Nope, they aren't lasers, and that's why your entire perception is wrongheaded. It's your head that's telling you lasers. The writers, in fact, told you differently -- they said "tractor beam", which is, as we know, not a laser. They said "Phaser", which is also not a laser. In *fact*, if you'll recall, there have been episodes where the *opponent* used "LASERs". much to the amusement of the trek crew... but thanks for playing!:o)
That 15 minutes pays itself back almost immediately, both in easier debugging (less code to debug) and quicker compile times,
One more thing: A class you write is something you can debug and maintain; classes in black box libraries aren't, and when you run into bugs in them, it's a huge problem. With your own class, you just fix it and move on. For me, that's the most important reason to avoid black box code and write my own. Bloat isn't much of an issue these days, but bugs are and always will be.
6809 Spreadsheet: 24k (far more powerful than visicalc, I should note)
I have almost a thousand programs on that system, including cross assemblers, languages, etc... it's very rare when one is larger than 16k. And that machine ROCKS. That's because the 6809 was hands-down the best 8 bit bus CPU ever crafted, and the GIMIX frame, with everything from motherboard to power connectors and sockets gold-plated, ferro-resonant power supply, awesome steel case... probably won't die in my lifetime.
Even if it does, I wrote a complete 6809/OS emulation (with permission from the OS authors and GIMIX themselves) and have all that software running on modern hardware, too, even the graphics. Fond memories. I developed a lot of hardware and software on that machine, particularly early arcade systems for Centuri, Bally-Midway, Arcade Engineering and Techstar, as well as early SSTV software for amateur radio. Those were fun days!
But STILL with insanely stupid and ill-advised anonymous moderation! Yes, that's right, visit now and you too can be moderated "diasagree" by some wag with unlimited mod points (a site luminary) or just Some Idiot who has 5 (or maybe 15!) chances to fuck up the comment flow. But wait! There's More! Slashdot *also* has no way to undo the damage done by these moderators! Instead of fixing the moderation, slashdot LOLs and gives the mod points to a NEW fool who will ALSO anonymously fuck up the comment flow! It's great! It's like a 1980's BBS with unlimited numbers of sysops on coke!
Because bitcoins want to be free! And, and, they're like... BEER! And... noone accepts them for anything, so you can save a LOT of 'em without being tempted to spend 'em! An... an... they keep you from having to do Real Work! "Honey, don't bother me, I'm minting bitcoins!"
I read your post. I responded to the only part of it that wasn't pedantic nonsense, and I didn't call you on your ridiculous non-real world imaginings. Count yourself lucky.
I don't fiddle with it (nor, I suspect, do most people who use this type of capability.) I also don't take my eyes anywhere near as far off the road as people do when they look at their in-dash speedo -- my GPS is a *lot* closer to my normal line of vision. The speed is right there on the display, all the time. It generally knows what the speed limit is for any particular stretch of road is, too. Helps if you miss a speed limit sign.
But hey, thanks for using your imagination to help you craft a snarky remark. Good to know that the theater of the mind isn't completely dead.
but in general as speed approaches the limits of the vehicle and driver's ability to maneuver around obstacles
But in general, posted speed limits aren't anywhere near either the limits of the vehicle or the driver's abilities. And that's just with your average car. There are cars -- and drivers -- fully capable of going a lot faster, quite safely, than than the statistics would lead you to presume. And there's the fact that when driving near one's limits, one tend to be paying a lot more attention, because one is enjoying one's self. Not that I'd expect the mothers of America to understand that.
But in the meantime, the company making the devices has scored, thus making it worthwhile to have pushed the locals into such a system. Remember, there's more than one party that stands to gain here.
FYI: Montana was coerced by the federal government to switch from reasonable and prudent to fixed limits by the threat of losing federal highway funds.
Interesting read about accident rates related to the reasonable and prudent years.
