My biggest complaint with most word processors is their default behaviour to change e-mail addresses and web addresses into blue, underlined hyperlinks.
There's a configuration option for that. I don't have Word on this computer but I recall it being reasonably obvious.
And while I'm at it, I can't think of a single time when I wanted the formatting from a web page to be carried into a printed document when I copied and pasted a block of text. Surely the sensible default should be to paste in plain text and pick up formatting from the destination document? At the very least this should be an optional default.
In Word, right-click where you want to paste and a context menu will come up with the options to paste it while keeping source formatting, merge formatting or plain text.
If you hover over each option it shows a preview of how it will turn out.
Main assumption is he's taking cash and not stock. Plausible for a $5m deal.
He'd lose about 5-10% in fees, say $500k. Admittedly this might be avoidable, but not safe to assume.
Here in UK he'd probably be taxed at about 10% due to entrepreneurs relief, say $450k.
Provided be bought outside London, he could get a nice place (not dramatically exciting, but a good 3 bed flat in a nice area of a nice city) for $400k. Could go quite a bit higher without significantly altering the result.
Rounding down for other costs, giving some nice things at family/friends, say $3.5m left. I'm getting 3% on a tiny bank deposit, less 20% taxes, gives $84k a year.
To me it'd be £4,375 per month in pocket, after taxes, with no rent/mortgage, no health insurance. Working backwards, that's equivalent to having a mortgage on a salary in the region of £100k - approx 4x the average salary in the UK.
The "green" credentials are not as simple as the net energy produced. Generalising, we're running out of landfill sites in the EU. I daresay it can be an overall energy deficit and still be preferable.
Partly due to the lack of landfill, and partly for "green" reasons like methane and the nasty leachate run-off, the EU are mandating a per-ton penalty for waste dumped in landfill. The response has been effective in my city. More than half my usual domestic rubbish by volume (quite a bit more than half by weight) is now going to recycling - cardboard, paper, metal, glass, some plastics and food waste. The stuff that is still going into the trash is the stuff that is hardest to recycle - and probably quite nasty in the landfill.
It's just weird to go making an effort hunting down info on people's past. Wedding announcements and LinkedIn profiles are either pushed to you or stumbled across.
Also, people change. People also say things that they were happy to say publicly at one point in time, that now they might not. Not necessarily because it's inherently embarrassing or whatever, but the context changes with age and environment. Maybe what was written at 17 isn't something you particularly want someone to read now you're 27.
I guess there's also a weird power/balance thing going on when one person has read up on someone's history, and the other hasn't.
Yeah, I buy bottled water when I am going to be on-site at a clients. For the rest of the week I refill the bottle from the tap, but they still got one sale from me.
Also, I am not sure why people single out bottled water. Ever looked at the ingredients of bottled soda? It's just water that has been made bad for you.
Have a look on the websites and check out the people standing for election in your constituency. This are who you are voting for - you do not really vote for government, you vote to elect your local MP. You may find someone standing who may be a member of a party you do not favour, but has demonstrated through his voting record that he does actually stand for many things aligned with your own beliefs.
Frankly a lot of the shite seems to come from the government itself. The regular MPs (the backbenchers) are often a lot more agreeable, you'll find a lot more principle and a lot less obsession for control and headlines.
Admittedly though you will have to let them off with some things they've told to vote for by the party whip.
Yeah I'm an accountant and was wondering WTF the problem is with the VAT.
Amazon does not charge the publishers 20% VAT, the publisher applies 20% VAT when it bills Amazon.
The issue appears to be - or I should say could be since the article is worded so poorly I am reluctant to give the benefit of the doubt - that when negotiating the publisher's royalty, they are firstly taking the gross selling price to the consumer and then assuming 20% of that goes to the tax man when actually it is 3%.
Thus, say we have a textbook retailing at £100 (the gross selling price the consumer pays), Amazon is taking £97 (the net selling price) and passing £3 VAT to the tax man. But then it goes and gives the publisher a royalty based on a net selling price of £80.
This is quite bizarre as business-to-business contracts almost always are based on the net price, given VAT is not a cost between two VAT-registered businesses, they merely collect the cash from consumers on behalf of the government.
