Did you somehow miss the entire discussion about loopholes?
Yes, because it wasn't there. "Cutting costs" by reducing spending and "raising taxes" were. And those were the only two items in the section I quoted and thus they are 'the issue' I was replying to.
Oh, wait, you just said loopholes were irrelevant...
You do have a reading comprehension problem, don't you? I said "There was nothing about removing loopholes". Do you see any mention of loopholes in what I quoted? No, you don't. And do you see me saying they are "irrelevant"? No, you don't.
... but now they are relevant, because you're talking about tactics like moving income offshore.
They are relevant because those tax laws you refer to as "loopholes" exist and will still exist when the tax RATES are increased. Nothing was said about "raise the rates and remove the loopholes." Just rates and revenue. Please read what is there and stop reading things that aren't.
You're really not good at this whole reading comprehension thing,
Apparently much better than you, since you seem to find words and concepts in what I, and other people, have written that aren't there. Like the following bit of nonsense you came up with:
seeing as you specifically argued against healthcare companies having any responsibility for the current prices,
I'll not bother continuing to respond until you can actually talk about things I've said and not what you want me to have said, n'k?
You've confused your own point in your anti-gov't frothing.
You must be replying to someone else, since I've said nothing anti-government here, and certainly not "frothing". I suspect, however, you are trying to be dismissive of an argument you have no rational response to by claiming that it is "frothing".
We've all ready established that auto insurance
Not talking here about auto insurance. Please keep up with the discussion.
The reality is that both you and the other guy are mandated to buy insurance.
So? The reason for the insurance YOU are forced to buy is not to protect YOU, it is to protect the other guy. That's one difference between the auto and health insurance mandates. I said that already, though.
Come now, do you really believe that?
Yes. Been there. Talked to people in that wonderful country called England about their black market medical system. Saw how well it covered "everyone" when I got sick there. Wasn't a pleasant experience.
The reality is that healthcare costs have been rising dramatically and the only ways to control costs is for gov't intervention in some form or another.
And the only possible intervention happens to be the method that you like and that mandates that everyone buys insurance, right? There is no other possible answer? Ok.
I would prefer a single payer system like the rest of the industrialized world,
Because that system works so well for the rest of the world -- they are happy accepting what they get because that's what they grew up with and don't know better. Like I said, been there, done that. Not as good as what we have.
And for the record, a system where EVERYONE who pays taxes is paying the bill is NOT a "single payer" system. Millions of payers, more like it, and paying whether they want to or not. And yet, this is/. where just the appearance of a loss of a liberty is cause for long threads about the jackboot thugs... and being forced to pay for everyone else's medical care isn't a loss of liberty at all.
Does it matter that it's state or federal if every state requires it?
Yes. What every state requires differs, and is controlled by the state legislature. It is also a function of the state, not the federal government. Read the Constitution sometime. That which is not enumerated herein is retained by the states. Where do you see "auto insurance" as part of the Constitution? Oh, right, it's Interstate Commerce.
Does it matter that it's required for you and "the other guy" when it's still required for both of you?
It is not required to cover you. It is required to cover the other guy. You are free to not have coverage for your vehicle or yourself. So yes, it does matter.
They both still cost you money to maintain and they're both supposed to save you money in the long run.
Really? You're all for the government "saving you money" by taking more and more of it away from you, because it is "the long run"? Having everyone pay more for health insurance saves me money in the long run when I have to find a black-market doctor to provide a service for cash because the service I need has been rationed out of existance to "save me money", or the providers have left the system because we were saving too much money for them to be able to make a living at it legally? How nice. Thanks so much.
Point one: the issue at hand is removing loopholes everywhere, not just in one jurisdiction. So unless the rich want to move between countries...
No, the "issue at hand" was a comment about raising tax rates and raising revenues. There was nothing about removing loopholes.
Even so, you're the only one talking about the rich moving to another country. If you care to notice, I said they'd take a different route to school -- or move their MANUFACTURING and PRODUCTION and other company functions to another country. Not themselves. But even so, the rich do move to other countries from time to time.
Point two: even if the loopholes weren't fixed consistently, the rich don't "just move" whenever tax rates rise.
Again, you're the only one talking about the rich moving. You have, of course, conveniently ignored the second option I mentioned -- reducing income by using the tax laws. Even if you don't think that the rich move their sources of income offshore (unlike most of the/. posters who seem to regularly rant about the movement of jobs overseas) they will pay more to an accountant to keep from paying more to the government.
Point three: Nothing is ever simple.
Yep, that's a good summary of what I said. "Raising rates" is not a simple way to "raise revenue", and has actually been shown to reduce revenue, for the reasons I stated but you failed to address while calling names. And the problems "socialized medicine" creates can hardly be called something as simple as "improve the medical quality of life", when demand exceeds supply and supply is rationed as a result.
And then you raise taxes. Just spending less today doesn't mean the cost of healthcare wont rise as the population grows larger and sicker. So just cutting costs without raising taxes wont work. You have to cut costs and increase revenue.
Which is it, please? Pick one, stick with it. Do you need to increase taxes or increase revenues?
The correct answer is B, increase revenues. Even JFK figured it out when he was president: confiscatory tax rates on the rich reduce revenues because the rich are rich but not stupid.
I'd use a car analogy, but I've got a better one. Let's say you are a kid who walks to school every day, and every day you pass by a bully who demands you give him part of your lunch money. Every day he demands a dime. You fork it over. It's only a dime, and you've still got enough to buy your lunch. Then he starts demanding a dollar. Wait a minute, that's a lot of money and you won't be able to buy your own lunch if you pay him.
