This is nothing new... 25 years ago Burger King was already experimenting with live outsourcing of drive through window order taking: you roll up, talk to the video monitor, and the human on the other end is at a call center in Missouri, they take your order and it appears on your monitor and in your local kitchen to be made - in 1991.
They really are that tax averse... there are Americans, wealthy and otherwise, who avoid earning income because they might have to pay tax on it - beyond irrational, but there it is.
The boats really are luxury items, and much more costly than the price tag. I wouldn't be surprised if the tax pissed them off, then they thought about all the other expenses a little harder.
And, yes, it's hard to raise taxes on the rich, especially when they own the legislators.
It was like a light switch - boats affected by the tax just stopped selling. As the law implied, they were luxury items, optional purchases. You were planning on spending $250K on a new shiny? Now the IRS wants to tack on a $25K tax... guess what, not a single one of those boat purchasers needed that boat, and they were pissed off and pouty, so they put their check books away and looked at ways they could buy the same thing cheaper in another country - for the million+ yachts that's pretty much what happened, they moved the construction contracts offshore. Apparently the guys in the middle just decided to do without.
In Florida, and other coastal areas, yes, literally thousands were put out of work as a direct result of decreased sales that were directly attributable to the tax. Boats above the $100K cutoff basically stopped selling. Businesses that had thrived for decades were shut down, or dramatically scaled back.
Like I said, I think it was an intentional consequence of the tax, anything else doesn't fit the party profile.
For every "Apple" poster child, there are a hundred other corporations doing the same thing without the public attention.
It needs to be fixed at the legislative level, and that has apparently been impossible for the last 8 years of Democratic administration and the previous 8 years of Republican administration. Even if all Trump does is make a lot of noise and fail to deliver substantial positive change, he won't actually be performing any worse than his two predecessors.
Don't get me wrong, he looks like a buffoon already and will be an even sadder parody of a human being if he fails to deliver, but, in reality, not much worse than a well spoken highly educated man who can't get simple things done, or a "connected" nephew (benefactor of nepotism) who engages in a costly a war that greatly enriches his friends.
The law exists to create a predictable playing field for business, one in which they can make elaborate plans to return gains to shareholders. Without predictable rules, there's unpredictable chaos. Can you imagine the turmoil in the stock market if corporations were only able to deliver on their promises 50% of the time and couldn't predict their profits within +/- 50%?
Successful corporations act shitty to lots of people, they screw their customers with higher than necessary prices, they screw their workers with lower than necessary wages, and when they don't do those things they're seen as screwing their shareholders. There's a reason that successful CEOs tend to be psychopaths - lacking normal levels of human empathy.
And Calvin Klein has hundreds of thousands of clothing designs under his name... amazing how prolific a single brand can be.
Besides, relatively business savvy isn't saying he's good, just that he's better than a lot of politician/legislators we have had in the past - which is a low bar indeed.
I was comparing his business savvy to that of HW Bush, the great Republican leader who passed the 10% luxury goods tax that literally gutted the luxury boat business. I wonder if they did it just to make a point that taxes which punish the rich are bad, certainly they could have punished the rich in more creative ways that wouldn't have collapsed industries, but I don't think that was their goal.
When Bitcoin starts to get "real market traction" and tries to serve a few million transactions per hour, it will collapse under its own computational weight.
It was a great experiment, especially on the social side. Any "security" that is built into Bitcoin by the blockchain is absolutely useless for many to many broad population small cash style transactions. Any band-aid that's spread on top of it to make it able to handle high volume transactions won't be Bitcoin anymore. Most of the security problems encountered with Bitcoin to-date have been in the exchanges, wallets, and other "accessories" that allow convenient use of Bitcoins.
If the bitcoin market expands to anything like cash/credit card transaction volume in even a small European country, it will implode under its own computational requirements.
I know that I collected 1 BTC in exchange for a product in 2010, at that time I could have re-exchanged it for half of a lunch. Three years later, I did exchange it for the equivalent of about 8 lunches. While that's a nice change, it's not stable. A year or so later, it would have exchanged for 40 lunches, then it came back down to 20 or so lunches.
Meanwhile, I can buy a lunch for $8-12 depending on where I go, same price in dollars for the last 5 years or so - give or take 10%, not 1000%.
Because it's Bitcoin, on Slashdot. People will react - and that's what makes the pump side of pump and dump work, getting people to think about it - for every million readers who think this is utter worthless trash, there's one who will go out and invest serious money in the market, helping pump it up - the millions who don't care are irrelevant.
As PT Barnum said: "there's a sucker born every minute." Current world birth rate is about 250 people per minute, a 0.4% sucker rate seems pretty accurate to me.