There could well be an opportunity for confusion by the article's author because the publisher would indeed add 20% VAT to their invoices to Amazon. To someone with little idea what they are doing, they might not realise the net figure is what matters, so looking at the gross amount it would look fishy.
Hmm, if close to all the Brazilian newspapers (or enough of the ones Brazilians care about) are exiting Google because the "National Association of Newspapers in Brazil" (ANJ) said to, what are people looking for Brazilian newspapers going to do? If the ANJ controls the supply, it effects a monopoly on domestic Brazilian news and so it's a dubious assumption that demand will simply switch to a competitor or substitute paper, because there isn't necessarily one left on Google.
I'm not sure that international traffic is substantially important to the Portuguese-language papers, especially if their ad revenue per reader is highest to their domestic market.
Regardless, while there may be a long-term strategy that somehow makes more money by not being on Google, I'm not convinced that is the game. My guess is that they are betting that their monopoly power allows them to dictate terms to Google. The logic being that if Brazilian users are worth anything to Google then Google will be willing to pay something up to that amount in order to keep them. This something being more than the papers get currently thus a long term win.
Most of the posts in this thread seem to be talking about what is fair and/or assuming a competitive market. Far as I can tell, companies aren't particularly bothered about what is fair and the influence of the ANJ suggests the market is not competitive. I'm not trying to say I like it, but that's what it looks like.
I suspect what the OP may be failing to communicate is an emphasis on the "amateur" whilst drawing parallels with his gripes about his own field.
As an accountant*1, this does seem very much like an amateur accounting/design problem, i.e. someone cobbling something together with no understanding of what they are doing. This happens all the time. Excel is immensely powerful, but relies completely on the competence of the user - both at Excel and at whatever it is they are trying to do. A lot of folks think Excel can somehow substitute for the latter, they don't really need to understand what they are doing because hey, Excel has a function for that!
However, what should have been an internal embarrassment for one member of staff turned into a crisis for the entire department because of a more fundamental failure with the department: nobody reviewed it properly. Control systems either were not adequate or were not functioning. I am an accountant and also would not claim that I would not make similar mistakes, but I would happily claim that I would most likely discover them in my own testing, and any mistakes remaining would more than likely be picked up at manager or partner review.
*1 strictly speaking it sounds more like an economic/finance job, though there is a lot of overlap.
The problem with inheritance tax is that it leads to a substantial amount of inefficient, uneconomic activity as rich folk try to mitigate it.
Here in UK, if you have a large plot of land, you could: a) rent it out and let someone do something useful with it, or b) stick 1 sheep on it and claim agricultural relief.
Option a) would have to turn in a profit equating to approx 100% of the value of the land in order to approximately break even with the 1 sheep.
Why? Let's assume the plot of land is worth about $100. The net cash position with option a) $100 profit less ~50% income taxes = $50 banked, plus $100 worth of land, total asset values $150. Deduct 40% Death Tax, kids left with $90. b) $100 land, no IHT due to agricultural property relief, kids are left with $100.
Similarly, say John the entrepreneur built up a great trade, but now his heath isn't so great and he's kinda run out of steam. The business is floundering, it isn't turning a profit, each year a few more staff are let go, everyone is demoralised and it's basically crap. Another entrepreneur, James, eyes up the business, has some great ideas and the ability to pull them off. He's really on the ball and has business lined up already, very comfortable he could turn it around and grow at least 10% per year. He puts in an offer of $1m.
If John sells, he'll pay 28% capital gains tax now and 40% death tax on what's left when he dies. Net cash position £432k to his son.
If he does not sell, passing the business to his son will fall under business property relief so he'll hand over the whole business. If the son later sells he'll pay the 28% capital gains tax, so he will come out ahead provided he can sell for more than 600k.
Obviously the examples are highly over simplified, there's other things that can be done to mitigate etc, but you can see how it easily poorly thought out taxation can cast aside economics and basic common sense. I should point out that it's not just those reliefs or aggressive avoidance leading to perverse incentives, a lot of sensible IHT planning can. Also, for the avoidance of doubt I am not trying to suggest that IHT nor high taxes are a bad thing in principle, but rather that taxes have to be carefully thought about and designed - however they are mainly driven by politicians.
And BTW I am an accountant and while the above are made up for illustration, the principle is no concoction. I do not need to guess the number of clients I consider "substantially wealthy" where IHT significantly impacts their strategic decision making, the answer is all of them.
