers text-based communication. This person did not perform text-based communication. When a judge says "well, text-based communication is against the law because it is distracting, and using a GPS is distracting too, so this law clearly covers using a GPS..." he's flat out wrong. He's writing law, not interpreting it. The legislature could easily have amended this law last year to include all kinds of things AND CHOSE NOT TO. And clearly the goal was not to keep everyone from touching a phone while driving, since the law allows touching the phone while driving.
No matter how justified that deterrent is made (by creating it as a law). To stop the most determined people from doing what they will do.
The title is misleading because it implies that the law is intended to be a deterrent, but the summary makes it clear that the law being talked about deals with allowing the sharing of information about the attacks. So, it's not another law making DDoS illegal, it's a law allowing information about DDoS to be passed around.
Yes, another deterrent law would be useless. A law that allows those who are being attacked to share data about how they are being attacked is not.
But as it stands now, banks should be left out in the cold to defend themselves, and in ways that don't violate our laws.
Some of those banks have my money in them, and those that don't have FDIC/etc insurance that means their losses are covered by my tax dollars. So you are patently wrong about leaving them out in the cold. There are too many innocent parties that are harmed by attacks on banks for you to have such a callous attitude.
Not to worry, when you want a high-squeaky voice a hundred years hence, you'll just go down to the local PartyTime store and pay someone to kick you in the nads.
No, you'll just walk outside and siphon some gas out of someone's hydrogen vehicle. You'll get an even better squeaky voice, but don't want to do this around anyone who smokes, or owns a lighter
On the other hand... "Hey, Kendall, that was a neat way to change your voice. Do it again." <sound of flicking bic> <sound of exploding Kendall>
And wealth is not income. What's your point? I suspect it is that you think taxation should be on wealth and not income, and that the excess tax revenues should be handed over to the ones who pay the least in the wealth taxes.
Might I point out that the wealth that came from last year's income has already been taxed, and that taxing it a second time because it has become "wealth" is ridiculously unfair. You would be punishing people who are wise with their money and don't just fritter it away on parties and non-tangible goods. I.e., someone who makes $100 million a year and spends it all on coke and round the world trips would pay nothing in wealth taxes while contributing nothing to the growth of the economy, while someone who makes the same $100 million but invests it in building businesses that employ people does pay more in wealth taxes. You're promoting the wrong kind of behavior. As long as you admit that you want this to happen, ok.
When I report my income, do I really report all my income or is much of the real income available to me hidden in deferrals, tax free municipals, etc?
I don't know. Do you fill out your forms honestly or do you cheat? On my forms, I have to list it all. I expect you use the same forms and you have to list it all, too.
Every businessman I know writes off things which personally benefit him be it the yacht (qualifies as a second home), the vacation place, the golf club, the charity deduction (designed to provide positive exposure for his business), the gas for his truck, the company car he commutes in, etc.
So you know a lot of criminals for things like yachts and second homes. There is no law that says you cannot write off things that you get some benefit from, but the benefits are limited. Charity is an example of something you can get benefit from (positive karma/advertising) no matter who you are. The goal there is to promote charitable giving. Does the charity get less if the giver tells people he gives?
The poor have no such investments or write-offs. So their reported matches the real.
No poor person has ever forgotten to include some income on his tax form. Right. And I hate to tell you , but write-offs are write-offs because you write them down and then deduct them. I still can't see what your point is supposed to be. Rich people have deductions that poor people don't get to take advantage of. Ok. When I rented, I couldn't deduct home mortgage interest. So what? I didn't have any home mortgage interest to deduct. When they were handing out tax credits for electric cars or turning in junkers I didn't buy an electric car or turn in a junker so I didn't get that credit. Should I complain about that, or just accept that I didn't get that credit because I didn't have the expense?
I filed my taxes the other day, I was shocked at the low % amount of tax relative to even reported income.
So, here's the crux of the matter: did you write a check larger than you legally had to, or did you send in just the amount you were shocked was so low? If the latter, then I suggest that the shock you felt wasn't very strong.
