It is almost NEVER a good idea to buy a lifetime membership in anything.
"But, I can get a LIFETIME of (whatever) for only the cost of 10 years!"
First problem with that is your breakeven point is much later than 10 years. If an annual membership costs $100, and the lifetime membership costs $1,000, then your break-even point is somewhere around year 20, not 10, because....
$100 now is worth more than $100 in 10 years.
If you instead bought a one-year membership, you could then invest the remaining $900 in something else, and use the proceeds from that investment to fund future membership purchases.
And that's just the math. The other problem is the reality......what happens when the business goes out of business?...what happens when the business changes fundamentally? Hours change, location changes, quality of service changes?...what happens if YOU change, you move out of the service area, you change your habits, etc?
It's actually common practice when selling a company to only sell the assets of the company, leaving the liabilities with the original company. This is done so that the buyer can't be surprised by any unrealized liabilities/debts/lawsuits etc.
If I run my truck into a brick wall and the wall doesn't move, it doesn't mean I had no affect on the wall. At the very least, I created sound, heat, cracked some bricks, and broke some mortar free of bricks.
Depends on the strength of the wall.
You may have just REALLY screwed up your truck. (The collision might also very slightly affect the rotation of the planet, but less than you affected the rotation when you were accelerating the truck in the first place.)
Ever since Vietnam, we've only chosen the wars we thought we could easily win.
The consequence is that if you don't have the military hardware to fight a war, then you can't use the threat of war against whatever opponent you're not willing to choose a war against.
Put another way, there's a reason we'll regime change Libya but have no balls when it comes to Iran's nukes.
I have a room that comfortably fits a twin bed, a work desk, shelving and bookshelves, and a two-desk setup with 4 monitors; 2 30" 2560x1200 and 2 20" 1600x1200 (rotated to perspective view), 30-20-30-20 setup, with the first 30 90 degrees left of chair and the other 3 in an arc so monitor plane at center is perpendicular to perspective.
Tough to fit a girlfriend in there, but plenty of monitor space.
I just got back from a con where they had the old Battletech pods set up. For those not familiar, it's basically a glorified version of Mechwarrior, played in an immersive pod/cockpit with 5 screens. There's the main "world view" screen which is actually reflected up onto a "lense" type glass that creates a wide perspective view, a full-color radar/control screen below that, and three green monochrome status screens up top.
Only the main screen displays the world, the rest display status/controls. While the graphics are still top-end 1995, the immersive experience is still top-notch.
One big "drawback" to enabling multi-monitor displays in FPS games is it's essentially a cheat - the player with the wider field of view has an advantage. Multi-screen displays for HUD purposes are closer to a convenience advantage.
It's ALREADY cheaper for employers to drop insurance.
The mandate, by forcing more people into the insurance pool, will make it cheaper for employers to CONTINUE to offer insurance, as people with insurance will be subsidizing less of the healthcare of deadbeats who don't have insurance, receive care, and then don't pay for it.
Roberts says Congress can't do this under the commerce clause, because allowing Congress to assess a penalty/fee for not paying for an insurance policy that will cover health care you would otherwise receive for free (through emergency rooms, or simply not paying your bills after hospital treatment) would allow congress to assess a penalty/fee if you don't pay for something that you're NOT going to get for free if you don't pay for it.
Then he turns around and says Congress can force you to do whatever the hell they want as long as they do it through the tax code. So it's even WORSE than had it simply been upheld on commerce clause grounds.
HP sold Itanium boxes to customers who use them to run Oracle. Oracle stops supporting Itanium and the customers are stuck holding computers that don't do what they paid for them to do.
There's probably penalties in HPs contracts with their customers in the event of such a circumstance. Or maybe they just don't want their customers to feel like HP screwed them.
The people that "make it" in the industry (and while I know this is true in music, it's probably true in film and other arts as well) aren't necessarily very good at their given craft anyway. Most of the time, it's just a matter of being in the right place at the right time.
First step is realizing that "the industry" is producing records that people will buy. The industry is *NOT* about producing good music. In an industry that produces records people will buy, musicians are rarely qualified for the position of "person who appears on record cover and performs concerts". That position is filled by models/dancers.