Summary for the tl;dr crowd:
After 4 years of no numerical or posted daytime speed limits on these classifications of highways outside of urban areas, Montana recorded its lowest number of fatal accidents on the affected roadways.
As catbeller succinctly pointed out, you are grievously ignorant of how our "great nation" was designed to work. The declaration of independence is not law; it's just a high-falutin' fuck-you and fuck-off letter to King George. The constitution, however, is the highest law in the land, and it is specifically the authorizing document from which our federal and state governments derive their legitimate authority.
congress is able to say "one nation under god" because that is not establishing a particular religion
The key issue isn't establishment by government, it is government respecting an establishment of religion. And "under god" respects several very religious things, among them, monotheism (worship of one god), which is antithetical to many (just for instance) Hindus, atheists, humanists, agnostics, Voo doo/Vo dou types and so on. The idea was, and remains, that the government has no legitimate place in these matters, and the point of the 1st amendment is to explicitly say so. We are a secular nation -- despite the cries of bewildered theists, who haven't the wit to see that it's not good for them for the government to be involved in religion either, even when it appears that the government is (presently) aligned with them, because the next executive / congress / judiciary may be of some other alignment, and if it's ok for the government to meddle in religious matters, soon they may find themselves on the short end of the stick. As happened repeatedly under English rule.
So go jump in a lake like good fellow, eh? Cheerio, pip pip, and all that.
Not really. All 'Fat tax' does is shift the tax burden from high income earners to low income earners.
No, it doesn't. It exempts low income earners. Please try not to embarrass yourself further; go read up on how it works. After that, if you have sensibly organized questions or objections, I'll be pleased to respond to them.
Higher marginal tax brackets have no affect on your existing income
I never said they did. Your entire post is a strawman. All I said was moving into a higher tax bracket is a counter indication, and it is.
The summary effect of an increase in income that moves the earner from one tax bracket to a higher one is that they're going to receive additional money from their employer, but they're going to get less of whatever portion of it falls into a higher bracket. Therefore, either the raise has to be adjusted higher than par to keep the earnings proportional to the supposed value of the work, which is a disincentive for the employer, or else the increase itself is eroded by the increased tax burden, which is a disincentive for the worker to take on additional workload in proportion to the money being put out by the employer. This doesn't count the case where the earner is being given money for no particular reason, because those aren't predicated upon increased work product and often are the result of non-productivity related pressures, such as various forms of external coercion.
Please stop mistaking the random grumpy noises in the echo chamber of your mind for something I said. If you want to respond to something I said, look for it in my writing, because if I said it, that's where it will be.
Switching to a system of ultrahigh sales tax isn't going to do anything about that particular problem.
Wrong. It does many things. As described, it removes the hidden tax from the poor. So they move up, economically. It removes the hidden double tax from those with more income than the baseline. So they can *choose* to spend on optionals above the COL, or they can choose to save/invest. Up to them. It puts the cost of the fed govt right in front of us, so we aren't so blind to what it is, and we might like to say something about it when some dingle-berry decides to put up a bridge to nowhere, or give a subsidy to the oil companies, or go to war, etc. It removes the entire IRS infrastructure and 80 zillion tax regulations are replaced with one, tax lawyers get to go work at McDOnald's, and the fees the lawyers used to command go to actual business instead of lawyer-person's Porsche, so businesses can be a good deal more efficient and plan more effectively. It means no visits to the fed tax preparer at the end of the year for Mr. Average (and Mr. Rich!); it means living frugally pays off; it means that an increase in salary isn't a waltz into a higher tax bracket and therefore a counter indication. That's just the advantages I was able to come up with off the top of my head.
It's the same amount of money, collected more simply, and more fairly -- a lot more will come out of the rich people's pockets than is currently the case. It is a major win and a huge increase in transparency and simplicity, and therefore very good for the economy of the middle class, which is MOST of the economy.
How are cities and locales able to continue getting funded?
