Honestly, this question seems to be coming up a lot lately. As with any tech, it either meets your needs or it doesn't, and if it doesn't then its not worth it at any price.
You've got the argument backwards, the OP said he was told never to use a business asset for personal use, if it's a business asset then of course it can be seized for actions against the corporation. I would agree to not use personal assets for business purposes unless you're willing to lose them
You just restated what I said. The parent was arguing that computers could be mixed use, where I stated that they shouldn't.
(though I wonder how that works if you declare a portion of your personal residence as an office, they obviously can't seize your entire house to cover the corporate debt, perhaps it's just like the situation with a landlord, you're essentially leasing the space to the corporation so it's not an asset).
IANAL, but they would be able to take the whole house and sell it to cover the debt. At best, you may get a proportional amount back - that is, if 25% of the house is used for the company they might take 25% of the sale price (after fees are taken out) and return the other 75%, but more likely than not, they'll just take up to the amount owed.
The democrats are cowards who are unwilling to put out a budget that reflects what they want
Infers they want to hide something.
(e.g. ObamaCare)
This has nothing to do with the massive health insurance company bailout that your conservative friends wrote and passed off to the vote without ample time for revision. The budget for it has been written and reviewed and does not require additional funds. Just because fox news tells you otherwise doesn't make it so.
Notice the timeline of when the Democrats stopped the budgetary process. It has nothing to do with what commentators say, only the actions of the President and the Democrats - in both houses.
so they're really not interested in passing a budget.
Funny, earlier you said that you are
I never said the Democrats were interested in actually passing a budget. They should be - they're required to by law; but they're not.
not saying that the Republicans are without blame
Yet here you just went and placed all the blame on the democrats. Or are you doing some fancy math where 110% of the blame goes to the democrats and then some other imaginary (or negative, but still counted) fraction goes to the republicans?
The Republicans have their share of the blame; but would place the majority of the blame on the Democrats, especially President Obama for not trying to work with the two houses to bring a budget together and for extreme partisan politics. Reagan, both Bushes, and Clinton all did a good deal of working with both parties, negotiating, etc. Yet here we are with a President and Senate majority leader who want nothing but partisan politics.
That is an incorrect assumption. Being a shareholder does indemnify you from most lawsuits, but the board of directors can be personally liable as well as the corporate officers. If you are a small business as an s-corp, you will still be personally on the hook for most things. The only real protection that incorporation offers is liability from your investors. Investors have little to no recourse if you lose all their money. You are not shielded from other forms of liability, such as personal injury or negligence. You can still be sued directly along with the corporation you own, since you would be the presiding officer and CEO. Protection from creditors is mixed. While you may be protected from personal action if you stiff a supplier, the bank may require you to be personally responsible for any loan to your company as a condition of credit.
You should confer with an attorney before incorporating any business. The few hundred dollars in consultation fee is worth doing it right.
IANAL, but so far as I am aware I am only liable up to what I have invested in my LLC. States may differ, consult a lawyer.
NO! This is terrible advice. The attorney will cost you thousands of $ and steer you toward the most expensive option. This just isn't that complicated.
The choice is simple: If you expect to ever seek VC funding or have an IPO then form a Delaware C Corp. Otherwise form an S Corp in the state where you reside and/or do the majority of your business. There are plenty of websites where you can do this online for a few hundred bucks. I use www.businessfilings.com for all my domestic corporations, but there are probably other sites just as good.
This is standard practice stuff for a lawyer, and any good law firm will be able to quote a flat price for setting up the business. I paid $500 for the lawyer, $110 for state filing fees, and $90 for the corporate book - for $700 total and following the practices required of an LLC I got an LLC in South Carolina. Different kinds of companies will require different filings, etc; so YMMV, but doing so through a good lawyer is the best thing you can do. And it will be well worth it in the long run, especially if you are doing it in anticipation of protecting yourself from lawsuits, etc. (e.g. Lodsys style).
The computer one seems funny to me, as an example with corporate cars there's a standard personal use line for payroll taxes (including for an S-corp), I'd assume you'd just have to declare that a certain percentage of the PC use was personal and pay payroll taxes on that fraction of the depreciation schedule.
Only if you want to have that personal computer taken for e-Discovery, sold off as an asset to cover debt, etc.
Having separate assets - including computers - is very very good, and really helps limit what others can get from you, where they can look during a legal situation, etc. IANAL, but I am an LLC owner.
As AC above points out, you have to be careful with your LLC. In additional to no commingling assets, you have to be aware of the possibility that single-owner LLCs can be treated as Sole Proprietorships for purposes of litigation. If you are being sued and the judge decides that your LLC is in fact an SP, you have no liability protection at all.
Having at least one other contributing partner -- preferably not a spouse -- should keep that from biting you.
IANAL, but it's a matter of whether or not you try to make the LLC behave like an LLC - that is, meeting minutes, separate of assets, etc.
I have to hold meetings with minutes, a separate bank account, separate computers, etc. It still runs out of my house (not enough money to do otherwise yet), but there is a very clear line between the business and everything else - much to the chagrin of my wife.