You've got two options. You either pick a different way to school (move your factories and production overseas where taxes are lower), or start hiding your money so the bully thinks you don't have any and doesn't take what you clearly don't have (use the existing tax incentives and deductions to reduce AGI.)
Do you see the result common to both actions? Yes, the bully gets less revenue from a higher rate than from the lower. It has been shown time and time again. Like I said, even JFK figured it out.
... but defense of liberty is in the Constitution and corporations are an oppressive force. They diminish liberty, and this includes health insurance corporations.
Your existence diminishes my liberty, too. I want what you have. I am not free to take it from you. I want my LIBERTY!
Health insurance companies are not what drive costs up. It seems obvious, doesn't it? If costs were lower, they'd have to pay out less to cover you and more of what they take in would be profit. No, what drives costs up is MALPRACTICE insurance. The money the doctor pays so he won't be bankrupted by a simple mistake, or even by a procedure that went pefectly but didn't turn out the way the patient wanted. And the costs of the unnecessary tests that he orders because he doesn't want to miss that one in a million chance that you don't have the same cold that everyone else is coming in with and get sued by your estate. That money gets tacked on the bill you pay, and then onto the health insurance company.
No kidding. Before you know it, they'll make auto-insurance required by law, just like health insurance!
It is a shame that they no longer teach in schools the difference between state and federal governments and the division of responsibilities accorded each based on the US Constitution. That's got to be the only reason such a stupid comment like this would appear here.
For the sarcasm impaired: the auto insurance laws are STATE laws that require coverage to protect THE OTHER GUY sharing the road with you; the new health insurance law is a FEDERAL LAW that nobody could bother to read before they voted on it that applies to everyone except those who have enough political clout to get exempted from it.
The other difference is that the AUTO insurance laws don't force insurers to cover every trip to the mechanic or replacement of worn out parts, while the HEALTH insurance law does.
Later, special units were designed for use by The Weather Channel that would genlock and overlay the text onto the video.
I have one of those "special units" on my desk, and three more sitting in the lab. They were SGI O2s. Very expensive but very easy to do video with. A 180MHz processor could keep up with real-time video, because the video had its own hardware. There wasn't much incoming video to genlock to since the output was graphics, but genlocking to the cable clock was important to help with interference issues.
SGI was quite proud of the fact that their hardware was sitting in a lot of cable headends.
The cult of the stock option is a cargo cult. The lavish compensation package doesn't create a good CEO any more than building a runway will create planes.
Oooh, an aviation analogy instead of automotive. Very nice.
Lavish compensation will not create a good CEO. Very true. It will, however, reward (when that compensation is in options) one that works to keep the stock prices high. Just as you don't create planes by building a runway. If you build a very large and expensive runway, however, you will attract large and expensive airplanes, the owners of which are more likely to spend a lot of money at your airport.
A 1700 foot grass strip is good for Cessna 150-type aircraft. A 10,000 foot paved surface with a precision approach at each end will attract 747s filled with people who will buy trinkets and a company that will buy a lot of gas.
The very idea of giving stock options to high level executives is antithetical to the purpose of retaining quality executives who will make good decisions for the benefit of the company.
Very very wrong. If the company benefits, the value of the company stays high, which means the stock price stays high. That makes stock options worth even more.
Maybe you don't know how stock options work. An option means that you have the ability to buy stock at a fixed price (say, $1/share) even if the stock is currently trading at $1.10/share. If you are a good CEO and make the company worth more, the stock price will go up, but you can still buy shares at $1 each. If you are a bad CEO, the company goes bust, the stock plummets, and your ability to buy stock at $1/share is worthless. (I know -- as an employee I was given options as part of my hiring. The company tanked, the options were worthless.)
Now, you may be thinking of put options, where you are guaranteed a buyer for any stock you have at $1/share no matter how high or low the price goes. This is a wash for the CEO (and thus why it isn't the kind of options used in this context) because he gets the same amount of money for his 1000 shares whether the stock tanks or it stays the same. He only profits from the 1000 shares if the price goes up, but then, he doesn't need the option to sell at a higher price.
Spend 5 minutes arguing with almost any Google engineer, and you'll find that your question goes both ways. The sense of entitlement "because we're Google" can get appalling very quickly.
Same as the sense of entitlement that some have that 'because you have a website' grants them automatic privileges to index every page on that site, or have a scraper download every piece of information, or consume every CPU cycle available on that site generating on-demand content, or full right to try to send any malformed or malicious SQL statements that their little hearts desire. After all, it it is on the net, it belongs to them now.
Dear VISA: The microwave oven in the room I stayed in appeared to be in perfect working order when I left. If the microwave oven was damaged in any way by simply heating a towel in it for 30 seconds, then the microwave oven was obviously defective to start with, and any damages would be attributed to either the previous guest or normal wear and tear. I contest this charge, too."
Let's face it, I can keep this up for as long as the Hilton can. What they are counting on is their customers being business travellers whose accounting departments will simply pay the bill because it is cheaper than contesting it. I, on the other hand, am a vacationing curmudgeon who enjoys seeing large companies getting dinged for making ridiculous fraudulent charges.
