Most licenses are OEM licenses, which can't be transferred to a new machine (unless the old motherboard is going into said machine). Once you get your first non-OEM license you can transfer it ad infinitum, but not until that point. At least legally, which may or may not be an issue for a given person...
Your response is in pretty much the same vein: short-sighted, lacking the application of sense (common or otherwise), and generally asinine.
In your example, yes, still not technically "on duty." That's not necessarily the same thing as being "off shift," depending on the job. Does he have a duty to get his ass out of the bathroom ASAP? Yes. Is he expected to be actively engaged in his job function while actually on the toilet? No.
The OP was clearly an overrated post, which is why I didn't respond to it (being 100% anecdote). Yours was not as clearly offtopic, as there are many people on/. who read and post from an American viewpoint even when it is completely irrelevant to the story. Those who read from an American viewpoint are much less likely to catch that you weren't actually talking about sentences having the slightest bearing on the crimes in the story.
Regardless, my initial point still stands: the US sentences are irrelevant, since the story is about a crime in the UK.
No, it was completely in line with the original story. The OP's post was vague and didn't contain anything to make anyone believe it was an attempt at authoritative commentary. It could have as easily been written by a clueless Brit as by a clueless American. I responded to yours since it clearly was an attempt at an authoritative post. As it was an analysis of US laws applied to British crimes, if any post was a non sequitur, it would be yours. After all, as I stated above, the OP could have easily been a clueless Brit. Commentary on US laws certainly wouldn't follow a posting strictly regarding inequities in the British penal system, unless the point was to compare and/or contrast the two. That did not appear to be the case.
Not knowing much about UK sentencing, I could have been convinced you knew what you were talking about until I got to the above.
Rather than mod it offtopic, which it clearly is, I figured I'd post this as response so that other mods can mod it offtopic without getting the hell meta-modded out of them.
It is different, but only in appearance. In actual practice it is not, because even if it were marketed as an incentive instead of a penalty, the ultimate effect is no different. They just screwed up the delivery of the pretense this time, or decided to dispense with it entirely. I don't know which was the rationale, but it's not really different. Similar to how there's no functional difference between a surcharge on credit transactions vs a discount for cash. One is seen as punitive and one is seen as incentive. The cost differential is the same for one person charging it and another paying cash. In the former, prices in general are lower and they add the charge. In the latter, prices in general are higher, and cash users are discounted. Incentive and penalty are a marketing ploy, nothing more.
They do treat it that way for that purpose, so they can format it correctly for people who don't know any better.
For those that do, the field is irrelevant because they know already which line it goes on and how addresses are concatenated in output.
As for it not working often, I have yet to see it fail and receive shipments via basically every major service that does business in the US multiple times per month, both originating here and in foreign countries. I've also received lots of incorrectly-addressed mail (the whole "second line unit" mis-addressing is common on manually-produced addressing) that makes it wherever I am just fine.
The only time it's really an issue is for automated bulk-rate mail, and then the USPS demands that it comply exactly to their specification. Put the unit number anywhere other than on the delivery location line or above it and goodbye bulk rate delivery.
Using taxation to influence purchasing is nothing new. People let that horse out of the barn long, long ago. Of course, that was by allowing Congress to get away with banning through taxation. If they can do that, it's only logical that eventually the scum will try the opposite. Ballsy yes, but different? Not really.
So, while I hope you are right about it not surviving a judicial challenge, it would not surprise me in the slightest for it to survive. A lot depends on whether Obama wants to try the same road FDR did, and how that turns out. Even if he doesn't, politicians have a nasty habit of embracing and extending controls they claimed to disagree with in order to get elected.
All taxes are governmentally-imposed hardships, and all can be avoided legally in one way or another through some extent of personal hardship. Every. Single. One. The two types of hardship are not mutually exclusive; government hardships are all, at some level, personal hardships. There are many that are not directly, but even those contribute indirectly to financial burden on someone.
