On the flip side, if you don't have a car and public transportation is not available to your city or county courthouse, you may be able to get out of jury duty.
Like I said above, I'm not sure I buy into the depreciation logic. I bought my car in 1997, paid it off by mid-2000, and I plan to drive it until it stops. Should I be doing some sort of GAAP accounting that indicates that I am getting some sort of unusual profit from my vehicle? To me, it's worth exactly what it was worth when I first bought it, because I'm not planning to sell the darn thing, and it still gets me exactly where I want to go.
Depreciation is only an issue if you've gotta always have a new car, so you're planning on swapping out every 2-5 years.
Of course, if it's a vehicle for your own business, that's a whole different issue. But in that case, you should probably be leasing anyway.
I'm not sure I understand the depreciation issue. I think of it as money out the door that I'm paying to the lien holder, but if I'm planning on paying off the car and running it into the ground, I can't really count that money spent twice, can I?
I guess if you plan to sell your car at some point, then it makes sense to play accounting games... "I paid out $500 a month for 12 months, which is $6000. The loan is for five years, so that's $30,000 total but I'm going to sell the car for $18,000 at that time, so I'm effectively only spending $12,000, or a little over $2,000 per year."
It seems like too much money juggling to me. I buy a car, lose what I paid for it and pay to use and maintain it, gain the value of what it has allowed me to do. If I sell it or trade it in eventually, then that's just icing on the cake.
It takes me almost 2 hours to get to school, which is only about ~7 miles away from me.
What's the terrain like? You could probably walk that far in 2 hours, certainly ride a bike, as long as the weather is nice. And think of what great shape you'd be in!
Yeah, there really is no "one size fits all" solution. In the SF Bay Area, there are plenty of lost productivity hours in driving one's self. Hit the wrong traffic patch and it can take you 2 hours to get 15 miles. My wife and I used to work in neighboring office buildings, and we got our wires crossed one day that she had driven in to work, and so she left without me. I called her on the cell phone, found out where she was, and without her pulling over, I was able to jog up to meet her before she got on the bridge, even though she was four blocks ahead of me.
One other solution that's really great--which I used in Oakland/SF commute--was the casual carpool. Cut through most of the traffic, ride in comfort (usually), no extra stops, and one direction is free. I wonder how many cities have that these days.
That being said, I'm sort of with you. I don't even think food crops should be used to feed people. Every thing started going wrong when efficient farming techniques ruined the world. Human lifespan and leisure time expanded so much that we were able to poison the world with our inventions, and overpopulate the world with our hungry progeny. Did you know that, before agriculture, cancer was almost unheard of? Heart attacks, too! We didn't live long enough!
2. Go with an endowment model. A rich philanthropist sets up a non-profit newspaper funded by the interest of a billion-dollar endowment. The salaries of the entire staff is paid by that endowment. In this model, the newspaper is free of external meddling.
I like this option, too. It reminds me of Citizen Kane. There was a point where one of Kane's inner circle said, "But the paper is losing a million dollars a year!"
To which Kane replied, "Well, then, in 60 years, when I am out of money, we will close it down!"
High school? I think the last time I opened up a Britannica was in elementary school, because once you get into Jr. High, they drill it into you that doing research in encyclopedias is somehow cheating, and that you need to do everything right from the source. Or at least it seemed to me that's what they were saying.
Besides, with California's prop 13, they didn't have any usable Brittanicas in public school; the best Brittanica I had easy access to was at home, and that was from 1942.
The best part about that one was that in the section on Da Vinci, they discussed his story of the first men on the moon, and in so doing, they said, "You will not live to see people landing on the moon, nor will your children. Maybe your children's children's children will see that day if they are lucky." I guess they figured that the readers would be rabbits or something, because 26 years later...
I think you're absolutely right. There are some other good points in this thread--i.e. the one about paying for *indexing* of information that would otherwise be free--but I think that financial news is WSJ's big value-add.
what I think is funny is that Murdoch et al are making two somewhat-countering arguments at once. One is that they can't support themselves by giving away the news for free on the web, and then they go after Google who are offering a free service of rounding up the news for people and linking back to the sources.
Thanks for the interesting summary. My question is, doesn't the charge that defines the ionosphere help protect us from solar radiation and who-knows-what-else? Even if this did work, I shudder to think what would happen if we started removing gigawatts from the ionosphere to power our doo-dads.
Ah, I see, the free electricity was to have been *collected* by the towers, but still distributed by wire; is that what you're saying? I think the GP post thought that Tesla was suggesting that the towers would broadcast the electricity through the air.
Don't forget VAT. Any time you buy anything other than food, books, children's clothes, or a smattering of exempt items, you pay a "value added tax" of 15% over the base retail cost of the goods. And it's going up to 17.5% in the not too distant future.
And I thought that California's sales tax was high...
it was clear to anyone on the ground that it cut across the whole political spectrum
True, because there are idiots in all parties. The news portrayed it as right-wing/redneck because they can't just call people morons on the nightly news.