I believe you're confusing LLC's with LLP's. LLC's are general purpose vehicles for just this sort of scenarios. LLP's are designed for the unique constraints of Architechture, Law, Medical and similar **licensed** professions; and as such, limit who can form. Straight "partnerships" on the other hand (meaning not LLP) can be formed without any paperwork at all, by simple agreeing to try to sell/make stuff with another person.
An LLP can be used anywhere where a group of people form a partnership for a business. IANAL, but it's Limited Liability Partnership, not Limited Liability Profession.
An LLP means you're still considered a partnership with some protection from each other, and the partners therefore have legal liability and their assets are at risk for the company.
An LLC means it's considered a corporate entity and the owners have a limited liability as far as their role is concerned with the governance of the corporate entity; but none of their assets are at stake.
I formed an LLC simply so that my house and cars would not be at stake if someone sued me, namely with the patent situation in software. So my wife and kid will still have money, transportation, and a house.
IANAL, however, here in Oregon, at least, LLC stands for "Limited Liability Company", not "Corporation" (a common misconception, BTW). This is in some small way different from an LLP (Limited Liability Partnership). I have interests in both types of organization, but honestly let the lawyers determine what the best form of organization to create is/was. Also, corporations have two different forms, a "C-corp", which is evidently designed for large, publicly traded companies, and an "S-corp", which is a way for individuals or small companies to incorporate without all the rules (board meetings, recorded minutes, etc.) of the C-corp. My understanding is that, in the case of S-corps, income is treated as a straight pass-through to the shareholders' personal income, and the corporation itself pays no taxes directly. This is similar to an LLC and LLP. Having said all this, I'd better declare that IANATA (Tax Accountant), either.
As an owner of an LLC, even if I had moved to an S-Corp I would have still had to do the board meetings, recorded minutes, etc. In fact, those things help you when it comes to a lawsuit. Not doing those things can make it easier for the other litigant to pierce the corporate veil. The difference is in the distributions, tax forms, and owner relationships.
Dont get me wrong though, I can see myself going to Unity in a few years, but that is a LOOOONG time as far as Linux is concerned. There are just too many issues with it right now.
Don't worry, by the time Unity's stability begins to materialize, they'll have lost interest and moved on to something else. Such is the way of the Linux desktop.
(I'm not saying it's Linux's fault, but it is undeniably a problem with Linux. If some guy drives into you while you're stopped at a red light, the result is still that you have a broken car.)
The only problem with your assertion is that Unity, GNOME, KDE, Xfce, CompuWiz, and others run on more than simply Linux - they also run on the BSDs and UNIX platforms. For a while GNOME was the standard desktop of Solaris; don't know if it still is or not.
So this ultimately has nothing to do with Linux itself, even as the article noted wrt KDE the issue is GNOME and Unity.
What is the point of preventing people from blowing up a group of people on a plane than a group of people standing in line to get on the plane?
Blow up a plane - stop a single plane and kill the hundred-odd passengers.
Blow up a TSA checkpoint - Kill same amount of people, stop entire airport for months, much more damage done.
Then what? Screeners to get into the line to get screened? Pre-flight, at-home interviews by TSA before you even buy your plane ticket? Restricting travel to people with special "travel-approved" ID cards? Where does it end?
When I flew home from Ankara, Turkey, I had to go through a number of check points. One just to get into the airport; after getting my ticket, another to get into the concourse; another to get into the gate area; and another to get onto the plane itself. All ran fairly efficiently, but it was still a PITA.
There was recent poll (on CNN I believe), that claimed people in general were satisfied with the TSA (note that some of them dont fly at all, and have never experienced the TSA, but decided to vote)
Didn't that poll get re-examined and found that the majority of people who were satisfied with TSA did not fly? That also means they likely had nearly zero interaction with TSA. And didn't that same re-examination find that frequent flyers were extremely dissatified with TSA?
But as humanrev mentioned, w/ Linux, it's either an all-or-nothing - it either works beautifully, or it simply doesn't work @ all. The worst problem in the past has been NIC and Wi-Fi, and if that doesn't work, one can't even go on forum hunts. Note that it's not just the PC - there is a question of which other hardware supports it OOTB. Printers, All-in-ones, webcams, and so on. With Windows, whenever you buy any hardware, you can be sure that it works w/ it (they are very specific about whether they work w/ XP, Vista, Windows 7 and so on). With Linux, one has to start w/ an assumption that it doesn't, unless the Linux AVL shows otherwise.
If you are an OEM/system-builder then this is pretty much a non-issue since your'e doing the work to put together the system. Now, customers may complain about additional stuff they buy after the fact, but that's not very different for Windows/Mac either. If OEMs pushed the hardware manufacturers to support Linux they would; many do in some form, but not all - it depends on which market they are going after. Anyone going for the server market supports Linux nearly 100% now with few exceptions. I wouldn't expect the Desktop market to be much farther behind as there are only a few additional market segments (e.g. video, webcam, printer, etc.) that only apply to the consumer market.