So I question the stats of tax paid versus income percentages because if one of those figures isn't the same (real) for all the strata being compared, you get a very false picture.
You could click on the links I provided to the data and see for yourself, but I can tell you it was AGI amount for everyone. Apples to apples. That's the amount after you write it all down and then subtract the things that pretty much anyone who has that kind of income can subtract. That's what I would consider "real" income, since a lot of what you deduct isn't stuff you can spend.
They pay a lower proportion of their wealth than the poor do.
Is there some significance to the italics? And, so what? The income taxes are not wealth taxes, they are income taxes. The rich pay a MUCH higher percentage of their income in taxes than the poor do.
As well they should. They haven't benefited much from the way our society is arranged,
First, nobody said they should pay more in taxes. I was pointing out that those talk about people who pay no taxes are usually talking about exactly the wrong group. And second, if you think they haven't benefited from our society, then I suggest you look at many of the other places in the world where the poor really don't benefit from the society in which they live.
Those who have benefitted the most--the rich--should shoulder most of the burden.
It would cheapen the gift and isn't worth the effort to me.
So what you're saying is that it would cost more in your time than it would recover in money. Ok, that's a fair trade. While you aren't making your monetary tax liability the least it can be, you are reaching a minimum total cost to the process.
your straw man notwithstanding,
It's not my straw man. I'm not the one who thinks that those awful rich are paying nothing. Other people have made that claim.
I think most folks want fairness.
I think most folks think it is fair that they pay less and other pay more, for some set of "others", whether their feelings about fair meet any reasonable test. Usually it's "those evil rich people". "Fair" is a rather nebulous and subjective term, so you can pretty much say you're for "fair taxes" and get away with it no matter what your tax scheme is.
If the rich make the majority of the money (which they most certainly do) they should pay the majority of the taxes.
They already do. Top 10% pay 71% of the taxes and make 45% of the money. So, the top 10% don't quite make the majority of the money, but they pay much much more than the majority of the taxes.
You do realize this conversation is about people who are hiding their wealth in offshore accounts, to illegally make their tax liability appear lower than it actually is?
No, I don't realize that, because it isn't true. It is common parlance to claim that anyone who uses legal means to reduce their tax liability, as long as they are rich, are "tax dodgers" or cheats. This conversation is about people who have used some means of moving money around to lower tax liabilities, but isn't limited to illegal activities. If you RTFA (a novel concept here), you'll see: "There was also plenty of information related to legal offshore dealings. Offshore investments aren't illicit as long as they are not used to evade taxes or launder money." A further comment was along the lines of "needing to plug the holes", which means making what is currently legal illegal. That's how you "plug" the holes.
Everyone wants to make their tax liability the least it can legally be. It is not unethical or immoral to do that, whether you make $1/year or $1 billion/year. And, as I've pointed out in other places, those awful rich who seem to be getting away with paying nothing actually seem to be paying a large share of the burden when you look at the actual numbers.
If you are taking in 40% of the income of the entire nation, you should expect to pay 40% of the tax of that entire nation.
From here, for 2009 the top 1% by percentile paid 36.73% of the income taxes. The top 50% paid 97.75%.
That's not exactly what you said, so let's look here for 2010. From table 1, we see that the top 10% of filers earned 45% of the total income collectively and paid 71% of the income taxes. That's much more than your 40%/40% ratio.
The top 1% paid an average rate of 23.39%. Not 0%, not 15%. They had 18.9% of the total income but paid 37.4% of the income tax revenues. Almost double what a flat tax would have cost them. And even though they didn't make 40% of the wealth, they paid almost 40% of the taxes.
And many would like to pay next to nothing and still enjoy all the benefits of a functioning democracy.
And whose fault is it if their legal tax liability is "next to nothing"?
I think you will find that most of the hated rich people don't pay "next to nothing". In fact, most of the figures show that those people pay a vastly inordinate amount of the tax bill. It is the lowest income people who pay next to nothing, and in some cases, get money back.
