There's no reduction in a UBI when you have other income. Universal. Everyone gets it. Everyone gets the same amount regardless of circumstance (with a possible exception for dependent children).
The UBI level is set to offset the regressiveness of a flat tax and VAT. Taxing the UBI as part of a flat tax makes no sense, since you're just going to take a flat rate out of it. Say the UBI is $2000/month with a flat tax rate of 40%. Just change that to $1200/month and declare it tax free. Now you have $1200/month, let's assume $800/month on items subject to a 20% VAT, that's $160 you're paying in VAT. That leaves you with $1040/month plus whatever other income you have.
At the same time, the billionaire spending $1000/day on luxury goods is paying out $6000 in that same month, with no loopholes to avoid it. He still gets that $1200/month, of course...
And that model is unsustainable. It simply doesn't work. Nice in theory, but not in practice.
Actually, with a UBI, you can go to a flat tax system, adjusting the level of the UBI so that the flat tax isn't regressive. In that case, it makes sense not to tax the UBI itself.
Which negates UBI. You can see this kind of thing with Social Security benefits, especially for those on SS Disability benefits where they can either get $500/month and work a job making $500/month. There is no in-between. It causes problems including pushing people to stay *on* SS Disability when they could otherwise be employed and helping society. UBI+Flat Tax would result in the same, primarily because if they make below a certain level then they would end up getting the entire UBI; but if they make above a certain level then they would see reductions in their UBI simply because you cannot have both a tax and payment - the net must go one way or the other, and a negative tax (UBI > tax rate) would not be sustainable period.
Actually, I like a system where the budget is split in half, with 50% coming from a VAT and 50% from income tax, tax rates automatically set based on the tax base and the amount spent. A spending bill is automatically a tax bill.
You're welcome to go to Europe and other countries utilizing that structure. However, realize that that structure benefits those with money while penalizing those with little money. That's the problem with VAT and any kind of sales tax.
More money available means that people will afford more and more expensive goods, services and housing.
I'm not sure anyone is talking about making more money available, i.e. printing more money. I think this is another flavor at looking at the negative effects on society of extreme wealth inequality of the type we have in the US. If more of that money was circulated to more people, it would also find its way into the hands of people who produce goods and services, enabling innovation and potentially (not necessarily) driving prices down, not up.
So what you're advocating is what already happens - wealthy people tend to finance many many things, including acting as Venture Capitalists and Angel Investors, which hands money from them over to people needing money to do some task, and ultimately pays out pay checks for numerous people, thereby building the economy and the result back to the VC/AI is a return on investment through ownership of the investment and extracting some profits, which then get fed back into the system to continue the process.
The problem for Basic Income is that it takes money out of those funds from the rich people and hands it directly to the non-working people (Robin Hood style), who don't have any ability or reason to produce something that returns any kind of return on investment and therefore doesn't generate any kind of feedback loop to continue and grow the system. This therefore defeats the feedback loop that is already in place, and acts to grow inflation, which then devalues the money in both situations and therefore means more Basic Income is required to operate the system, which then continues to pull more out of the feed back loop that is creating positive effect on the system and ultimately creating a growing negative effect on the system, eventually leading to collapse of the entire system.
I think it's likely to happen in Europe in the next decade or two. There will be small scale trials, followed by acceptance that it works and implementation in the more progressive and freedom focused northern countries.
And then collapse as the money runs out since Basic Income won't be tax exempt income (the tax man must be paid).
The equation works out to U = (B + W) * (1.0 - T) - where U = usable (expendable) income, B = basic income, W = income acquired via a job, and T = tax rate. All it really does is shift the scales by a fixed constant, and ultimately (like with Minimum Wage) Inflation will adjust thereby ultimately negating it.
You can play with the numbers all you like, and do all the studies you like, but until you actually try it out those theories and studies are pretty much worthless. The only thing that will really matter is a long term result of an actual complete economy operating on it, kind of like with Marxism/Communism being proven bad with the 50+ year run via the Soviet Union - it was good except when it wasn't, which was pretty much most of the time (granted, Soviet Russia never followed through on Karl Marx' outlined plans as the government would have had to essentially disband itself, but people in power positions will never voluntarily give up their power).
I may not be able to afford all the items that I want, but at the very least I do not have to pay $7.50/month in order to access WalMart, another $8.00/month in order to access Bed Bath & Beyond, and yet another $5.00/month to access my farmer's market
Your argument is bollocks. Complete bollocks. You don't pay a monthly fee to those places because that's not their business model. Those places DO have exclusivity contracts - and if you want to buy something that ONLY Wal-Mart sells, then you're forced to either:
1) Pay WalMart's quoted price;
2) Do without it;
3) Steal it from WalMart;
Unfortunately you're still wrong. Yes, WalMart/Target/etc do have exclusive contracts - but they're not really that exclusive. It may be for one particular line of Levi Jeans; but you can find a near identical pair at another store.
Only the first two of these are *ethical* solutions to your dilemma. Furthermore, there ARE stores that charge monthly or yearly fees - Amazon Prime, BJ's Wholesale, Sam's Clubs, and others charge monthly fees for the "privilege" of shopping there - and if you want BJ's brand stuff, you're going to have to shop at BJ's, and pay their membership fees.
Again, another false comparison. BJ's, Sam's, etc have a verify of memberships, and they'll even let you come in on a guest membership, but you pay a little more. (We did a guest membership at BJ's and you pay 5% more than members, at least at that time.) Typically though members pay annually, and it's in the range of $35-$40/yr - compared with $120/service/year in TFA. That's a big difference in itself; but then if you have a membership you also typically note what you save on what you're buying in bulk, which again you can buy anywhere else - and if you watch sales closely enough you can match the prices - so that membership fee becomes a savings point which they also highly advertise (buy X of Y over the year and save your membership fee).
The music services have no such equivalence.
Also, shoplifting isn't the same as copyright infringement. Thank you.
So what? Your argument is equivalent to saying "Shoplifting isn't the same as murder." They may not be the same, but that doesn't make either one of them moral, ethical acts. If you decide to take something that does not belong to you, which the owner has not consented to give to you, then you are engaged in a profoundly immoral activity. Your ethical choices, when presented with terms and prices which you object to for music are:
1) Pay the price the owner is asking for, and abide by the limits and restrictions they stipulate as part of the sale;
2) Negotiate with the owner for a better price, or fewer/no limits/restrictions as part of the sale;
3) Do without the music, and either make your own, or patronize other artists whose terms of sale are more palatable to you;
Notice there is no option that says, "take what you want, fuck the creator, he has no right to control the products of his labor."
