How does releasing Windows 8 for arm and not supporting x86 apps equate to "the first full-bodied version of Windows that won't (initially) be susceptible to viruses and malware...?"
Does that mean that Windows 8 is closing all of the security holes that allow for viruses and malaware? If so, why would it just be the arm version that is protected? On the other hand, if they are not closing the security holes, how does using arm protect it? Just because a virus will have to be rewritten to execute on the arm platform does not mean the platform won't be susceptible to viruses and malware, unless the OS is changed to protect against it.
If I am arrested for DWI, that is a misdemeanor? But, if I use bittorrent to watch a copy of a show broadcast last night that my DVR failed to record, I just committed a felony?
Same damn reason corporations in general are running everything. In the past few decades, "capitalism" and "free market" has been twisted by those with lots of money and a vested interest in having as much power as possible to mean unbridled, unregulated, free reign to do anything they want. When someone tries to inject some common sense into the conversation, they get called Communists (the Cold War buzzword) and/or Socialists (its modern bogeyman equivalent), the FTC, FCC, and other organizations tasked with looking out for us get emasculated and de-funded, a bunch of flag waving and chants of "freedom!" happen, and people vote and act against their own self-interest. All the while, those very rich people get to pay 15% capital gains tax on most of their income while the rest of us pay way more, and those corporations that are screwing us over pay little or no tax in the name of "creating jobs" all the while planning how to more efficiently cut our salaries and benefits and ship our jobs overseas.
What you are describing sounds like fascism. At least Mussolini made the trains run on time. In the US, they can't even do that.
Nah. But it does become a real problem with trapped inside your house.
Actually, no. The Radon gas has a short half life, and in a few days it is gone. What causes a problem in a house, or any building is not the radon gas trapped there, but the continual radon gas leaking into the building.
He had one law staring him in the face saying that handing over the information insecurely would place him in jail. He had (basically) someone's political bitch telling him to subvert the law. Then a jury is ordered to ignore the law to convict him.
You'd better hope you never end up in that situation. Essentially, the court is impressing that they can and will subvert State law in order to support a process they evidently do not understand.
If anything, organizations like the ACLU should be screaming for this fight.
I don't have any information to accept or doubt what you post. However, I don't see the relevance with regard to the original poster claiming he was exercising his constitutional right. That is what I was responding to. Did you mis-post to the wrong thread? Regardless, if what you post is true, it goes to show that the employee did not have any right to do what he did.
Assuming your information is accurate, you seem to feel he only had the two choices you mention. I can thing of two additional options he could have exercised. First, nobody can be compelled legally to perform an illegal act. If he was being forced to break the law by releasing the information, he could have refused and been terminated. Upon which time, if he had chosen that option, he could have sued. Option two, assuming he didn't want to go that route, would have been to resign/quit. In short, if he had chosen either of these two options, both legal, he would not have been charged with a crime. He might be unemployed, but that would seem a lot better than his current situation.
Even the restitution is out of hand, what are the chances that he can ever repay that?
If the fine is for restitution of costs the city had to pay with regards to figure out and correct what he did, then it truly is his problem to figure out how to pay it back. Why should city taxpayers foot that bill? On the other hand, if these are punitive damages, then a) they do seem excessive and b) why would they be paid to the technology department?
Or, to put it in a more sinister way: You get a heavier sentence if you insist on asserting your constitutional rights to a trial, to confront your accusers, to privacy from searches without probable cause, to avoid incriminating yourself, etc.
He had no constitutional right to do what he did. Free speech does not apply in the workplace. Well, it does, you are free to exercise it, but there is nothing that precludes the employer for terminating you for do so. Most employees think they have all of these "rights," but they should quit relying on TV shows. In all states, save Oregon (I think), all employees are at will employees and can be let go for no reason whatsoever. The only "rights" that employees have are those actually outlined by law and free speech, as it applies to an employee does not exist, unless it is with regards to certain other protected things (ie. speaking out against illegal discrimination). Union workers may have something in their contracts to preclude this, but otherwise that is the real world situation.
Statistically speaking, Gliese 581d is giving us tons of new information. Before, the known statistics on habitable planets could have been as low as one in the entire observable universe -- we suspected the chances might have been better, but we didn't *know*.
With Gliese 581d we can now estimate that the chance of finding a habitable planet is somewhere around one in every 20 cubic lightyears of volume. That's huge. We can extrapolate that into all sort of statistical estimates for number of habitable planets in the galaxy, and work our way up the Drake equation to an estimate of our our species' longevity.
Finding one planet that may be habitable does not help the statistics at all. At least not any more than saying since our solar system had 1 habitable plan then statistically all solar systems have a habitable planet or out of the 100 known planets in the universe, two are habitable, so 2% of all planets are habitable. You would need a much larger sample size to make any claim as to how many habitable planets there would be and it would definitely be a lot farther than 20 cubic light years (since there is a lot more empty space in the universe that spans distances of much greater than 20 cubic light years).