We call those people freeloaders.
Be careful with the namecalling. It doesn't add much to the discussion, and it may boomerang on you.
Some people refuse to change the tax code and get rid of the 4,825,025 loopholes that exist today.
Most people don't want a change to the tax code to remove the dozen or so "loopholes" that they use. Enough people's set of a dozen will create a union of 4,000,000.
I question the fairness of such modifications anyway. Many tax
"loopholes" are created as a means of social engineering. For example, the mortgage interest deduction. It was created to promote home ownership. Many people (myself included) considered this deduction when I decided to buy a house. Doesn't it seem a bit unfair to tell people "buy a house, here, we'll sweeten the pot to help you", and then say "you're a tax cheat because you use a loophole and we're taking it away"? This fairness issue exists with any long-term investment based deductions where someone makes a 30 year decision based on existing policy. Things like "buy a green car and get an immediate deduction" don't have that problem.
Of course, the tax loophole cleaner-uppers have a bit of a tough row to hoe when they label their proposals like 'fair tax' and then misrepresent the percentages and that it really hits a lot of people that aren't their target. They tell people that they'll be better off with the new tax and hope that most people don't bother running the numbers to see for themselves. (Every "fair tax" that I've seen would raise my taxes by a considerable amount, and I'm certainly not in the target zone for the hated wealthy.)
Most people want to pay only the minimum amount of taxes that they are legally required to pay. Jackson/Hewitt and HR Block base their entire businesses on this.
Most people talk a good talk about how taxes do so much for everyone and are such a wonderful thing, but they are usually referring to taxes paid by other people and not themselves. Very few of these people add a few hundred dollars to their tax payments just to help promote the general welfare, etc.
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Sure - there are some diffiuculties to pulling this off.
Do you think there are some difficulties with pulling off a hack where a bad guy turns a knob and the ILS glideslope moves downward as a whole 100 or 200 feet? Really? That's what they did in the movie. They didn't change the slope, they changed the intercept, in terms of a linear equation.
Say you do nothing until the plane is about 400' AGL and then send 90hz and the plane is flying a coupled approach.
So the GS goes fully offscale in a fraction of a second and the flight computer faithfully follows it, even though it is no longer providing course guidance. And the GS receiver doesn't notice that it is no longer receiving the other tone?
But - once again - a lot of people seem to think the airplane uses some kind of DF gear to aim itself at the antenna.
I said nothing of the kind, so arguing with me about it is ridiculous.
BTW - ever get a false glide slope? Sometimes you get a 6, 9, 12, 15, etc. degree reflections that result in an incredible descent rate if you try and follow them.
This is precisely the reason for the FAF and/or glideslope intercept information on the approach plate. Yes, you can find the sidelobes from the directional antennas, but guess where the INTERCEPT still is. Right -- at the TDZ and the TDZE. And guess what, too? If you've been properly trained you'll notice that you are having to descend much faster than you should be or have pulled the power back too much and you'll know something is wrong well before you hit the ground. "Gee, in this aircraft I pull the power back to 1800 RPM and descend at 500 fpm at 90 knots to keep the normal glideslope on an ILS, but today I'm at 1500 rpm and 1000 fpm at 100 knots. I guess everything is ok..."
I guess a major part of the problem might be, that there is no penalty for blocking too much.
Did you miss that this block is on one IP address? That there are 1215 virtual hosts running at this one address? How can you block less than one IP address at a router? You'd have to do deep enough packet inspection to look at the virtual hostname header in any HTTP request, and the RCPT TO in any SMTP transaction. Should there be packet filtering at that level?
since we don't even know what content triggered the blocking. And that may actually be the largest problem with this sort of blocking.
That's right, we don't know which of the 1215 domain names hosted the content that justified the block. But we can know that the fact that YOU personally don't know what the content was isn't really the largest problem with blocking things.
You realize that foreign students fund the American education system, right? They don't get government-backed loans. They pay the full price out of their pocket.