And for me, I don't purchase any music subscriptions. I'll buy unregulated MP3's, and that's it. I'm in control, period.
Actually it does because the routes that allow one to from A to B to C may be able to be comprised of A->D->C or A->B->D->E->C
I can't tell if I'm not explaining it well, or if you are just being dense. Lets try again, with a specific example.
Lets say your home is on Comcast cable for internet.
Lets say ALL of comcasts perring links get cut. Everyone on comcast loses their internet. You're internet goes down. Your still getting an ip address from comcast, you can ping other comcast users, but you can't reach anything outside the comcast network. With me so far?
Lets say *I* happen to have both comcast cable and verizon wireless internet. So I still have internet.
There is absolutely nothing I can do to share that link back to comcast and give all those comcast users internet. I simply cannot configure my gear to automagically let comcast know that hey I've still got internet, feel free to route some packets through me; so that suddenly you and all comcasts customers have some internet access again.
If comcast has a million customers, and 100,000 of them have random other connections, dialup, sateliite,ceullar, whatever, they all can get internet access, their really is no practical way for them bring *comcast* back 'online' by somehow 'sharing' those links.
Well, depends on the policies - namely around whether you have a public IP or and ability to run as a server; most ISPs allow people to run as servers primarily to please gamers. It's actually easier now to get a public IP and server allowance for consumers than it has generally been in the past. And so technically yes you can. That doesn't mean Comcast would be happy about it, but then for your scenario - they'll probably be wanting to talk to improve things because they won't be happy about not being able to get their own direct line to Verizon, etc.
You can advertise your gateway If (a) you advertise back to Comcast (either by issuing the appropriate BGP or calling them up and working out a deal) or (b) you advertise to people directly (via word of mouth) that they can use you as a gateway (slow expansion but it will work), then yes you can become a gateway for people to get Internet access from outside of Comcast to. It's not difficult, though it may require people to do specific setups, it's still not difficult to do.
Now if you're a business with an SLA with Comcast and you do that...Or if you're a government entity...
As someone who has done networks, only one side really needs to know about the other
Sort of. Yes, I realized myself after posting that you could use NAT to get around the inability to advertise routes on the 'other side', but to ad-hoc a whole major ISP or whole country of ISPs via multiple consumer NAT points is not practical. For starters the NAT tables would be enormous with millions of hosts behind them and you'd need a lot more than regular consumer gear which again limits who can actually build functional links again.
But sure, yes, with the right hardware, and cooperation from carrier engineers something could be done. This doesn't defeat my argument, it demonstrates how centralized it is.
Its not completely centralized, but its obviously not peer to peer either, nor can it easily become peer to peer in the event the big centrallized links got knocked down.
So all of that is solvable by how you design your network - how many resources are employed. NAT isn't required - it's just one example. My point was never that the solution would have the best scalability...just that it would work even if providing a very slow connection. And if the Powers That Be (e.g a dictator) really wanted to restore Internet service to the country, then these kinds of solutions could be employed to do so.
What you're arguing is that it's not a *scalable* solution, but scalability doesn't matter - if it's just one individual doing it, y
I didn't say a thing about *who* did it, just that it could be done - meaning *anyone* could do it
That's a really weird definition of 'anyone' can do it. Most people CANNOT do it, and the people who can do it all belong to very specific organizations. That is pretty much the opposite of 'anyone'.
Further, even if they've got the ability to advertise new routes locally, good luck being able to get whatever entity they are connected to wirelessly to advertise the route. Best case, the small number of people who might be able to get the domestic internet to route packets along adhoc routes still aren't going to be able to get their foreign counterparts to advertise those ad hoc routs, so no packets are coming back.
If you want to go there, then you obviously missed the headlines last year that a lot of the Internet infrastructure is open to attack simply because it's extremely trusting that when someone advertises a route they actually own that route. Don't recall if that was fixed or not, but it was actually used to subvert some routes IIRC.
Again, it's just a matter of *who* is doing it. If the Country wanted to provide the service, they'll find a way to provide the service, even if it's just for government use
Providing individuals internet service really has nothing to do with the internet's ability to route around damage though.
Actually it does because the routes that allow one to from A to B to C may be able to be comprised of A->D->C or A->B->D->E->C. The route may not be the most efficient (A->C) but if it can be made it will be made. Which is the entire point of this thread. You can only isolate yourself - if A has no routes out of A then C can never be reached, but once A has a route outside of A (B) then if C is reachable via that route then there is ultimately nothing A can do to prevent users within A to get to C.
No, you're missing the point.
I'm definitely not missing the point that I am making.
I see what you are saying, but you are simply talking about something else entirely.
Lets try this another way.
The internet is like a spiderweb. And every node can communicate with every other along various paths. If I then cut a portion off the web off, then I have two separate webs. That can't communicate with eachother.
You on the other hand are making the argument that it's easy for anyone on the cut off half to throw a line over to the first half and get some service for themselves, and/or some others is absolutely correct. But it still doesn't create a bridge between the two webs again. They might have service but the other web is still cut off.
The number of people who have the ability to actually connect them back together is pretty small. Both sides of the connection have to have the ability advertise routes; and that's pretty rarefied these days.
As someone who has done networks, only one side really needs to know about the other. If you don't care about data connecting outside in, then advertising the route on the inside only is quite sufficient - that's typically how NAT works, and the external entity will be able to gain the route back to the source even if it's not entirely advertised both directions.
Unfortunately, you just cut your own argument down. If there is a line that allows two nodes to connect to each other then the only limit is the transmission rate of that line to provide the entire route. That's *how* the Internet works. It may not be efficient, but it does work - and (more importantly) has been *proven* to work.
Except Country A cannot necessarily or even practically prevent Country B from having connections with any other Country (C, D, E, F).
We simply aren't talking about the same thing.
You are trying to deny internet access to individuals in country B. And yes, that is extremely difficult to do.
I am talking about denying internet access to the country at large. And that is relatively easy to do. Because those few individuals near the border with satellites that didn't get bombed, or within cellular coverage range (perhaps via custom antenna configurations) they are JUST getting access for themselves and an extremely small local group. They aren't restoring the "internet" to that country.
Says who? They could set that up and have a connection running to be a provider for the country at large. Heck, the government could do it and provide internet to everyone. I didn't say a thing about *who* did it, just that it could be done - meaning *anyone* could do it, and thus restore connectivity.