I fail entirely to see how the above paragraph is bullshit. I also fail to see how it does not apply to either issue: healthcare tax*; petroleum tax. In what way does it not?
If it is true, and applies to both issues, it logically follows that it is not a bullshit comparison.
This is what it appears your argument is based on, and while I use absolute statements, I obviously cannot know that they are really true. As I said, this is what appears to be the subtext of your entire commentary here:
The fact that you don't like the comparison does not invalidate it, and that seems to be the real issue underlying your argument. You don't like the thought that they are actually the same. You pretend you can avoid the petroleum tax but at the same time can't avoid the healthcare tax. This is likely because you don't mind the petroleum tax as much as the hassle to avoid it, and it's not something that you see all the time: it's invisible. You don't want to stop either taxed activity (and I completely understand and can sympathize with why), but you also don't want to pay a new tax. This mandate makes it so you have to choose one or the other, and that pisses you off.
Again, I may not be right, but that's how what you've written reads.
Nobody is forcing you at gunpoint to engage in any activity you don't want to, nor are they preventing you from engaging in an activity you want to engage in. Like all taxes, what is happening is you are being given a choice: Pay up, or go without the activity being taxed. Now, if you want to talk about what Congress should be able to tax, that's a whole other ballgame (Personally, I think they shouldn't have the power to tax hourly wages at all, let alone impose fines on those wage taxes for something completely unrelated). However, as long as they're taxing something, every single tax issue boils down to "pay to play." A given tax may exceed Congress's authority, but those that don't are all the same: you pay them to make it easier to engage in activities you want to, and they tax activities to make it easier to collect taxes from the majority of people. Health insurance, petroleum, whatever. All the same system, all for the same underlying reasons, all using the same mechanisms to ensure high levels of compliance.
* The "fine" is levied under the taxing power of Congress, so it is a tax in function, regardless of what they call it.
The government doesn't compel you to have a job either, but there is a cost to having one if you choose to. One stupid rationalization does not excuse another. I simply used one stupid rationalization to highlight that another stupid rationalization was just that: stupid.
There is no "street name" field. There is "address line #1" and "address line #2". Some input systems include a 3rd "unit #" field, and those that do append it to the first address line. The only time the unit # appears in "address line #2" is if you enter it into the "address line #2" field instead of entering it into the "unit #" or "address line #1" field.
Again, the USPS treats it as a unique field so that they can process it correctly: by appending it to the first address line. If it is too long, the USPS still places the unit # on the first address line, and places the rest (street # and name) on the line immediately preceding the "city state zip" line.
Hey, you're finally catching on! Not completely, since I never brought up freedom or liberty.
Now, let me complete the picture and comparison: it takes a whole lot more than that to live without paying the taxes on oil products.
So, you've finally gotten around to realizing you can actually live without penalty for not buying health insurance. It's also as absurd for most people as what is required to live without penalty for consuming petroleum-using products.
Comparison complete. Neither is really palatable for most, though both are possible. That, and only that, was my point. Your original comparison took the blithe position that you could avoid oil taxes but not healthcare insurance penalties. In practice, avoiding either is nearly impossible for most people, but still theoretically possible. You can't legitimately claim one is and one is not, because if you're going to take one to it's extreme you need to do that for both.
For the record, I'm against oil cronyism and subsidy as much as I'm against healthcare subsidy and cronyism. I'm just against torturing logic to suit an ideology (rather than developing an ideology through proper use of logic) more.
Did you read the healthcare... Yes, and I'm aware of the above.
Are you really unable to see, or are you just unwilling to actually respond to the complete comparison? The "gasoline tax" bit is a major reversion, and, while superficially they are similar, so are import taxes and capitation taxes. Comparing them directly to one another doesn't make much sense without a much broader context. That context is something you've consistently only applied to one side, which is intellectually dishonest.