To go through the list you linked:
Hardware 1 - Agreed. Video is certainly an issue, and nVidia and AMD/ATI both have a long ways to go. They're doing better, but it's still a problem. nVidia directly supports what they consider their current and supported cards but only through a binary blob, but it's the same support for Windows (same binary blob actually). AMD/ATI is a little more burdensom. There is pretty much already a complete OpenGL stack on Linux with several open source packages supporting it, and even emulating it in software; his claim there is a misnomer. And don't expect Microsoft to ever really support something that would allow seamless integration with a competitor product (e.g. H.264 AVC vs. MS VC). Video tearing is primarily related to the drivers and video card support; nVidia has fewer issues as it is better supported; same with Intel cards; but AMD/ATI cards seem to have a larger issue.
Hardware 2 - Nearly all sound cards are supported via ALSA. The issue is mainly in the wrappers around ALSA (e.g. PulseAudio, GStreamer) as they can be a bit buggy at times. (PulseAudio has some really big architectural issues.) BTW, I have a Creative SB AWE64 Gold, and a Creative SB Audigy; I have had problems with neither; only issue is getting Skype to find the microphone but that's a Skype issue.
Hardware 3 - Most all printers supported by Mac are supported by Linux as they both use the CUPS Printing System and associated drivers. Scanners and all-in-ones are a bit of an issue, yes. WebCams are very well supported by the Linux Kernel now for most recent webcams as they did something similar to the WiFi support (which is excellent how with the exception of a couple chipset manufacturers, e.g. Broadcom, and they are coming around). TV Tuners are generally well supported.
Hardware 4 - Most 'special buttons' on laptops are supported if you install the correct packages - e.g. the Dell/Lenovo/HP/etc packages.
Hardware 5 - Regressions come and go, and Windows has the same problem. Worse, you'll more likely get supported restored in Linux where Windows if they don't want to upgrade the drivers from WinNT4 to Win2k to XP to Vista to Win7 to Win8 to whatever is next then you're just screwed. So I'd say this is a misnomer.
Hardware 6 - APM/ACPI support is something that Linux itself does very well at. The problem is that many motherboard manufacturers only fill out the required structures in their BIOS to support Windows. If you're a system-builder or OEM, you can generally do something about it - by selecting the right motherboard/BIOS, or having it made yourself. So blame HP/Dell/etc on this, not Linux.
Software 1 - X was des
So, FYI, it's not the Republicans who are standing in the way of a Federal Budget over the last few years.
The democrats are cowards who are unwilling to put out a budget that reflects what they want, and have a discussion on it.
Agreed.
The republicans are thoroughly entrenched in their ideology and unwilling to negotiate on anything, which makes it pointless for the democrats to propose a budget or try to negotiate a republican-proposed budget.
The Republicans are more sticking to their grounds based on the 2010 election cycle in which their electorate wanted them to do so.
So if you are trying to claim that the republicans are somehow without blame in the situation, you are dead fucking wrong. If you want to say instead that they do not own 100% of the blame, there is some truth to that argument.
No, I'm not saying that the Republicans are without blame - only pointing out that they have actually done more in terms of budgets then the Democrats.
Typically the House and Senate would each pass a budget, and then if they don't agree do a reconciliation. However, the Senate hasn't passed anything for the reconciliation step to even kick in. But as you said, the Democrats want to hide the costs of what they wanted done in legislation (e.g. ObamaCare), so they're really not interested in passing a budget.
Yea, that's the way our highschool was, but we still had students who couldn't afford them -- they were going to college on scholarships and financial aid. One of my best friends in highschool was among them -- single parent who I believe was living entirely off disability with three kids.
As for using them in college -- I graduated from Penn State a couple months ago, and I don't recall having a single math class that would have even _permitted_ a graphing calculator, let alone require one. I certainly never purchased one -- and never felt I needed to. And I took a couple of extra 400-level math courses that weren't required for my major. Hell, I don't think we were even permitted something as simple as a TI-34 in the exams. The classes were designed to teach you math, and evaluate how well you were able to do that math -- not teach and evaluate how well you could use a calculator.
Calculus I & II typically requires a graphing calculator. That said, there are times when they may forbid their use as they want to make sure you can actually do the work; and they may provide calculators for tests too. Physics is another. Now, not every major requires those classes. As a CS student, I had to have Calculus I & II, and we were required to have one.
That said, policy changes from school to school, and some schools may try to teach without them while others will try to make sure you can do the work without them but allow them for convenience, and others may rely solely on them.
I have to take medicine daily, one stated contraindication of which is "death". The condition for which I take it is non-fatal. I still take the medication (because death is a very rare contraindication, and there are usually enough warning signs to stop taking the medication and get medical attention in time). Does a six-monthly chat with my doctor count as "heavily monitored conditions"?
I'd say its proportional to the risk of the side-effect. In your case, probably yes. Comparatively there are some medications that have a high risk of seizure, heart attack, etc; they're only used in a hospital setting or under supervision of some sort.