As with most things in life, generalisations like "brilliant jerk" are wrong the vast majority of the time.
Dealing with your "brilliant jerk" will depend entirely on many factors such as his personality, strengths and weaknesses. And those of the company.
Whenever I read a business article, it's always full of truthisms. But then read another article and it's full of truthisms that are completely the opposite course of action. Go read a dozen case studies, find the same thing. The best course of action depends on making the right call in the specific situation - and being able to execute it. All the stock management strategies, tools etc are just guidance, there to help you think objectively and formally.
I go with AdBlock and NoScript, addons for Firefox, same or similar available for Chrome.
AdBlock takes the blacklist approach, so you have to manually add things you want to block. This takes some of your time to configure but after a while you'll likely very rarely need to. Occasionally you may need to disable it to allow content, which is easily done. There is a feature to subscribe to blocking lists but this seemed overkill to me, especially when also using NoScript.
Adblock does accept rules and wildcards, e.g. */ads/* *adserver* *doubleclick* *quantserve*
I'd list more good ones but I nuked many ad servers a long time ago using a Windows hosts file. That is also a good approach however IMHO it is superseded by AdBlock, which allows much more control.
NoScript takes the whitelist approach, i.e. any scripts are blocked until you allow them, either temporarily (this session) or permanently. This is highly effective but the control does require your interaction on a frequent basis, hence not suitable for grandma.
This is why I don't use Facebook. You start out posting a few innocent quotes and photos. Then maybe you add a questionable comment or two. Maybe a drunk college photo. Next thing you know [...]
FB privacy has moved on a bit. You can add "friends" then categorise your real friends as "close friends", then default all postings as being visible only to close friends. It does take a bit of care but you can leave your FB page sterile and devoid of anything remotely interesting. You can even add people as "restricted" so even if you mess up at some point they still never see anything.
Much to my surprise, this is actually my biggest problem with FB.
See historically it was quite comfortable to be acquainted with someone, but not include them in things and not be included in their things. It just doesn't come up that either of you would include the other. You weren't hanging out on Saturday so of course you weren't included in the conversation or invited to the cinema or whatever. Friendship was an organic thing, you could lie anywhere between best friend and vague acquaintance and that relationship could vary depending on the circumstances - if you did happen to meet that day maybe you would be in the conversation and invited to join them to the cinema or whatever. It's pretty easy just to go around thinking maybe you two would be good friends if only the situation arose.
FB however feels more like positive exclusion. Like you're in the room but people are whispering and moving away to keep out of earshot. At lunchtime you can see your colleague, who "friended" you on FB and is generally very friendly, tapping away into their phone app yet you never see anything. It's much more in your face that you're not in their trusted circles and not really considered their friend. They have categorised you and that's that; there's nothing organic about it.
The worst bit is the feedback loop. Due to FB it's clear you're not in their trusted circles so you're more careful with them "in real life" - you either trust them or you don't - and life begins to reflect FB.
This is really quite a sad state of affairs for someone who is quite shy, a bit socially awkward but naturally likes people and tends towards being quite open.
Foundations and charities are typically bound by a trust deed or similar which dictates the charitable aims and other restrictions.
It is your primary point of guidance and must be followed, for both legal and moral reasons. Money in a trust is never "yours" in any sense, a trustee or whomever basically is there to administer the wishes of those who formed the trust and put money in it.
That said, the deed may have some fairly broad terms such as "promotion of education", but it may also be much more narrow in scope and in defining beneficiaries.
Couldn't agree more. 120gb SSD for OS and games, 1TB HDD for music, videos and photos.
Sure a fast CPU and plenty RAM helps speed up the more intensive tasks, but it's only really relevant to gaming - it's vastly over spec for everything else, and everything else is what I'm doing 3/4 of the time. The SSD alleviated all the little annoyances, made it snappy when loading programs or whatever. Granted I'm not on an especially tight budget but I consider it good value.
Admittedly I can't have that many games installed at once. It's very manageable but I have cash and about due for a treat, so am considering getting a 240gb.
> It's also expensive: It costs about $2M to attack or defend a patent and takes a lot of employee time when they could be working instead. In the US even if you successfully defend a patent attack you usually don't get your legal fees reimbursed, so that $2M is gone forever. This will send a smaller businesses broke.