John Stewart's coverage--via field reporter John Oliver--however, was pretty much perfect.
Yup. A buddy of mine is a professional and artistic photographer. I separate the two not because they necessarily need to be different, but what he does is he whores himself out for six months of the year, taking pictures for Bob Vila, Architectural Digest, and other major money-making pubs, and then disappears into some third-world jungle for the other six months to take pictures of animals, indigenous locals, and natural- and man-made wonders.
When he was cutting his teeth and building enough of a name that he could afford to do that, he had to take whatever job he could, and that included some porn shoots. Nothing, y'know, penetrative, but definitely explicit. He was telling me how boring it was after the first five minutes. In his words, "I just don't see what people find exciting about a woman, legs akimbo, arms crossed at the wrists and drawing the curtains back as if there were some sort of stage down there, but for some reason, it's part of every shoot."
It's like the old Pepsi challenge. Pepsi typically wins in the "sip" test, even among Coke fans. Why does Coke outsell Pepsi 2:1 worldwide, then? Well, drinking a whole can is a whole different experience from taking a sip.
No, publishers should and do exercise editorial and quality controls over the content that they publish. CNN is a publisher. If I write a news article, should I be able to get it published as news if I pay them enough money?
I dunno. That's sort of a cop out. If you bill yourself as a premier publisher of respectable medical journals, you should take whatever extra effort is required to avoid being subject to Stugeon2.
To my mind, this statement is no more insightful than, "Shit happens." Any company wiling to offload its responsibilities by invoking S2 is on its way out.
But maybe that was Merck's ultimate goal. Maybe they meant to not only create a single bogus journal, but also to undermine the credibility of all journals by bringing down a major publisher.
I can compare a penny to a dollar coin. A dollar coin is worth one hundred times more than a penny.
But they are both money.
Yes, but to say that a private social network not allowing a fringe group to use the same functions as mainstream political parties means that the country where that private network operates is going the way of the Nazis or the DDR is a lot like a bum who gets a dollar claiming to be like Bill Gates.
Either way, I call Godwin's on this thread. It's ridiculous, and truly, invoking that type of history on this type of issue minimizes what actually happened. I don't think anyone in the Pirate Party has been arrested, put into forced labor camps, or gassed, incinerated and sent up the chimney.
Slashdot Mirror
On the flip side, if you don't have a car and public transportation is not available to your city or county courthouse, you may be able to get out of jury duty.
Like I said above, I'm not sure I buy into the depreciation logic. I bought my car in 1997, paid it off by mid-2000, and I plan to drive it until it stops. Should I be doing some sort of GAAP accounting that indicates that I am getting some sort of unusual profit from my vehicle? To me, it's worth exactly what it was worth when I first bought it, because I'm not planning to sell the darn thing, and it still gets me exactly where I want to go.
Depreciation is only an issue if you've gotta always have a new car, so you're planning on swapping out every 2-5 years.
Of course, if it's a vehicle for your own business, that's a whole different issue. But in that case, you should probably be leasing anyway.
I'm not sure I understand the depreciation issue. I think of it as money out the door that I'm paying to the lien holder, but if I'm planning on paying off the car and running it into the ground, I can't really count that money spent twice, can I?
I guess if you plan to sell your car at some point, then it makes sense to play accounting games... "I paid out $500 a month for 12 months, which is $6000. The loan is for five years, so that's $30,000 total but I'm going to sell the car for $18,000 at that time, so I'm effectively only spending $12,000, or a little over $2,000 per year."
It seems like too much money juggling to me. I buy a car, lose what I paid for it and pay to use and maintain it, gain the value of what it has allowed me to do. If I sell it or trade it in eventually, then that's just icing on the cake.
It takes me almost 2 hours to get to school, which is only about ~7 miles away from me.
What's the terrain like? You could probably walk that far in 2 hours, certainly ride a bike, as long as the weather is nice. And think of what great shape you'd be in!
Yeah, there really is no "one size fits all" solution. In the SF Bay Area, there are plenty of lost productivity hours in driving one's self. Hit the wrong traffic patch and it can take you 2 hours to get 15 miles. My wife and I used to work in neighboring office buildings, and we got our wires crossed one day that she had driven in to work, and so she left without me. I called her on the cell phone, found out where she was, and without her pulling over, I was able to jog up to meet her before she got on the bridge, even though she was four blocks ahead of me.
One other solution that's really great--which I used in Oakland/SF commute--was the casual carpool. Cut through most of the traffic, ride in comfort (usually), no extra stops, and one direction is free. I wonder how many cities have that these days.
I eat algae, you insensitive clod!
That being said, I'm sort of with you. I don't even think food crops should be used to feed people. Every thing started going wrong when efficient farming techniques ruined the world. Human lifespan and leisure time expanded so much that we were able to poison the world with our inventions, and overpopulate the world with our hungry progeny. Did you know that, before agriculture, cancer was almost unheard of? Heart attacks, too! We didn't live long enough!