And they get paid a lot not because of their musical talent; they get paid a lot in exchange for sacrificing any shred of privacy for the rest of their lives.
they notice you weaving, driving erratically, speeding, emitting radiation, taking a slug from a Jack Daniels bottle, running a red light, rolling through a stop sign
One of these things is not like the others...
Maybe you can point to the one which isn't illegal, sleuth!
You would make a poor sleuth.
Three of the above mentioned actions are not illegal: weaving, driving erratically, and emitting radiation.
However, all three of those actions are a good indication of either an illegal OR unsafe condition. And either an illegal OR unsafe condition is a reasonable basis for a police officer to conduct a traffic stop.
For example, weaving could be an indication that the driver is drunk. (illegal) Or that they are simply too tired. (unsafe) Or that they just spilled a beverage in their lap. (probably not safe, but remedied once clean-up is complete.) Emitting radiation could indicate improper transport of radioactive material (illegal) or presence of some sort of destructive device (really illegal) or simply that you recently had a medical test done.
And you believe, no doubt, that re-instituting this tax at a higher level will bring back the golden days of yesteryear?
I do.
Here's the thing about taxing the rich.
It reduces their incentive to make more money.
Which is a very good thing.
For example, let's say the top marginal tax rate is 80%. It applies to all income over, say, $10 million. Income includes ALL income too, including capital gains.
You have a decision to make. If you fire 100 employees, you can increase your profits by $1 million. And make $200,000. What's your decision?
Now let's look at the current tax system. If you fire 100 employees, you can increase your profits by $1 million, funnel those earnings through a structure so they are taxed as capital gains, and make $850,000. What's your decision?
The reason we had great economic expansion is because very high marginal tax rates on very high income is a strong disincentive against earning very high income. It encourages the people who are running the businesses to share the wealth with everyone who contributes to the business.
When you eliminate taxes on high income, you are encouraging most of the wealth to go to a small number of people.
Why pay an employee an extra $10,000 that the government will take $4,300 of (15.3% FICA and 28% income) when you can keep it for yourself and only pay the government $1,500?
That's the problem: Under the current tax system, paying employees (in the US) is stupid! The more employees you have, the MORE taxes you pay!
If the government REALLY "got in the middle", this wouldn't be a problem in the first place since public colleges and universities would be dirt cheap or even free, as they are in most other OECD countries.
How would banks make billions in federally guaranteed and subsidized profits if the government just provided higher education to qualified students?
~$80,000 really isn't that much money if you learn to SACRIFICE and save you money instead of throwing it away on Comcast cable, Verizon cellservice, and other shit that you really (to be brutally honest) do not need.
How about food and rent?
It's nice that your parents could choose whether to spend their money on your education or Comcast. But most children in this country don't have parents in that position. They have parents who choose to spend their money on the heating bill or doctor visits.
That said, in this country, you USED to be able to put yourself through school by working and going to school at the same time. Your education would cost $6k/year, you'd live in a tiny dorm room, and you'd work 20 hours a week during the school year and all summer, get your degree, and graduate with little or no debt.
Then student loans happened. Now, the government will hand tens of thousands of dollars to anyone who can get admitted to college. When the university has a pool of students who have $20k a year in loan money to pay for education, it shouldn't be surprising that they raise the price of education to $20k/year. Students with no degree can't get a job where they make $20k extra to pay for school, so now the only choice if you want an education is to take the student loans.
All student loans have accomplished is making education more expensive while loading the students up with debt and costing the taxpayer in subsidized interest.
The old way was far better - no student loans, affordable education payable via job and, if necessary, unsubsidized loans.
without affordable loans the number of students would drop dramatically.
Without student loans, the price of education would drop dramatically.
Inexpensive, readily available student loans have the same effect on the cost of education as inexpensive, readily available home loans did on the cost of property during the housing bubble - they give the purchaser far more purchasing power than they would normally have, resulting in the price of the product being bid up much higher than its value.
We're trapped in a vicious cycle - education is perceived as "too expensive", so we give out loans to students so they can pay for education. Then prospective students, collectively armed with more money to pay for education, then bid up the price of education, making it too expensive.