... when you have children to feed and a mortgage to pay...... and the users expect all their software to be free?
Better off spending one's time addressing a market where people expect to have to pay for stuff, no?
I bought the Linux Edition of Corel WordPerfect 8 a while back. No, I don't expect everything to be free. But companies also have to make the effort to support Linux. Soon it will be required if they want to keep certain market segments as Microsoft is destroying itself.
That all depends on the hardware you buy.
For instance, put a SATA drive in the system and try to install any version of Windows XP - it won't as the disk doesn't contain the drivers and you have to use a floppy drive to load the drivers (or modify the install disk to include them). Dell/HP/etc modify the disk and set it up for you; but if you bought it with an IDE drive (a long time ago) and upgraded to a SATA, then you're screwed. Vista/Win7 are better as they do include the SATA drivers. (And yes, SATA was available when WinXP SP3 was released, so the age issue is not an excuse.)
If, however, you screen your hardware - which if you are selecting hardware to put in a machine you should be doing to start with - then you can verify that the chips are supported by Linux to start with, and what state that support is - whether fully supported directly by the kernel folks (the vast majority), requiring a binary blob (e.g. nVidia, win-modems, many RAID controllers), or completely unsupported, and whether community or manufacturer supported. If you pay attention, then you'll get better quality hardware with support, and won't have an issue as you upgrade the system.
If you're buying a pre-built computer, then you can pay attention and do a little research or order it with Linux to start with. (Yes, that's possible. my last laptop purchase was an HP with Linux pre-installed.)
Not that they haven't tried. But the Republicans have screamed "No!", whined, kicked, and filibustered wherever they could. Even to things that they would have come up with themselves a few years earlier, but now that the Democrats are proposing them, they are boo-hoo-Socialist!!1
The Democratic controlled Senate has not passed a budget since the spring right after the 2008 elections. They have not even tried to pass a realistic budget or even to make a bi-partisan effort to negotiate one, despite the Democrats having the Senate and the White House. The Republican minority in the Senate has tried to bring forward budgets compatible with those that passed in the House to a vote, only to have the Democratic Majority refuse to even bring them to a vote.
Obama has been nearly 100% absent from trying to negotiate a bi-partisan budget for his full first term. He's also specifically states he would veto all the budgets the House has passed, but never put one forward since ObamaCare was passed.
Comparatively, the Republican controlled House has actually passed numerous budgets each year.
So, FYI, it's not the Republicans who are standing in the way of a Federal Budget over the last few years.
The fact that schools require their students to purchase these things never ceases to amaze me. Seriously? A highschool requiring $100+ purchases by students for a single class? A university sure, but a highschool should be providing the students with any materials that are required.
The only high school classes that typically require those calculators are ones where they assume you are on a college track (e.g. Pre-Calculus, Calculus, Physics) - e.g. there is 99% chance you're going to do post high school studies requiring those same calculators. They also usually have them around for exam time - some times requiring you use the ones they hand out so as not to have anything extra programmed in.
Algebra II (matrix mathematics), Trigonometry, and Geometry may recommend you have them, but shouldn't require them. However, those courses are typically requirements for Physics, Pre-Calc, and Calc - again, you're on a college track.
A modern high-school math calculator that is solar-powered and can run rings around the previous generations costs around $15 in any fall back-to-school sale, and even less when they're clearing out their school supplies for the Halloween stuff. Both my high-school kids have several old ones (borrowed from teachers when their was forgotten, or lost and then refound after purchasing a replacement) knocking around in their drawers. I've offered them to their friends and friend's parents, but every one just offers me back their old stuff.
If you only need a basic calculator then yes that is true.
If you need one that can perform programmed functions like Mathematica, MatLab, etc. (typical for most engineering, computer, and mathematical theory students) then a TI-83 or similar is priceless.
If you need one that can do Reverse Polish Notation (typical of accounting students), then a TI-85 or similar is priceless.
If you need to have one that can help build integrals or derivaties quickly, then a TI-92 or similar is priceless.
There's a reason that most Pre-calculus and Calculus (and sometimes Geometry/Trigonometry) classes require a TI-83/TI-85 or similar calculators; and often the books have instructions on how to use them for the various tasks.
Sometimes medicine has undesirable side-effects. We don't stop using medicine because of that. We don't even stop using the medicine with the undesirable side-effects because of that. We might look for better medicines -- if the payoff looks to be worthwhile.
Depends on the side effect.
For example, cyanide can be quite an effective medicine for a number of diseases; but I doubt anyone would take it given the guaranteed side-effect - death, which of course is the ultimate cure for numerous diseases - but one that no one would like.
So if the side-effect is simply a little extra heart burn, or something rather minor then yes people will continue with it. But it if something really severe (e.g. heart attack, death, etc.) then very few will continue to take it, or do so under heavily monitored conditions.
If you saw people eating all food resources available to them at a rate that was unsustainable, even though the food was healthy and free, would you not warn them that their short term gains is going to cause long term problems?