They pay a higher price than many students because they pay out-of-state tuition rates, but they certainly don't pay the full cost out of their own pocket. The taxpayer is still kicking in the difference just like they pay the difference for any other out-of-state student.
And when you consider graduate students, they typically get stipends from either grants or state money (taxpayers), so they are paying no more for their education than any other out-of-state grad student, and since some universities classify stipend-funded graduate students as in-state they pay quite a bit less than the other out-of-state-ers.
So, no, foreign students do NOT fund the education system, the taxpayers do. Foreign students tend to pay out-of-state rates which, while higher, still aren't paying the whole cost.
And now she's likely to get kicked out.
Actually, she is kicking herself out. She was allowed to come here by accepting the condition that her stay could not exceed 6 years. Now the six years are up and it is time to fulfill the final condition of her original entry permit. It's sad, but she chose this option.
We're in a period of unemployment. The fact she has a $50k job and is paying taxes is nice, but if she leaves perhaps someone already here will get the job, make $50k (or more) a year, pay taxes, and stop getting unemployment insurance payments. This local will not have the limit of working for just one company, can use this job as a step to a better, higher taxpaying one, and then reopen this job for another local to pay taxes on their income. At worst, any training this local gets isn't going to be forced to leave the country after 3 or 6 years and will stay in-country. As a local, he'll be a better role model for local students than "one of them foreigners comin' here to take all the jobs" would be.
If we're going to base our immigration policy on "has a job and pays taxes", then immigrants will lose every time.
Actually, it is not FUD.
Claiming that pilots are going to 'freak out' and perform "extreme measures" whenever they get a traffic conflict advisory certainly is trying to create fear, uncertainty and doubt. They've been trained how to deal with this. It isn't a 'freak out' kind of situation by any means.
Yes, part of the current training is to "follow the TCAS and ignore the human controller", but that's not "freaking out".
You could grab the antenna and point it higher or lower to change the slope or you could just send a strong 90 Hz modulated signal and the cockpit indication will always be "descend - you are high" even at ground level.
As I already pointed out, if you do this then the pilot will be absolutely certain that there is a problem with the ILS because he will be told he's above the glideslope even before he intercepts it -- and he will always intercept the glideslope from below. It's part of the training for IFR pilots. Watch the needle on the GS to see it come down towards center and then start a descent to keep it there. If you haven't intercepted the GS yet and it says "too high", something is broken and you don't use the GS. If authorized, you can fly the ILS as a LOC approach and then you'll descend based on your altimeter reading. Even if somehow you get a bad BP setting* and your pressure altimeter is off, the radar altimeter will be telling you AGL and you'll know you are too low.
The error will become glaringly obvious when you reach the FAF. That's the point in space where you know your 3-D position based on ILS and another nav aid (compass locator/NDB/marker beacon/VOR radial) and you cross-check your altitude -- and if the ILS is wrong the altitude will be wrong, telling you that something isn't right.
* Yes, the bad guys could have hijacked the tower frequency and told you a new altimeter setting, but you will have gotten the current setting from the ATIS or approach controller well before you talk to the tower, and if the setting changes by a large amount you have good reason to question it. That still leaves the radar altimeter as a backup.
And in the case of DH2, bury the transmitter 100' below ground or something.
Easier to put it 1000' prior to the TDZ. That would put the TDZE below ground. And the point about ignoring the radar/pressure altimeter is also valid, as is one that they'd have to ignore the ILS FAF altitude (final approach fix, a 3-d point in space defined by glideslope, localizer and one other lateral fix) which has a published altitude and is part of the final approach checklist. And they'd have to ignore the DH, which is the altitude (radar or pressure) at which they must either have the runway/environment in sight or cannot descend further.
ILS is a fixed installation and must be physically moved to affect the glide slope.
Actually, I think you can change the angle (slope) of the glideslope by changing the modulation levels of the tones on the two radio beams, and theoretically there could be an obstruction that would intrude in the flight path if you lowered it a degree. I don't know the TERPS (approach designer) criteria for protected zones.