Many economist would argue that a flat tax is the only fair tax. Moralists, on the other hand, would beg to differ. However, where flat taxes usually run into problems with fairness are when they are applied to purchases (sales or consumption tax) in lieu of an income tax. The argument goes that since the poor spend most of their income then effectively all of it is taxed. The wealthy only spend a portion of their income and therefore they pay a lower percentage overall.
On the other hand, a flat tax income tax is not viewed as unfair to the poor. However, once you start adding exemptions, that only one class can take advantage of, even if for good reasons (stimulate charity, encourage home ownership, etc), then you no longer have a flat system. Most flat tax proposals for income tax recognize that the poor have the extra burden of not only having to put food on the table but providing most basic necessities of life. That is why the exempt some portion of income from any tax. The advantage of using the poverty level (or some multiple of it) is that it automatically adjusts for geographic location and size of family. Anything above that amount is taxed.
Somebody making 40,000 a year or less will generally pay no more tax than they do now, maybe even less. However, those making more than 7 times the poverty level for their area will end up paying more taxes than they do now. Regardless, though, they are at the same tax rate (unless there is an incremental increase) but no higher rate than they currently are at. Study after study shows that that the current tax system allows significant methods to legally avoid tax through various mechanisms so that people making more than $250,000/yr very often are paying less tax than those making $50,000. A system that eliminates all of these so called loopholes, rebalances the system so that other than the poorest people, everyone pays the same percentage of their income (whether they spend it or not).
I love how our definition of "habitable" is "kind of like Earth."
That would be the generally accepted definition of habitable: capable of being lived in. There are many parts of this plant that are not habitable. Just because some type of life form might be able to live there, doesn't make it habitable. Those sulfur vents in the Pacific have life that has adapted to it, but is toxic to most creatures and definitely not habitable to human beings. The Antarctic is not considered habitable, even though we have people living there doing research, because those people cannot sustain their existence from the resources found there. Likewise, most desert islands are not habitable because, even though one could survive there for a short period of time, they lack the resources to actually live there (adequate fresh water, dietary needs, etc.).
The definition of habitable implies that living there is sustainable, not just survivable for a short period of time. The only place in the universe we know that to be true, at least for us, is Earth, so for any place else in the universe to be habitable, it will indeed need to be "kind of like Earth." (At least habitable from our perspective).
The importance of this isn't that we can now send a team to colonize it. The importance of this is that we now have actual evidence that there are other planets that are theoretically habitable (Gliese581d doesn't sound like a good vacation spot, but it sounds comparable to some parts of Siberia or Antartica). We just one of the lower bounds in the Drake Equation.
There have always been planets that were theoretically habitable. Actually habitable is a different story. Mars is theoretically habitable, actually habitable is yet to be proven. Gliese 581d "meets key requirements for sustaining life" That doesn't mean it could sustain our life. The only thing really stated is that it has the minimum things that would be required for some type of life to exist there.
Even on our own planet, there are many parts that are not habitable, at least for most creatures. The Antarctic is not habitable, at least by most life forms on earth. People can exist there for short times to do research and the like, but it is not habitable because it cannot be sustained without food and resources from elsewhere. And yet, an entire planet like the Antarctic would meet the same minimal requirements for life as Gliese 581d.
Gliese 581d is an important discovery, but it just confirms what statistically we knew all along -- that there are other planets in the universe that could support some type of life. Nothing more, nothing less.
In economics this is called Pareto efficiency. A change that makes at least one person better off and no one worse off. With complex systems it is notoriously hard to do. Undoubtedly the model proposed could create a better tax system, but nothing short of a miracle would be able to make the system better without making at least a few people worse off. Some of the cruft that would be cut out would hurt someone, and re-balancing another part of the tax system to compensate would affect more people than were originally affected by the cruft. Then you'd have to try and re-balance somewhere else, and that would affect people who weren't affected by either of the first two changes. The interconnectedness of complex systems makes Pareto efficiency fiendishly hard.
To truly make the system better some people are going to feel pain. Trying to fix it without hurting anyone at all is like trying to live in the land of rainbows and unicorns. A very pretty dream.
If the tax code is unfair to certain groups, then trying to fix it without hurting anyone at all doesn't fix anything, it only perpetuates the injustice in the current system. Pareto efficiency isn't much better. For instance, raising the taxes on the wealthy and then having to offset that with new taxes on the poor to keep the same distribution or balance, hardly helps. Nor does lowering the tax on the poor and then doing the same for the wealthy. In effect that is the mess the current system tries to accomplish and is why the middle-class keep getting squeezed.
Make it easy, replace the code with a flat tax, regardless of one's income. If everybody pays 10% on everything over the poverty level, then it is hard to argue it isn't fair. No deductions - if you have constructive receipt of the funds, then you are taxed. Corporation or individual. If you make $10,000 above the poverty level, then you pay $1,000 in taxes. If you make $100,000 over the poverty level, you pay $10,000 in taxes. $1M over the poverty level, then $100,000 in taxes. Note, I just picked 10% out of the air. The actual value would probably be different (maybe a flat 15%).