You say you can live without penalty for not buying products that are produced using oil. I agree with you to the extent that you can as easily live without paying for health insurance without penalty. That you apparently are capable of deducing that you can, in fact, avoid the tax penalty by *gasp* not doing anything that incurs a tax liability in the first place makes the fact that you still fail to actually make the connection even worse. It can be logically deduced from your statement about the liability mechanism used to enforce payment. That liability mechanism is engaging in other activity that produces a tax liability. You can refrain from engaging in that activity as easily as you can refrain from engaging in the liability mechanism for oil taxes (purchasing, well, pretty much anything).
Let me make it easier: say you were to couch-surf or live with your parents (or in a hut somewhere in the woods, it matters not) and are unemployed by choice, will the government fine you and have any way to enforce the collection of that fine as a result of the new healthcare legislation?
The above question can be answered with a simple yes or no.
It's pretty easy to be a bum. Not so much to live in US society and not purchasing or consuming, well, almost anything at all. It's really sad this went even half as far as it's gone. Either is arguably as much a reduction or increase in freedom, depending on your point of view. Unfortunately, the ability to neutrally analyse sides of issues one may not agree with is a skill almost completely extinct, at least in the US.
You should at least have the decency to answer the yes-or-no question if you want to continue flailing about. I'd be interested to see how close you can get while still maintaining the illusion.
Really? How are they punishing you by not buying healthcare any more than they can punish you for not buying oil?
It's as easy to live without a job as it is to live without oil (actually, much easier). If you have no job, a tax penalty is not a punishment. Ergo, if you're going to go so far as arguing it is possible to live without oil sans punishment, you have to admit it is as easy (again, arguably far easier) to live without health insurance sans punishment. If you're not willing to admit that, we're pretty much done here. I can't make up for a lack of ability on your part to abstract both sides of a comparison equally.
Which, in actual practice, almost never happens. The retention department is there to convince you to stay. That means they have to have something to offer the people who have made up their mind to leave.
Pick up a cheap DSL modem and keep it on-hand if you are worried about it. You'll pay for it in the price of one month's reduced rate, and if they ever do call your bluff you actually aren't without internet. Call the phone company, have a DSL line switched on, and you'll be paying their promotional rate. If they have a connection fee, tell them you won't sign up unless they waive it. They will waive it.
Call them and request to cancel service. You'll talk to a perky retention department representative who will be happy to help you terminate your service. While they're pulling up your account information, they'll inquisitively ask why you wish to cancel your service with them. When you say that the price is simply too high, and you'll get by just fine with the cheaper and slower DSL, the representative will suggest that they can reduce your monthly bill to whatever the current "new customer" promotional rate is. They'll then cheerfully thank you for allowing them the opportunity to provide you service at a much lower price.
Smart consumers can even leverage the average reluctance to switch to their advantage. Retention departments are designed to play on that reluctance in order to maintain customer relationships, which means that they can be easily manipulated to get price reductions in favor of a person who's willing to bluff every time the price goes back up. Rarely will the bluff ever be called, and even if it is, switching providers is not a huge hassle anymore.
I've only ever encountered on person who didn't have a retention department give them concessions to stay, and that was with DirecTV. Dish Network now has a new customer, and the net result was the same.
I do this every 6 months with a certain national cable provider. As a result, I pay no more than $30 a month for 15 Mb cable service, without a single other bundled product. Then again, I'm also willing to actually go through with switching if they call my bluff. DSL equipment is on-hand to switch my service over the second they won't give me an acceptable monthly rate, and the telephone company will be happy to give me their fastest service for $20-$30/month for 6 months. After 6 months, I'm considered a "new customer" to the cable company again. As long as they think I'm going to leave once the introductory rate goes away, I get the introductory rate, well, forever.
Slashdot Mirror
Most licenses are OEM licenses, which can't be transferred to a new machine (unless the old motherboard is going into said machine). Once you get your first non-OEM license you can transfer it ad infinitum, but not until that point. At least legally, which may or may not be an issue for a given person...
Your response is in pretty much the same vein: short-sighted, lacking the application of sense (common or otherwise), and generally asinine.
