but the government needs to overhaul the system of taxation to a simple system without loopholes,
The problem is that the government *wants* the loopholes. They aren't a mistake that needs to be cleaned up, they are quite intentional. This is what so many people don't get. They assume the sole purpose of taxes in the modern age is to collect revenue. But the other goal: promoting what the government thinks is good and demoting what it thinks is bad, is in direct conflict with the ideas of simple and without loopholes. What you call "loopholes" are called "deductions" or "incentives" in the tax code, and that makes them okay.
Under the current mindset: if you had a flat tax, then that means people won't donate as much money to the Red Cross because it isn't tax deductible. Companies won't spend as much because spending money isn't a tax deduction. Companies won't offer health insurance benefits because it isn't a tax deduction, and people won't put money into their 401k because it isn't tax deductible. And alcohol and tobacco sales will skyrocket, causing public health problems.
I prefaced that with "under the current mindset" because I am skeptical of it all. If that mindset is correct, then the wealthy would buy the most alcohol and cigarettes. And companies really don't care about their own success, they just want the tax deductions. And people don't really want health insurance is only worthwhile as a tax deduction. In reality, addicts buy cigarettes and alcohol regardless of their income. Companies use these loopholes to do things that would otherwise be economically dumb, then spend the savings giving their CEOs free jets. Health insurance costs are just inflated to compensate for the tax deductions.
There must be some interesting stories behind that. But I think my point is that the legal system needs to offer recourse here. It sounds like you have more devious approaches, which would be good to know but aren't going to work to correct the system as a whole.
This study is interesting but highly incomplete. I won't cut HFCS out of my diet based on this alone.
The paper states that "Overall, we found detectable mercury in 17 of 55 samples, or around 31 percent" which doesn't mean anything without a quantity. There is some amount of mercury in the atmosphere so without a number the finding is meaningless.
This also doesn't relate to China at all, because the plants listed in the article are located in "Georgia, Tennessee, Ohio and West Virginia." I think HFCS is produced in the US because the US produces lots of corn.
Apple has a consistent marketing name for their products: The iPhone, iPhone 2, iPhone 3, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, etc. But other manufacturers completely rename their phones between versions: Samsungs made the Galaxy, Droid, Captivate, Vibrant,... Motorola has the Droid, Droid X, Droid Razr. Which is better? X or Razr? Blech.
People ask me what phone I have and I said "An Android" which is about all they care to know. Telling them it is a Samsung Droid Charge doesn't add anything new since that could be 5 years old or 5 minutes old. If it was named the Samsung Droid 4G then they would know that it was probably 1yr old since "4G" = "new"
The problem is this: what recourse is there when they lie? You have 5 people replying to your post with examples of doing exactly what you suggest. That's great! But none of them end with any officials being indicted, resigning, or really any change. What you propose is good, but we need to take the next step. Senators who lie should be impeached. Officials who lie should be fired, and potentially sued.
This is similar to when big corporations push frivolous lawsuits against smaller competitors. Even if they lose, they win, because the smaller company can't afford the fight even if they win. There is no real punishment for this behavior.
Wow, thanks! That law makes a lot more sense than what it sounds like from the discussion. The discussion makes it sound like the law says "Prohibits U.S. contributions... if they grant membership to Palestine." But writing it in neutral language like that makes a lot more sense. Upon reflection, it is odd to grant member status to a group that is not recognized as a state by that same body.
If one CA is compromised, then you revoke the certificates generated by that authority and the rest of the system remains safe. The way it is now, each authority is so big they there is hesitation to revoke the certificates because so many sites then have invalid certificates.
I think we need to do the opposite - have thousands of CAs. What we have seen from this is that putting power in the hands of a small specially designated group is very risky. A public-key system can't rely on a hierarchy where a few organizations can bring down the entire web of trust.
It wouldn't hurt the customer so much if they weren't monopolies. If one grocery store lost their license to sell food due to an FDA violation, customers would go to another store. This is handled in the banking industry by requiring insolvent banks to sell to another bank. That way customers can keep their accounts, just with another bank. You you can't mandate that Verizon sell the company and accounts because there are only 4 providers in the country and Verizon is already the largest. If there were 400 providers, each with a compatible system, it wouldn't be such a big deal.
1) The occupy wall street movement, which is what the "We are the 99%" refers to, has gone global. 2) US companies have the lions share of the list linked by the article.
So my comment applies to the US as well as globally.