A good way to look at this is imagine someone is selling a car that you want to buy. The car costs $10,000, an you only have $2,000 but you need it to get to work, so you'll take out a loan to buy the car. Then, the government comes along and decides to give a free $10k loan to whoever buys the car. What happens? Now a whole bunch of other people can buy the car too, so the dealer raises the price to say, $12,000.
So now instead of a $8k loan with market interest, you have to get a $10k loan with discount interest. Didn't make the car any cheaper for you, but the car dealer made an extra $2k off the taxpayer.
Student loans are working the same way - they use taxpayer dollars to inflate the cost of education, raising the costs to both students and the taxpayer.
What's worse is, just like we had no standards on housing loans leading into the housing bubble, we have no standards on student loans either - virtually any student can get a loan, even if the school they are going to go to is a degree mill where graduates see no increases in employement opportunity (as measured by low loan repayment rates), or they are getting a degree where the expected salary can not justify the loan cost. (i.e. tens of thousands of dollars in loan debt for a degree in a career path with $30k top pay.)
We would be far better off if we eliminated student loans entirely, allowing the costs of education to fall and people would once again be able to afford to pay for an education with a job while they are in school, instead of having to pay for their education for 20 years after school.
Slashdot Mirror
Its a real tort.
Apple? Strawberry?
It is almost NEVER a good idea to buy a lifetime membership in anything.
"But, I can get a LIFETIME of (whatever) for only the cost of 10 years!"
First problem with that is your breakeven point is much later than 10 years. If an annual membership costs $100, and the lifetime membership costs $1,000, then your break-even point is somewhere around year 20, not 10, because....
$100 now is worth more than $100 in 10 years.
If you instead bought a one-year membership, you could then invest the remaining $900 in something else, and use the proceeds from that investment to fund future membership purchases.
And that's just the math. The other problem is the reality... ...what happens when the business goes out of business? ...what happens when the business changes fundamentally? Hours change, location changes, quality of service changes? ...what happens if YOU change, you move out of the service area, you change your habits, etc?
Lifetime purchases are for suckers.
It's actually common practice when selling a company to only sell the assets of the company, leaving the liabilities with the original company. This is done so that the buyer can't be surprised by any unrealized liabilities/debts/lawsuits etc.
I think the readers of Slashdot have been watching too many movies.
Besides, everyone knows the best way to get him out is the secret tunnel from the Embassy's basement into the sewer system.
someone who would have consensual sex with a woman without a condom when the woman said she wanted him to wear a condom
What huh?
Unprotected sex with someone who has stated that they do not want unprotected sex is NOT consensual sex!
If I run my truck into a brick wall and the wall doesn't move, it doesn't mean I had no affect on the wall. At the very least, I created sound, heat, cracked some bricks, and broke some mortar free of bricks.
Depends on the strength of the wall.
You may have just REALLY screwed up your truck. (The collision might also very slightly affect the rotation of the planet, but less than you affected the rotation when you were accelerating the truck in the first place.)
Verizon is charging more because people will pay for the service.
I know I'll pay Verizon more because I get high speed data coverage in a lot more places than I do on any other network.
Although, I am one of the people who is saving huge on the new share-everything plans - cut my bill in half.
Ever since Vietnam, we've only chosen the wars we thought we could easily win.
The consequence is that if you don't have the military hardware to fight a war, then you can't use the threat of war against whatever opponent you're not willing to choose a war against.
Put another way, there's a reason we'll regime change Libya but have no balls when it comes to Iran's nukes.
How about trying to maintain a foreign policy that encourages peace and free trade?
That stops working the second someone else decides to have a foreign policy based on military power.
You can't demand peace and free trade if the other guy has a gun and you don't.
(or in more extreme cases whether you agree to sleep with her).
Think about how you'd really truly react in that kind of scenario,
Insufficient information.
Is she hot?
Freedom of speech was meant to protect you from the government taking any action based on knowing you were saying things the government may not like.
It affords you protection from the government, but not protection from your fellow citizens thinking you're a moron.