A stupid example, to be sure, but it gets the point across. If you prefer, I'm sure I can come up with a car analogy rather easily (gas anyone) to make it more appropriate to Slashdot.
Sure, while I quitely stock pile away for the famine that would be coming.
Slashdot Mirror
...then the answer is no.
Honestly, this question seems to be coming up a lot lately. As with any tech, it either meets your needs or it doesn't, and if it doesn't then its not worth it at any price.
You've got the argument backwards, the OP said he was told never to use a business asset for personal use, if it's a business asset then of course it can be seized for actions against the corporation. I would agree to not use personal assets for business purposes unless you're willing to lose them
You just restated what I said. The parent was arguing that computers could be mixed use, where I stated that they shouldn't.
(though I wonder how that works if you declare a portion of your personal residence as an office, they obviously can't seize your entire house to cover the corporate debt, perhaps it's just like the situation with a landlord, you're essentially leasing the space to the corporation so it's not an asset).
IANAL, but they would be able to take the whole house and sell it to cover the debt. At best, you may get a proportional amount back - that is, if 25% of the house is used for the company they might take 25% of the sale price (after fees are taken out) and return the other 75%, but more likely than not, they'll just take up to the amount owed.
But as you said, the Democrats want to hide the costs of what they wanted done
No, I did not say that. I never suggested they want to hide anything. Nor is there any proof of such a thing.
To quote your earlier post:
The democrats are cowards who are unwilling to put out a budget that reflects what they want
Infers they want to hide something.
(e.g. ObamaCare)
This has nothing to do with the massive health insurance company bailout that your conservative friends wrote and passed off to the vote without ample time for revision. The budget for it has been written and reviewed and does not require additional funds. Just because fox news tells you otherwise doesn't make it so.
Notice the timeline of when the Democrats stopped the budgetary process. It has nothing to do with what commentators say, only the actions of the President and the Democrats - in both houses.
so they're really not interested in passing a budget.
Funny, earlier you said that you are
I never said the Democrats were interested in actually passing a budget. They should be - they're required to by law; but they're not.
not saying that the Republicans are without blame
Yet here you just went and placed all the blame on the democrats. Or are you doing some fancy math where 110% of the blame goes to the democrats and then some other imaginary (or negative, but still counted) fraction goes to the republicans?
The Republicans have their share of the blame; but would place the majority of the blame on the Democrats, especially President Obama for not trying to work with the two houses to bring a budget together and for extreme partisan politics. Reagan, both Bushes, and Clinton all did a good deal of working with both parties, negotiating, etc. Yet here we are with a President and Senate majority leader who want nothing but partisan politics.
That is an incorrect assumption. Being a shareholder does indemnify you from most lawsuits, but the board of directors can be personally liable as well as the corporate officers. If you are a small business as an s-corp, you will still be personally on the hook for most things. The only real protection that incorporation offers is liability from your investors. Investors have little to no recourse if you lose all their money. You are not shielded from other forms of liability, such as personal injury or negligence. You can still be sued directly along with the corporation you own, since you would be the presiding officer and CEO. Protection from creditors is mixed. While you may be protected from personal action if you stiff a supplier, the bank may require you to be personally responsible for any loan to your company as a condition of credit.
You should confer with an attorney before incorporating any business. The few hundred dollars in consultation fee is worth doing it right.
IANAL, but so far as I am aware I am only liable up to what I have invested in my LLC. States may differ, consult a lawyer.
Hire a competent attorney.
NO! This is terrible advice. The attorney will cost you thousands of $ and steer you toward the most expensive option. This just isn't that complicated.
The choice is simple: If you expect to ever seek VC funding or have an IPO then form a Delaware C Corp. Otherwise form an S Corp in the state where you reside and/or do the majority of your business. There are plenty of websites where you can do this online for a few hundred bucks. I use www.businessfilings.com for all my domestic corporations, but there are probably other sites just as good.
This is standard practice stuff for a lawyer, and any good law firm will be able to quote a flat price for setting up the business. I paid $500 for the lawyer, $110 for state filing fees, and $90 for the corporate book - for $700 total and following the practices required of an LLC I got an LLC in South Carolina. Different kinds of companies will require different filings, etc; so YMMV, but doing so through a good lawyer is the best thing you can do. And it will be well worth it in the long run, especially if you are doing it in anticipation of protecting yourself from lawsuits, etc. (e.g. Lodsys style).
The computer one seems funny to me, as an example with corporate cars there's a standard personal use line for payroll taxes (including for an S-corp), I'd assume you'd just have to declare that a certain percentage of the PC use was personal and pay payroll taxes on that fraction of the depreciation schedule.
Only if you want to have that personal computer taken for e-Discovery, sold off as an asset to cover debt, etc.
Having separate assets - including computers - is very very good, and really helps limit what others can get from you, where they can look during a legal situation, etc. IANAL, but I am an LLC owner.