As you're alluding to here but not directly spelling out, in business terms anyway, is how the patent affects risk. If you are in the planning stages of a new product and find even a highly dubious patent that only might maybe argued to be infringed, it can have a dramatic effect on the project viability. Say you calculated the internal rate of return before knowing about the patent and came up with 5%. That's positive, so it's a goer. But patent disputes can have massive implications for the project so even a small chance of them happening can easily destroy that 5%.
Taking an attitude where you're just leaving companies to fight it out in court is highly detrimental to consumers and the economy, because the mere existence of a patent can easily make marginal projects not viable.
Coming from a business/accounting background, my immediate thoughts when Napster popped up and piracy hit mainstream was "adapt or die".
It was just bloody obvious, at least to anyone with marketing and business strategy textbooks in front of them. Literally basic textbook stuff.
When the market moves, adapt to it. No point fighting as you'll only lose, and anyway your purpose is to serve your market as well you can. I'm not going to condone piracy/copyright infringement/whatever, but it's just not business to point fingers and blame your market.
You are right to suggest seeking professional advice if he thinks it may be worthwhile going ahead, but a businessman should always be seeking advice widely and contemporaries are a good source.
I'm UK so unfamiliar with US, but I suspect commentators so far have covered most of the highlights.
Pros: - Limited liability, your non-business assets are protected (note that to a degree this assumes you fulfilled your responsibilities as an officer of the company). - Can be taxation advantages, in part this can be due to a lower overall tax bill and in part can be due to being able to defer tax to an extent, keeping some cash for use in the business. - Some potential customers/suppliers perceive a formal company as somehow more legit.
Cons: - More paperwork, of which failures can have consequences e.g. penalties. - More complex paperwork, may need an accountant (though keep good books and their costs should be limited to mainly value-added stuff). - Potentially some other costs, like in some situations you may be an employee of your company so your company may be required to obtain insurances. - May need to publicly file information you would rather keep private. - Enjoying "taxation advantages" can turn quite normal people into greedy shits.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a configuration option for that. I don't have Word on this computer but I recall it being reasonably obvious.
In Word, right-click where you want to paste and a context menu will come up with the options to paste it while keeping source formatting, merge formatting or plain text.
If you hover over each option it shows a preview of how it will turn out.
Main assumption is he's taking cash and not stock. Plausible for a $5m deal.
He'd lose about 5-10% in fees, say $500k. Admittedly this might be avoidable, but not safe to assume.
Here in UK he'd probably be taxed at about 10% due to entrepreneurs relief, say $450k.
Provided be bought outside London, he could get a nice place (not dramatically exciting, but a good 3 bed flat in a nice area of a nice city) for $400k. Could go quite a bit higher without significantly altering the result.
Rounding down for other costs, giving some nice things at family/friends, say $3.5m left. I'm getting 3% on a tiny bank deposit, less 20% taxes, gives $84k a year.
To me it'd be £4,375 per month in pocket, after taxes, with no rent/mortgage, no health insurance. Working backwards, that's equivalent to having a mortgage on a salary in the region of £100k - approx 4x the average salary in the UK.
The "green" credentials are not as simple as the net energy produced. Generalising, we're running out of landfill sites in the EU. I daresay it can be an overall energy deficit and still be preferable.
Partly due to the lack of landfill, and partly for "green" reasons like methane and the nasty leachate run-off, the EU are mandating a per-ton penalty for waste dumped in landfill. The response has been effective in my city. More than half my usual domestic rubbish by volume (quite a bit more than half by weight) is now going to recycling - cardboard, paper, metal, glass, some plastics and food waste. The stuff that is still going into the trash is the stuff that is hardest to recycle - and probably quite nasty in the landfill.
It's just weird to go making an effort hunting down info on people's past. Wedding announcements and LinkedIn profiles are either pushed to you or stumbled across.
Also, people change. People also say things that they were happy to say publicly at one point in time, that now they might not. Not necessarily because it's inherently embarrassing or whatever, but the context changes with age and environment. Maybe what was written at 17 isn't something you particularly want someone to read now you're 27.
I guess there's also a weird power/balance thing going on when one person has read up on someone's history, and the other hasn't.
How is a job "American"? In order for something to be stolen, someone else must already have a right to it.