"Dear VISA: I left every towel I was provided by that hotel in the room when I checked out. I did heat some of them up in the microwave so I could have a warm towel for my morning shower. Perhaps the hotel needs to actually count the towels and not just the number of working RFID tags, especially when they've provided the means, motive and opportunity for the destruction of the tag without damage to the towel itself. If any of the towels were missing, then the staff stole them, not me. I have no use for used, dirty towels. I have enough of them of my own already. I contest this charge."
Person C? That sicko needs help...off a tall cliff. We have no need for "them kind" in this world.
And person C's day job just happens to be conducting highly advanced research in the use of adult stem cells to cure Alzheimer's and several other diseases.
Be very careful who you start labelling as "them kind", because once YOU get labelled as one of "them kind" for whatever reason you might find yourself on the way to the top of the hill.
If no one viewed it, no one would make it, would they?
If no one PAID for it, nobody would make it. It's a business like any other. It costs money to run servers.
Well, ok, some would make it for the shear pleasure of making it -- those people would not care if you viewed it or not, they're going to make it. (If you are going to use that line of argument to support your claim that viewing is equivalent to producing, then you've just blown your first argument that "if nobody views it nobody would make it.") Some might make it for the fun of sharing. "You show me your's, I'll show you mine". That requires interaction between producers. But to claim that simply viewing something on a website provides that interaction and thus creates a demand, well, that's beyond reason.
Child molestation is a crime,
Let's see, an irrelevant part of an argument, is that a red herring or a straw man? Yes, child molestation is a crime. So is grand theft auto and murder. Looking at a picture of a child is not child molestation; looking at a picture of a car is not grand theft auto; looking at a picture of a dead body is not murder.
That's why the sex offender registries are important; many child porn viewers do actually act on their impulses.
And many of them do not. Many people like the feel of money, but many people do not rob banks to get it. Many people like the taste of caviar, but many people do not rob the upscale grocery store to steal it. Should every person who likes the feel of money be arrested for robbing a bank when they have never robbed a bank?
Do the research; find out how the correlations work.
Do the research and find out the difference between correlation and causation. Here's an important correlation: every child molester breathes through either his nose or mouth. (We'll dismiss the vanishingly small percentage of those who breath through a tracheotomy...) Do YOU breathe through your nose or mouth? AH HA! YOU are a child molester. I've proven it beyond any shadow of doubt because of the correlation! You can't argue against a correlation, can you?
Do you hear that knock on your door? It's the FBI. They're there to arrest you based on the correlation. Have a nice life, hope you make friends in the slammer.
If you pay someone to do a contract murder, you'll never see it, but you're a murderer in the same way as someone pulling the trigger.
And if you don't pay them to do a contract murder -- in fact, you never speak to the person or communicate anything to him in any way -- you'd have a very hard time convincing anyone that you committed a murder. Not even conspiracy.
Yes, if you buy kiddie pr0n from someone, you're a part of the chain. No question. Your money funds the system.
If you are just surfing free adult pr0n sites and come across a site with what looks like CP, you have not participated in any way in the creation of those images and should not be guilty of anything. Consent is not relevant because at no time did you do anything that required consent from someone who could not give it. You are not funding the system because you are paying nothing. If anything, whatever advertisers are on the site are, but you aren't.
Other porn is done (usually) with consenting adults, who make an informed choice. Children can't do that.
When you say "done", you mean "created". With that correction, yes, I agree fully. Children cannot consent to the creation of pr0n of themselves legally. (In actuality, yes, some of them probably have sufficient development to make a reasoned judgement, but the law assumes none of them do. I question the intelligence of a 14 year old who sexts a picture of herself to her boyfriend, but I wouldn't charge her with distribution of CP like some have.)
But going two steps further (from creation to distribution to simple posession) leaves the consent issue in the dust.
Perfect for those "my next class is on the other side of campus and I forgot my personal jetpack" times.
Yeah, buy three cans of pop, shake them really hard, and strap them on your back. Zoom zoom zoom, almost like a Mazda. Kinda messy for all those around you, and you have one hell of a carbon footprint...
Wow, that guy must have a lot of friends who know he likes Pepsi.
Verizon is currently running an ad campaign asking people to send email and text messages to some 110 year old woman, so she can have "a happy birthday".
Sure, a mailbox stuffed to capacity and a phone that can't be used because it is so busy getting incoming text messages, that would make a happy birthday for me, for sure.
How long until Pepsi does the same thing? "Send Velma a can of Pepsi for her birthday....". Hope she's not a diabetic.
Or better, someone does something like the old classified ad trick: "make $100 a week with no work, send $1 to... for details". "Send a Pepsi to... for details on how to never have to pay for a can of Pepsi again."
The original purpose of public universities was education for the public good, as a conservative as well, I see little public good in graduating 50 history majors for every electrical engineer. Yes the engineer will make more out of college, but they will also contribute more to the economy a through their work.
The original purpose of public universities was not to prepare people for the most lucrative jobs available. It was to provide an education to create a broad knowledge of subjects and a well educated populace.
Those 50 history majors will have a better understanding of where we came from and more understanding of where we will be going. As in "those who don't know history tend to repeat history". That's not a comment about being able to pass the final exam and needing to retake the class, it is a statement pertaining to repeating the mistakes of the past because you don't know they were tried before and failed. Chamberlain tried appeasement to prevent war, and that attempt failed. Those who don't know that, and why it failed, are likely to think about trying it today and a lot of people could die because they didn't know history.
If you want training for a job, go to a vocational school or community college.
It is my personal belief that societally, making STEM degrees cheaper to obtain is good for all parties involved and represents a solid investment by society.