There's an interesting theory running around Neuroscience (and, let me tell you what a Harvard educated neuroscientist said about virtually all neuroscience and brain studies: "they're great theories, they've got tiny experimental observations to back them up, they're basically pulling all of this out of their asses.") so, anyway, the theory goes that "thoughts" are encoded as repeating firing patterns. As far as I understand the theory and what little I read of OP, the patterns themselves are more nuanced than binary, but one "idea" might be encoded as firing pattern like..-..-..-..- while a competing idea might be encoded as a different firing pattern:...---......---... so, there can be thousands of distinct firing patterns (continuing the morse code analogy, even a simple 3 letter code holds over 17000 unique patterns, make those inter-firing intervals analog and a virtual infinity of patterns can be encoded with 8 to 10 intervals) so, groups of neurons start "singing" their songs based on inputs from other areas of the brain/body, usually several different patterns based on competing inputs from different "source" areas. The neurons in a "processing node" sort of fight it out, each repeating their idea of the "right" firing pattern until they reach some form of consensus, then that coherent pattern becomes a "valid" input to the next level of processing, which itself may be getting inputs from a bunch of different areas that it has to hash out until it can reach a coherent pattern to pass along. Eventually, these "ideas" fire off motor control routines and actuate the body to move, speak, etc.
The thing that's most intriguing to me about this theory is that it's somewhat repeated in human society. We get together, repeat ideas among small groups, pass them along to "higher levels" and eventually act as societies to do things. Now, with the internet, we have billions of people acting in some ways like neurons in a brain, reaching consensus about some things and chanting in chaotic disagreement about others.
Slashdot Mirror
This is nothing new... 25 years ago Burger King was already experimenting with live outsourcing of drive through window order taking: you roll up, talk to the video monitor, and the human on the other end is at a call center in Missouri, they take your order and it appears on your monitor and in your local kitchen to be made - in 1991.
It's the export of US culture and values - first you watch our movies, then you follow our politics... careful, it's highly contagious.
They really are that tax averse... there are Americans, wealthy and otherwise, who avoid earning income because they might have to pay tax on it - beyond irrational, but there it is.
The boats really are luxury items, and much more costly than the price tag. I wouldn't be surprised if the tax pissed them off, then they thought about all the other expenses a little harder.
And, yes, it's hard to raise taxes on the rich, especially when they own the legislators.
It was like a light switch - boats affected by the tax just stopped selling. As the law implied, they were luxury items, optional purchases. You were planning on spending $250K on a new shiny? Now the IRS wants to tack on a $25K tax... guess what, not a single one of those boat purchasers needed that boat, and they were pissed off and pouty, so they put their check books away and looked at ways they could buy the same thing cheaper in another country - for the million+ yachts that's pretty much what happened, they moved the construction contracts offshore. Apparently the guys in the middle just decided to do without.
In Florida, and other coastal areas, yes, literally thousands were put out of work as a direct result of decreased sales that were directly attributable to the tax. Boats above the $100K cutoff basically stopped selling. Businesses that had thrived for decades were shut down, or dramatically scaled back.
Like I said, I think it was an intentional consequence of the tax, anything else doesn't fit the party profile.
More than 80 Americans needed healthcare?
If other diseases don't get you, the depression will.
And there's the key, people can make an ass of themselves without a phone, or be polite with one... life is like a box of chocolates.
So, First Class will now get private offices with soundproof walls - a return to private train compartments.
Peasants get noise cancelling headphones, and 2" less legroom to make space for the compartment walls.
For every "Apple" poster child, there are a hundred other corporations doing the same thing without the public attention.
It needs to be fixed at the legislative level, and that has apparently been impossible for the last 8 years of Democratic administration and the previous 8 years of Republican administration. Even if all Trump does is make a lot of noise and fail to deliver substantial positive change, he won't actually be performing any worse than his two predecessors.
Don't get me wrong, he looks like a buffoon already and will be an even sadder parody of a human being if he fails to deliver, but, in reality, not much worse than a well spoken highly educated man who can't get simple things done, or a "connected" nephew (benefactor of nepotism) who engages in a costly a war that greatly enriches his friends.
The law exists to create a predictable playing field for business, one in which they can make elaborate plans to return gains to shareholders. Without predictable rules, there's unpredictable chaos. Can you imagine the turmoil in the stock market if corporations were only able to deliver on their promises 50% of the time and couldn't predict their profits within +/- 50%?