In your example, yes, still not technically "on duty." That's not necessarily the same thing as being "off shift," depending on the job. Does he have a duty to get his ass out of the bathroom ASAP? Yes. Is he expected to be actively engaged in his job function while actually on the toilet? No.
Such things don't qualify as being "on-duty," but you probably actually knew that and chose to troll a perfectly legitimate comment anyway.
The OP was clearly an overrated post, which is why I didn't respond to it (being 100% anecdote). Yours was not as clearly offtopic, as there are many people on /. who read and post from an American viewpoint even when it is completely irrelevant to the story. Those who read from an American viewpoint are much less likely to catch that you weren't actually talking about sentences having the slightest bearing on the crimes in the story.
Regardless, my initial point still stands: the US sentences are irrelevant, since the story is about a crime in the UK.
No, it was completely in line with the original story. The OP's post was vague and didn't contain anything to make anyone believe it was an attempt at authoritative commentary. It could have as easily been written by a clueless Brit as by a clueless American. I responded to yours since it clearly was an attempt at an authoritative post. As it was an analysis of US laws applied to British crimes, if any post was a non sequitur, it would be yours. After all, as I stated above, the OP could have easily been a clueless Brit. Commentary on US laws certainly wouldn't follow a posting strictly regarding inequities in the British penal system, unless the point was to compare and/or contrast the two. That did not appear to be the case.
I was using American sentencing.
That was exactly my point, and why the post is offtopic.
Add the noose if anyone dies.
Not knowing much about UK sentencing, I could have been convinced you knew what you were talking about until I got to the above.
Rather than mod it offtopic, which it clearly is, I figured I'd post this as response so that other mods can mod it offtopic without getting the hell meta-modded out of them.
Unfortunately, no mod points left or I would have done exactly that.
True, and yet all that is all still completely irrelevant to the question that was asked.
I hope you're joking (hard to tell), because things exactly like that do happen from time to time.
No, that only resolves the issue of request latency. The reply latency is still a problem.
Oh, I'm certainly with you on all that.
It is different, but only in appearance. In actual practice it is not, because even if it were marketed as an incentive instead of a penalty, the ultimate effect is no different. They just screwed up the delivery of the pretense this time, or decided to dispense with it entirely. I don't know which was the rationale, but it's not really different. Similar to how there's no functional difference between a surcharge on credit transactions vs a discount for cash. One is seen as punitive and one is seen as incentive. The cost differential is the same for one person charging it and another paying cash. In the former, prices in general are lower and they add the charge. In the latter, prices in general are higher, and cash users are discounted. Incentive and penalty are a marketing ploy, nothing more.
They do treat it that way for that purpose, so they can format it correctly for people who don't know any better.
For those that do, the field is irrelevant because they know already which line it goes on and how addresses are concatenated in output.
As for it not working often, I have yet to see it fail and receive shipments via basically every major service that does business in the US multiple times per month, both originating here and in foreign countries. I've also received lots of incorrectly-addressed mail (the whole "second line unit" mis-addressing is common on manually-produced addressing) that makes it wherever I am just fine.
The only time it's really an issue is for automated bulk-rate mail, and then the USPS demands that it comply exactly to their specification. Put the unit number anywhere other than on the delivery location line or above it and goodbye bulk rate delivery.
Using taxation to influence purchasing is nothing new. People let that horse out of the barn long, long ago. Of course, that was by allowing Congress to get away with banning through taxation. If they can do that, it's only logical that eventually the scum will try the opposite. Ballsy yes, but different? Not really.
So, while I hope you are right about it not surviving a judicial challenge, it would not surprise me in the slightest for it to survive. A lot depends on whether Obama wants to try the same road FDR did, and how that turns out. Even if he doesn't, politicians have a nasty habit of embracing and extending controls they claimed to disagree with in order to get elected.
All taxes are governmentally-imposed hardships, and all can be avoided legally in one way or another through some extent of personal hardship. Every. Single. One. The two types of hardship are not mutually exclusive; government hardships are all, at some level, personal hardships. There are many that are not directly, but even those contribute indirectly to financial burden on someone.