The easy (and constitutionally correct) answer is, that's up to the state, as it should be. My feeling is that if the states are sensible, they would choose to add the additional amount to the sales tax in order to reap the savings of closing down their own teetering piles of tax bureaucrats, paperwork, etc. So, again using imaginary numbers, if the fed tax is 35%, the state might add 15% on top of that, and the sales tax is then 50%. But again, the state should decide via the will of its people.
Would this system be able to collect enough revenue to fund our current government size?
Of course. It's not a method for collecting a different amount of money; it's a method for collecting the same amount, using a much simpler and fairer methodology, by moving the most tax revenue to the riches wallets, who, of course, buy the most stuff and services, and the most expensive stuff and services, by huge margins. It also puts the actual cost right out in front and funds it incrementally, instead of walloping people and companies at the end of the year.
Who would decide how much the basic cost of living is?
COL varies; the states have an overwhelming interest in getting it right, and they're "right there", as it were. Have them provide the numbers to the feds. Seems like the same old empire building to make a fed department to do it. They'd be remote to the issue, have (at least) 50 completely different things to deal with, and probably, as usual, do a bad job with all of them. A state will have many fewer issues, are local to them, and furthermore, remain directly responsible to the people whose issues they are. The feds... well, they don't seem to be responsible to anyone. As this very slashdot article shows.
How can it be kept from becoming another minimum wage trap, where it never gets raised and doesn't reflect the actual cost of living?
It needs to be adjusted at least yearly. If it is handled poorly, we'll be right back where we are, with the poor being squished, the middle class bearing far more burden than they should, and the rich laughing their asses off at the rest of us.
How does this system benefit people who have no income at all?
That's a social safety net issue (IOW, it's a government cost, like funding the military is); their income would be funded by revenues from the tax; they'd get the same $350 or whatever to cover the $1000 basic COL they receive as their safety net (so, $1350 using my imaginary and highly speculative numbers), and hopefully, we'd do something proactive to get them employed if in fact they are employable. The problem is, as it always has been, that this last step is basically skipped.
Slashdot Mirror
The Comfy Chair!
Nope, they aren't lasers, and that's why your entire perception is wrongheaded. It's your head that's telling you lasers. The writers, in fact, told you differently -- they said "tractor beam", which is, as we know, not a laser. They said "Phaser", which is also not a laser. In *fact*, if you'll recall, there have been episodes where the *opponent* used "LASERs". much to the amusement of the trek crew... but thanks for playing! :o)
0th filter criterion: does the show claim that the beams in question are lasers?
Constructive interference, as defined in the congressional realm, is when congress interferes with construction projects.
Just observe the slit. Hey, it works for porn...
Can you provide a reference that the visible light was depicted as the effective mechanism, rather than as a side effect?
Tractor beams are easy. You just weld a bunch of tractors together into beams, and use 'em like tweezers.
One more thing: A class you write is something you can debug and maintain; classes in black box libraries aren't, and when you run into bugs in them, it's a huge problem. With your own class, you just fix it and move on. For me, that's the most important reason to avoid black box code and write my own. Bloat isn't much of an issue these days, but bugs are and always will be.
On my (still working) 6809 GIMIX system:
I have almost a thousand programs on that system, including cross assemblers, languages, etc... it's very rare when one is larger than 16k. And that machine ROCKS. That's because the 6809 was hands-down the best 8 bit bus CPU ever crafted, and the GIMIX frame, with everything from motherboard to power connectors and sockets gold-plated, ferro-resonant power supply, awesome steel case... probably won't die in my lifetime.
Even if it does, I wrote a complete 6809/OS emulation (with permission from the OS authors and GIMIX themselves) and have all that software running on modern hardware, too, even the graphics. Fond memories. I developed a lot of hardware and software on that machine, particularly early arcade systems for Centuri, Bally-Midway, Arcade Engineering and Techstar, as well as early SSTV software for amateur radio. Those were fun days!