However, this would screw the glideslope intercept altitude shown on the approach and the pilot would know something is wrong if he's paying attention, and this is one of the points of the approach he's supposed to pay attention to. At least I was taught to verify that I was intercepting at the right altitude (or passing through that altitude at the marker/locator if I intercepted higher.)
Changing slope, maybe, but changing the intercept -- no. That's fixed at a point just past the antennas. Not at the antennas, since they are above ground and non-zero distance apart, but at a point following the glideslope angle behind them.
This would in return cause all sorts of alarms to go off and maybe cause the pilots to freak out and take extreme measures.
Thanks for the FUD. Pilots who fly aircraft with these systems have training to know how to deal with collision avoidance alerts and they don't "freak out" every time one happens, and the measures are rarely extreme.
They were executing a man in the middle attack against aircraft and their ground based navigation infrastructure.
A MITM attack requires intercepting the original message and replacing it with a modified version. That's not what was happening in DH2. In DH2 they were allegedly modifying the original message itself, in a way that is ridiculously impossible.
A MITM would have the black hats intercepting the ILS radio signals and modifying them. There would be no need to do that, since all you need is the ability to transmit your own ILS signal. That would have required the physical presence of a transmitter several hundred feet prior to the threshold in order to put the TDZE below ground. You cannot do that by simply changing the signals transmitted by the FAA ILS system itself.
Now, I suppose you could put the high beam audio onto the low beam and vice versa IF the transmitters were computer controlled (and they almost certainly aren't.). All that would do is create confusion as the pilot intercepted the glideslope and noticed that he was flying into the glideslope from below yet the instrument said he was intercepting it from above. I don't think that would flag the display, but it certainly would have the pilot ignoring the ILS at least, and going around as a precaution.
But move the TDZE down? Impossible.
Was he reading something on the screen? Communication.
You know, sometimes, when you deal with the law, you actually have to read an entire sentence of words and connect them all together to get the real meaning of the law. You can't just look at the pages one word at a time. Sometimes, you even have to read two entire sentences. On rare occasions, an entire section. Like, sometimes, the law says "it is against the law to do A". And then the next subsection says "by 'doing A' we mean ...." and then they spell it out. You don't get to interpret what they mean by "doing A" when the next sentence tells you what they mean by "doing A".
And sometimes, you'll find a later section that says "the part about it being illegal to do A doesn't apply if ...", so even if you interpret the first two sentences together, you need the third sentence or fourth to know that someone isn't guilty of "doing A" because he's exempt from the prohibition. (That means, the law says he can do it.)
And then, sometimes, you have to realize that if the law doesn't say "it is against the law" to do what you just did, it really isn't against the law. So, if the law doesn't say "it is illegal to look at a navigation display on an cellphone", then it really isn't illegal to look at a navigating display on a cellphone.
So, maybe he was "communicating" when he looked at a GPS. Maybe the GPS was showing him text (probably not). But he was not communicating with a person, and the law is explicit in defining the action that it prohibits.
You may disagree with the conclusion, but your argument is using logic that the law does not recognize and cannot consider.
You're saying that "the law" cannot read "the law" and consider "the law" when determining guilt of an accused party. That's pathetic. "My argument" is based on reading the law; your's is based on reading word by word and saying that any word that fits means he's guilty.
I happen to agree with your conclusion -- that this is something that should be fixed.
Now I know you're making things up. I did not come up with the conclusion that the law needs to be fixed. I think the law is fine as it stands. It's the JUDGE that needs to smack with a two by four to get him to pay attention to his job and the law as it is written. Not just one word at a time, but the entire section.
How would it look if Gumshoe Freddy tried to hack a cell phone tower and crapped an entire communities' access? 911 calls that go nowhere, customer service lines jammed, people stranded because their GPS glitched out...