Or take Mesh Networking into account (802.11s), and again it's accessible to anyone within range of the mesh network - hence the country at large, even if the country at large is routing through a couple Mesh Network devices connected to a few Sat Com devices (run from any where in the country) and Cell Modems around the border. Sure, performance is going to be poor but it wouldn't take much to restore *some* level of connectivity.
just means you have someone sitting close to a border with enough cellular modems to make the same kind of service available without having physical links, and it's near impossible to really prevent them or block the RF, etc.
Unless that someone is able to establish a connection to the countries internet infrastructure and advertise the route all he's done is given himself and maybe his little local group internet access. And you are right, that's all but impossible to stop, but I'm talking about actually bringing the country back online (actually having internet access) with these "guerrilla" links and that doesn't work. Its just a few endpoints.
Again, it's just a matter of *who* is doing it. If the Country wanted to provide the service, they'll find a way to provide the service, even if it's just for government use - which is one of the reasons why Country A may want to block Country B from being on the Internet - to prevent Country B's government from nefarious acts against Country A via the Internet. The fact that Country B can put a Sat Com in place to run those attacks over completely negates the issue of cutting the fibre servicing the residents. If they want to do it they'll find a way - even placing people to do so into Country C if necessary.
So no, my example is spot on when you look at reality.
As I said, we seem to be talking about achieving different goals.
So Country A blocks Country B; Country B then gets to Country A via Country C, or via C-D-E-F.
You are attacking the wrong problem. Country A doesn't want to block traffic from country B reaching country A. Country A wants to take country B off the internet entirely; and country A is already engaged militarily with B so it has options that include doing stuff IN country B.
So country A physically destroys the big fiber optic bundles at the borders and disables the satellite uplinks of country B by military force.
Country B is now pretty effectively cut off from A, C, D, E, F...
Except Country A cannot necessarily or even practically prevent Country B from having connections with any other Country (C, D, E, F). Country A can sever connections between Country A and Country B, but that will not prevent connections between Country B and Country C, D, E, or F. Country A can realistically only isolate itself.
A good example of how this really plays out and how difficult it is to really maintain such an enforcement is the Great Firewall of China. Now they're 99% of the example in that they do want some but very censored traffic to come in and go out.
Alternatively, look at the Middle East where Sat-Comm is a norm - all you have to do is have an account with an appropriate Sat Com vendor and there's NOTHING that Country A can do to prevent your traffic from crossing into their borders; or switch from SatCom to Cellular and it's not very different - just means you have someone sitting close to a border with enough cellular modems to make the same kind of service available without having physical links, and it's near impossible to really prevent them or block the RF, etc.
So no, my example is spot on when you look at reality.
ARPAnet and MilNet were designed to be resilient against centralized attack and outages
During the evolution from those networks to the current, commercialized, information utility, much of that design was abandoned. We have migrated from an everything-is-redundantly-multiconnected, route around failures, survive a nuclear exchange system to a hierarchy, with a distinction between core and edge, where loss of certain boxes can shut down 10,000 to 100,000 end user sites.
(That's why those boxes are designed with internal reduncancy, like a telephone exchange. And I know them intimately, having spent over a decade designing parts of them.)
The core/backbone does retain some of the features of the Internet's cold-war-survival origin (though the transition to fiber and physical ring layouts made that more vulnerable to multipoint failures, as well.) So some of it still has part of the old robustness.
Then there are new services which added new dependencies (and sometimes new surprises when something goes down or goes away and a lot of stuff breaks).
And to top it off, the discussion is not about government actors managing to taking the net down, but identifying and surgically cutting off a designated portion of it.
So arguing from the characteristics of the robust-against-nukes network design we once had - and haven't had for decades - isn't particularly germaine.
You seem to have missed the resiliency of the Internet on 9/11 and how even though several major core backbone connections running under Twin Towers were completely severed almost no one noticed.
No we don't. The Internet considers censoring as damage and routes around it
Not so much anymore.
Even I had a 100Mbp connections and my neighbor across the border had the same, and we decided to connect them, we'd be able to cross browse, but the internet at large would still be pretty much down because we can't advertise the route.
So Country A blocks Country B; Country B then gets to Country A via Country C, or via C-D-E-F.
The option is basically to block everything outside your borders - in which case the Internet becomes an Intranet - or allow everything because if even one Allowed external entity has a route to someone you don't want to have access then that someone can get access to your network.
And that's not taking into account hopping via Sat-Com or Modems, etc as mentioned in the thread, which is yet another way to dial-in via routing around the problem area.
And yes, this was by design due to Cold War concerns by CIA, NSA, DoD, etc.
In a group of 4 cars, a single $90k luxury model can bring the average up to $33k when the three others cost $15k. That's why nobody cites the average home price, but somehow the median car price is impossible to find. [grassroots...sports.com] You'll notice, if you go searching, that there are a bunch of articles bemoaning how the "median" American can't afford an "average" priced car, but that's a ridiculous comparison. If a person had the "average" wealth of all Americans, s/he would easily be in the top decile, and probably higher.
My income is well above average, and my only debt is my house with a modest monthly mortgage payment. I cannot afford most SUVs when bought new. Most cars are just too damn expensive. And yes, I've bought two new vehicles in the last 11 years - a 2005 Mazda3 at $18.9k+interest (total $23k), and a 2011 Grand Caravan at $28k+interest (total $30k-$33k max).
Now, I'd go for the Tesla Model 3, but it would definitely be near the top of my budget if I did. But I'll likely go for a used F-350 instead, and be a low lower in price.
Ditto. Why does Jeffrey Smith become CEO of Yahoo and see how easy it is to run the company. I'm thinking he's feeling buyers remorse and is trying to get his money back. Activist investors need to be stopped.
While generally I'd agree (Icahn), I think this time around it's more necessary as Yahoo! is almost actively destroying their own value - selling off core businesses after remaking them to look like Google.
I know a person who uses a Yahoo account as their second email account.
I know such a shyster too. Worse: he uses Yahoo as his primary mail account. Seriously broken software. Not only does it ignore existence of carriage returns but also of spaces, and often runsseveralwordstogether.
I primarily use Yahoo! but it's more a matter of the practicality of moving off and onto my own server, namely due to that I've had the Yahoo! account as a primary address since 1999.
Even so, they do a lot seem to be pushing people *away* from using their services.
Bullshit. You must be gay or live with your parents if you think women aren't more aggressive than men.
There are actually quite a few studies out there that show that women are not as aggressive as men when it comes to salary negotiation; in part because the core mindset is one of expecting reward than having to fight for it.
