Since a "2x4" is really approximately 1.5x3.5 inches, it should not be a big deal if a "2x4" were instead approximately 4x9 cm. You'd still frame interior walls with "2x4s".
For all that is Good and Holy, only put ONE NUMBER for the speed limit on the road. If you want to convert to KPH, do it once and do it as quickly as possible. Do not make me try to squint at the units on the signs and do not put two numbers up. There's no compelling reason to convert roadways to metric, but please do it right if you really must.
Staying with national specific units is just retarded.
It's only retarded if trade is your primary concern. While I would prefer that the US were a little more metric, I can hardly blame the milk manufacturers for not abandoning their equipment just to make the 1 gallon milk jug round off nicely to 3 or 4 liters. And road signs - there really is no compelling reason to go towards km on the roads. It only becomes an issue for the minority who cross into Canada and Mexico, and those people are quite capable of reading the "km/h" letters on their speedometer.
Engineering is another matter - in the vast majority of cases there really is no excuse to be using anything but metric. We have a certain failed Mars probe to prove the case. It drives me crazy that I need both a metric and a standard set of socket wrenches and hex keys. A small matter, but still quite strange. Many (most?) of the appliances that I have are assembled with standard-unit nuts, bolts, and screws. Now, I'm sure there aren't a lot of American appliances exported overseas, but it still seems insane... Whirlpool must replace their drill bits and driver bits fairly often - it's not clear to me why they stick with standard sized consumables.
Actually, the point of copyright and patents are to offer a limited monopoly on an innovation so artists and inventors can make a buck off their work.
No, that is the mechanism. The goal (point) is to have people making stuff. There are lots of ways to do it, but the Founding Fathers felt that IP was the way to go.
My use case was to blow away the crappy, deranged, obsolete version of "Android" that my phone was stuck with and replace it with something closer to stock Android. Without even booting it up the first time, I sideload the gapps.
Yes, you are correct - anything as complex as a car is going to involve information imbalance. But I'm not sure there is a solution to that. Carfax does help this a bit.
Pricing to these customers are based on their ability to pay back, not on normal market forces.
I guess it is unclear to me why high-risk people do not represent a competitive market? Look at the competition in prepay phone plans, for instance. I'd argue that there are much better values there than in the less-competitive post-pay market.
I've been robbed at gunpoint. It's no fun, and it made me nervous to be out at night for a long time. Still happens sometimes. With that perspective, I cannot even imagine the trauma that someone who has gone through rape would need to work through. Both are "unsafe propositions", but I don't think they are really comparable events.
If all sellers have their costs go down, prices stay the same and profits go up.
Profits will go up because they will be able to make loans to people who weren't able to afford the interest rates they would have needed to pay before.
Or they get together as a group and decide where to set the price.
Besides being collusion, which is illegal, your assertion is easily debunked by anyone who has ever purchased a used car. You can play dealers off of one another, or even just buy a car from Craigslist. There are dealers all over the freaking place, and you can get financing from non-dealers. There are far too many parties involved for collusion. The used car market is very close to pure capitalism, except for transaction taxes, registration, proof of insurance, and other regulations which make the transaction too expensive to do frequently.
There's not going to be a good definition that hold as media evolves over time.
Who says the law shouldn't evolve over time? We can't get into the conceited notion that we can anticipate future developments.
Plus, how does limited liability matter here?
Let me take a step even further back: why do we allow limited liability at all? Originally it was to encourage investment in certain high-risk activities - for instance, building a bridge that might involve death during construction. I can get behind that sort of thing - if all that you contribute is money, then let's keep limited liability. However, if someone is indeed negligent and causes someone's death, then let's go after the individual who is responsible - not just the assets of the corporation. Limited liability stands in the way of treating a corporation as a collection of individuals, because you have to "pierce" a layer to get to the individuals.
What's the compelling interest of the state there that couldn't be served without that restriction?
What's the compelling interest of the state to grant this right to limited liability in the first place?
As far as I'm concerned, you can group limited liability partnerships (LLP) and limited liability proprietorships (LLC) along with corporations for the purposes of the discussion about limited liability... I think it is all crazy. Unlike the Supreme Court, I have no problems separating purely economic entities from political entities. I admit it gets murky when you get into things like the New York Times, but I'm fairly certain that we can come up with an acceptable definition of the "press" - though I don't pretend to be smart enough to be the one to do that.