If Gumshoe Freddy was able to hack a cellphone tower and cause somone's GPS to "glitch out", I'd say Gumshoe Freddy was a remarkably skilled hacker. GPS and cellphones use entirely different sets of frequencies, and I doubt that you could coerce a cellphone tower into transmitting on a GPS frequency no matter how good you are at it. Maybe those cell transmitters have a DDS system that can go where the GPS lives, but I doubt the amps or combiners would pass the signal. They kinda have to be selective enough so that the transmitted signal doesn't block the received one, so transmitting out of band is not going to be highly efficient if possible at all.
For what? I can walk into a cell phone store and get a cell phone "mini cell" to put in my house to help with reception. FCC approved. I don't need a license to do that. Unless he's causing harmful interference to a licensed broadcaster and the broadcaster reports it, the FCC isn't going to do anything.
You can buy a type certificated cell phone mini cell because the cell phone companies have agreed to allow it and the FCC has created a specification for what they can do and manufacturers have to meet that spec. They aren't just deciding on their own say so that they can do this.
You don't have to be causing interference to a licensed broadcaster before the FCC cares, all you have to be doing is causing interference. True, most cases come to the attention of the FCC because the licensee complains, but the FCC can act without a complaint. You don't think Verizon or any of the other cell phone companies would complain about someone creating interference publicly?
The FCC is an administrative government entity. It is not really law enforcement in any meaningful sense.
That would be news to the FCC Enforcement Bureau, and the people to whom they've issued notices of apparent liability and levied fines.
The judge is only allowed to look at the relevant law, and decide whether a given set of circumstances meets that or not. In this case, the judge is not over-stepping.
Did you actually read the law? Here's the primary prohibitive statement from that law:
Was the defendant using a device to write, send or read a text-based communication? No. Therefore, he cannot be guilty of violation of this section of the law. Period. End of consideration.
But he was doing something with text, right? Here's the relevant definition of "text-based communication":
Was he communicating with a person? No. He does not meet the definition of "text-based communication". Not guilty.
The law, as written, doesn't account for other uses of a phone, possibly owing to the fact that the people who wrote it didn't have the modern phone in mind when they wrote it. The law is out of date,
Now I know you didn't read the law. It was amended effective Jan. 1, 2013. That's three months ago, plus a few days. That's what you call "out of date"? You don't think they had "modern phones" four months ago? Maybe 12 months when they wrote the law or the amendments? I know, it is California, but I think they have reasonably modern technology available there. After all, we're talking about someone using a GPS in a phone, in California.
The judge is only there to apply those laws, not question their sanity, relevance, or modernity.
The law clearly covers text-based communication. This person did not perform text-based communication. When a judge says "well, text-based communication is against the law because it is distracting, and using a GPS is distracting too, so this law clearly covers using a GPS..." he's flat out wrong. He's writing law, not interpreting it. The legislature could easily have amended this law last year to include all kinds of things AND CHOSE NOT TO. And clearly the goal was not to keep everyone from touching a phone while driving, since the law allows touching the phone while driving.
No matter how justified that deterrent is made (by creating it as a law). To stop the most determined people from doing what they will do.
The title is misleading because it implies that the law is intended to be a deterrent, but the summary makes it clear that the law being talked about deals with allowing the sharing of information about the attacks. So, it's not another law making DDoS illegal, it's a law allowing information about DDoS to be passed around.
Yes, another deterrent law would be useless. A law that allows those who are being attacked to share data about how they are being attacked is not.
But as it stands now, banks should be left out in the cold to defend themselves, and in ways that don't violate our laws.
Some of those banks have my money in them, and those that don't have FDIC/etc insurance that means their losses are covered by my tax dollars. So you are patently wrong about leaving them out in the cold. There are too many innocent parties that are harmed by attacks on banks for you to have such a callous attitude.
Not to worry, when you want a high-squeaky voice a hundred years hence, you'll just go down to the local PartyTime store and pay someone to kick you in the nads.