It seems like >50% of the people only vote for someone from one of two parties. They act as though there are no other parties around. They also refuse to run for office or vote for a write-in candidate. Then they complain that there are no choices. That is self-defeating behavior.
The real world is that we vote on the choices we give to ourselves. We should not allow this attitude that "we" vote for "them." There is not one pool of voters and a separate pool of candidates. The whole point of a democracy is that if we don't like the choices, we run for office ourselves. But that system falls apart when >50% of the people only vote for one of two parties. And yes, this is human nature, so I am almost ready to give up trying.
If everyone who didn't vote because they don't like the choices just voted randomly for some 3rd-party candidate, those parties would qualify for federal funding and suddenly the playing field would open up.
Ahhh, graduation rates. Wow, that's a great link. I think we are on exactly the same page here. Why give federal money to people who aren't going to graduate? Now they have debt, and their skills weren't improved. Many of those people probably never belonged in college anyway. Giving federal money to have someone flunk out of college and become unemployed is a mistake.
From the article:
While American high schools graduate about three-fourths of their students in four years, American colleges graduate only about half of their students in six
I wonder what percentage of them would have succeeded if they had been trained as a carpenter or an electrician over the course of 1 or 2 years instead of sitting in a classroom for 6. Right now, too many of them go into the military because they have no other option. For some of them that is good, they get training and learn discipline that can be useful. But I don't think it is a good catch-all solution.
I know it was meant to be rhetorical, but "YES." These statistics merely reinforce the intuition that we have all had for decades. In the modern day, oligarchy == democracy. Companies that are "too big to fail." This is why there are people flooding the streets with with signs saying "We are the 99%." Because it isn't the 99% that count.
So I'm not sure what you are referring to. As for the unemployment rates of college grads - That is always true, more education rarely hurts. But that doesn't mean that some of those individuals would be better off as trade-school grads. Right now, there are lots of people in community colleges and the military who probably should be in trade schools instead.
The article makes some good points,but completely eliminating the program is probably overzealous. They point out that the cost of education is rising, that more people have college educations, yet unemployment is high. Combine that with the long-standing belief that too many people are getting college educations instead of trade educations and I see a solution forming:
We should move college loan money to trade school scholarship money.
Too many people are going to college then not using those college skills, and have no chance of paying back that debt. Just like how the US Government provides free K - 12 education, perhaps it should provide free trade schools as well. Historically, there were enough trade workers that such educations were free. A son would be trained by his father in his trade, or given to another person as an apprentice. But we have moved to a more formal system, and rarely do people enter the family business or serve as an apprentice. So let us formally institutionalize such a system.
This way, instead of forcing a rise in college tuition costs and giving out costly loans that can never be repaid, we put people to work in an appropriate field sooner, cheaper, and without incurring enormous individual debt.
Sprint Nextel is ending unlimited data plans for all devices except smartphones, bringing the era of all-you-can-eat mobile data in the U.S. nearer to a close.
Why are smartphones excepted? Bandwidth is a fungible resource - one kilobyte used by a smartphone is the same as one kilobyte used by a laptop.
The electric company doesn't limit me to 500 kilowatt-hours for lights, but allow unlimited power for my television. The water company doesn't limit me to 1000 gallons per month for toilets but allow unlimited water for showers. They don't care how the water is used. Even if they knew, why would they care?
You often hear in the software industry that performance optimization is one of the last steps in the software development process.
No you don't, not among sane people. You don't do performance optimization as "one of the last steps" shortly before shipping.
I suspect that the misunderstanding comes from the fact that Microsoft releases checked builds initially, with lots of debugging code some compiler optimizations disabled. So the perception is that they don't "optimize" the code until the final release.
Today, the Dept of Education exists to provide financial pressure for states to do what the federal government says. For example: The federal government has no power to demand that public libraries install filtering software, or that colleges limit on campus drinking, or ban books. But they *do* have the power to say "if you do not do these things, your schools will not receive federal funding." The states could end this game by all agreeing to give up the funding, and the Dept of education would cease to have any power any longer. But there are poorer states and they really want that money so that won't happen.
Slashdot Mirror
but the government needs to overhaul the system of taxation to a simple system without loopholes,
The problem is that the government *wants* the loopholes. They aren't a mistake that needs to be cleaned up, they are quite intentional. This is what so many people don't get. They assume the sole purpose of taxes in the modern age is to collect revenue. But the other goal: promoting what the government thinks is good and demoting what it thinks is bad, is in direct conflict with the ideas of simple and without loopholes. What you call "loopholes" are called "deductions" or "incentives" in the tax code, and that makes them okay.