You can, of course, make "STEM" degrees free by simply handing them out to every person who visits the appropriate website. I don't think that this would be a "solid investment" in anything at all. The degree program needs to provide the education first, the paper last, not the other way around. If that education takes more time (five years vs. four) or harder classes (quantum chemistry vs. "efficient use of aquatic resources") then that's what it takes.
I'm simply flabbergasted by the compaint a previous commenter made about STEM classes being harder and something needed to be done to keep people from dropping out because of it. What an idiotic way of solving the problem of lack of STEM degrees.
And then this from the GP:
The solution is to artificially make top-level education available at the cost to provide that education, not at what the student is willing to pay.
You are overlooking the tiny detail that the cost of a college education is heavily taxpayer subsidized and most, if not all, public universities. The students are already not willing to pay the price being charged in many cases; making the price equal the cost will simply drive more students away. It certainly will not solve the problem of too few STEM students, since the actual cost of STEM educations will be much higher (to pay for lab equipment and facilities) than it is today.
The problem comes when you have states like Michigan where the police are allegedly downloading information from a smart phone in a minute or two
Please stop spreading this nonsense. This isn't "insightful", it is inciteful. There are no allegations, at least no serious ones, that the Michigan State Police are doing any such thing. The only allegation is that they COULD do it because they have a piece of equipment that could do it.
Not even the ACLU has found anyone who has claimed they are doing it. All it would take it one person to stand up and say "this happened to me" and the ACLU would be all over it. They aren't. They're "investigating" the policies by putting in FOIA requests. The ACLU doesn't need FOIA, they need a victim, and apparently they haven't got even one of those to sue on behalf of.
The link you provide is just another one of the "they could be" flamebait articles. They "can" do this. That's all it says. Well, no shit. So can a lot of other people who have bought the CellBrite system. It makes no claims that it is happening. It doesn't even pretend to say that there is even one known victim of this "big problem", as you call it. It DOES try to make it an issue of minority rights by telling us, in essence, "think of the minorities this is happening to." Think of the children.
COULD DO is not the same as IS DOING. Until there is some shred of evidence that it IS being done, stop claiming it is.
I've seen books on Amazon before that were in the thousands of dollars - books that you can find at any used bookstore for 50 cents, we're not talking ultra-rare stuff here. So this isn't a new bug and they're bound to have had complaints many times before. I think this is the first time they've let the loop get this far though.
I've seen the same thing, but it was always in a context of a dozen different stores all selling the same used book. All but one would have a reasonable price. One, two, maybe five dollars. But one store would be above $1000. I could never figure it out, and the one time I sent email to the store asking why they were so high I didn't get an answer.
I assumed it had something to do with a money laundering operation.
I wonder why camera companies waste volume with SD cards and don't just put 32GB of flash on the MLB and call it a day.
Because photographers don't want to waste time during a picture shoot downloading all their photos through the USB port, or they want to be able to take some shots and hand the card to someone to process them while they keep the camera doing camera-like stuff.
The most expensive part of a camera is not the electronics, it's the optics. Making the optics sit idle while you deal with an electronic issue is big big waste of money and time.
The SD slot is an obsolete waste of product volume and complexity, and for some reason people (meaning people on Slashdot, not as a whole) don't seem to get it.
I don't "get it", because I use the SD slots on the devices I have to move data back and forth, and have compact storage for things I want to carry with me. Yes, it's hard to remember which card contains what, sometimes, but I've found the same problem with USB sticks. What I also like is that most of the SD slots my things have are completely internal, so there isn't anything sticking out of the device while I'm using one, unlike USB sticks which 'stick out' and get in the way.
I wasn't trying to disprove anything. I asked a question.
An AC posted a comment about the difference between government and private companies. You brought up the "private companies" in Iraq and Afghanistan, and asked how that applied to them. That would reasonably be seen as an attempt at disproving the difference, by presenting an example where there isn't one.
I answered your "question", which prompted an argument from you. Ok. You want to argue. You're still arguing.
No need to be a jerk.
So why be one? I answered your question. Do you not understand the answer, and why your example of a "private company" that has access to the powers of governments isn't applicable here?
I hear on the news and CNN and other articles is how much trouble these guys get in for their shoot 1st ask questions later actions, and yet nothing ever seems to happen. Are they exercising government policy when this stuff happens?
So the problem is you listen to CNN. If that was your question, you should have asked it.
CNN tries to make those companies look as bad as possible because that makes headlines and news and brings in viewers. They don't report on the results because that isn't making news and bringing in viewers. "Unfounded" and "unsupported allegation" doesn't warrant coverage. "Atrocity! Murder! Pillage! Rape! Violence! Bush's fault!" does.
So yes, when "these guys", as you call them, "shoot 1st ask questions later" and do "this stuff", as you portray it (in a typically biased way), they aren't acting under the color of authority, but when they do their job they are. They aren't acting as a private company. They are CONTRACTORS working for the GOVERNMENT. Like I said before.
Do you think that contractors YOU hire to work for YOU shouldn't have the authority to do the job YOU hired them to do in your stead? Why would a private company hired by the government be different?
Slashdot Mirror
Did you somehow miss the entire discussion about loopholes?
Yes, because it wasn't there. "Cutting costs" by reducing spending and "raising taxes" were. And those were the only two items in the section I quoted and thus they are 'the issue' I was replying to.
Oh, wait, you just said loopholes were irrelevant ...