As AC above points out, you have to be careful with your LLC. In additional to no commingling assets, you have to be aware of the possibility that single-owner LLCs can be treated as Sole Proprietorships for purposes of litigation. If you are being sued and the judge decides that your LLC is in fact an SP, you have no liability protection at all. Having at least one other contributing partner -- preferably not a spouse -- should keep that from biting you.
IANAL, but it's a matter of whether or not you try to make the LLC behave like an LLC - that is, meeting minutes, separate of assets, etc.
I have to hold meetings with minutes, a separate bank account, separate computers, etc. It still runs out of my house (not enough money to do otherwise yet), but there is a very clear line between the business and everything else - much to the chagrin of my wife.
I believe you're confusing LLC's with LLP's. LLC's are general purpose vehicles for just this sort of scenarios. LLP's are designed for the unique constraints of Architechture, Law, Medical and similar **licensed** professions; and as such, limit who can form. Straight "partnerships" on the other hand (meaning not LLP) can be formed without any paperwork at all, by simple agreeing to try to sell/make stuff with another person.
An LLP can be used anywhere where a group of people form a partnership for a business. IANAL, but it's Limited Liability Partnership, not Limited Liability Profession.
An LLP means you're still considered a partnership with some protection from each other, and the partners therefore have legal liability and their assets are at risk for the company.
An LLC means it's considered a corporate entity and the owners have a limited liability as far as their role is concerned with the governance of the corporate entity; but none of their assets are at stake.
I formed an LLC simply so that my house and cars would not be at stake if someone sued me, namely with the patent situation in software. So my wife and kid will still have money, transportation, and a house.
IANAL, however, here in Oregon, at least, LLC stands for "Limited Liability Company", not "Corporation" (a common misconception, BTW). This is in some small way different from an LLP (Limited Liability Partnership). I have interests in both types of organization, but honestly let the lawyers determine what the best form of organization to create is/was. Also, corporations have two different forms, a "C-corp", which is evidently designed for large, publicly traded companies, and an "S-corp", which is a way for individuals or small companies to incorporate without all the rules (board meetings, recorded minutes, etc.) of the C-corp. My understanding is that, in the case of S-corps, income is treated as a straight pass-through to the shareholders' personal income, and the corporation itself pays no taxes directly. This is similar to an LLC and LLP. Having said all this, I'd better declare that IANATA (Tax Accountant), either.
As an owner of an LLC, even if I had moved to an S-Corp I would have still had to do the board meetings, recorded minutes, etc. In fact, those things help you when it comes to a lawsuit. Not doing those things can make it easier for the other litigant to pierce the corporate veil. The difference is in the distributions, tax forms, and owner relationships.
As always, consult your lawyer first, and IANAL.
Don't worry, by the time Unity's stability begins to materialize, they'll have lost interest and moved on to something else. Such is the way of the Linux desktop.
So about the same time that GNU delivers HURD?
... about problems with Linux on the desktop? Yeah. Here you go.
(I'm not saying it's Linux's fault, but it is undeniably a problem with Linux. If some guy drives into you while you're stopped at a red light, the result is still that you have a broken car.)
The only problem with your assertion is that Unity, GNOME, KDE, Xfce, CompuWiz, and others run on more than simply Linux - they also run on the BSDs and UNIX platforms. For a while GNOME was the standard desktop of Solaris; don't know if it still is or not.
So this ultimately has nothing to do with Linux itself, even as the article noted wrt KDE the issue is GNOME and Unity.
This.
What is the point of preventing people from blowing up a group of people on a plane than a group of people standing in line to get on the plane?
Blow up a plane - stop a single plane and kill the hundred-odd passengers.
Blow up a TSA checkpoint - Kill same amount of people, stop entire airport for months, much more damage done.
Then what? Screeners to get into the line to get screened? Pre-flight, at-home interviews by TSA before you even buy your plane ticket? Restricting travel to people with special "travel-approved" ID cards? Where does it end?
When I flew home from Ankara, Turkey, I had to go through a number of check points. One just to get into the airport; after getting my ticket, another to get into the concourse; another to get into the gate area; and another to get onto the plane itself. All ran fairly efficiently, but it was still a PITA.
There was recent poll (on CNN I believe), that claimed people in general were satisfied with the TSA (note that some of them dont fly at all, and have never experienced the TSA, but decided to vote)
Didn't that poll get re-examined and found that the majority of people who were satisfied with TSA did not fly? That also means they likely had nearly zero interaction with TSA. And didn't that same re-examination find that frequent flyers were extremely dissatified with TSA?
Just saying.
If you are an OEM/system-builder then this is pretty much a non-issue since your'e doing the work to put together the system. Now, customers may complain about additional stuff they buy after the fact, but that's not very different for Windows/Mac either. If OEMs pushed the hardware manufacturers to support Linux they would; many do in some form, but not all - it depends on which market they are going after. Anyone going for the server market supports Linux nearly 100% now with few exceptions. I wouldn't expect the Desktop market to be much farther behind as there are only a few additional market segments (e.g. video, webcam, printer, etc.) that only apply to the consumer market.