I have a room that comfortably fits a twin bed, a work desk, shelving and bookshelves, and a two-desk setup with 4 monitors; 2 30" 2560x1200 and 2 20" 1600x1200 (rotated to perspective view), 30-20-30-20 setup, with the first 30 90 degrees left of chair and the other 3 in an arc so monitor plane at center is perpendicular to perspective.
Tough to fit a girlfriend in there, but plenty of monitor space.
I just got back from a con where they had the old Battletech pods set up. For those not familiar, it's basically a glorified version of Mechwarrior, played in an immersive pod/cockpit with 5 screens. There's the main "world view" screen which is actually reflected up onto a "lense" type glass that creates a wide perspective view, a full-color radar/control screen below that, and three green monochrome status screens up top.
Only the main screen displays the world, the rest display status/controls. While the graphics are still top-end 1995, the immersive experience is still top-notch.
One big "drawback" to enabling multi-monitor displays in FPS games is it's essentially a cheat - the player with the wider field of view has an advantage. Multi-screen displays for HUD purposes are closer to a convenience advantage.
The whole POINT of PHP is that it works DESPITE bad coding practices.
If the programmer were capable of GOOD programming practices, they'd be using Python!
It's ALREADY cheaper for employers to drop insurance.
The mandate, by forcing more people into the insurance pool, will make it cheaper for employers to CONTINUE to offer insurance, as people with insurance will be subsidizing less of the healthcare of deadbeats who don't have insurance, receive care, and then don't pay for it.
Roberts says Congress can't do this under the commerce clause, because allowing Congress to assess a penalty/fee for not paying for an insurance policy that will cover health care you would otherwise receive for free (through emergency rooms, or simply not paying your bills after hospital treatment) would allow congress to assess a penalty/fee if you don't pay for something that you're NOT going to get for free if you don't pay for it.
Then he turns around and says Congress can force you to do whatever the hell they want as long as they do it through the tax code. So it's even WORSE than had it simply been upheld on commerce clause grounds.
HP sold Itanium boxes to customers who use them to run Oracle. Oracle stops supporting Itanium and the customers are stuck holding computers that don't do what they paid for them to do.
There's probably penalties in HPs contracts with their customers in the event of such a circumstance. Or maybe they just don't want their customers to feel like HP screwed them.
If guns are illegal, then anyone who has a gun is a criminal, and you can prevent crime by just arresting everyone who has guns.
The people that "make it" in the industry (and while I know this is true in music, it's probably true in film and other arts as well) aren't necessarily very good at their given craft anyway. Most of the time, it's just a matter of being in the right place at the right time.
First step is realizing that "the industry" is producing records that people will buy. The industry is *NOT* about producing good music. In an industry that produces records people will buy, musicians are rarely qualified for the position of "person who appears on record cover and performs concerts". That position is filled by models/dancers.
And they get paid a lot not because of their musical talent; they get paid a lot in exchange for sacrificing any shred of privacy for the rest of their lives.
they notice you weaving, driving erratically, speeding, emitting radiation, taking a slug from a Jack Daniels bottle, running a red light, rolling through a stop sign
One of these things is not like the others...
Maybe you can point to the one which isn't illegal, sleuth!
You would make a poor sleuth.
Three of the above mentioned actions are not illegal: weaving, driving erratically, and emitting radiation.
However, all three of those actions are a good indication of either an illegal OR unsafe condition. And either an illegal OR unsafe condition is a reasonable basis for a police officer to conduct a traffic stop.
For example, weaving could be an indication that the driver is drunk. (illegal) Or that they are simply too tired. (unsafe) Or that they just spilled a beverage in their lap. (probably not safe, but remedied once clean-up is complete.) Emitting radiation could indicate improper transport of radioactive material (illegal) or presence of some sort of destructive device (really illegal) or simply that you recently had a medical test done.
And you believe, no doubt, that re-instituting this tax at a higher level will bring back the golden days of yesteryear?
I do.
Here's the thing about taxing the rich.
It reduces their incentive to make more money.
Which is a very good thing.
For example, let's say the top marginal tax rate is 80%. It applies to all income over, say, $10 million. Income includes ALL income too, including capital gains.