You do have a reading comprehension problem, don't you? I said "There was nothing about removing loopholes". Do you see any mention of loopholes in what I quoted? No, you don't. And do you see me saying they are "irrelevant"? No, you don't.
... but now they are relevant, because you're talking about tactics like moving income offshore.
They are relevant because those tax laws you refer to as "loopholes" exist and will still exist when the tax RATES are increased. Nothing was said about "raise the rates and remove the loopholes." Just rates and revenue. Please read what is there and stop reading things that aren't.
You're really not good at this whole reading comprehension thing,
Apparently much better than you, since you seem to find words and concepts in what I, and other people, have written that aren't there. Like the following bit of nonsense you came up with:
seeing as you specifically argued against healthcare companies having any responsibility for the current prices,
I'll not bother continuing to respond until you can actually talk about things I've said and not what you want me to have said, n'k?
You've confused your own point in your anti-gov't frothing.
You must be replying to someone else, since I've said nothing anti-government here, and certainly not "frothing". I suspect, however, you are trying to be dismissive of an argument you have no rational response to by claiming that it is "frothing".
We've all ready established that auto insurance
Not talking here about auto insurance. Please keep up with the discussion.
The reality is that both you and the other guy are mandated to buy insurance.
So? The reason for the insurance YOU are forced to buy is not to protect YOU, it is to protect the other guy. That's one difference between the auto and health insurance mandates. I said that already, though.
Come now, do you really believe that?
Yes. Been there. Talked to people in that wonderful country called England about their black market medical system. Saw how well it covered "everyone" when I got sick there. Wasn't a pleasant experience.
The reality is that healthcare costs have been rising dramatically and the only ways to control costs is for gov't intervention in some form or another.
And the only possible intervention happens to be the method that you like and that mandates that everyone buys insurance, right? There is no other possible answer? Ok.
I would prefer a single payer system like the rest of the industrialized world,
Because that system works so well for the rest of the world -- they are happy accepting what they get because that's what they grew up with and don't know better. Like I said, been there, done that. Not as good as what we have.
And for the record, a system where EVERYONE who pays taxes is paying the bill is NOT a "single payer" system. Millions of payers, more like it, and paying whether they want to or not. And yet, this is /. where just the appearance of a loss of a liberty is cause for long threads about the jackboot thugs ... and being forced to pay for everyone else's medical care isn't a loss of liberty at all.
Go figgur.
Does it matter that it's state or federal if every state requires it?
Yes. What every state requires differs, and is controlled by the state legislature. It is also a function of the state, not the federal government. Read the Constitution sometime. That which is not enumerated herein is retained by the states. Where do you see "auto insurance" as part of the Constitution? Oh, right, it's Interstate Commerce.
Does it matter that it's required for you and "the other guy" when it's still required for both of you?
It is not required to cover you. It is required to cover the other guy. You are free to not have coverage for your vehicle or yourself. So yes, it does matter.
They both still cost you money to maintain and they're both supposed to save you money in the long run.
Really? You're all for the government "saving you money" by taking more and more of it away from you, because it is "the long run"? Having everyone pay more for health insurance saves me money in the long run when I have to find a black-market doctor to provide a service for cash because the service I need has been rationed out of existance to "save me money", or the providers have left the system because we were saving too much money for them to be able to make a living at it legally? How nice. Thanks so much.
Point one: the issue at hand is removing loopholes everywhere, not just in one jurisdiction. So unless the rich want to move between countries...
No, the "issue at hand" was a comment about raising tax rates and raising revenues. There was nothing about removing loopholes.
Even so, you're the only one talking about the rich moving to another country. If you care to notice, I said they'd take a different route to school -- or move their MANUFACTURING and PRODUCTION and other company functions to another country. Not themselves. But even so, the rich do move to other countries from time to time.
Point two: even if the loopholes weren't fixed consistently, the rich don't "just move" whenever tax rates rise.
Again, you're the only one talking about the rich moving. You have, of course, conveniently ignored the second option I mentioned -- reducing income by using the tax laws. Even if you don't think that the rich move their sources of income offshore (unlike most of the /. posters who seem to regularly rant about the movement of jobs overseas) they will pay more to an accountant to keep from paying more to the government.
Point three: Nothing is ever simple.
Yep, that's a good summary of what I said. "Raising rates" is not a simple way to "raise revenue", and has actually been shown to reduce revenue, for the reasons I stated but you failed to address while calling names. And the problems "socialized medicine" creates can hardly be called something as simple as "improve the medical quality of life", when demand exceeds supply and supply is rationed as a result.
And then you raise taxes. Just spending less today doesn't mean the cost of healthcare wont rise as the population grows larger and sicker. So just cutting costs without raising taxes wont work. You have to cut costs and increase revenue.
Which is it, please? Pick one, stick with it. Do you need to increase taxes or increase revenues?
The correct answer is B, increase revenues. Even JFK figured it out when he was president: confiscatory tax rates on the rich reduce revenues because the rich are rich but not stupid.
I'd use a car analogy, but I've got a better one. Let's say you are a kid who walks to school every day, and every day you pass by a bully who demands you give him part of your lunch money. Every day he demands a dime. You fork it over. It's only a dime, and you've still got enough to buy your lunch. Then he starts demanding a dollar. Wait a minute, that's a lot of money and you won't be able to buy your own lunch if you pay him.