Yeah, I buy bottled water when I am going to be on-site at a clients. For the rest of the week I refill the bottle from the tap, but they still got one sale from me.
Also, I am not sure why people single out bottled water. Ever looked at the ingredients of bottled soda? It's just water that has been made bad for you.
Have a look on the websites and check out the people standing for election in your constituency. This are who you are voting for - you do not really vote for government, you vote to elect your local MP. You may find someone standing who may be a member of a party you do not favour, but has demonstrated through his voting record that he does actually stand for many things aligned with your own beliefs.
Frankly a lot of the shite seems to come from the government itself. The regular MPs (the backbenchers) are often a lot more agreeable, you'll find a lot more principle and a lot less obsession for control and headlines.
Admittedly though you will have to let them off with some things they've told to vote for by the party whip.
FYI I think OP is subtly patronising arrogant people, and doing so in a manner very relevant to the topic.
Yeah I'm an accountant and was wondering WTF the problem is with the VAT.
Amazon does not charge the publishers 20% VAT, the publisher applies 20% VAT when it bills Amazon.
The issue appears to be - or I should say could be since the article is worded so poorly I am reluctant to give the benefit of the doubt - that when negotiating the publisher's royalty, they are firstly taking the gross selling price to the consumer and then assuming 20% of that goes to the tax man when actually it is 3%.
Thus, say we have a textbook retailing at £100 (the gross selling price the consumer pays), Amazon is taking £97 (the net selling price) and passing £3 VAT to the tax man.
But then it goes and gives the publisher a royalty based on a net selling price of £80.
This is quite bizarre as business-to-business contracts almost always are based on the net price, given VAT is not a cost between two VAT-registered businesses, they merely collect the cash from consumers on behalf of the government.
There could well be an opportunity for confusion by the article's author because the publisher would indeed add 20% VAT to their invoices to Amazon. To someone with little idea what they are doing, they might not realise the net figure is what matters, so looking at the gross amount it would look fishy.
Hmm, if close to all the Brazilian newspapers (or enough of the ones Brazilians care about) are exiting Google because the "National Association of Newspapers in Brazil" (ANJ) said to, what are people looking for Brazilian newspapers going to do? If the ANJ controls the supply, it effects a monopoly on domestic Brazilian news and so it's a dubious assumption that demand will simply switch to a competitor or substitute paper, because there isn't necessarily one left on Google.
I'm not sure that international traffic is substantially important to the Portuguese-language papers, especially if their ad revenue per reader is highest to their domestic market.
Regardless, while there may be a long-term strategy that somehow makes more money by not being on Google, I'm not convinced that is the game. My guess is that they are betting that their monopoly power allows them to dictate terms to Google. The logic being that if Brazilian users are worth anything to Google then Google will be willing to pay something up to that amount in order to keep them. This something being more than the papers get currently thus a long term win.
Most of the posts in this thread seem to be talking about what is fair and/or assuming a competitive market. Far as I can tell, companies aren't particularly bothered about what is fair and the influence of the ANJ suggests the market is not competitive. I'm not trying to say I like it, but that's what it looks like.
Why can they not simply require that employees who smoke make contributions to cover the incremental premium on their policies?
I suspect what the OP may be failing to communicate is an emphasis on the "amateur" whilst drawing parallels with his gripes about his own field.
As an accountant*1, this does seem very much like an amateur accounting/design problem, i.e. someone cobbling something together with no understanding of what they are doing. This happens all the time. Excel is immensely powerful, but relies completely on the competence of the user - both at Excel and at whatever it is they are trying to do. A lot of folks think Excel can somehow substitute for the latter, they don't really need to understand what they are doing because hey, Excel has a function for that!
However, what should have been an internal embarrassment for one member of staff turned into a crisis for the entire department because of a more fundamental failure with the department: nobody reviewed it properly. Control systems either were not adequate or were not functioning. I am an accountant and also would not claim that I would not make similar mistakes, but I would happily claim that I would most likely discover them in my own testing, and any mistakes remaining would more than likely be picked up at manager or partner review.
*1 strictly speaking it sounds more like an economic/finance job, though there is a lot of overlap.
If you're trying to reference So I Married an Axe Murderer, the quote is "if it's not Scottish, it's crap!".