Computers aren't needed to solve the tax code, just common sense.
Or, replace the code with a two or three tier incremental tax on gross income, no deductions. Less than $16,000 (full time minimum wage), no tax. $16,001 to 100000, 15%. The portion over $100,000 28%. This would apply to individuals and corporations (since they now seem to have "rights" they can also pay taxes to protect those rights).
Fair, balanced and simple. It's an income tax -- no special brakes by the government to encourage behaviors or spending. If they want to do that, they can pass a special appropriation and issue a check to those who qualify, like the Bush Administration did.
Pros: 1) Everybody but the poor pay something 2) All income, regardless of source, is taxed. 3) No special interest groups 4) Simple (means lower enforcement costs, too) 5) Predictable
Cons: 1) No more shelters and loopholes 2) CPAs and Tax attorneys loose prestige (and income) 3) Wealthiest taxpayers/corporations will now have to pay taxes on all their income.
I don't know, I still get a lot of messages in the morning that state something to the affect that "Windows was restarted after updating files" on desktop systems. May not need to be rebooted as in the past for memory leaks, etc., it still needs rebooted much more than a linux. Of course, one could turn off the automatic updates on a server. Regardless, Win7 stability is a major improvement over previous versions of Windows, with the possible exception of Windows 2000.
I didn't leave it out. You didn't mention it in your comment, therefore I didn't mention it either.
That aside, the 'special pricing' arrangement refers to the purchase of displays, for which Apple has invested in the form of multi-billion dollar prepayments. The payments have already been made up front, both in order to secure low price and a large degree of exclusivity.
Samsung have the cash already, and the contract is signed.
How does one sign a contract and make payment for a display that was just created? Does Apple's contract cover every display Samsung will come out with or does it cover specifically the displays that were designed for the ipad(1) and ipad2? Just curious.
- I buy a CD, I lend it to you, you copy the CD and give back the original. Perfectly legal. - I buy a CD, I copy it and give you the copy. although the end result is identical to the first case, this way is illegal. - I buy a CD, I copy it, I keep the copy and give you the original. Perfectly legal. - I buy a CD, I lend it to you, you copy the CD and give back the copy. although the end result is identical to the last example, this is illegal.
Your logic is faulty. In the first case, you are legal, your friend has committed an illegal act. In the second case, you have committed the illegal act. In case 3, you are only legal, under personal use copy, until you transfer title of the original CD to your friend at which time your copy is now illegal as you no longer own the original. In case 4, you are legal, your friend is illegal for distributing the copy.
In all four cases, somebody is illegal and therefore the results are technically identical with the exception of who has violated the law.
I live in Germany. They have this "tax" on various devices / media such as: writeable CDs, CD/DVD burners, printers (!), I can't remember what else. That does not stop them going for people they think are file-sharing, copying content or whatever.
Absolute parasites. The government are just as bad for forgetting who they are supposed to be representing and going along with this theft.
They probably don't charge $3 (or whatever the Euro equivalent is) per blank CD, though.
But you left out that Apple announced they are moving to Intel for a large part of their fabrication. This, too, takes business away from Samsung who currently has the contract. Regardless of the outcome of the phone suit. Samsung is losing its largest fabrication partner. The impact of that on the special pricing Samsung gives Apple has yet to be seen.
Isn't Apple severing ties with Samsung over their phone being to similar to an iPhone? If so, I wonder what would happen if Samsung pushes this towards Android and Blackberry for their tables and all of a sudden, Apple is the one with less quality?
Now before somebody posts that Apple would be the biggest purchaser, so Samsung would be hurting them self. 1) Apple is currently suing Samsung. 2) Samsung can only produce so many of these screens (high reject rate). 3) if Android/Blackberry devices can use up the supply that Samsung can produce, there is no loss.
Is it too cynical to mention that the US government has a vested interest in denigrating Bin Laden, and that he's no longer around to deny this claim?
Only if you assume the US government wants to further inflame radical Islamic terrorists so as to further their hatred of the US people to encourage more attacks.
Last I checked a human can't look in every direction at the same time and process all that information, a computer with several cameras can
That is true. However, the last time I checked, if there are cars beside you and behind you on the highway, whether you see them there or not, you can't move into the space they occupy. As such, an AI vehicle, while it may see everything going on around it, while it may be able to react faster than a human driver, still only has the three same options as a human driver: apply the brakes or veer around the obstacle or do both. Unless their AI is clairvoyant, knowing that my car is beside them doesn't help, if I don't see them and try and pull into their lane (at least not if somebody is on the other side of them).