I'm not worried about loans - banks that loan without collateral are on their own! LOL And owners have long used their own assets to collateralize their business loans. I'm more concerned about criminal and civil liability, and the general trend toward making corporations more and more like people.
I think the test-driven advocates would say that relying on the compiler is OK for that one particular kind of error, but you really should be writing tests to catch that kind of error along with many others.
The reality is probably, as you kind of imply, sometimes you have a task that is more suited to one approach or another.
Capital gains are as much about inflation as profit. I'm all for treating all income equally (one flat tax to rule them all), but you'd have to inflation-index cap gains (and who still trusts government inflation numbers?)
I'm on board with an inflation-adjusted number for long-term capital gains. To get past government inflation numbers games, tie it to average savings account interest rates, money market accounts, or something like that. You just want to encourage people to invest their money instead of plopping it in a money market.
I don't know what you mean by "activist owners".
Activist owners are people who are actively involved in running the business, as opposed to passive investors like most owners of common stock or holders of mutual funds. As a for-instance, if you find out that GE has been dumping acid into a river, you could go after the individual fortunes of the board of directors, but not the state pension fund that happens to hold a bunch of GE stock.
I'm not sure what you're going for on point 4, but the first three are at least interesting. If you could explain that, it'd be appreciated.
Point 4 is not really 100% on-topic, but addresses a beef I have with corporations in general. In this context, I think that if people went to jail for fraud (in this case tax fraud) instead of companies being simply fined, fraud would be a bit less common. I actually like limited liability for passive investors (don't put me in jail for holding a mutual fund, please!).
I'd expect that there would be a bunch of newly developed "hidden benefits,"
I agree that this could be a problem. Of course, as I type this one of our VPs arrived in his company car... so maybe it is already happening and the change wouldn't be that large. If it became a huge tax dodge we could always legislate, but I'd like to start simple.
Slashdot Mirror
Since a "2x4" is really approximately 1.5x3.5 inches, it should not be a big deal if a "2x4" were instead approximately 4x9 cm. You'd still frame interior walls with "2x4s".
For all that is Good and Holy, only put ONE NUMBER for the speed limit on the road. If you want to convert to KPH, do it once and do it as quickly as possible. Do not make me try to squint at the units on the signs and do not put two numbers up. There's no compelling reason to convert roadways to metric, but please do it right if you really must.
Staying with national specific units is just retarded.
It's only retarded if trade is your primary concern. While I would prefer that the US were a little more metric, I can hardly blame the milk manufacturers for not abandoning their equipment just to make the 1 gallon milk jug round off nicely to 3 or 4 liters. And road signs - there really is no compelling reason to go towards km on the roads. It only becomes an issue for the minority who cross into Canada and Mexico, and those people are quite capable of reading the "km/h" letters on their speedometer.
Engineering is another matter - in the vast majority of cases there really is no excuse to be using anything but metric. We have a certain failed Mars probe to prove the case. It drives me crazy that I need both a metric and a standard set of socket wrenches and hex keys. A small matter, but still quite strange. Many (most?) of the appliances that I have are assembled with standard-unit nuts, bolts, and screws. Now, I'm sure there aren't a lot of American appliances exported overseas, but it still seems insane... Whirlpool must replace their drill bits and driver bits fairly often - it's not clear to me why they stick with standard sized consumables.
Ah, we are talking past one another. I'm on your side. Copyright indeed has been corrupted.
Actually, the point of copyright and patents are to offer a limited monopoly on an innovation so artists and inventors can make a buck off their work.
No, that is the mechanism. The goal (point) is to have people making stuff. There are lots of ways to do it, but the Founding Fathers felt that IP was the way to go.
My use case was to blow away the crappy, deranged, obsolete version of "Android" that my phone was stuck with and replace it with something closer to stock Android. Without even booting it up the first time, I sideload the gapps.
I disagree. The number of used car lots seems to triple in the poor areas of the city.
Yes, you are correct - anything as complex as a car is going to involve information imbalance. But I'm not sure there is a solution to that. Carfax does help this a bit.
Pricing to these customers are based on their ability to pay back, not on normal market forces.
I guess it is unclear to me why high-risk people do not represent a competitive market? Look at the competition in prepay phone plans, for instance. I'd argue that there are much better values there than in the less-competitive post-pay market.
Well, I'm not as pretty as you.
That's why I only mention it in passing.