Under the current mindset: if you had a flat tax, then that means people won't donate as much money to the Red Cross because it isn't tax deductible. Companies won't spend as much because spending money isn't a tax deduction. Companies won't offer health insurance benefits because it isn't a tax deduction, and people won't put money into their 401k because it isn't tax deductible. And alcohol and tobacco sales will skyrocket, causing public health problems.
I prefaced that with "under the current mindset" because I am skeptical of it all. If that mindset is correct, then the wealthy would buy the most alcohol and cigarettes. And companies really don't care about their own success, they just want the tax deductions. And people don't really want health insurance is only worthwhile as a tax deduction. In reality, addicts buy cigarettes and alcohol regardless of their income. Companies use these loopholes to do things that would otherwise be economically dumb, then spend the savings giving their CEOs free jets. Health insurance costs are just inflated to compensate for the tax deductions.
There must be some interesting stories behind that. But I think my point is that the legal system needs to offer recourse here. It sounds like you have more devious approaches, which would be good to know but aren't going to work to correct the system as a whole.
Ahhh, okay. I see what you mean.
This study is interesting but highly incomplete. I won't cut HFCS out of my diet based on this alone.
The paper states that "Overall, we found detectable mercury in 17 of 55 samples, or around 31 percent" which doesn't mean anything without a quantity. There is some amount of mercury in the atmosphere so without a number the finding is meaningless.
This also doesn't relate to China at all, because the plants listed in the article are located in "Georgia, Tennessee, Ohio and West Virginia." I think HFCS is produced in the US because the US produces lots of corn.
Or bufferoverflow.com#$a(k?e@`%s5^_`
Apple has a consistent marketing name for their products: The iPhone, iPhone 2, iPhone 3, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, etc. But other manufacturers completely rename their phones between versions: Samsungs made the Galaxy, Droid, Captivate, Vibrant, ... Motorola has the Droid, Droid X, Droid Razr. Which is better? X or Razr? Blech.
People ask me what phone I have and I said "An Android" which is about all they care to know. Telling them it is a Samsung Droid Charge doesn't add anything new since that could be 5 years old or 5 minutes old. If it was named the Samsung Droid 4G then they would know that it was probably 1yr old since "4G" = "new"
The problem is this: what recourse is there when they lie? You have 5 people replying to your post with examples of doing exactly what you suggest. That's great! But none of them end with any officials being indicted, resigning, or really any change. What you propose is good, but we need to take the next step. Senators who lie should be impeached. Officials who lie should be fired, and potentially sued.
This is similar to when big corporations push frivolous lawsuits against smaller competitors. Even if they lose, they win, because the smaller company can't afford the fight even if they win. There is no real punishment for this behavior.
Wow, thanks! That law makes a lot more sense than what it sounds like from the discussion. The discussion makes it sound like the law says "Prohibits U.S. contributions... if they grant membership to Palestine." But writing it in neutral language like that makes a lot more sense. Upon reflection, it is odd to grant member status to a group that is not recognized as a state by that same body.
Doh! History fail.
It also shows how spitefull the current administration is
How so? The law was passed in 1994. It sounds like the administration of George H W Bush was the cause. Or do you suggest that Obama ignore the law?
Also - can someone post a link to this supposed 1994 law?
If regardless of who you vote for the result is the same you are living in a Dictatorship.
Agreed, so what do you call it when the citizens keep voting for the same two parties?
If one CA is compromised, then you revoke the certificates generated by that authority and the rest of the system remains safe. The way it is now, each authority is so big they there is hesitation to revoke the certificates because so many sites then have invalid certificates.
I think we need to do the opposite - have thousands of CAs. What we have seen from this is that putting power in the hands of a small specially designated group is very risky. A public-key system can't rely on a hierarchy where a few organizations can bring down the entire web of trust.
It wouldn't hurt the customer so much if they weren't monopolies. If one grocery store lost their license to sell food due to an FDA violation, customers would go to another store. This is handled in the banking industry by requiring insolvent banks to sell to another bank. That way customers can keep their accounts, just with another bank. You you can't mandate that Verizon sell the company and accounts because there are only 4 providers in the country and Verizon is already the largest. If there were 400 providers, each with a compatible system, it wouldn't be such a big deal.
1) The occupy wall street movement, which is what the "We are the 99%" refers to, has gone global.
2) US companies have the lions share of the list linked by the article.
So my comment applies to the US as well as globally.
The problem is that we vote on choices that are given to us.
Actually we don't. This is a case of perception creating reality. Douglas Adams described this rather humorously.