To go through the list you linked:
Hardware 1 - Agreed. Video is certainly an issue, and nVidia and AMD/ATI both have a long ways to go. They're doing better, but it's still a problem. nVidia directly supports what they consider their current and supported cards but only through a binary blob, but it's the same support for Windows (same binary blob actually). AMD/ATI is a little more burdensom. There is pretty much already a complete OpenGL stack on Linux with several open source packages supporting it, and even emulating it in software; his claim there is a misnomer. And don't expect Microsoft to ever really support something that would allow seamless integration with a competitor product (e.g. H.264 AVC vs. MS VC). Video tearing is primarily related to the drivers and video card support; nVidia has fewer issues as it is better supported; same with Intel cards; but AMD/ATI cards seem to have a larger issue.
Hardware 2 - Nearly all sound cards are supported via ALSA. The issue is mainly in the wrappers around ALSA (e.g. PulseAudio, GStreamer) as they can be a bit buggy at times. (PulseAudio has some really big architectural issues.) BTW, I have a Creative SB AWE64 Gold, and a Creative SB Audigy; I have had problems with neither; only issue is getting Skype to find the microphone but that's a Skype issue.
Hardware 3 - Most all printers supported by Mac are supported by Linux as they both use the CUPS Printing System and associated drivers. Scanners and all-in-ones are a bit of an issue, yes. WebCams are very well supported by the Linux Kernel now for most recent webcams as they did something similar to the WiFi support (which is excellent how with the exception of a couple chipset manufacturers, e.g. Broadcom, and they are coming around). TV Tuners are generally well supported.
Hardware 4 - Most 'special buttons' on laptops are supported if you install the correct packages - e.g. the Dell/Lenovo/HP/etc packages.
Hardware 5 - Regressions come and go, and Windows has the same problem. Worse, you'll more likely get supported restored in Linux where Windows if they don't want to upgrade the drivers from WinNT4 to Win2k to XP to Vista to Win7 to Win8 to whatever is next then you're just screwed. So I'd say this is a misnomer.
Hardware 6 - APM/ACPI support is something that Linux itself does very well at. The problem is that many motherboard manufacturers only fill out the required structures in their BIOS to support Windows. If you're a system-builder or OEM, you can generally do something about it - by selecting the right motherboard/BIOS, or having it made yourself. So blame HP/Dell/etc on this, not Linux.
Software 1 - X was des
So, FYI, it's not the Republicans who are standing in the way of a Federal Budget over the last few years.
The democrats are cowards who are unwilling to put out a budget that reflects what they want, and have a discussion on it.
Agreed.
The republicans are thoroughly entrenched in their ideology and unwilling to negotiate on anything, which makes it pointless for the democrats to propose a budget or try to negotiate a republican-proposed budget.
The Republicans are more sticking to their grounds based on the 2010 election cycle in which their electorate wanted them to do so.
So if you are trying to claim that the republicans are somehow without blame in the situation, you are dead fucking wrong. If you want to say instead that they do not own 100% of the blame, there is some truth to that argument.
No, I'm not saying that the Republicans are without blame - only pointing out that they have actually done more in terms of budgets then the Democrats.
Typically the House and Senate would each pass a budget, and then if they don't agree do a reconciliation. However, the Senate hasn't passed anything for the reconciliation step to even kick in. But as you said, the Democrats want to hide the costs of what they wanted done in legislation (e.g. ObamaCare), so they're really not interested in passing a budget.
Yea, that's the way our highschool was, but we still had students who couldn't afford them -- they were going to college on scholarships and financial aid. One of my best friends in highschool was among them -- single parent who I believe was living entirely off disability with three kids.
As for using them in college -- I graduated from Penn State a couple months ago, and I don't recall having a single math class that would have even _permitted_ a graphing calculator, let alone require one. I certainly never purchased one -- and never felt I needed to. And I took a couple of extra 400-level math courses that weren't required for my major. Hell, I don't think we were even permitted something as simple as a TI-34 in the exams. The classes were designed to teach you math, and evaluate how well you were able to do that math -- not teach and evaluate how well you could use a calculator.
Calculus I & II typically requires a graphing calculator. That said, there are times when they may forbid their use as they want to make sure you can actually do the work; and they may provide calculators for tests too. Physics is another. Now, not every major requires those classes. As a CS student, I had to have Calculus I & II, and we were required to have one.
That said, policy changes from school to school, and some schools may try to teach without them while others will try to make sure you can do the work without them but allow them for convenience, and others may rely solely on them.
I have to take medicine daily, one stated contraindication of which is "death". The condition for which I take it is non-fatal. I still take the medication (because death is a very rare contraindication, and there are usually enough warning signs to stop taking the medication and get medical attention in time). Does a six-monthly chat with my doctor count as "heavily monitored conditions"?
I'd say its proportional to the risk of the side-effect. In your case, probably yes. Comparatively there are some medications that have a high risk of seizure, heart attack, etc; they're only used in a hospital setting or under supervision of some sort.