You've got two options. You either pick a different way to school (move your factories and production overseas where taxes are lower), or start hiding your money so the bully thinks you don't have any and doesn't take what you clearly don't have (use the existing tax incentives and deductions to reduce AGI.)
Do you see the result common to both actions? Yes, the bully gets less revenue from a higher rate than from the lower. It has been shown time and time again. Like I said, even JFK figured it out.
... but defense of liberty is in the Constitution and corporations are an oppressive force. They diminish liberty, and this includes health insurance corporations.
Your existence diminishes my liberty, too. I want what you have. I am not free to take it from you. I want my LIBERTY!
Health insurance companies are not what drive costs up. It seems obvious, doesn't it? If costs were lower, they'd have to pay out less to cover you and more of what they take in would be profit. No, what drives costs up is MALPRACTICE insurance. The money the doctor pays so he won't be bankrupted by a simple mistake, or even by a procedure that went pefectly but didn't turn out the way the patient wanted. And the costs of the unnecessary tests that he orders because he doesn't want to miss that one in a million chance that you don't have the same cold that everyone else is coming in with and get sued by your estate. That money gets tacked on the bill you pay, and then onto the health insurance company.
No kidding. Before you know it, they'll make auto-insurance required by law, just like health insurance!
It is a shame that they no longer teach in schools the difference between state and federal governments and the division of responsibilities accorded each based on the US Constitution. That's got to be the only reason such a stupid comment like this would appear here.
For the sarcasm impaired: the auto insurance laws are STATE laws that require coverage to protect THE OTHER GUY sharing the road with you; the new health insurance law is a FEDERAL LAW that nobody could bother to read before they voted on it that applies to everyone except those who have enough political clout to get exempted from it.
The other difference is that the AUTO insurance laws don't force insurers to cover every trip to the mechanic or replacement of worn out parts, while the HEALTH insurance law does.
Later, special units were designed for use by The Weather Channel that would genlock and overlay the text onto the video.
I have one of those "special units" on my desk, and three more sitting in the lab. They were SGI O2s. Very expensive but very easy to do video with. A 180MHz processor could keep up with real-time video, because the video had its own hardware. There wasn't much incoming video to genlock to since the output was graphics, but genlocking to the cable clock was important to help with interference issues.
SGI was quite proud of the fact that their hardware was sitting in a lot of cable headends.
The cult of the stock option is a cargo cult. The lavish compensation package doesn't create a good CEO any more than building a runway will create planes.
Oooh, an aviation analogy instead of automotive. Very nice.
Lavish compensation will not create a good CEO. Very true. It will, however, reward (when that compensation is in options) one that works to keep the stock prices high. Just as you don't create planes by building a runway. If you build a very large and expensive runway, however, you will attract large and expensive airplanes, the owners of which are more likely to spend a lot of money at your airport.
A 1700 foot grass strip is good for Cessna 150-type aircraft. A 10,000 foot paved surface with a precision approach at each end will attract 747s filled with people who will buy trinkets and a company that will buy a lot of gas.
The very idea of giving stock options to high level executives is antithetical to the purpose of retaining quality executives who will make good decisions for the benefit of the company.
Very very wrong. If the company benefits, the value of the company stays high, which means the stock price stays high. That makes stock options worth even more.
Maybe you don't know how stock options work. An option means that you have the ability to buy stock at a fixed price (say, $1/share) even if the stock is currently trading at $1.10/share. If you are a good CEO and make the company worth more, the stock price will go up, but you can still buy shares at $1 each. If you are a bad CEO, the company goes bust, the stock plummets, and your ability to buy stock at $1/share is worthless. (I know -- as an employee I was given options as part of my hiring. The company tanked, the options were worthless.)
Now, you may be thinking of put options, where you are guaranteed a buyer for any stock you have at $1/share no matter how high or low the price goes. This is a wash for the CEO (and thus why it isn't the kind of options used in this context) because he gets the same amount of money for his 1000 shares whether the stock tanks or it stays the same. He only profits from the 1000 shares if the price goes up, but then, he doesn't need the option to sell at a higher price.
Spend 5 minutes arguing with almost any Google engineer, and you'll find that your question goes both ways. The sense of entitlement "because we're Google" can get appalling very quickly.
Same as the sense of entitlement that some have that 'because you have a website' grants them automatic privileges to index every page on that site, or have a scraper download every piece of information, or consume every CPU cycle available on that site generating on-demand content, or full right to try to send any malformed or malicious SQL statements that their little hearts desire. After all, it it is on the net, it belongs to them now.
Is it necessary to provide a warrant to obtain location data from cell providers?
No. It takes a formal request from an official source. The director of a 911 center attesting to the purpose is good enough.
Let's face it, I can keep this up for as long as the Hilton can. What they are counting on is their customers being business travellers whose accounting departments will simply pay the bill because it is cheaper than contesting it. I, on the other hand, am a vacationing curmudgeon who enjoys seeing large companies getting dinged for making ridiculous fraudulent charges.
"Dear VISA: I left every towel I was provided by that hotel in the room when I checked out. I did heat some of them up in the microwave so I could have a warm towel for my morning shower. Perhaps the hotel needs to actually count the towels and not just the number of working RFID tags, especially when they've provided the means, motive and opportunity for the destruction of the tag without damage to the towel itself. If any of the towels were missing, then the staff stole them, not me. I have no use for used, dirty towels. I have enough of them of my own already. I contest this charge."
Person C? That sicko needs help...off a tall cliff. We have no need for "them kind" in this world.