The AI technology that Google is using is very sophisticated. However, it cannot predict how others will react at any given moment. Take for instance the following traffic pattern ABC DEF GHI
A typical rush hour commute. The AI car is car E. Car C brakes to avoid a piece of debris in the road. Car F, swerves to the left to avoid C (yes, F could have gone right, but didn't). What will the AI car E do? Not much, there isn't room to swerve itself and braking wouldn't apply. Even if it could brake quickly enough so car F went in front of it, then car H would be sitting in its back seat. In a situation like this, the AI car isn't any better than a human car. BTW, according to the NHTS, this is the most common scenario for accidents on congested highways.
Some at google have proposed having a special AI lane, like there are now carpool lanes. This doesn't totally eliminate the problem as somebody could still swerve into such a lane, but it definitely reduces it. However, at over $1M construction cost per mile, that seems like a very expensive solution.
You obviously don't live in a rural area, not every place has a taxi system. What about when you're busy and your kid needs something at the store 20 minutes away?
Actually, I currently am doing contract work in a town in the midwest with a population of 1500. How much more rural do you want? But regardless, the comment was about somebody who was 15 miles from the airport. Most airports, particularly those that charge the large parking fees (130/week) tend to be in metropolitan areas. Metropolitan areas would tend to have taxi service.
As for being busy and your kids need something at the store right way. Well, that is not what the original poster was talking about, so I didn't respond to that. But again, would a $50,000 vehicle be the solution to that situation, for a rural citizen? Maybe it would. I'm hoping by your question you aren't implying that you would keep doing what you were doing and put the kids in the automatic car and let it drive them to the mall or even walmart unsupervised. Otherwise, there is a much bigger problem to discuss than whether driverless cars should be allowed or not.
You keep talking about the AI car this, the AI car that. I keep talking about the vehicles around the AI car as AI cars, if allowed, won't be the majority for a very long time.
From Google, itself, their car stops upto 30% sooner than a conventional car. What does that do to your calculations for the non-AI driver behind you? How will your AI car keep the drivers behind and around your from being any less distracted? It can't and therefore those 3 second reaction times come into play.
Back to the NHTSA, most accidents that occur during heavy congestion are multi-vehicle accidents. Under heavy congestion, traffic flows like a fluid and fluid dynamics are involved. Reaction time plays a part, but not as much as one would think. A multitude of research has gone into this. Your single AI car, in your oversimplified view of the real dynamics involved, cannot change that. Even if 10% of the cars are AI, they cannot change that (unless they all happen to be in the same group.
All your AI car can do is what the driver of any car can do -- take control of itself. In most multi-vehicle accidents, there is one driver who starts the accident and then others try to avoid it -- some successfully, some not. Again, avoiding comes down to two options - braking or steering. In congested traffic, there is nowhere to steer, too. That leaves braking. And a car that brakes sooner than others "may" cause problems for the drivers behind.
I fail to understand why you keep arguing this. The same thing happened in the 70s as cars started to go to front disc brakes and their stopping distances were shortened, particularly during wet road conditions. Many of these "new" cars were rear ended because the more traditional cars could not stop in time. Once enough vehicles ended up with disc brakes, the problem resolved itself.
If the new technology improves stopping distance, which google's own research shows, and it does matter if it is improved via physical abilities or response time to apply the brakes, then those cars without that capability will be more prone to rear end the new cars, at least in congested areas.
Even google's own research lists this as a concern. Their own research states that to mitigate this risk, highway speeds, during congested times, could be reduced until there are a sufficient number of newly equipped vehicles (paraphrased). There car is smart enough to know how to brake and how to steer to avoid collisions. It is also smart enough to know when it can't steer to avoid a collision because its pathways are blocked. It is not smart enough to tell the human drivers of the surrounding cars what to do to avoid it (although they have a patent for just that car to car communication for their smart cars).
Again, I am not saying that the AI car would cause the crash or commit some human failure. I am saying that the human drivers, who cannot react as quickly, regardless as to how attentive they are can still cause an accident with the AI car. Add the normal inattentiveness of the average driver and the occupant of the AI car is not much safer than if they had been driving - they won't necessary cause an accident, but they cannot prevent one from involving them, either.
Here is an extreme and unlikely example. I use it to show what I am talking about. You are following behind a string of cars going into town, not even congested. However, as you cross the railroad tracks, the trafic in front of you comes to a stop because of any number of reasons (it doesn't matter, traffic stopped). You are now sitting on the tracks and the warning lights and bells go off because a train is coming. Meanwhile, the gates lower. Your AI car cannot go forward or back or left or right. In that situation it makes no difference as to whether it is AI or not, you better get out of the car.
New scenario, much more likely (but the exact scenario that google mentions and is concerned about). You are driving home on I-95 in rush hour. Traffic is moving 60mph. You have cars to you
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How does releasing Windows 8 for arm and not supporting x86 apps equate to "the first full-bodied version of Windows that won't (initially) be susceptible to viruses and malware...?"