The problem with inheritance tax is that it leads to a substantial amount of inefficient, uneconomic activity as rich folk try to mitigate it.
Here in UK, if you have a large plot of land, you could:
a) rent it out and let someone do something useful with it, or
b) stick 1 sheep on it and claim agricultural relief.
Option a) would have to turn in a profit equating to approx 100% of the value of the land in order to approximately break even with the 1 sheep.
Why? Let's assume the plot of land is worth about $100. The net cash position with option
a) $100 profit less ~50% income taxes = $50 banked, plus $100 worth of land, total asset values $150. Deduct 40% Death Tax, kids left with $90.
b) $100 land, no IHT due to agricultural property relief, kids are left with $100.
Similarly, say John the entrepreneur built up a great trade, but now his heath isn't so great and he's kinda run out of steam. The business is floundering, it isn't turning a profit, each year a few more staff are let go, everyone is demoralised and it's basically crap. Another entrepreneur, James, eyes up the business, has some great ideas and the ability to pull them off. He's really on the ball and has business lined up already, very comfortable he could turn it around and grow at least 10% per year. He puts in an offer of $1m.
If John sells, he'll pay 28% capital gains tax now and 40% death tax on what's left when he dies. Net cash position £432k to his son.
If he does not sell, passing the business to his son will fall under business property relief so he'll hand over the whole business. If the son later sells he'll pay the 28% capital gains tax, so he will come out ahead provided he can sell for more than 600k.
Obviously the examples are highly over simplified, there's other things that can be done to mitigate etc, but you can see how it easily poorly thought out taxation can cast aside economics and basic common sense. I should point out that it's not just those reliefs or aggressive avoidance leading to perverse incentives, a lot of sensible IHT planning can. Also, for the avoidance of doubt I am not trying to suggest that IHT nor high taxes are a bad thing in principle, but rather that taxes have to be carefully thought about and designed - however they are mainly driven by politicians.
And BTW I am an accountant and while the above are made up for illustration, the principle is no concoction. I do not need to guess the number of clients I consider "substantially wealthy" where IHT significantly impacts their strategic decision making, the answer is all of them.
What happened with the ones with gender left ambiguous?
(the paper itself will not open for me, for some reason.)
As with most things in life, generalisations like "brilliant jerk" are wrong the vast majority of the time.
Dealing with your "brilliant jerk" will depend entirely on many factors such as his personality, strengths and weaknesses. And those of the company.
Whenever I read a business article, it's always full of truthisms. But then read another article and it's full of truthisms that are completely the opposite course of action. Go read a dozen case studies, find the same thing. The best course of action depends on making the right call in the specific situation - and being able to execute it. All the stock management strategies, tools etc are just guidance, there to help you think objectively and formally.
I go with AdBlock and NoScript, addons for Firefox, same or similar available for Chrome.
AdBlock takes the blacklist approach, so you have to manually add things you want to block. This takes some of your time to configure but after a while you'll likely very rarely need to. Occasionally you may need to disable it to allow content, which is easily done. There is a feature to subscribe to blocking lists but this seemed overkill to me, especially when also using NoScript.
Adblock does accept rules and wildcards, e.g.
*/ads/*
*adserver*
*doubleclick*
*quantserve*
I'd list more good ones but I nuked many ad servers a long time ago using a Windows hosts file. That is also a good approach however IMHO it is superseded by AdBlock, which allows much more control.
NoScript takes the whitelist approach, i.e. any scripts are blocked until you allow them, either temporarily (this session) or permanently. This is highly effective but the control does require your interaction on a frequent basis, hence not suitable for grandma.
This is why I don't use Facebook. You start out posting a few innocent quotes and photos. Then maybe you add a questionable comment or two. Maybe a drunk college photo. Next thing you know [...]
FB privacy has moved on a bit. You can add "friends" then categorise your real friends as "close friends", then default all postings as being visible only to close friends. It does take a bit of care but you can leave your FB page sterile and devoid of anything remotely interesting. You can even add people as "restricted" so even if you mess up at some point they still never see anything.
Much to my surprise, this is actually my biggest problem with FB.