Successful corporations act shitty to lots of people, they screw their customers with higher than necessary prices, they screw their workers with lower than necessary wages, and when they don't do those things they're seen as screwing their shareholders. There's a reason that successful CEOs tend to be psychopaths - lacking normal levels of human empathy.
And Calvin Klein has hundreds of thousands of clothing designs under his name... amazing how prolific a single brand can be.
Besides, relatively business savvy isn't saying he's good, just that he's better than a lot of politician/legislators we have had in the past - which is a low bar indeed.
I was comparing his business savvy to that of HW Bush, the great Republican leader who passed the 10% luxury goods tax that literally gutted the luxury boat business. I wonder if they did it just to make a point that taxes which punish the rich are bad, certainly they could have punished the rich in more creative ways that wouldn't have collapsed industries, but I don't think that was their goal.
Wait until Trump slaps $50 per phone tariff on their asses
Lol, like an extra $50 would stop a die-hard Apple fanboi from buying his or her new shiny.
Which is why Trump would stop at $50 per phone, because he's relatively business savvy and it's a tariff that would work without killing the business.
Unlike Bush's $10K+ tax on luxury boats.
Blame the laws and the legislators that pass them, not the corporations who maximize their profits by acting within them.
When Bitcoin starts to get "real market traction" and tries to serve a few million transactions per hour, it will collapse under its own computational weight.
It was a great experiment, especially on the social side. Any "security" that is built into Bitcoin by the blockchain is absolutely useless for many to many broad population small cash style transactions. Any band-aid that's spread on top of it to make it able to handle high volume transactions won't be Bitcoin anymore. Most of the security problems encountered with Bitcoin to-date have been in the exchanges, wallets, and other "accessories" that allow convenient use of Bitcoins.
If the bitcoin market expands to anything like cash/credit card transaction volume in even a small European country, it will implode under its own computational requirements.
Perception is all there is. Reference: Wall Street.
That's because Windows users are unruly, blocking updates, etc.
How many Android users just let the updates roll in hourly?
I know that I collected 1 BTC in exchange for a product in 2010, at that time I could have re-exchanged it for half of a lunch. Three years later, I did exchange it for the equivalent of about 8 lunches. While that's a nice change, it's not stable. A year or so later, it would have exchanged for 40 lunches, then it came back down to 20 or so lunches.
Meanwhile, I can buy a lunch for $8-12 depending on where I go, same price in dollars for the last 5 years or so - give or take 10%, not 1000%.
diff, rsync, git, et.al. are NIH, can't use them without compromising security of the user lock-in.
Get smaller patch sizes by compressing the things that people actually change... didn't git do something like this?
Because it's Bitcoin, on Slashdot. People will react - and that's what makes the pump side of pump and dump work, getting people to think about it - for every million readers who think this is utter worthless trash, there's one who will go out and invest serious money in the market, helping pump it up - the millions who don't care are irrelevant.
As PT Barnum said: "there's a sucker born every minute." Current world birth rate is about 250 people per minute, a 0.4% sucker rate seems pretty accurate to me.
Bitcoin, lacking government interference, seems to be a bit less stable than the government controlled currencies.
There's an interesting theory running around Neuroscience (and, let me tell you what a Harvard educated neuroscientist said about virtually all neuroscience and brain studies: "they're great theories, they've got tiny experimental observations to back them up, they're basically pulling all of this out of their asses.") so, anyway, the theory goes that "thoughts" are encoded as repeating firing patterns. As far as I understand the theory and what little I read of OP, the patterns themselves are more nuanced than binary, but one "idea" might be encoded as firing pattern like ..-..- ..-..- while a competing idea might be encoded as a different firing pattern: ...---... ...---... so, there can be thousands of distinct firing patterns (continuing the morse code analogy, even a simple 3 letter code holds over 17000 unique patterns, make those inter-firing intervals analog and a virtual infinity of patterns can be encoded with 8 to 10 intervals) so, groups of neurons start "singing" their songs based on inputs from other areas of the brain/body, usually several different patterns based on competing inputs from different "source" areas. The neurons in a "processing node" sort of fight it out, each repeating their idea of the "right" firing pattern until they reach some form of consensus, then that coherent pattern becomes a "valid" input to the next level of processing, which itself may be getting inputs from a bunch of different areas that it has to hash out until it can reach a coherent pattern to pass along. Eventually, these "ideas" fire off motor control routines and actuate the body to move, speak, etc.
The thing that's most intriguing to me about this theory is that it's somewhat repeated in human society. We get together, repeat ideas among small groups, pass them along to "higher levels" and eventually act as societies to do things. Now, with the internet, we have billions of people acting in some ways like neurons in a brain, reaching consensus about some things and chanting in chaotic disagreement about others.