Does that mean that Windows 8 is closing all of the security holes that allow for viruses and malaware? If so, why would it just be the arm version that is protected? On the other hand, if they are not closing the security holes, how does using arm protect it? Just because a virus will have to be rewritten to execute on the arm platform does not mean the platform won't be susceptible to viruses and malware, unless the OS is changed to protect against it.
If I am arrested for DWI, that is a misdemeanor? But, if I use bittorrent to watch a copy of a show broadcast last night that my DVR failed to record, I just committed a felony?
Same damn reason corporations in general are running everything. In the past few decades, "capitalism" and "free market" has been twisted by those with lots of money and a vested interest in having as much power as possible to mean unbridled, unregulated, free reign to do anything they want. When someone tries to inject some common sense into the conversation, they get called Communists (the Cold War buzzword) and/or Socialists (its modern bogeyman equivalent), the FTC, FCC, and other organizations tasked with looking out for us get emasculated and de-funded, a bunch of flag waving and chants of "freedom!" happen, and people vote and act against their own self-interest. All the while, those very rich people get to pay 15% capital gains tax on most of their income while the rest of us pay way more, and those corporations that are screwing us over pay little or no tax in the name of "creating jobs" all the while planning how to more efficiently cut our salaries and benefits and ship our jobs overseas.
What you are describing sounds like fascism. At least Mussolini made the trains run on time. In the US, they can't even do that.
Nah. But it does become a real problem with trapped inside your house.
Actually, no. The Radon gas has a short half life, and in a few days it is gone. What causes a problem in a house, or any building is not the radon gas trapped there, but the continual radon gas leaking into the building.
Really? Are you that dense?
He had one law staring him in the face saying that handing over the information insecurely would place him in jail. He had (basically) someone's political bitch telling him to subvert the law. Then a jury is ordered to ignore the law to convict him.
You'd better hope you never end up in that situation. Essentially, the court is impressing that they can and will subvert State law in order to support a process they evidently do not understand.
If anything, organizations like the ACLU should be screaming for this fight.
I don't have any information to accept or doubt what you post. However, I don't see the relevance with regard to the original poster claiming he was exercising his constitutional right. That is what I was responding to. Did you mis-post to the wrong thread? Regardless, if what you post is true, it goes to show that the employee did not have any right to do what he did.
Assuming your information is accurate, you seem to feel he only had the two choices you mention. I can thing of two additional options he could have exercised. First, nobody can be compelled legally to perform an illegal act. If he was being forced to break the law by releasing the information, he could have refused and been terminated. Upon which time, if he had chosen that option, he could have sued. Option two, assuming he didn't want to go that route, would have been to resign/quit. In short, if he had chosen either of these two options, both legal, he would not have been charged with a crime. He might be unemployed, but that would seem a lot better than his current situation.
The majority of downloads on our Windows computers seem to be Microsoft patches, so 1 out of 14 being malicious sounds about right.
Even the restitution is out of hand, what are the chances that he can ever repay that?
If the fine is for restitution of costs the city had to pay with regards to figure out and correct what he did, then it truly is his problem to figure out how to pay it back. Why should city taxpayers foot that bill? On the other hand, if these are punitive damages, then a) they do seem excessive and b) why would they be paid to the technology department?
It's probably billing him for the temerity to actually take his case to trial.
You know, exercising his constitutional rights. That's something the "justice" system has to punish at all costs.
Here's some info for you.
Here's more.
Or, to put it in a more sinister way: You get a heavier sentence if you insist on asserting your constitutional rights to a trial, to confront your accusers, to privacy from searches without probable cause, to avoid incriminating yourself, etc.
He had no constitutional right to do what he did. Free speech does not apply in the workplace. Well, it does, you are free to exercise it, but there is nothing that precludes the employer for terminating you for do so. Most employees think they have all of these "rights," but they should quit relying on TV shows. In all states, save Oregon (I think), all employees are at will employees and can be let go for no reason whatsoever. The only "rights" that employees have are those actually outlined by law and free speech, as it applies to an employee does not exist, unless it is with regards to certain other protected things (ie. speaking out against illegal discrimination). Union workers may have something in their contracts to preclude this, but otherwise that is the real world situation.
Statistically speaking, Gliese 581d is giving us tons of new information. Before, the known statistics on habitable planets could have been as low as one in the entire observable universe -- we suspected the chances might have been better, but we didn't *know*.
With Gliese 581d we can now estimate that the chance of finding a habitable planet is somewhere around one in every 20 cubic lightyears of volume. That's huge. We can extrapolate that into all sort of statistical estimates for number of habitable planets in the galaxy, and work our way up the Drake equation to an estimate of our our species' longevity.
Finding one planet that may be habitable does not help the statistics at all. At least not any more than saying since our solar system had 1 habitable plan then statistically all solar systems have a habitable planet or out of the 100 known planets in the universe, two are habitable, so 2% of all planets are habitable. You would need a much larger sample size to make any claim as to how many habitable planets there would be and it would definitely be a lot farther than 20 cubic light years (since there is a lot more empty space in the universe that spans distances of much greater than 20 cubic light years).