It's not that women *can't* be more aggressive - they can - it's just they have different expectations around how things work so they are not as aggressive as the should. Some men suffer from the same issues, just not as big a percentage.
Take the Rust programming language, for example. Despite its community having an intense focus on diversity and tolerance, and despite the project having one of the most stringent code of conducts around [rust-lang.org], and despite the project even having a Moderation Team to stamp out perceived injustice [rust-lang.org], why do we see so little diversity among Rust's contributors [github.com]?
Probably because all those things actively push towards uniformity - people being of a like mind and wanting the same thing - and pushing the people away that would actually bring a challenge to the status quo.
While the idea of a Code of Conduct is nice, it also means pushing away anyone that doesn't want to deal with it - thus effectively limiting the people from joining when they first learn of the project instead of later. Reduces issues, but also reduces the talent pool. The other items (moderation, etc) just reinforce the Code of Conduct, and thereby rewarding uniformity and people being of like-mind, and punishing those who disagree.
Now that doesn't mean there won't be diversity inside the group, just that its going to be of limited form.
First off, automatics DO engine brake downhill. My Mazda does. It sounds like you haven't driven an automatic in over a decade.
I drive a manual (2005) and an automatic (2010) on a regular basis. An automatic does not engine brake the same way a manual does; nor does it have any kind of situational awareness. It does not engine brake b/c it *knows* it is going down hill (like you do with a manual); it does it because you're not adding gas and the hill isn't enough to overcome the drag on the gear. It doesn't *know* that traffic is slowing so gearing down before the brake gets hit is good.
But your biggest flaw is assuming that automatics and manuals have identical mechanics, and identical gear ratios.
That actually doesn't matter for my point. You can have as many gears as you like in either and you'll still do better with the situational awareness that the driver brings to selecting the gear to use. This is why I said that an AI coupled with an AT can do better, but we're still 5-10 years from those really doing it well; current driver AI's are generally experimental but getting better - and there's only a couple that are good enough to manage the road.
I've never heard of an 8-speed manual in a car, but 8-speed automatics are getting to be common.
Obviously you're not aware of many sports cars which even the manuals can have 8 or 9 gears. My Mazda3 only has 5; the 2006 has 6 (the 5 really could have used the 6th gear to help keep the optimal RPM at highway speed), and newer models may even have 7 - and that's the *low* end of the market. Pick up a something higher up and you'll easily find 8 or 9 gears in a manual.
But that's beside the point because while gear count does have some impact, the primary impact is still the intelligence and situational awareness the driver brings - even an AI driver - which is why a manual will always win over an automatic.
Your points are valid, but possibly outdated. Manuals *mostly* had 4-5 forward gears. Autos had 3. Today autos have upwards of 8 gears. That alone will give autos an advantage. CVTs as you said get the 'perfect' gear all the time (with massive sacrifice of performance and feel).
Issue is not how many gears or how fast the change can be made, the issue is the additional information available and ability to use that intelligence that makes the difference.
I've driven both. I presently drive a 2005 Mazda3 with a 5-speed, and we have a 2010 Grand Caravan with an automatic and gear selector (select maximum gear). I can consistently get better gas mileage on the Grand Caravan by limiting the maximum gear versus just letting it do its thing. This kind of matches what the EPA says about mileage too - manuals tend to get 1-2 MPG better than automatics.
but from what I've seen from shopping for small cars, manual transmissions are still a bit more fuel efficient on average.
You're misinterpreting the data; you're seeing manual transmissions on smaller, more fuel-efficient cars [that typically ship with manual transmissions]... but they're not more fuel efficient because they're manual...
Fuel efficiency of a manual transmission primarily depends on the driver's ability to use the manual transmission. The reason why a manual transmission will always be more efficient than an automatic transmission (until we have a fully autonomous vehicle that can do the same thing) is that a driver brings a situational awareness to the use of gearing that an automatic transmission has no ability to account for.
For instance, automatic transmissions do not gear down (engine brake) when going down a hill; nor do they chose gearing based on what is about to happen - they're always reactive, not proactive. An autonomous vehicle that takes the same data into account could probably achieve the same efficiency.
As to CBTs and the likes....they have some major faults (such as not being able to do engine braking going down a steep incline) that also keeps them from really being more efficient even if they can be more efficient in some scenarios.
...and there's no way to plan multi-year projects when dealing with voluntary contributions.
Non-profits (and I've worked for a few, and know a lot of people that do as well, including raising funds) do it all the time, so no that's not an issue.
One of the big issues is that so much related to Prior Art is hidden from the USPTO or even the Software Community at large as people would work for company A, learn something while there, and then move to company B; company A would go under and company B (or C,....) would file a patent not realizing that the work really belonged to Company A. Company A would get the patent, but the 50 other people that knew of the "invention" from Company A and had been using it for years (again not necessarily realizing the link as they may have indirectly learned it) now find themselves open to litigation from the company holding the patent, and good luck showing Prior Art since everything from Company A when into a black hole when it went under.
There's another dozen scenarios similar to the above too - in all cases the knowledge is locked away or unable to be proven according to the rules of Prior Art unless some random person just happens to have the right kind of documentation because they kept it (accidentally) when leaving the company.
^that. I don't know why these stories never read as "millionaires have used existing mechanisms to voluntarily pay more in taxes". Somehow it never quite reads like that.
Because it wouldn't play well for the liberal media and the DNC political machinery.
Copyright reassignment is necessary to enforce the provisions of the GPL. If the holder of the copyright is not aware that his code has been stolen, or if he has died or can't afford to pay a lawyer, then the GPL is worthless because it can't be enforced. If the copyright is reassigned to the FSF, for example, they will pay the lawyer to sue on behalf of the GPL. The GPL is silent of reassignment. If a project leader is requiring it, the contributor is free to take all the existing project code and fork the whole thing. That's how the GPL prevents any one person from having leverage over the code.
It's not required to enforce the GPL; any of the copyright holders can force it. It's really only helpful in changing the license. FSF/GNU requires it because they want to always keep the license at the latest revision of the GPL/LGPL/FDL.
Note: The difficulty in tracking down contributors or their estate (and then explaining to the estate why the estate should allow it for those that have died) or otherwise re-writing code is one of the reasons that the Linux Kernel will remain GPLv2; the other reason is that Linus doesn't see a need to change the license.
That's BS. My contracts with Fortune 500s and the government do not forbid me from working more than forty hours, in fact they practically encourage me to seek out new opportunities and strike when I can.