2. Go with an endowment model. A rich philanthropist sets up a non-profit newspaper funded by the interest of a billion-dollar endowment. The salaries of the entire staff is paid by that endowment. In this model, the newspaper is free of external meddling.
I like this option, too. It reminds me of Citizen Kane. There was a point where one of Kane's inner circle said, "But the paper is losing a million dollars a year!"
To which Kane replied, "Well, then, in 60 years, when I am out of money, we will close it down!"
High school? I think the last time I opened up a Britannica was in elementary school, because once you get into Jr. High, they drill it into you that doing research in encyclopedias is somehow cheating, and that you need to do everything right from the source. Or at least it seemed to me that's what they were saying.
Besides, with California's prop 13, they didn't have any usable Brittanicas in public school; the best Brittanica I had easy access to was at home, and that was from 1942.
The best part about that one was that in the section on Da Vinci, they discussed his story of the first men on the moon, and in so doing, they said, "You will not live to see people landing on the moon, nor will your children. Maybe your children's children's children will see that day if they are lucky." I guess they figured that the readers would be rabbits or something, because 26 years later...
I think you're absolutely right. There are some other good points in this thread--i.e. the one about paying for *indexing* of information that would otherwise be free--but I think that financial news is WSJ's big value-add.
what I think is funny is that Murdoch et al are making two somewhat-countering arguments at once. One is that they can't support themselves by giving away the news for free on the web, and then they go after Google who are offering a free service of rounding up the news for people and linking back to the sources.
Thanks for the interesting summary. My question is, doesn't the charge that defines the ionosphere help protect us from solar radiation and who-knows-what-else? Even if this did work, I shudder to think what would happen if we started removing gigawatts from the ionosphere to power our doo-dads.
Ah, I see, the free electricity was to have been *collected* by the towers, but still distributed by wire; is that what you're saying? I think the GP post thought that Tesla was suggesting that the towers would broadcast the electricity through the air.
Won't someone please think of the kittens?!
I don't know why, but i read that as "goatse mit methane." I don't want to think about *that* guy's emissions...
Oh yeah, and lots of whites space gets better responses; if you don't separate your bullets, it starts to look like a paragraph.
Don't forget VAT. Any time you buy anything other than food, books, children's clothes, or a smattering of exempt items, you pay a "value added tax" of 15% over the base retail cost of the goods. And it's going up to 17.5% in the not too distant future.
And I thought that California's sales tax was high...
it was clear to anyone on the ground that it cut across the whole political spectrum
True, because there are idiots in all parties. The news portrayed it as right-wing/redneck because they can't just call people morons on the nightly news.
John Stewart's coverage--via field reporter John Oliver--however, was pretty much perfect.
Yup. A buddy of mine is a professional and artistic photographer. I separate the two not because they necessarily need to be different, but what he does is he whores himself out for six months of the year, taking pictures for Bob Vila, Architectural Digest, and other major money-making pubs, and then disappears into some third-world jungle for the other six months to take pictures of animals, indigenous locals, and natural- and man-made wonders.
When he was cutting his teeth and building enough of a name that he could afford to do that, he had to take whatever job he could, and that included some porn shoots. Nothing, y'know, penetrative, but definitely explicit. He was telling me how boring it was after the first five minutes. In his words, "I just don't see what people find exciting about a woman, legs akimbo, arms crossed at the wrists and drawing the curtains back as if there were some sort of stage down there, but for some reason, it's part of every shoot."
It's like the old Pepsi challenge. Pepsi typically wins in the "sip" test, even among Coke fans. Why does Coke outsell Pepsi 2:1 worldwide, then? Well, drinking a whole can is a whole different experience from taking a sip.
You're right. You know what? I'm canceling my vacation to Australasia in protest!
No, publishers should and do exercise editorial and quality controls over the content that they publish. CNN is a publisher. If I write a news article, should I be able to get it published as news if I pay them enough money?
I dunno. That's sort of a cop out. If you bill yourself as a premier publisher of respectable medical journals, you should take whatever extra effort is required to avoid being subject to Stugeon2.
To my mind, this statement is no more insightful than, "Shit happens." Any company wiling to offload its responsibilities by invoking S2 is on its way out.
But maybe that was Merck's ultimate goal. Maybe they meant to not only create a single bogus journal, but also to undermine the credibility of all journals by bringing down a major publisher.
Good post. But... "shonky"? Never heard that word.
I can compare a penny to a dollar coin. A dollar coin is worth one hundred times more than a penny. But they are both money.
Yes, but to say that a private social network not allowing a fringe group to use the same functions as mainstream political parties means that the country where that private network operates is going the way of the Nazis or the DDR is a lot like a bum who gets a dollar claiming to be like Bill Gates.
Either way, I call Godwin's on this thread. It's ridiculous, and truly, invoking that type of history on this type of issue minimizes what actually happened. I don't think anyone in the Pirate Party has been arrested, put into forced labor camps, or gassed, incinerated and sent up the chimney.
Click... Boom!