You have a decision to make. If you fire 100 employees, you can increase your profits by $1 million. And make $200,000. What's your decision?
Now let's look at the current tax system. If you fire 100 employees, you can increase your profits by $1 million, funnel those earnings through a structure so they are taxed as capital gains, and make $850,000. What's your decision?
The reason we had great economic expansion is because very high marginal tax rates on very high income is a strong disincentive against earning very high income. It encourages the people who are running the businesses to share the wealth with everyone who contributes to the business.
When you eliminate taxes on high income, you are encouraging most of the wealth to go to a small number of people.
Why pay an employee an extra $10,000 that the government will take $4,300 of (15.3% FICA and 28% income) when you can keep it for yourself and only pay the government $1,500?
That's the problem: Under the current tax system, paying employees (in the US) is stupid! The more employees you have, the MORE taxes you pay!
If the government REALLY "got in the middle", this wouldn't be a problem in the first place since public colleges and universities would be dirt cheap or even free, as they are in most other OECD countries.
How would banks make billions in federally guaranteed and subsidized profits if the government just provided higher education to qualified students?
~$80,000 really isn't that much money if you learn to SACRIFICE and save you money instead of throwing it away on Comcast cable, Verizon cellservice, and other shit that you really (to be brutally honest) do not need.
How about food and rent?
It's nice that your parents could choose whether to spend their money on your education or Comcast. But most children in this country don't have parents in that position. They have parents who choose to spend their money on the heating bill or doctor visits.
That said, in this country, you USED to be able to put yourself through school by working and going to school at the same time. Your education would cost $6k/year, you'd live in a tiny dorm room, and you'd work 20 hours a week during the school year and all summer, get your degree, and graduate with little or no debt.
Then student loans happened. Now, the government will hand tens of thousands of dollars to anyone who can get admitted to college. When the university has a pool of students who have $20k a year in loan money to pay for education, it shouldn't be surprising that they raise the price of education to $20k/year. Students with no degree can't get a job where they make $20k extra to pay for school, so now the only choice if you want an education is to take the student loans.
All student loans have accomplished is making education more expensive while loading the students up with debt and costing the taxpayer in subsidized interest.
The old way was far better - no student loans, affordable education payable via job and, if necessary, unsubsidized loans.
without affordable loans the number of students would drop dramatically.
Without student loans, the price of education would drop dramatically.
Inexpensive, readily available student loans have the same effect on the cost of education as inexpensive, readily available home loans did on the cost of property during the housing bubble - they give the purchaser far more purchasing power than they would normally have, resulting in the price of the product being bid up much higher than its value.
We're trapped in a vicious cycle - education is perceived as "too expensive", so we give out loans to students so they can pay for education. Then prospective students, collectively armed with more money to pay for education, then bid up the price of education, making it too expensive.
A good way to look at this is imagine someone is selling a car that you want to buy. The car costs $10,000, an you only have $2,000 but you need it to get to work, so you'll take out a loan to buy the car. Then, the government comes along and decides to give a free $10k loan to whoever buys the car. What happens? Now a whole bunch of other people can buy the car too, so the dealer raises the price to say, $12,000.
So now instead of a $8k loan with market interest, you have to get a $10k loan with discount interest. Didn't make the car any cheaper for you, but the car dealer made an extra $2k off the taxpayer.
Student loans are working the same way - they use taxpayer dollars to inflate the cost of education, raising the costs to both students and the taxpayer.
What's worse is, just like we had no standards on housing loans leading into the housing bubble, we have no standards on student loans either - virtually any student can get a loan, even if the school they are going to go to is a degree mill where graduates see no increases in employement opportunity (as measured by low loan repayment rates), or they are getting a degree where the expected salary can not justify the loan cost. (i.e. tens of thousands of dollars in loan debt for a degree in a career path with $30k top pay.)
We would be far better off if we eliminated student loans entirely, allowing the costs of education to fall and people would once again be able to afford to pay for an education with a job while they are in school, instead of having to pay for their education for 20 years after school.
Can we say "WOOOOSH!"