The contract may not explicitly forbid it, but it's essentially forbidden as the project manager won't approve the OT.
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There's no reduction in a UBI when you have other income. Universal. Everyone gets it. Everyone gets the same amount regardless of circumstance (with a possible exception for dependent children).
The UBI level is set to offset the regressiveness of a flat tax and VAT. Taxing the UBI as part of a flat tax makes no sense, since you're just going to take a flat rate out of it. Say the UBI is $2000/month with a flat tax rate of 40%. Just change that to $1200/month and declare it tax free. Now you have $1200/month, let's assume $800/month on items subject to a 20% VAT, that's $160 you're paying in VAT. That leaves you with $1040/month plus whatever other income you have.
At the same time, the billionaire spending $1000/day on luxury goods is paying out $6000 in that same month, with no loopholes to avoid it. He still gets that $1200/month, of course...
And that model is unsustainable. It simply doesn't work. Nice in theory, but not in practice.
Actually, with a UBI, you can go to a flat tax system, adjusting the level of the UBI so that the flat tax isn't regressive. In that case, it makes sense not to tax the UBI itself.
Which negates UBI. You can see this kind of thing with Social Security benefits, especially for those on SS Disability benefits where they can either get $500/month and work a job making $500/month. There is no in-between. It causes problems including pushing people to stay *on* SS Disability when they could otherwise be employed and helping society. UBI+Flat Tax would result in the same, primarily because if they make below a certain level then they would end up getting the entire UBI; but if they make above a certain level then they would see reductions in their UBI simply because you cannot have both a tax and payment - the net must go one way or the other, and a negative tax (UBI > tax rate) would not be sustainable period.
Actually, I like a system where the budget is split in half, with 50% coming from a VAT and 50% from income tax, tax rates automatically set based on the tax base and the amount spent. A spending bill is automatically a tax bill.
You're welcome to go to Europe and other countries utilizing that structure. However, realize that that structure benefits those with money while penalizing those with little money. That's the problem with VAT and any kind of sales tax.
More money available means that people will afford more and more expensive goods, services and housing.
I'm not sure anyone is talking about making more money available, i.e. printing more money. I think this is another flavor at looking at the negative effects on society of extreme wealth inequality of the type we have in the US. If more of that money was circulated to more people, it would also find its way into the hands of people who produce goods and services, enabling innovation and potentially (not necessarily) driving prices down, not up.
So what you're advocating is what already happens - wealthy people tend to finance many many things, including acting as Venture Capitalists and Angel Investors, which hands money from them over to people needing money to do some task, and ultimately pays out pay checks for numerous people, thereby building the economy and the result back to the VC/AI is a return on investment through ownership of the investment and extracting some profits, which then get fed back into the system to continue the process.
The problem for Basic Income is that it takes money out of those funds from the rich people and hands it directly to the non-working people (Robin Hood style), who don't have any ability or reason to produce something that returns any kind of return on investment and therefore doesn't generate any kind of feedback loop to continue and grow the system. This therefore defeats the feedback loop that is already in place, and acts to grow inflation, which then devalues the money in both situations and therefore means more Basic Income is required to operate the system, which then continues to pull more out of the feed back loop that is creating positive effect on the system and ultimately creating a growing negative effect on the system, eventually leading to collapse of the entire system.
I think it's likely to happen in Europe in the next decade or two. There will be small scale trials, followed by acceptance that it works and implementation in the more progressive and freedom focused northern countries.
And then collapse as the money runs out since Basic Income won't be tax exempt income (the tax man must be paid).
The equation works out to U = (B + W) * (1.0 - T) - where U = usable (expendable) income, B = basic income, W = income acquired via a job, and T = tax rate. All it really does is shift the scales by a fixed constant, and ultimately (like with Minimum Wage) Inflation will adjust thereby ultimately negating it.
You can play with the numbers all you like, and do all the studies you like, but until you actually try it out those theories and studies are pretty much worthless. The only thing that will really matter is a long term result of an actual complete economy operating on it, kind of like with Marxism/Communism being proven bad with the 50+ year run via the Soviet Union - it was good except when it wasn't, which was pretty much most of the time (granted, Soviet Russia never followed through on Karl Marx' outlined plans as the government would have had to essentially disband itself, but people in power positions will never voluntarily give up their power).
Your argument is bollocks. Complete bollocks. You don't pay a monthly fee to those places because that's not their business model. Those places DO have exclusivity contracts - and if you want to buy something that ONLY Wal-Mart sells, then you're forced to either:
1) Pay WalMart's quoted price; 2) Do without it; 3) Steal it from WalMart;
Unfortunately you're still wrong. Yes, WalMart/Target/etc do have exclusive contracts - but they're not really that exclusive. It may be for one particular line of Levi Jeans; but you can find a near identical pair at another store.
Only the first two of these are *ethical* solutions to your dilemma. Furthermore, there ARE stores that charge monthly or yearly fees - Amazon Prime, BJ's Wholesale, Sam's Clubs, and others charge monthly fees for the "privilege" of shopping there - and if you want BJ's brand stuff, you're going to have to shop at BJ's, and pay their membership fees.
Again, another false comparison. BJ's, Sam's, etc have a verify of memberships, and they'll even let you come in on a guest membership, but you pay a little more. (We did a guest membership at BJ's and you pay 5% more than members, at least at that time.) Typically though members pay annually, and it's in the range of $35-$40/yr - compared with $120/service/year in TFA. That's a big difference in itself; but then if you have a membership you also typically note what you save on what you're buying in bulk, which again you can buy anywhere else - and if you watch sales closely enough you can match the prices - so that membership fee becomes a savings point which they also highly advertise (buy X of Y over the year and save your membership fee).
The music services have no such equivalence.
So what? Your argument is equivalent to saying "Shoplifting isn't the same as murder." They may not be the same, but that doesn't make either one of them moral, ethical acts. If you decide to take something that does not belong to you, which the owner has not consented to give to you, then you are engaged in a profoundly immoral activity. Your ethical choices, when presented with terms and prices which you object to for music are:
1) Pay the price the owner is asking for, and abide by the limits and restrictions they stipulate as part of the sale; 2) Negotiate with the owner for a better price, or fewer/no limits/restrictions as part of the sale; 3) Do without the music, and either make your own, or patronize other artists whose terms of sale are more palatable to you;
Notice there is no option that says, "take what you want, fuck the creator, he has no right to control the products of his labor."
And for me, I don't purchase any music subscriptions. I'll buy unregulated MP3's, and that's it. I'm in control, period.