I fail entirely to see how the above paragraph is bullshit. I also fail to see how it does not apply to either issue: healthcare tax*; petroleum tax. In what way does it not?
If it is true, and applies to both issues, it logically follows that it is not a bullshit comparison.
This is what it appears your argument is based on, and while I use absolute statements, I obviously cannot know that they are really true. As I said, this is what appears to be the subtext of your entire commentary here:
The fact that you don't like the comparison does not invalidate it, and that seems to be the real issue underlying your argument. You don't like the thought that they are actually the same. You pretend you can avoid the petroleum tax but at the same time can't avoid the healthcare tax. This is likely because you don't mind the petroleum tax as much as the hassle to avoid it, and it's not something that you see all the time: it's invisible. You don't want to stop either taxed activity (and I completely understand and can sympathize with why), but you also don't want to pay a new tax. This mandate makes it so you have to choose one or the other, and that pisses you off.
Again, I may not be right, but that's how what you've written reads.
Nobody is forcing you at gunpoint to engage in any activity you don't want to, nor are they preventing you from engaging in an activity you want to engage in. Like all taxes, what is happening is you are being given a choice: Pay up, or go without the activity being taxed. Now, if you want to talk about what Congress should be able to tax, that's a whole other ballgame (Personally, I think they shouldn't have the power to tax hourly wages at all, let alone impose fines on those wage taxes for something completely unrelated). However, as long as they're taxing something, every single tax issue boils down to "pay to play." A given tax may exceed Congress's authority, but those that don't are all the same: you pay them to make it easier to engage in activities you want to, and they tax activities to make it easier to collect taxes from the majority of people. Health insurance, petroleum, whatever. All the same system, all for the same underlying reasons, all using the same mechanisms to ensure high levels of compliance.
* The "fine" is levied under the taxing power of Congress, so it is a tax in function, regardless of what they call it.
Not understanding something is not the same as that something not existing.
The government doesn't compel you to have a job either, but there is a cost to having one if you choose to. One stupid rationalization does not excuse another. I simply used one stupid rationalization to highlight that another stupid rationalization was just that: stupid.
I'd like to hear how you would possibly live without using oil products that is any more realistic than living without tax liability.
Should be an interesting work of fiction, to say the least.
There is no "street name" field. There is "address line #1" and "address line #2". Some input systems include a 3rd "unit #" field, and those that do append it to the first address line. The only time the unit # appears in "address line #2" is if you enter it into the "address line #2" field instead of entering it into the "unit #" or "address line #1" field.
Again, the USPS treats it as a unique field so that they can process it correctly: by appending it to the first address line. If it is too long, the USPS still places the unit # on the first address line, and places the rest (street # and name) on the line immediately preceding the "city state zip" line.
Postal addressing standards
Hey, you're finally catching on! Not completely, since I never brought up freedom or liberty.
Now, let me complete the picture and comparison: it takes a whole lot more than that to live without paying the taxes on oil products.
So, you've finally gotten around to realizing you can actually live without penalty for not buying health insurance. It's also as absurd for most people as what is required to live without penalty for consuming petroleum-using products.
Comparison complete. Neither is really palatable for most, though both are possible. That, and only that, was my point. Your original comparison took the blithe position that you could avoid oil taxes but not healthcare insurance penalties. In practice, avoiding either is nearly impossible for most people, but still theoretically possible. You can't legitimately claim one is and one is not, because if you're going to take one to it's extreme you need to do that for both.
For the record, I'm against oil cronyism and subsidy as much as I'm against healthcare subsidy and cronyism. I'm just against torturing logic to suit an ideology (rather than developing an ideology through proper use of logic) more.
Did you read the healthcare...
Yes, and I'm aware of the above.