Many economist would argue that a flat tax is the only fair tax. Moralists, on the other hand, would beg to differ. However, where flat taxes usually run into problems with fairness are when they are applied to purchases (sales or consumption tax) in lieu of an income tax. The argument goes that since the poor spend most of their income then effectively all of it is taxed. The wealthy only spend a portion of their income and therefore they pay a lower percentage overall.
On the other hand, a flat tax income tax is not viewed as unfair to the poor. However, once you start adding exemptions, that only one class can take advantage of, even if for good reasons (stimulate charity, encourage home ownership, etc), then you no longer have a flat system. Most flat tax proposals for income tax recognize that the poor have the extra burden of not only having to put food on the table but providing most basic necessities of life. That is why the exempt some portion of income from any tax. The advantage of using the poverty level (or some multiple of it) is that it automatically adjusts for geographic location and size of family. Anything above that amount is taxed.
Somebody making 40,000 a year or less will generally pay no more tax than they do now, maybe even less. However, those making more than 7 times the poverty level for their area will end up paying more taxes than they do now. Regardless, though, they are at the same tax rate (unless there is an incremental increase) but no higher rate than they currently are at. Study after study shows that that the current tax system allows significant methods to legally avoid tax through various mechanisms so that people making more than $250,000/yr very often are paying less tax than those making $50,000. A system that eliminates all of these so called loopholes, rebalances the system so that other than the poorest people, everyone pays the same percentage of their income (whether they spend it or not).
I love how our definition of "habitable" is "kind of like Earth."
That would be the generally accepted definition of habitable: capable of being lived in. There are many parts of this plant that are not habitable. Just because some type of life form might be able to live there, doesn't make it habitable. Those sulfur vents in the Pacific have life that has adapted to it, but is toxic to most creatures and definitely not habitable to human beings. The Antarctic is not considered habitable, even though we have people living there doing research, because those people cannot sustain their existence from the resources found there. Likewise, most desert islands are not habitable because, even though one could survive there for a short period of time, they lack the resources to actually live there (adequate fresh water, dietary needs, etc.).
The definition of habitable implies that living there is sustainable, not just survivable for a short period of time. The only place in the universe we know that to be true, at least for us, is Earth, so for any place else in the universe to be habitable, it will indeed need to be "kind of like Earth." (At least habitable from our perspective).
The importance of this isn't that we can now send a team to colonize it. The importance of this is that we now have actual evidence that there are other planets that are theoretically habitable (Gliese581d doesn't sound like a good vacation spot, but it sounds comparable to some parts of Siberia or Antartica). We just one of the lower bounds in the Drake Equation.
There have always been planets that were theoretically habitable. Actually habitable is a different story. Mars is theoretically habitable, actually habitable is yet to be proven. Gliese 581d "meets key requirements for sustaining life" That doesn't mean it could sustain our life. The only thing really stated is that it has the minimum things that would be required for some type of life to exist there.
Even on our own planet, there are many parts that are not habitable, at least for most creatures. The Antarctic is not habitable, at least by most life forms on earth. People can exist there for short times to do research and the like, but it is not habitable because it cannot be sustained without food and resources from elsewhere. And yet, an entire planet like the Antarctic would meet the same minimal requirements for life as Gliese 581d.
Gliese 581d is an important discovery, but it just confirms what statistically we knew all along -- that there are other planets in the universe that could support some type of life. Nothing more, nothing less.
"that leaves all 100 taxpayer clades unhurt"
In economics this is called Pareto efficiency. A change that makes at least one person better off and no one worse off. With complex systems it is notoriously hard to do. Undoubtedly the model proposed could create a better tax system, but nothing short of a miracle would be able to make the system better without making at least a few people worse off. Some of the cruft that would be cut out would hurt someone, and re-balancing another part of the tax system to compensate would affect more people than were originally affected by the cruft. Then you'd have to try and re-balance somewhere else, and that would affect people who weren't affected by either of the first two changes. The interconnectedness of complex systems makes Pareto efficiency fiendishly hard.
To truly make the system better some people are going to feel pain. Trying to fix it without hurting anyone at all is like trying to live in the land of rainbows and unicorns. A very pretty dream.
If the tax code is unfair to certain groups, then trying to fix it without hurting anyone at all doesn't fix anything, it only perpetuates the injustice in the current system. Pareto efficiency isn't much better. For instance, raising the taxes on the wealthy and then having to offset that with new taxes on the poor to keep the same distribution or balance, hardly helps. Nor does lowering the tax on the poor and then doing the same for the wealthy. In effect that is the mess the current system tries to accomplish and is why the middle-class keep getting squeezed.