Actually it does because the routes that allow one to from A to B to C may be able to be comprised of A->D->C or A->B->D->E->C
I can't tell if I'm not explaining it well, or if you are just being dense. Lets try again, with a specific example.
Lets say your home is on Comcast cable for internet. Lets say ALL of comcasts perring links get cut. Everyone on comcast loses their internet. You're internet goes down. Your still getting an ip address from comcast, you can ping other comcast users, but you can't reach anything outside the comcast network. With me so far?
Lets say *I* happen to have both comcast cable and verizon wireless internet. So I still have internet.
There is absolutely nothing I can do to share that link back to comcast and give all those comcast users internet. I simply cannot configure my gear to automagically let comcast know that hey I've still got internet, feel free to route some packets through me; so that suddenly you and all comcasts customers have some internet access again.
If comcast has a million customers, and 100,000 of them have random other connections, dialup, sateliite,ceullar, whatever, they all can get internet access, their really is no practical way for them bring *comcast* back 'online' by somehow 'sharing' those links.
Well, depends on the policies - namely around whether you have a public IP or and ability to run as a server; most ISPs allow people to run as servers primarily to please gamers. It's actually easier now to get a public IP and server allowance for consumers than it has generally been in the past. And so technically yes you can. That doesn't mean Comcast would be happy about it, but then for your scenario - they'll probably be wanting to talk to improve things because they won't be happy about not being able to get their own direct line to Verizon, etc.
You can advertise your gateway If (a) you advertise back to Comcast (either by issuing the appropriate BGP or calling them up and working out a deal) or (b) you advertise to people directly (via word of mouth) that they can use you as a gateway (slow expansion but it will work), then yes you can become a gateway for people to get Internet access from outside of Comcast to. It's not difficult, though it may require people to do specific setups, it's still not difficult to do.
Now if you're a business with an SLA with Comcast and you do that...Or if you're a government entity...
As someone who has done networks, only one side really needs to know about the other
Sort of. Yes, I realized myself after posting that you could use NAT to get around the inability to advertise routes on the 'other side', but to ad-hoc a whole major ISP or whole country of ISPs via multiple consumer NAT points is not practical. For starters the NAT tables would be enormous with millions of hosts behind them and you'd need a lot more than regular consumer gear which again limits who can actually build functional links again.
But sure, yes, with the right hardware, and cooperation from carrier engineers something could be done. This doesn't defeat my argument, it demonstrates how centralized it is.
Its not completely centralized, but its obviously not peer to peer either, nor can it easily become peer to peer in the event the big centrallized links got knocked down.
So all of that is solvable by how you design your network - how many resources are employed. NAT isn't required - it's just one example. My point was never that the solution would have the best scalability...just that it would work even if providing a very slow connection. And if the Powers That Be (e.g a dictator) really wanted to restore Internet service to the country, then these kinds of solutions could be employed to do so.
What you're arguing is that it's not a *scalable* solution, but scalability doesn't matter - if it's just one individual doing it, y
I didn't say a thing about *who* did it, just that it could be done - meaning *anyone* could do it
That's a really weird definition of 'anyone' can do it. Most people CANNOT do it, and the people who can do it all belong to very specific organizations. That is pretty much the opposite of 'anyone'.
Further, even if they've got the ability to advertise new routes locally, good luck being able to get whatever entity they are connected to wirelessly to advertise the route. Best case, the small number of people who might be able to get the domestic internet to route packets along adhoc routes still aren't going to be able to get their foreign counterparts to advertise those ad hoc routs, so no packets are coming back.
If you want to go there, then you obviously missed the headlines last year that a lot of the Internet infrastructure is open to attack simply because it's extremely trusting that when someone advertises a route they actually own that route. Don't recall if that was fixed or not, but it was actually used to subvert some routes IIRC.
Again, it's just a matter of *who* is doing it. If the Country wanted to provide the service, they'll find a way to provide the service, even if it's just for government use
Providing individuals internet service really has nothing to do with the internet's ability to route around damage though.
Actually it does because the routes that allow one to from A to B to C may be able to be comprised of A->D->C or A->B->D->E->C. The route may not be the most efficient (A->C) but if it can be made it will be made. Which is the entire point of this thread. You can only isolate yourself - if A has no routes out of A then C can never be reached, but once A has a route outside of A (B) then if C is reachable via that route then there is ultimately nothing A can do to prevent users within A to get to C.
No, you're missing the point.
I'm definitely not missing the point that I am making. I see what you are saying, but you are simply talking about something else entirely.
Lets try this another way.
The internet is like a spiderweb. And every node can communicate with every other along various paths. If I then cut a portion off the web off, then I have two separate webs. That can't communicate with eachother.
You on the other hand are making the argument that it's easy for anyone on the cut off half to throw a line over to the first half and get some service for themselves, and/or some others is absolutely correct. But it still doesn't create a bridge between the two webs again. They might have service but the other web is still cut off.
The number of people who have the ability to actually connect them back together is pretty small. Both sides of the connection have to have the ability advertise routes; and that's pretty rarefied these days.
As someone who has done networks, only one side really needs to know about the other. If you don't care about data connecting outside in, then advertising the route on the inside only is quite sufficient - that's typically how NAT works, and the external entity will be able to gain the route back to the source even if it's not entirely advertised both directions.
Unfortunately, you just cut your own argument down. If there is a line that allows two nodes to connect to each other then the only limit is the transmission rate of that line to provide the entire route. That's *how* the Internet works. It may not be efficient, but it does work - and (more importantly) has been *proven* to work.
Except Country A cannot necessarily or even practically prevent Country B from having connections with any other Country (C, D, E, F).
We simply aren't talking about the same thing.
You are trying to deny internet access to individuals in country B. And yes, that is extremely difficult to do.
I am talking about denying internet access to the country at large. And that is relatively easy to do. Because those few individuals near the border with satellites that didn't get bombed, or within cellular coverage range (perhaps via custom antenna configurations) they are JUST getting access for themselves and an extremely small local group. They aren't restoring the "internet" to that country.
Says who? They could set that up and have a connection running to be a provider for the country at large. Heck, the government could do it and provide internet to everyone. I didn't say a thing about *who* did it, just that it could be done - meaning *anyone* could do it, and thus restore connectivity.
Or take Mesh Networking into account (802.11s), and again it's accessible to anyone within range of the mesh network - hence the country at large, even if the country at large is routing through a couple Mesh Network devices connected to a few Sat Com devices (run from any where in the country) and Cell Modems around the border. Sure, performance is going to be poor but it wouldn't take much to restore *some* level of connectivity.
just means you have someone sitting close to a border with enough cellular modems to make the same kind of service available without having physical links, and it's near impossible to really prevent them or block the RF, etc.