No, you'll just walk outside and siphon some gas out of someone's hydrogen vehicle. You'll get an even better squeaky voice, but don't want to do this around anyone who smokes, or owns a lighter
On the other hand... "Hey, Kendall, that was a neat way to change your voice. Do it again." <sound of flicking bic> <sound of exploding Kendall>
Might I point out that the wealth that came from last year's income has already been taxed, and that taxing it a second time because it has become "wealth" is ridiculously unfair. You would be punishing people who are wise with their money and don't just fritter it away on parties and non-tangible goods. I.e., someone who makes $100 million a year and spends it all on coke and round the world trips would pay nothing in wealth taxes while contributing nothing to the growth of the economy, while someone who makes the same $100 million but invests it in building businesses that employ people does pay more in wealth taxes. You're promoting the wrong kind of behavior. As long as you admit that you want this to happen, ok.
When I report my income, do I really report all my income or is much of the real income available to me hidden in deferrals, tax free municipals, etc?
I don't know. Do you fill out your forms honestly or do you cheat? On my forms, I have to list it all. I expect you use the same forms and you have to list it all, too.
Every businessman I know writes off things which personally benefit him be it the yacht (qualifies as a second home), the vacation place, the golf club, the charity deduction (designed to provide positive exposure for his business), the gas for his truck, the company car he commutes in, etc.
So you know a lot of criminals for things like yachts and second homes. There is no law that says you cannot write off things that you get some benefit from, but the benefits are limited. Charity is an example of something you can get benefit from (positive karma/advertising) no matter who you are. The goal there is to promote charitable giving. Does the charity get less if the giver tells people he gives?
The poor have no such investments or write-offs. So their reported matches the real.
No poor person has ever forgotten to include some income on his tax form. Right. And I hate to tell you , but write-offs are write-offs because you write them down and then deduct them. I still can't see what your point is supposed to be. Rich people have deductions that poor people don't get to take advantage of. Ok. When I rented, I couldn't deduct home mortgage interest. So what? I didn't have any home mortgage interest to deduct. When they were handing out tax credits for electric cars or turning in junkers I didn't buy an electric car or turn in a junker so I didn't get that credit. Should I complain about that, or just accept that I didn't get that credit because I didn't have the expense?
I filed my taxes the other day, I was shocked at the low % amount of tax relative to even reported income.
So, here's the crux of the matter: did you write a check larger than you legally had to, or did you send in just the amount you were shocked was so low? If the latter, then I suggest that the shock you felt wasn't very strong.
So I question the stats of tax paid versus income percentages because if one of those figures isn't the same (real) for all the strata being compared, you get a very false picture.
You could click on the links I provided to the data and see for yourself, but I can tell you it was AGI amount for everyone. Apples to apples. That's the amount after you write it all down and then subtract the things that pretty much anyone who has that kind of income can subtract. That's what I would consider "real" income, since a lot of what you deduct isn't stuff you can spend.
They pay a lower proportion of their wealth than the poor do.
Is there some significance to the italics? And, so what? The income taxes are not wealth taxes, they are income taxes. The rich pay a MUCH higher percentage of their income in taxes than the poor do.
As well they should. They haven't benefited much from the way our society is arranged,
First, nobody said they should pay more in taxes. I was pointing out that those talk about people who pay no taxes are usually talking about exactly the wrong group. And second, if you think they haven't benefited from our society, then I suggest you look at many of the other places in the world where the poor really don't benefit from the society in which they live.
Those who have benefitted the most--the rich--should shoulder most of the burden.
They already do. Your problem is solved.
It would cheapen the gift and isn't worth the effort to me.
So what you're saying is that it would cost more in your time than it would recover in money. Ok, that's a fair trade. While you aren't making your monetary tax liability the least it can be, you are reaching a minimum total cost to the process.
your straw man notwithstanding,
It's not my straw man. I'm not the one who thinks that those awful rich are paying nothing. Other people have made that claim.
I think most folks want fairness.
I think most folks think it is fair that they pay less and other pay more, for some set of "others", whether their feelings about fair meet any reasonable test. Usually it's "those evil rich people". "Fair" is a rather nebulous and subjective term, so you can pretty much say you're for "fair taxes" and get away with it no matter what your tax scheme is.