Make it easy, replace the code with a flat tax, regardless of one's income. If everybody pays 10% on everything over the poverty level, then it is hard to argue it isn't fair. No deductions - if you have constructive receipt of the funds, then you are taxed. Corporation or individual. If you make $10,000 above the poverty level, then you pay $1,000 in taxes. If you make $100,000 over the poverty level, you pay $10,000 in taxes. $1M over the poverty level, then $100,000 in taxes. Note, I just picked 10% out of the air. The actual value would probably be different (maybe a flat 15%).
Computers aren't needed to solve the tax code, just common sense.
Or, replace the code with a two or three tier incremental tax on gross income, no deductions. Less than $16,000 (full time minimum wage), no tax. $16,001 to 100000, 15%. The portion over $100,000 28%. This would apply to individuals and corporations (since they now seem to have "rights" they can also pay taxes to protect those rights).
Fair, balanced and simple. It's an income tax -- no special brakes by the government to encourage behaviors or spending. If they want to do that, they can pass a special appropriation and issue a check to those who qualify, like the Bush Administration did.
Pros:
1) Everybody but the poor pay something
2) All income, regardless of source, is taxed.
3) No special interest groups
4) Simple (means lower enforcement costs, too)
5) Predictable
Cons:
1) No more shelters and loopholes
2) CPAs and Tax attorneys loose prestige (and income)
3) Wealthiest taxpayers/corporations will now have to pay taxes on all their income.
I don't know, I still get a lot of messages in the morning that state something to the affect that "Windows was restarted after updating files" on desktop systems. May not need to be rebooted as in the past for memory leaks, etc., it still needs rebooted much more than a linux. Of course, one could turn off the automatic updates on a server. Regardless, Win7 stability is a major improvement over previous versions of Windows, with the possible exception of Windows 2000.
I didn't leave it out. You didn't mention it in your comment, therefore I didn't mention it either.
That aside, the 'special pricing' arrangement refers to the purchase of displays, for which Apple has invested in the form of multi-billion dollar prepayments. The payments have already been made up front, both in order to secure low price and a large degree of exclusivity.
Samsung have the cash already, and the contract is signed.
How does one sign a contract and make payment for a display that was just created? Does Apple's contract cover every display Samsung will come out with or does it cover specifically the displays that were designed for the ipad(1) and ipad2? Just curious.
- I buy a CD, I lend it to you, you copy the CD and give back the original. Perfectly legal.
- I buy a CD, I copy it and give you the copy. although the end result is identical to the first case, this way is illegal.
- I buy a CD, I copy it, I keep the copy and give you the original. Perfectly legal.
- I buy a CD, I lend it to you, you copy the CD and give back the copy. although the end result is identical to the last example, this is illegal.
Your logic is faulty. In the first case, you are legal, your friend has committed an illegal act. In the second case, you have committed the illegal act. In case 3, you are only legal, under personal use copy, until you transfer title of the original CD to your friend at which time your copy is now illegal as you no longer own the original. In case 4, you are legal, your friend is illegal for distributing the copy.
In all four cases, somebody is illegal and therefore the results are technically identical with the exception of who has violated the law.
I live in Germany.
They have this "tax" on various devices / media such as: writeable CDs, CD/DVD burners, printers (!), I can't remember what else.
That does not stop them going for people they think are file-sharing, copying content or whatever.
Absolute parasites. The government are just as bad for forgetting who they are supposed to be representing and going along with this theft.
They probably don't charge $3 (or whatever the Euro equivalent is) per blank CD, though.
But you left out that Apple announced they are moving to Intel for a large part of their fabrication. This, too, takes business away from Samsung who currently has the contract. Regardless of the outcome of the phone suit. Samsung is losing its largest fabrication partner. The impact of that on the special pricing Samsung gives Apple has yet to be seen.
Isn't Apple severing ties with Samsung over their phone being to similar to an iPhone? If so, I wonder what would happen if Samsung pushes this towards Android and Blackberry for their tables and all of a sudden, Apple is the one with less quality?
Now before somebody posts that Apple would be the biggest purchaser, so Samsung would be hurting them self. 1) Apple is currently suing Samsung. 2) Samsung can only produce so many of these screens (high reject rate). 3) if Android/Blackberry devices can use up the supply that Samsung can produce, there is no loss.
Is it too cynical to mention that the US government has a vested interest in denigrating Bin Laden, and that he's no longer around to deny this claim?
Only if you assume the US government wants to further inflame radical Islamic terrorists so as to further their hatred of the US people to encourage more attacks.
I am sure that he was only watching it for doing research on how decadent the West is.
Last I checked a human can't look in every direction at the same time and process all that information, a computer with several cameras can
That is true. However, the last time I checked, if there are cars beside you and behind you on the highway, whether you see them there or not, you can't move into the space they occupy. As such, an AI vehicle, while it may see everything going on around it, while it may be able to react faster than a human driver, still only has the three same options as a human driver: apply the brakes or veer around the obstacle or do both. Unless their AI is clairvoyant, knowing that my car is beside them doesn't help, if I don't see them and try and pull into their lane (at least not if somebody is on the other side of them).