And person C's day job just happens to be conducting highly advanced research in the use of adult stem cells to cure Alzheimer's and several other diseases.
Be very careful who you start labelling as "them kind", because once YOU get labelled as one of "them kind" for whatever reason you might find yourself on the way to the top of the hill.
Child exploitation may have a long disconnection between the event and a viewer, but the photos weren't made to put in a family album.
Yes, sir, in some cases, they were.
http://www.cfcamerica.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=358:woman-charged-with-possession-of-child-pornography-for-taking-photos-of-herself-breastfeeding&catid=3:news&Itemid=96
http://www.abc4.com/content/news/top%20stories/story/Innocent-family-pictures-or-child-porn-Parents/ARX1K8NqXk6yMGyVfAmueQ.cspx
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/09/22/family-vacay-pics-deemed-child-porn-by-wal-mart-at-center-of-lawsuit/
Does the Hilton HV also have an in-room microwave for guests?
If no one viewed it, no one would make it, would they?
If no one PAID for it, nobody would make it. It's a business like any other. It costs money to run servers.
Well, ok, some would make it for the shear pleasure of making it -- those people would not care if you viewed it or not, they're going to make it. (If you are going to use that line of argument to support your claim that viewing is equivalent to producing, then you've just blown your first argument that "if nobody views it nobody would make it.") Some might make it for the fun of sharing. "You show me your's, I'll show you mine". That requires interaction between producers. But to claim that simply viewing something on a website provides that interaction and thus creates a demand, well, that's beyond reason.
Child molestation is a crime,
Let's see, an irrelevant part of an argument, is that a red herring or a straw man? Yes, child molestation is a crime. So is grand theft auto and murder. Looking at a picture of a child is not child molestation; looking at a picture of a car is not grand theft auto; looking at a picture of a dead body is not murder.
That's why the sex offender registries are important; many child porn viewers do actually act on their impulses.
And many of them do not. Many people like the feel of money, but many people do not rob banks to get it. Many people like the taste of caviar, but many people do not rob the upscale grocery store to steal it. Should every person who likes the feel of money be arrested for robbing a bank when they have never robbed a bank?
Do the research; find out how the correlations work.
Do the research and find out the difference between correlation and causation. Here's an important correlation: every child molester breathes through either his nose or mouth. (We'll dismiss the vanishingly small percentage of those who breath through a tracheotomy...) Do YOU breathe through your nose or mouth? AH HA! YOU are a child molester. I've proven it beyond any shadow of doubt because of the correlation! You can't argue against a correlation, can you?
Do you hear that knock on your door? It's the FBI. They're there to arrest you based on the correlation. Have a nice life, hope you make friends in the slammer.
If you pay someone to do a contract murder, you'll never see it, but you're a murderer in the same way as someone pulling the trigger.
And if you don't pay them to do a contract murder -- in fact, you never speak to the person or communicate anything to him in any way -- you'd have a very hard time convincing anyone that you committed a murder. Not even conspiracy.
Yes, if you buy kiddie pr0n from someone, you're a part of the chain. No question. Your money funds the system.
If you are just surfing free adult pr0n sites and come across a site with what looks like CP, you have not participated in any way in the creation of those images and should not be guilty of anything. Consent is not relevant because at no time did you do anything that required consent from someone who could not give it. You are not funding the system because you are paying nothing. If anything, whatever advertisers are on the site are, but you aren't.
Other porn is done (usually) with consenting adults, who make an informed choice. Children can't do that.
When you say "done", you mean "created". With that correction, yes, I agree fully. Children cannot consent to the creation of pr0n of themselves legally. (In actuality, yes, some of them probably have sufficient development to make a reasoned judgement, but the law assumes none of them do. I question the intelligence of a 14 year old who sexts a picture of herself to her boyfriend, but I wouldn't charge her with distribution of CP like some have.)
But going two steps further (from creation to distribution to simple posession) leaves the consent issue in the dust.
Perfect for those "my next class is on the other side of campus and I forgot my personal jetpack" times.
Yeah, buy three cans of pop, shake them really hard, and strap them on your back. Zoom zoom zoom, almost like a Mazda. Kinda messy for all those around you, and you have one hell of a carbon footprint...
Wow, that guy must have a lot of friends who know he likes Pepsi.
Verizon is currently running an ad campaign asking people to send email and text messages to some 110 year old woman, so she can have "a happy birthday".
Sure, a mailbox stuffed to capacity and a phone that can't be used because it is so busy getting incoming text messages, that would make a happy birthday for me, for sure.
How long until Pepsi does the same thing? "Send Velma a can of Pepsi for her birthday....". Hope she's not a diabetic.
Or better, someone does something like the old classified ad trick: "make $100 a week with no work, send $1 to ... for details". "Send a Pepsi to ... for details on how to never have to pay for a can of Pepsi again."
The original purpose of public universities was education for the public good, as a conservative as well, I see little public good in graduating 50 history majors for every electrical engineer. Yes the engineer will make more out of college, but they will also contribute more to the economy a through their work.
The original purpose of public universities was not to prepare people for the most lucrative jobs available. It was to provide an education to create a broad knowledge of subjects and a well educated populace.
Those 50 history majors will have a better understanding of where we came from and more understanding of where we will be going. As in "those who don't know history tend to repeat history". That's not a comment about being able to pass the final exam and needing to retake the class, it is a statement pertaining to repeating the mistakes of the past because you don't know they were tried before and failed. Chamberlain tried appeasement to prevent war, and that attempt failed. Those who don't know that, and why it failed, are likely to think about trying it today and a lot of people could die because they didn't know history.