It seems like >50% of the people only vote for someone from one of two parties. They act as though there are no other parties around. They also refuse to run for office or vote for a write-in candidate. Then they complain that there are no choices. That is self-defeating behavior.
The real world is that we vote on the choices we give to ourselves. We should not allow this attitude that "we" vote for "them." There is not one pool of voters and a separate pool of candidates. The whole point of a democracy is that if we don't like the choices, we run for office ourselves. But that system falls apart when >50% of the people only vote for one of two parties. And yes, this is human nature, so I am almost ready to give up trying.
If everyone who didn't vote because they don't like the choices just voted randomly for some 3rd-party candidate, those parties would qualify for federal funding and suddenly the playing field would open up.
Ahhh, graduation rates. Wow, that's a great link. I think we are on exactly the same page here. Why give federal money to people who aren't going to graduate? Now they have debt, and their skills weren't improved. Many of those people probably never belonged in college anyway. Giving federal money to have someone flunk out of college and become unemployed is a mistake.
From the article:
While American high schools graduate about three-fourths of their students in four years, American colleges graduate only about half of their students in six
I wonder what percentage of them would have succeeded if they had been trained as a carpenter or an electrician over the course of 1 or 2 years instead of sitting in a classroom for 6. Right now, too many of them go into the military because they have no other option. For some of them that is good, they get training and learn discipline that can be useful. But I don't think it is a good catch-all solution.
Does this mean we have a global oligarchy
I know it was meant to be rhetorical, but "YES." These statistics merely reinforce the intuition that we have all had for decades. In the modern day, oligarchy == democracy. Companies that are "too big to fail." This is why there are people flooding the streets with with signs saying "We are the 99%." Because it isn't the 99% that count.
When you say "the rate of college education" what do you mean? The "rates" as in the "costs" have been steadily increasing. The "rates" as in number of applications has also been increasing. Typically, it jumps when unemployment increases.
Application Inflation: When Is Enough Enough?
Applications Rise (Yet Again) at Dozens of Selective Colleges
So I'm not sure what you are referring to. As for the unemployment rates of college grads - That is always true, more education rarely hurts. But that doesn't mean that some of those individuals would be better off as trade-school grads. Right now, there are lots of people in community colleges and the military who probably should be in trade schools instead.
The article makes some good points,but completely eliminating the program is probably overzealous. They point out that the cost of education is rising, that more people have college educations, yet unemployment is high. Combine that with the long-standing belief that too many people are getting college educations instead of trade educations and I see a solution forming:
We should move college loan money to trade school scholarship money.
Too many people are going to college then not using those college skills, and have no chance of paying back that debt. Just like how the US Government provides free K - 12 education, perhaps it should provide free trade schools as well. Historically, there were enough trade workers that such educations were free. A son would be trained by his father in his trade, or given to another person as an apprentice. But we have moved to a more formal system, and rarely do people enter the family business or serve as an apprentice. So let us formally institutionalize such a system.
This way, instead of forcing a rise in college tuition costs and giving out costly loans that can never be repaid, we put people to work in an appropriate field sooner, cheaper, and without incurring enormous individual debt.
Sprint Nextel is ending unlimited data plans for all devices except smartphones, bringing the era of all-you-can-eat mobile data in the U.S. nearer to a close.
Why are smartphones excepted? Bandwidth is a fungible resource - one kilobyte used by a smartphone is the same as one kilobyte used by a laptop.
The electric company doesn't limit me to 500 kilowatt-hours for lights, but allow unlimited power for my television. The water company doesn't limit me to 1000 gallons per month for toilets but allow unlimited water for showers. They don't care how the water is used. Even if they knew, why would they care?
You often hear in the software industry that performance optimization is one of the last steps in the software development process.
No you don't, not among sane people. You don't do performance optimization as "one of the last steps" shortly before shipping.
I suspect that the misunderstanding comes from the fact that Microsoft releases checked builds initially, with lots of debugging code some compiler optimizations disabled. So the perception is that they don't "optimize" the code until the final release.
Today, the Dept of Education exists to provide financial pressure for states to do what the federal government says. For example: The federal government has no power to demand that public libraries install filtering software, or that colleges limit on campus drinking, or ban books. But they *do* have the power to say "if you do not do these things, your schools will not receive federal funding." The states could end this game by all agreeing to give up the funding, and the Dept of education would cease to have any power any longer. But there are poorer states and they really want that money so that won't happen.
Just so I understand this: what deregulation are you talking about?
true!