The AI technology that Google is using is very sophisticated. However, it cannot predict how others will react at any given moment. Take for instance the following traffic pattern
ABC
DEF
GHI
A typical rush hour commute. The AI car is car E. Car C brakes to avoid a piece of debris in the road. Car F, swerves to the left to avoid C (yes, F could have gone right, but didn't). What will the AI car E do? Not much, there isn't room to swerve itself and braking wouldn't apply. Even if it could brake quickly enough so car F went in front of it, then car H would be sitting in its back seat. In a situation like this, the AI car isn't any better than a human car. BTW, according to the NHTS, this is the most common scenario for accidents on congested highways.
Some at google have proposed having a special AI lane, like there are now carpool lanes. This doesn't totally eliminate the problem as somebody could still swerve into such a lane, but it definitely reduces it. However, at over $1M construction cost per mile, that seems like a very expensive solution.
You obviously don't live in a rural area, not every place has a taxi system. What about when you're busy and your kid needs something at the store 20 minutes away?
Actually, I currently am doing contract work in a town in the midwest with a population of 1500. How much more rural do you want? But regardless, the comment was about somebody who was 15 miles from the airport. Most airports, particularly those that charge the large parking fees (130/week) tend to be in metropolitan areas. Metropolitan areas would tend to have taxi service.
As for being busy and your kids need something at the store right way. Well, that is not what the original poster was talking about, so I didn't respond to that. But again, would a $50,000 vehicle be the solution to that situation, for a rural citizen? Maybe it would. I'm hoping by your question you aren't implying that you would keep doing what you were doing and put the kids in the automatic car and let it drive them to the mall or even walmart unsupervised. Otherwise, there is a much bigger problem to discuss than whether driverless cars should be allowed or not.
You keep talking about the AI car this, the AI car that. I keep talking about the vehicles around the AI car as AI cars, if allowed, won't be the majority for a very long time.
From Google, itself, their car stops upto 30% sooner than a conventional car. What does that do to your calculations for the non-AI driver behind you? How will your AI car keep the drivers behind and around your from being any less distracted? It can't and therefore those 3 second reaction times come into play.
Back to the NHTSA, most accidents that occur during heavy congestion are multi-vehicle accidents. Under heavy congestion, traffic flows like a fluid and fluid dynamics are involved. Reaction time plays a part, but not as much as one would think. A multitude of research has gone into this. Your single AI car, in your oversimplified view of the real dynamics involved, cannot change that. Even if 10% of the cars are AI, they cannot change that (unless they all happen to be in the same group.
All your AI car can do is what the driver of any car can do -- take control of itself. In most multi-vehicle accidents, there is one driver who starts the accident and then others try to avoid it -- some successfully, some not. Again, avoiding comes down to two options - braking or steering. In congested traffic, there is nowhere to steer, too. That leaves braking. And a car that brakes sooner than others "may" cause problems for the drivers behind.
I fail to understand why you keep arguing this. The same thing happened in the 70s as cars started to go to front disc brakes and their stopping distances were shortened, particularly during wet road conditions. Many of these "new" cars were rear ended because the more traditional cars could not stop in time. Once enough vehicles ended up with disc brakes, the problem resolved itself.
If the new technology improves stopping distance, which google's own research shows, and it does matter if it is improved via physical abilities or response time to apply the brakes, then those cars without that capability will be more prone to rear end the new cars, at least in congested areas.
Even google's own research lists this as a concern. Their own research states that to mitigate this risk, highway speeds, during congested times, could be reduced until there are a sufficient number of newly equipped vehicles (paraphrased). There car is smart enough to know how to brake and how to steer to avoid collisions. It is also smart enough to know when it can't steer to avoid a collision because its pathways are blocked. It is not smart enough to tell the human drivers of the surrounding cars what to do to avoid it (although they have a patent for just that car to car communication for their smart cars).
Again, I am not saying that the AI car would cause the crash or commit some human failure. I am saying that the human drivers, who cannot react as quickly, regardless as to how attentive they are can still cause an accident with the AI car. Add the normal inattentiveness of the average driver and the occupant of the AI car is not much safer than if they had been driving - they won't necessary cause an accident, but they cannot prevent one from involving them, either.
Here is an extreme and unlikely example. I use it to show what I am talking about. You are following behind a string of cars going into town, not even congested. However, as you cross the railroad tracks, the trafic in front of you comes to a stop because of any number of reasons (it doesn't matter, traffic stopped). You are now sitting on the tracks and the warning lights and bells go off because a train is coming. Meanwhile, the gates lower. Your AI car cannot go forward or back or left or right. In that situation it makes no difference as to whether it is AI or not, you better get out of the car.
New scenario, much more likely (but the exact scenario that google mentions and is concerned about). You are driving home on I-95 in rush hour. Traffic is moving 60mph. You have cars to you