See historically it was quite comfortable to be acquainted with someone, but not include them in things and not be included in their things. It just doesn't come up that either of you would include the other. You weren't hanging out on Saturday so of course you weren't included in the conversation or invited to the cinema or whatever. Friendship was an organic thing, you could lie anywhere between best friend and vague acquaintance and that relationship could vary depending on the circumstances - if you did happen to meet that day maybe you would be in the conversation and invited to join them to the cinema or whatever. It's pretty easy just to go around thinking maybe you two would be good friends if only the situation arose.
FB however feels more like positive exclusion. Like you're in the room but people are whispering and moving away to keep out of earshot. At lunchtime you can see your colleague, who "friended" you on FB and is generally very friendly, tapping away into their phone app yet you never see anything. It's much more in your face that you're not in their trusted circles and not really considered their friend. They have categorised you and that's that; there's nothing organic about it.
The worst bit is the feedback loop. Due to FB it's clear you're not in their trusted circles so you're more careful with them "in real life" - you either trust them or you don't - and life begins to reflect FB.
This is really quite a sad state of affairs for someone who is quite shy, a bit socially awkward but naturally likes people and tends towards being quite open.
By treating a login as a password reset.
Foundations and charities are typically bound by a trust deed or similar which dictates the charitable aims and other restrictions.
It is your primary point of guidance and must be followed, for both legal and moral reasons. Money in a trust is never "yours" in any sense, a trustee or whomever basically is there to administer the wishes of those who formed the trust and put money in it.
That said, the deed may have some fairly broad terms such as "promotion of education", but it may also be much more narrow in scope and in defining beneficiaries.
Couldn't agree more. 120gb SSD for OS and games, 1TB HDD for music, videos and photos.
Sure a fast CPU and plenty RAM helps speed up the more intensive tasks, but it's only really relevant to gaming - it's vastly over spec for everything else, and everything else is what I'm doing 3/4 of the time. The SSD alleviated all the little annoyances, made it snappy when loading programs or whatever. Granted I'm not on an especially tight budget but I consider it good value.
Admittedly I can't have that many games installed at once. It's very manageable but I have cash and about due for a treat, so am considering getting a 240gb.
> It's also expensive: It costs about $2M to attack or defend a patent and takes a lot of employee time when they could be working instead. In the US even if you successfully defend a patent attack you usually don't get your legal fees reimbursed, so that $2M is gone forever. This will send a smaller businesses broke.
As you're alluding to here but not directly spelling out, in business terms anyway, is how the patent affects risk. If you are in the planning stages of a new product and find even a highly dubious patent that only might maybe argued to be infringed, it can have a dramatic effect on the project viability. Say you calculated the internal rate of return before knowing about the patent and came up with 5%. That's positive, so it's a goer. But patent disputes can have massive implications for the project so even a small chance of them happening can easily destroy that 5%.
Taking an attitude where you're just leaving companies to fight it out in court is highly detrimental to consumers and the economy, because the mere existence of a patent can easily make marginal projects not viable.
Coming from a business/accounting background, my immediate thoughts when Napster popped up and piracy hit mainstream was "adapt or die".
It was just bloody obvious, at least to anyone with marketing and business strategy textbooks in front of them. Literally basic textbook stuff.
When the market moves, adapt to it. No point fighting as you'll only lose, and anyway your purpose is to serve your market as well you can. I'm not going to condone piracy/copyright infringement/whatever, but it's just not business to point fingers and blame your market.
You are right to suggest seeking professional advice if he thinks it may be worthwhile going ahead, but a businessman should always be seeking advice widely and contemporaries are a good source.
I'm UK so unfamiliar with US, but I suspect commentators so far have covered most of the highlights.
Pros:
- Limited liability, your non-business assets are protected (note that to a degree this assumes you fulfilled your responsibilities as an officer of the company).
- Can be taxation advantages, in part this can be due to a lower overall tax bill and in part can be due to being able to defer tax to an extent, keeping some cash for use in the business.
- Some potential customers/suppliers perceive a formal company as somehow more legit.
Cons:
- More paperwork, of which failures can have consequences e.g. penalties.
- More complex paperwork, may need an accountant (though keep good books and their costs should be limited to mainly value-added stuff).
- Potentially some other costs, like in some situations you may be an employee of your company so your company may be required to obtain insurances.
- May need to publicly file information you would rather keep private.
- Enjoying "taxation advantages" can turn quite normal people into greedy shits.
True, but less so when you're observing someone who is very keenly aware that they are being observed.