Unless that someone is able to establish a connection to the countries internet infrastructure and advertise the route all he's done is given himself and maybe his little local group internet access. And you are right, that's all but impossible to stop, but I'm talking about actually bringing the country back online (actually having internet access) with these "guerrilla" links and that doesn't work. Its just a few endpoints.
Again, it's just a matter of *who* is doing it. If the Country wanted to provide the service, they'll find a way to provide the service, even if it's just for government use - which is one of the reasons why Country A may want to block Country B from being on the Internet - to prevent Country B's government from nefarious acts against Country A via the Internet. The fact that Country B can put a Sat Com in place to run those attacks over completely negates the issue of cutting the fibre servicing the residents. If they want to do it they'll find a way - even placing people to do so into Country C if necessary.
So no, my example is spot on when you look at reality.
As I said, we seem to be talking about achieving different goals.
No, you're missing the point.
So Country A blocks Country B; Country B then gets to Country A via Country C, or via C-D-E-F.
You are attacking the wrong problem. Country A doesn't want to block traffic from country B reaching country A. Country A wants to take country B off the internet entirely; and country A is already engaged militarily with B so it has options that include doing stuff IN country B.
So country A physically destroys the big fiber optic bundles at the borders and disables the satellite uplinks of country B by military force.
Country B is now pretty effectively cut off from A, C, D, E, F...
Except Country A cannot necessarily or even practically prevent Country B from having connections with any other Country (C, D, E, F). Country A can sever connections between Country A and Country B, but that will not prevent connections between Country B and Country C, D, E, or F. Country A can realistically only isolate itself.
A good example of how this really plays out and how difficult it is to really maintain such an enforcement is the Great Firewall of China. Now they're 99% of the example in that they do want some but very censored traffic to come in and go out.
Alternatively, look at the Middle East where Sat-Comm is a norm - all you have to do is have an account with an appropriate Sat Com vendor and there's NOTHING that Country A can do to prevent your traffic from crossing into their borders; or switch from SatCom to Cellular and it's not very different - just means you have someone sitting close to a border with enough cellular modems to make the same kind of service available without having physical links, and it's near impossible to really prevent them or block the RF, etc.
So no, my example is spot on when you look at reality.
ARPAnet and MilNet were designed to be resilient against centralized attack and outages
During the evolution from those networks to the current, commercialized, information utility, much of that design was abandoned. We have migrated from an everything-is-redundantly-multiconnected, route around failures, survive a nuclear exchange system to a hierarchy, with a distinction between core and edge, where loss of certain boxes can shut down 10,000 to 100,000 end user sites.
(That's why those boxes are designed with internal reduncancy, like a telephone exchange. And I know them intimately, having spent over a decade designing parts of them.)
The core/backbone does retain some of the features of the Internet's cold-war-survival origin (though the transition to fiber and physical ring layouts made that more vulnerable to multipoint failures, as well.) So some of it still has part of the old robustness.
Then there are new services which added new dependencies (and sometimes new surprises when something goes down or goes away and a lot of stuff breaks).
And to top it off, the discussion is not about government actors managing to taking the net down, but identifying and surgically cutting off a designated portion of it.
So arguing from the characteristics of the robust-against-nukes network design we once had - and haven't had for decades - isn't particularly germaine.
You seem to have missed the resiliency of the Internet on 9/11 and how even though several major core backbone connections running under Twin Towers were completely severed almost no one noticed.
No we don't. The Internet considers censoring as damage and routes around it
Not so much anymore.
Even I had a 100Mbp connections and my neighbor across the border had the same, and we decided to connect them, we'd be able to cross browse, but the internet at large would still be pretty much down because we can't advertise the route.
So Country A blocks Country B; Country B then gets to Country A via Country C, or via C-D-E-F.
The option is basically to block everything outside your borders - in which case the Internet becomes an Intranet - or allow everything because if even one Allowed external entity has a route to someone you don't want to have access then that someone can get access to your network.
And that's not taking into account hopping via Sat-Com or Modems, etc as mentioned in the thread, which is yet another way to dial-in via routing around the problem area.
And yes, this was by design due to Cold War concerns by CIA, NSA, DoD, etc.
In a group of 4 cars, a single $90k luxury model can bring the average up to $33k when the three others cost $15k. That's why nobody cites the average home price, but somehow the median car price is impossible to find. [grassroots...sports.com] You'll notice, if you go searching, that there are a bunch of articles bemoaning how the "median" American can't afford an "average" priced car, but that's a ridiculous comparison. If a person had the "average" wealth of all Americans, s/he would easily be in the top decile, and probably higher.
My income is well above average, and my only debt is my house with a modest monthly mortgage payment. I cannot afford most SUVs when bought new. Most cars are just too damn expensive. And yes, I've bought two new vehicles in the last 11 years - a 2005 Mazda3 at $18.9k+interest (total $23k), and a 2011 Grand Caravan at $28k+interest (total $30k-$33k max).
Now, I'd go for the Tesla Model 3, but it would definitely be near the top of my budget if I did. But I'll likely go for a used F-350 instead, and be a low lower in price.
Ditto. Why does Jeffrey Smith become CEO of Yahoo and see how easy it is to run the company. I'm thinking he's feeling buyers remorse and is trying to get his money back. Activist investors need to be stopped.
While generally I'd agree (Icahn), I think this time around it's more necessary as Yahoo! is almost actively destroying their own value - selling off core businesses after remaking them to look like Google.
I know a person who uses a Yahoo account as their second email account.
I know such a shyster too. Worse: he uses Yahoo as his primary mail account. Seriously broken software. Not only does it ignore existence of carriage returns but also of spaces, and often runsseveralwordstogether.
I primarily use Yahoo! but it's more a matter of the practicality of moving off and onto my own server, namely due to that I've had the Yahoo! account as a primary address since 1999.
Even so, they do a lot seem to be pushing people *away* from using their services.
Maybe men are better at negotiating salary.
They're just more aggressive.
Bullshit. You must be gay or live with your parents if you think women aren't more aggressive than men.
There are actually quite a few studies out there that show that women are not as aggressive as men when it comes to salary negotiation; in part because the core mindset is one of expecting reward than having to fight for it.
It's not that women *can't* be more aggressive - they can - it's just they have different expectations around how things work so they are not as aggressive as the should. Some men suffer from the same issues, just not as big a percentage.