But STILL with insanely stupid and ill-advised anonymous moderation! Yes, that's right, visit now and you too can be moderated "diasagree" by some wag with unlimited mod points (a site luminary) or just Some Idiot who has 5 (or maybe 15!) chances to fuck up the comment flow. But wait! There's More! Slashdot *also* has no way to undo the damage done by these moderators! Instead of fixing the moderation, slashdot LOLs and gives the mod points to a NEW fool who will ALSO anonymously fuck up the comment flow! It's great! It's like a 1980's BBS with unlimited numbers of sysops on coke!
Thanks, I'll be here all day. Try the veal.
Because bitcoins want to be free! And, and, they're like... BEER! And... noone accepts them for anything, so you can save a LOT of 'em without being tempted to spend 'em! An... an... they keep you from having to do Real Work! "Honey, don't bother me, I'm minting bitcoins!"
I read your post. I responded to the only part of it that wasn't pedantic nonsense, and I didn't call you on your ridiculous non-real world imaginings. Count yourself lucky.
I don't fiddle with it (nor, I suspect, do most people who use this type of capability.) I also don't take my eyes anywhere near as far off the road as people do when they look at their in-dash speedo -- my GPS is a *lot* closer to my normal line of vision. The speed is right there on the display, all the time. It generally knows what the speed limit is for any particular stretch of road is, too. Helps if you miss a speed limit sign.
But hey, thanks for using your imagination to help you craft a snarky remark. Good to know that the theater of the mind isn't completely dead.
What I want to know is, WTF are these three seashells on the dash for?
No, let's not, seeing as it's one of the few places we actually have tested these ideas, and we have the results.
But in general, posted speed limits aren't anywhere near either the limits of the vehicle or the driver's abilities. And that's just with your average car. There are cars -- and drivers -- fully capable of going a lot faster, quite safely, than than the statistics would lead you to presume. And there's the fact that when driving near one's limits, one tend to be paying a lot more attention, because one is enjoying one's self. Not that I'd expect the mothers of America to understand that.
Most speed limits are unmitigated bullshit.
My speedometer is my GPS. Doesn't depend on tire inflation.
But in the meantime, the company making the devices has scored, thus making it worthwhile to have pushed the locals into such a system. Remember, there's more than one party that stands to gain here.
FYI: Montana was coerced by the federal government to switch from reasonable and prudent to fixed limits by the threat of losing federal highway funds.
Interesting read about accident rates related to the reasonable and prudent years.
Summary for the tl;dr crowd:
As catbeller succinctly pointed out, you are grievously ignorant of how our "great nation" was designed to work. The declaration of independence is not law; it's just a high-falutin' fuck-you and fuck-off letter to King George. The constitution, however, is the highest law in the land, and it is specifically the authorizing document from which our federal and state governments derive their legitimate authority.
The key issue isn't establishment by government, it is government respecting an establishment of religion. And "under god" respects several very religious things, among them, monotheism (worship of one god), which is antithetical to many (just for instance) Hindus, atheists, humanists, agnostics, Voo doo /Vo dou types and so on. The idea was, and remains, that the government has no legitimate place in these matters, and the point of the 1st amendment is to explicitly say so. We are a secular nation -- despite the cries of bewildered theists, who haven't the wit to see that it's not good for them for the government to be involved in religion either, even when it appears that the government is (presently) aligned with them, because the next executive / congress / judiciary may be of some other alignment, and if it's ok for the government to meddle in religious matters, soon they may find themselves on the short end of the stick. As happened repeatedly under English rule.
So go jump in a lake like good fellow, eh? Cheerio, pip pip, and all that.
No, it doesn't. It exempts low income earners. Please try not to embarrass yourself further; go read up on how it works. After that, if you have sensibly organized questions or objections, I'll be pleased to respond to them.