... when you have children to feed and a mortgage to pay ... ... and the users expect all their software to be free?
Better off spending one's time addressing a market where people expect to have to pay for stuff, no?
I bought the Linux Edition of Corel WordPerfect 8 a while back. No, I don't expect everything to be free. But companies also have to make the effort to support Linux. Soon it will be required if they want to keep certain market segments as Microsoft is destroying itself.
That all depends on the hardware you buy. For instance, put a SATA drive in the system and try to install any version of Windows XP - it won't as the disk doesn't contain the drivers and you have to use a floppy drive to load the drivers (or modify the install disk to include them). Dell/HP/etc modify the disk and set it up for you; but if you bought it with an IDE drive (a long time ago) and upgraded to a SATA, then you're screwed. Vista/Win7 are better as they do include the SATA drivers. (And yes, SATA was available when WinXP SP3 was released, so the age issue is not an excuse.)
If, however, you screen your hardware - which if you are selecting hardware to put in a machine you should be doing to start with - then you can verify that the chips are supported by Linux to start with, and what state that support is - whether fully supported directly by the kernel folks (the vast majority), requiring a binary blob (e.g. nVidia, win-modems, many RAID controllers), or completely unsupported, and whether community or manufacturer supported. If you pay attention, then you'll get better quality hardware with support, and won't have an issue as you upgrade the system.
If you're buying a pre-built computer, then you can pay attention and do a little research or order it with Linux to start with. (Yes, that's possible. my last laptop purchase was an HP with Linux pre-installed.)
Isn't there a Linux distro for them?
Not that they haven't tried. But the Republicans have screamed "No!", whined, kicked, and filibustered wherever they could. Even to things that they would have come up with themselves a few years earlier, but now that the Democrats are proposing them, they are boo-hoo-Socialist!!1
The Democratic controlled Senate has not passed a budget since the spring right after the 2008 elections. They have not even tried to pass a realistic budget or even to make a bi-partisan effort to negotiate one, despite the Democrats having the Senate and the White House. The Republican minority in the Senate has tried to bring forward budgets compatible with those that passed in the House to a vote, only to have the Democratic Majority refuse to even bring them to a vote.
Obama has been nearly 100% absent from trying to negotiate a bi-partisan budget for his full first term. He's also specifically states he would veto all the budgets the House has passed, but never put one forward since ObamaCare was passed.
Comparatively, the Republican controlled House has actually passed numerous budgets each year.
So, FYI, it's not the Republicans who are standing in the way of a Federal Budget over the last few years.
The only high school classes that typically require those calculators are ones where they assume you are on a college track (e.g. Pre-Calculus, Calculus, Physics) - e.g. there is 99% chance you're going to do post high school studies requiring those same calculators. They also usually have them around for exam time - some times requiring you use the ones they hand out so as not to have anything extra programmed in.
Algebra II (matrix mathematics), Trigonometry, and Geometry may recommend you have them, but shouldn't require them. However, those courses are typically requirements for Physics, Pre-Calc, and Calc - again, you're on a college track.
A modern high-school math calculator that is solar-powered and can run rings around the previous generations costs around $15 in any fall back-to-school sale, and even less when they're clearing out their school supplies for the Halloween stuff. Both my high-school kids have several old ones (borrowed from teachers when their was forgotten, or lost and then refound after purchasing a replacement) knocking around in their drawers. I've offered them to their friends and friend's parents, but every one just offers me back their old stuff.
If you only need a basic calculator then yes that is true.
If you need one that can perform programmed functions like Mathematica, MatLab, etc. (typical for most engineering, computer, and mathematical theory students) then a TI-83 or similar is priceless.
If you need one that can do Reverse Polish Notation (typical of accounting students), then a TI-85 or similar is priceless.
If you need to have one that can help build integrals or derivaties quickly, then a TI-92 or similar is priceless.
There's a reason that most Pre-calculus and Calculus (and sometimes Geometry/Trigonometry) classes require a TI-83/TI-85 or similar calculators; and often the books have instructions on how to use them for the various tasks.
Sometimes medicine has undesirable side-effects. We don't stop using medicine because of that. We don't even stop using the medicine with the undesirable side-effects because of that. We might look for better medicines -- if the payoff looks to be worthwhile.
Depends on the side effect.
For example, cyanide can be quite an effective medicine for a number of diseases; but I doubt anyone would take it given the guaranteed side-effect - death, which of course is the ultimate cure for numerous diseases - but one that no one would like.
So if the side-effect is simply a little extra heart burn, or something rather minor then yes people will continue with it. But it if something really severe (e.g. heart attack, death, etc.) then very few will continue to take it, or do so under heavily monitored conditions.
If you saw people eating all food resources available to them at a rate that was unsustainable, even though the food was healthy and free, would you not warn them that their short term gains is going to cause long term problems?
A stupid example, to be sure, but it gets the point across. If you prefer, I'm sure I can come up with a car analogy rather easily (gas anyone) to make it more appropriate to Slashdot.
Sure, while I quitely stock pile away for the famine that would be coming.