If you want training for a job, go to a vocational school or community college.
It is my personal belief that societally, making STEM degrees cheaper to obtain is good for all parties involved and represents a solid investment by society.
You can, of course, make "STEM" degrees free by simply handing them out to every person who visits the appropriate website. I don't think that this would be a "solid investment" in anything at all. The degree program needs to provide the education first, the paper last, not the other way around. If that education takes more time (five years vs. four) or harder classes (quantum chemistry vs. "efficient use of aquatic resources") then that's what it takes.
I'm simply flabbergasted by the compaint a previous commenter made about STEM classes being harder and something needed to be done to keep people from dropping out because of it. What an idiotic way of solving the problem of lack of STEM degrees.
And then this from the GP:
The solution is to artificially make top-level education available at the cost to provide that education, not at what the student is willing to pay.
You are overlooking the tiny detail that the cost of a college education is heavily taxpayer subsidized and most, if not all, public universities. The students are already not willing to pay the price being charged in many cases; making the price equal the cost will simply drive more students away. It certainly will not solve the problem of too few STEM students, since the actual cost of STEM educations will be much higher (to pay for lab equipment and facilities) than it is today.
The problem comes when you have states like Michigan where the police are allegedly downloading information from a smart phone in a minute or two
Please stop spreading this nonsense. This isn't "insightful", it is inciteful. There are no allegations, at least no serious ones, that the Michigan State Police are doing any such thing. The only allegation is that they COULD do it because they have a piece of equipment that could do it.
Not even the ACLU has found anyone who has claimed they are doing it. All it would take it one person to stand up and say "this happened to me" and the ACLU would be all over it. They aren't. They're "investigating" the policies by putting in FOIA requests. The ACLU doesn't need FOIA, they need a victim, and apparently they haven't got even one of those to sue on behalf of.
The link you provide is just another one of the "they could be" flamebait articles. They "can" do this. That's all it says. Well, no shit. So can a lot of other people who have bought the CellBrite system. It makes no claims that it is happening. It doesn't even pretend to say that there is even one known victim of this "big problem", as you call it. It DOES try to make it an issue of minority rights by telling us, in essence, "think of the minorities this is happening to." Think of the children.
COULD DO is not the same as IS DOING. Until there is some shred of evidence that it IS being done, stop claiming it is.
I've seen books on Amazon before that were in the thousands of dollars - books that you can find at any used bookstore for 50 cents, we're not talking ultra-rare stuff here. So this isn't a new bug and they're bound to have had complaints many times before. I think this is the first time they've let the loop get this far though.
I've seen the same thing, but it was always in a context of a dozen different stores all selling the same used book. All but one would have a reasonable price. One, two, maybe five dollars. But one store would be above $1000. I could never figure it out, and the one time I sent email to the store asking why they were so high I didn't get an answer.
I assumed it had something to do with a money laundering operation.
who says their not both?
Nobody who knows how to spell "they're".
I wonder why camera companies waste volume with SD cards and don't just put 32GB of flash on the MLB and call it a day.
Because photographers don't want to waste time during a picture shoot downloading all their photos through the USB port, or they want to be able to take some shots and hand the card to someone to process them while they keep the camera doing camera-like stuff.
The most expensive part of a camera is not the electronics, it's the optics. Making the optics sit idle while you deal with an electronic issue is big big waste of money and time.
The SD slot is an obsolete waste of product volume and complexity, and for some reason people (meaning people on Slashdot, not as a whole) don't seem to get it.
I don't "get it", because I use the SD slots on the devices I have to move data back and forth, and have compact storage for things I want to carry with me. Yes, it's hard to remember which card contains what, sometimes, but I've found the same problem with USB sticks. What I also like is that most of the SD slots my things have are completely internal, so there isn't anything sticking out of the device while I'm using one, unlike USB sticks which 'stick out' and get in the way.
I wasn't trying to disprove anything. I asked a question.
An AC posted a comment about the difference between government and private companies. You brought up the "private companies" in Iraq and Afghanistan, and asked how that applied to them. That would reasonably be seen as an attempt at disproving the difference, by presenting an example where there isn't one.
I answered your "question", which prompted an argument from you. Ok. You want to argue. You're still arguing.
No need to be a jerk.
So why be one? I answered your question. Do you not understand the answer, and why your example of a "private company" that has access to the powers of governments isn't applicable here?
I hear on the news and CNN and other articles is how much trouble these guys get in for their shoot 1st ask questions later actions, and yet nothing ever seems to happen. Are they exercising government policy when this stuff happens?
So the problem is you listen to CNN. If that was your question, you should have asked it.
CNN tries to make those companies look as bad as possible because that makes headlines and news and brings in viewers. They don't report on the results because that isn't making news and bringing in viewers. "Unfounded" and "unsupported allegation" doesn't warrant coverage. "Atrocity! Murder! Pillage! Rape! Violence! Bush's fault!" does.
So yes, when "these guys", as you call them, "shoot 1st ask questions later" and do "this stuff", as you portray it (in a typically biased way), they aren't acting under the color of authority, but when they do their job they are. They aren't acting as a private company. They are CONTRACTORS working for the GOVERNMENT. Like I said before.
Do you think that contractors YOU hire to work for YOU shouldn't have the authority to do the job YOU hired them to do in your stead? Why would a private company hired by the government be different?