If the rich make the majority of the money (which they most certainly do) they should pay the majority of the taxes.
They already do. Top 10% pay 71% of the taxes and make 45% of the money. So, the top 10% don't quite make the majority of the money, but they pay much much more than the majority of the taxes.
You do realize this conversation is about people who are hiding their wealth in offshore accounts, to illegally make their tax liability appear lower than it actually is?
No, I don't realize that, because it isn't true. It is common parlance to claim that anyone who uses legal means to reduce their tax liability, as long as they are rich, are "tax dodgers" or cheats. This conversation is about people who have used some means of moving money around to lower tax liabilities, but isn't limited to illegal activities. If you RTFA (a novel concept here), you'll see: "There was also plenty of information related to legal offshore dealings. Offshore investments aren't illicit as long as they are not used to evade taxes or launder money." A further comment was along the lines of "needing to plug the holes", which means making what is currently legal illegal. That's how you "plug" the holes.
Everyone wants to make their tax liability the least it can legally be. It is not unethical or immoral to do that, whether you make $1/year or $1 billion/year. And, as I've pointed out in other places, those awful rich who seem to be getting away with paying nothing actually seem to be paying a large share of the burden when you look at the actual numbers.
If you are taking in 40% of the income of the entire nation, you should expect to pay 40% of the tax of that entire nation.
From here, for 2009 the top 1% by percentile paid 36.73% of the income taxes. The top 50% paid 97.75%.
That's not exactly what you said, so let's look here for 2010. From table 1, we see that the top 10% of filers earned 45% of the total income collectively and paid 71% of the income taxes. That's much more than your 40%/40% ratio.
The top 1% paid an average rate of 23.39%. Not 0%, not 15%. They had 18.9% of the total income but paid 37.4% of the income tax revenues. Almost double what a flat tax would have cost them. And even though they didn't make 40% of the wealth, they paid almost 40% of the taxes.
And many would like to pay next to nothing and still enjoy all the benefits of a functioning democracy.
And whose fault is it if their legal tax liability is "next to nothing"?
I think you will find that most of the hated rich people don't pay "next to nothing". In fact, most of the figures show that those people pay a vastly inordinate amount of the tax bill. It is the lowest income people who pay next to nothing, and in some cases, get money back.
We call those people freeloaders.
Be careful with the namecalling. It doesn't add much to the discussion, and it may boomerang on you.
Some people refuse to change the tax code and get rid of the 4,825,025 loopholes that exist today.
Most people don't want a change to the tax code to remove the dozen or so "loopholes" that they use. Enough people's set of a dozen will create a union of 4,000,000.
I question the fairness of such modifications anyway. Many tax "loopholes" are created as a means of social engineering. For example, the mortgage interest deduction. It was created to promote home ownership. Many people (myself included) considered this deduction when I decided to buy a house. Doesn't it seem a bit unfair to tell people "buy a house, here, we'll sweeten the pot to help you", and then say "you're a tax cheat because you use a loophole and we're taking it away"? This fairness issue exists with any long-term investment based deductions where someone makes a 30 year decision based on existing policy. Things like "buy a green car and get an immediate deduction" don't have that problem.
Of course, the tax loophole cleaner-uppers have a bit of a tough row to hoe when they label their proposals like 'fair tax' and then misrepresent the percentages and that it really hits a lot of people that aren't their target. They tell people that they'll be better off with the new tax and hope that most people don't bother running the numbers to see for themselves. (Every "fair tax" that I've seen would raise my taxes by a considerable amount, and I'm certainly not in the target zone for the hated wealthy.)
Some people just don't want to pay taxes.
Most people want to pay only the minimum amount of taxes that they are legally required to pay. Jackson/Hewitt and HR Block base their entire businesses on this.
Most people talk a good talk about how taxes do so much for everyone and are such a wonderful thing, but they are usually referring to taxes paid by other people and not themselves. Very few of these people add a few hundred dollars to their tax payments just to help promote the general welfare, etc.