I never said they did. Your entire post is a strawman. All I said was moving into a higher tax bracket is a counter indication, and it is.
The summary effect of an increase in income that moves the earner from one tax bracket to a higher one is that they're going to receive additional money from their employer, but they're going to get less of whatever portion of it falls into a higher bracket. Therefore, either the raise has to be adjusted higher than par to keep the earnings proportional to the supposed value of the work, which is a disincentive for the employer, or else the increase itself is eroded by the increased tax burden, which is a disincentive for the worker to take on additional workload in proportion to the money being put out by the employer. This doesn't count the case where the earner is being given money for no particular reason, because those aren't predicated upon increased work product and often are the result of non-productivity related pressures, such as various forms of external coercion.
Please stop mistaking the random grumpy noises in the echo chamber of your mind for something I said. If you want to respond to something I said, look for it in my writing, because if I said it, that's where it will be.
Wrong. It does many things. As described, it removes the hidden tax from the poor. So they move up, economically. It removes the hidden double tax from those with more income than the baseline. So they can *choose* to spend on optionals above the COL, or they can choose to save/invest. Up to them. It puts the cost of the fed govt right in front of us, so we aren't so blind to what it is, and we might like to say something about it when some dingle-berry decides to put up a bridge to nowhere, or give a subsidy to the oil companies, or go to war, etc. It removes the entire IRS infrastructure and 80 zillion tax regulations are replaced with one, tax lawyers get to go work at McDOnald's, and the fees the lawyers used to command go to actual business instead of lawyer-person's Porsche, so businesses can be a good deal more efficient and plan more effectively. It means no visits to the fed tax preparer at the end of the year for Mr. Average (and Mr. Rich!); it means living frugally pays off; it means that an increase in salary isn't a waltz into a higher tax bracket and therefore a counter indication. That's just the advantages I was able to come up with off the top of my head.
It's the same amount of money, collected more simply, and more fairly -- a lot more will come out of the rich people's pockets than is currently the case. It is a major win and a huge increase in transparency and simplicity, and therefore very good for the economy of the middle class, which is MOST of the economy.
You didn't understand what you read. I suggest you read this.
The easy (and constitutionally correct) answer is, that's up to the state, as it should be. My feeling is that if the states are sensible, they would choose to add the additional amount to the sales tax in order to reap the savings of closing down their own teetering piles of tax bureaucrats, paperwork, etc. So, again using imaginary numbers, if the fed tax is 35%, the state might add 15% on top of that, and the sales tax is then 50%. But again, the state should decide via the will of its people.
Of course. It's not a method for collecting a different amount of money; it's a method for collecting the same amount, using a much simpler and fairer methodology, by moving the most tax revenue to the riches wallets, who, of course, buy the most stuff and services, and the most expensive stuff and services, by huge margins. It also puts the actual cost right out in front and funds it incrementally, instead of walloping people and companies at the end of the year.
COL varies; the states have an overwhelming interest in getting it right, and they're "right there", as it were. Have them provide the numbers to the feds. Seems like the same old empire building to make a fed department to do it. They'd be remote to the issue, have (at least) 50 completely different things to deal with, and probably, as usual, do a bad job with all of them. A state will have many fewer issues, are local to them, and furthermore, remain directly responsible to the people whose issues they are. The feds... well, they don't seem to be responsible to anyone. As this very slashdot article shows.
It needs to be adjusted at least yearly. If it is handled poorly, we'll be right back where we are, with the poor being squished, the middle class bearing far more burden than they should, and the rich laughing their asses off at the rest of us.
That's a social safety net issue (IOW, it's a government cost, like funding the military is); their income would be funded by revenues from the tax; they'd get the same $350 or whatever to cover the $1000 basic COL they receive as their safety net (so, $1350 using my imaginary and highly speculative numbers), and hopefully, we'd do something proactive to get them employed if in fact they are employable. The problem is, as it always has been, that this last step is basically skipped.