Which is why I did not predicate my argument based on it being illegal.
In the US, this would be "Google Maps Reveals Widespread Tax Evasion"
I said "probably", which is true.
I've been robbed at gunpoint. It's no fun, and it made me nervous to be out at night for a long time. Still happens sometimes. With that perspective, I cannot even imagine the trauma that someone who has gone through rape would need to work through. Both are "unsafe propositions", but I don't think they are really comparable events.
If all sellers have their costs go down, prices stay the same and profits go up.
Profits will go up because they will be able to make loans to people who weren't able to afford the interest rates they would have needed to pay before.
Or they get together as a group and decide where to set the price.
Besides being collusion, which is illegal, your assertion is easily debunked by anyone who has ever purchased a used car. You can play dealers off of one another, or even just buy a car from Craigslist. There are dealers all over the freaking place, and you can get financing from non-dealers. There are far too many parties involved for collusion. The used car market is very close to pure capitalism, except for transaction taxes, registration, proof of insurance, and other regulations which make the transaction too expensive to do frequently.
They'll rob you, but they probably won't rape you.
This is one of those rare times where SI and imperial almost align... yards and meters are close enough unless you are building something.
There's not going to be a good definition that hold as media evolves over time.
Who says the law shouldn't evolve over time? We can't get into the conceited notion that we can anticipate future developments.
Plus, how does limited liability matter here?
Let me take a step even further back: why do we allow limited liability at all? Originally it was to encourage investment in certain high-risk activities - for instance, building a bridge that might involve death during construction. I can get behind that sort of thing - if all that you contribute is money, then let's keep limited liability. However, if someone is indeed negligent and causes someone's death, then let's go after the individual who is responsible - not just the assets of the corporation. Limited liability stands in the way of treating a corporation as a collection of individuals, because you have to "pierce" a layer to get to the individuals.
What's the compelling interest of the state there that couldn't be served without that restriction?
What's the compelling interest of the state to grant this right to limited liability in the first place?
As far as I'm concerned, you can group limited liability partnerships (LLP) and limited liability proprietorships (LLC) along with corporations for the purposes of the discussion about limited liability... I think it is all crazy. Unlike the Supreme Court, I have no problems separating purely economic entities from political entities. I admit it gets murky when you get into things like the New York Times, but I'm fairly certain that we can come up with an acceptable definition of the "press" - though I don't pretend to be smart enough to be the one to do that.
I'm not worried about loans - banks that loan without collateral are on their own! LOL And owners have long used their own assets to collateralize their business loans. I'm more concerned about criminal and civil liability, and the general trend toward making corporations more and more like people.
I think the test-driven advocates would say that relying on the compiler is OK for that one particular kind of error, but you really should be writing tests to catch that kind of error along with many others.
The reality is probably, as you kind of imply, sometimes you have a task that is more suited to one approach or another.
Python is strongly-typed. It is not statically-typed, however.
No, see my reply to the parent. I meant people who are actively involved in the running of the business.
Capital gains are as much about inflation as profit. I'm all for treating all income equally (one flat tax to rule them all), but you'd have to inflation-index cap gains (and who still trusts government inflation numbers?)
I'm on board with an inflation-adjusted number for long-term capital gains. To get past government inflation numbers games, tie it to average savings account interest rates, money market accounts, or something like that. You just want to encourage people to invest their money instead of plopping it in a money market.
I don't know what you mean by "activist owners".
Activist owners are people who are actively involved in running the business, as opposed to passive investors like most owners of common stock or holders of mutual funds. As a for-instance, if you find out that GE has been dumping acid into a river, you could go after the individual fortunes of the board of directors, but not the state pension fund that happens to hold a bunch of GE stock.
I'm not sure what you're going for on point 4, but the first three are at least interesting. If you could explain that, it'd be appreciated.
Point 4 is not really 100% on-topic, but addresses a beef I have with corporations in general. In this context, I think that if people went to jail for fraud (in this case tax fraud) instead of companies being simply fined, fraud would be a bit less common. I actually like limited liability for passive investors (don't put me in jail for holding a mutual fund, please!).
I'd expect that there would be a bunch of newly developed "hidden benefits,"
I agree that this could be a problem. Of course, as I type this one of our VPs arrived in his company car... so maybe it is already happening and the change wouldn't be that large. If it became a huge tax dodge we could always legislate, but I'd like to start simple.