Are you really unable to see, or are you just unwilling to actually respond to the complete comparison? The "gasoline tax" bit is a major reversion, and, while superficially they are similar, so are import taxes and capitation taxes. Comparing them directly to one another doesn't make much sense without a much broader context. That context is something you've consistently only applied to one side, which is intellectually dishonest.
You say you can live without penalty for not buying products that are produced using oil. I agree with you to the extent that you can as easily live without paying for health insurance without penalty. That you apparently are capable of deducing that you can, in fact, avoid the tax penalty by *gasp* not doing anything that incurs a tax liability in the first place makes the fact that you still fail to actually make the connection even worse. It can be logically deduced from your statement about the liability mechanism used to enforce payment. That liability mechanism is engaging in other activity that produces a tax liability. You can refrain from engaging in that activity as easily as you can refrain from engaging in the liability mechanism for oil taxes (purchasing, well, pretty much anything).
Let me make it easier: say you were to couch-surf or live with your parents (or in a hut somewhere in the woods, it matters not) and are unemployed by choice, will the government fine you and have any way to enforce the collection of that fine as a result of the new healthcare legislation?
The above question can be answered with a simple yes or no.
It's pretty easy to be a bum. Not so much to live in US society and not purchasing or consuming, well, almost anything at all. It's really sad this went even half as far as it's gone. Either is arguably as much a reduction or increase in freedom, depending on your point of view. Unfortunately, the ability to neutrally analyse sides of issues one may not agree with is a skill almost completely extinct, at least in the US.
You should at least have the decency to answer the yes-or-no question if you want to continue flailing about. I'd be interested to see how close you can get while still maintaining the illusion.
Really? How are they punishing you by not buying healthcare any more than they can punish you for not buying oil?
It's as easy to live without a job as it is to live without oil (actually, much easier). If you have no job, a tax penalty is not a punishment. Ergo, if you're going to go so far as arguing it is possible to live without oil sans punishment, you have to admit it is as easy (again, arguably far easier) to live without health insurance sans punishment. If you're not willing to admit that, we're pretty much done here. I can't make up for a lack of ability on your part to abstract both sides of a comparison equally.
Which, in actual practice, almost never happens. The retention department is there to convince you to stay. That means they have to have something to offer the people who have made up their mind to leave.
Pick up a cheap DSL modem and keep it on-hand if you are worried about it. You'll pay for it in the price of one month's reduced rate, and if they ever do call your bluff you actually aren't without internet. Call the phone company, have a DSL line switched on, and you'll be paying their promotional rate. If they have a connection fee, tell them you won't sign up unless they waive it. They will waive it.
Don't do without, and don't call to bitch.
Call them and request to cancel service. You'll talk to a perky retention department representative who will be happy to help you terminate your service. While they're pulling up your account information, they'll inquisitively ask why you wish to cancel your service with them. When you say that the price is simply too high, and you'll get by just fine with the cheaper and slower DSL, the representative will suggest that they can reduce your monthly bill to whatever the current "new customer" promotional rate is. They'll then cheerfully thank you for allowing them the opportunity to provide you service at a much lower price.
Smart consumers can even leverage the average reluctance to switch to their advantage. Retention departments are designed to play on that reluctance in order to maintain customer relationships, which means that they can be easily manipulated to get price reductions in favor of a person who's willing to bluff every time the price goes back up. Rarely will the bluff ever be called, and even if it is, switching providers is not a huge hassle anymore.
I've only ever encountered on person who didn't have a retention department give them concessions to stay, and that was with DirecTV. Dish Network now has a new customer, and the net result was the same.
I do this every 6 months with a certain national cable provider. As a result, I pay no more than $30 a month for 15 Mb cable service, without a single other bundled product. Then again, I'm also willing to actually go through with switching if they call my bluff. DSL equipment is on-hand to switch my service over the second they won't give me an acceptable monthly rate, and the telephone company will be happy to give me their fastest service for $20-$30/month for 6 months. After 6 months, I'm considered a "new customer" to the cable company again. As long as they think I'm going to leave once the introductory rate goes away, I get the introductory rate, well, forever.