Take the Rust programming language, for example. Despite its community having an intense focus on diversity and tolerance, and despite the project having one of the most stringent code of conducts around [rust-lang.org], and despite the project even having a Moderation Team to stamp out perceived injustice [rust-lang.org], why do we see so little diversity among Rust's contributors [github.com]?
Probably because all those things actively push towards uniformity - people being of a like mind and wanting the same thing - and pushing the people away that would actually bring a challenge to the status quo.
While the idea of a Code of Conduct is nice, it also means pushing away anyone that doesn't want to deal with it - thus effectively limiting the people from joining when they first learn of the project instead of later. Reduces issues, but also reduces the talent pool. The other items (moderation, etc) just reinforce the Code of Conduct, and thereby rewarding uniformity and people being of like-mind, and punishing those who disagree.
Now that doesn't mean there won't be diversity inside the group, just that its going to be of limited form.
Completely wrong.
First off, automatics DO engine brake downhill. My Mazda does. It sounds like you haven't driven an automatic in over a decade.
I drive a manual (2005) and an automatic (2010) on a regular basis. An automatic does not engine brake the same way a manual does; nor does it have any kind of situational awareness. It does not engine brake b/c it *knows* it is going down hill (like you do with a manual); it does it because you're not adding gas and the hill isn't enough to overcome the drag on the gear. It doesn't *know* that traffic is slowing so gearing down before the brake gets hit is good.
But your biggest flaw is assuming that automatics and manuals have identical mechanics, and identical gear ratios.
That actually doesn't matter for my point. You can have as many gears as you like in either and you'll still do better with the situational awareness that the driver brings to selecting the gear to use. This is why I said that an AI coupled with an AT can do better, but we're still 5-10 years from those really doing it well; current driver AI's are generally experimental but getting better - and there's only a couple that are good enough to manage the road.
I've never heard of an 8-speed manual in a car, but 8-speed automatics are getting to be common.
Obviously you're not aware of many sports cars which even the manuals can have 8 or 9 gears. My Mazda3 only has 5; the 2006 has 6 (the 5 really could have used the 6th gear to help keep the optimal RPM at highway speed), and newer models may even have 7 - and that's the *low* end of the market. Pick up a something higher up and you'll easily find 8 or 9 gears in a manual.
But that's beside the point because while gear count does have some impact, the primary impact is still the intelligence and situational awareness the driver brings - even an AI driver - which is why a manual will always win over an automatic.
Your points are valid, but possibly outdated. Manuals *mostly* had 4-5 forward gears. Autos had 3. Today autos have upwards of 8 gears. That alone will give autos an advantage. CVTs as you said get the 'perfect' gear all the time (with massive sacrifice of performance and feel).
Issue is not how many gears or how fast the change can be made, the issue is the additional information available and ability to use that intelligence that makes the difference.
I've driven both. I presently drive a 2005 Mazda3 with a 5-speed, and we have a 2010 Grand Caravan with an automatic and gear selector (select maximum gear). I can consistently get better gas mileage on the Grand Caravan by limiting the maximum gear versus just letting it do its thing. This kind of matches what the EPA says about mileage too - manuals tend to get 1-2 MPG better than automatics.
but from what I've seen from shopping for small cars, manual transmissions are still a bit more fuel efficient on average.
You're misinterpreting the data; you're seeing manual transmissions on smaller, more fuel-efficient cars [that typically ship with manual transmissions]... but they're not more fuel efficient because they're manual...
Fuel efficiency of a manual transmission primarily depends on the driver's ability to use the manual transmission. The reason why a manual transmission will always be more efficient than an automatic transmission (until we have a fully autonomous vehicle that can do the same thing) is that a driver brings a situational awareness to the use of gearing that an automatic transmission has no ability to account for.
For instance, automatic transmissions do not gear down (engine brake) when going down a hill; nor do they chose gearing based on what is about to happen - they're always reactive, not proactive. An autonomous vehicle that takes the same data into account could probably achieve the same efficiency.
As to CBTs and the likes....they have some major faults (such as not being able to do engine braking going down a steep incline) that also keeps them from really being more efficient even if they can be more efficient in some scenarios.
...and there's no way to plan multi-year projects when dealing with voluntary contributions.
Non-profits (and I've worked for a few, and know a lot of people that do as well, including raising funds) do it all the time, so no that's not an issue.
One of the big issues is that so much related to Prior Art is hidden from the USPTO or even the Software Community at large as people would work for company A, learn something while there, and then move to company B; company A would go under and company B (or C,....) would file a patent not realizing that the work really belonged to Company A. Company A would get the patent, but the 50 other people that knew of the "invention" from Company A and had been using it for years (again not necessarily realizing the link as they may have indirectly learned it) now find themselves open to litigation from the company holding the patent, and good luck showing Prior Art since everything from Company A when into a black hole when it went under.
There's another dozen scenarios similar to the above too - in all cases the knowledge is locked away or unable to be proven according to the rules of Prior Art unless some random person just happens to have the right kind of documentation because they kept it (accidentally) when leaving the company.
^that. I don't know why these stories never read as "millionaires have used existing mechanisms to voluntarily pay more in taxes". Somehow it never quite reads like that.
Because it wouldn't play well for the liberal media and the DNC political machinery.
Copyright reassignment is necessary to enforce the provisions of the GPL. If the holder of the copyright is not aware that his code has been stolen, or if he has died or can't afford to pay a lawyer, then the GPL is worthless because it can't be enforced. If the copyright is reassigned to the FSF, for example, they will pay the lawyer to sue on behalf of the GPL. The GPL is silent of reassignment. If a project leader is requiring it, the contributor is free to take all the existing project code and fork the whole thing. That's how the GPL prevents any one person from having leverage over the code.
It's not required to enforce the GPL; any of the copyright holders can force it. It's really only helpful in changing the license. FSF/GNU requires it because they want to always keep the license at the latest revision of the GPL/LGPL/FDL.
Note: The difficulty in tracking down contributors or their estate (and then explaining to the estate why the estate should allow it for those that have died) or otherwise re-writing code is one of the reasons that the Linux Kernel will remain GPLv2; the other reason is that Linus doesn't see a need to change the license.
That's BS. My contracts with Fortune 500s and the government do not forbid me from working more than forty hours, in fact they practically encourage me to seek out new opportunities and strike when I can.
The contract may not explicitly forbid it, but it's essentially forbidden as the project manager won't approve the OT.
...that's what they tell themselves, and then they go and do what they want...