I would take a few microwaves over a bullet anytime... trouble is that if I go to protest a corrupt or insane government it is very improbable (Western Europe) that I will be met with bullets (at most anti-riot gear, and haven't seen it in use in my life).
In the other hand, police would have less restraints to use this weapon even if it blinds 1 in 1000 people (they usually excuse police brutality on demostrators and even bystanders unless they get filmed on camera, and even then). Side effects will be ignored due to ease of use (see tasers, rubber bullets and smoke grenades), and blame will be put into the people hurt.
Yeah. Police forces always are, always have been, and always will be, a model of conduct. They only hit with the force needed to violent people, non-violent demostrator or even by-stander who happen to be near are safe and won't be hit without provocation. Police brutality is an oxymoron.
The agressions from police officers caught in camera are just optical illusions.
I think your argument is a weak one because you can easily justify just the opposite with it: with sales taxes there is less consumption so bussiness won't be able to sell so many items so they produce less so sales taxes disincintivize the creation of wealth and providing additional labor. QED, and I won't waste more time on it.
IMHO there are two issues: the amount of goods (because in the end money is just a way of getting a good) the government takes to satisfy its needs and provide its services (here there is another issue about which should be those services), and from who it gets them. As low income people usually spend most of his money (because they get less), sales tax is proportionally heavier on them than on people who can save. My stance is that richer people should be taxed more. Someone with your nick and sig should understand that I don't need to explain my ethics:-). Once I define my position, income and wealth taxes looks like better instruments than sales tax.
Another issue is that sales tax is usually politically "softer" (because its effect is noted through the year, and the consumer usually don't know how much they pay yearly) than direct taxes (as the income tax where you know exactly how much you pay). Also, as it involves less people it probably is easier to control. My stance is that
regressive usually means "I don't like it, but I think I should give a reason of why". From my second point, I could easily call sales tax regressive. Also, I have heard that idea from lots of critics of income and wealth taxes, but I somehow I have trouble envisioning, even in the most possible heavy taxes, people deciding to stay home and starve than to work even if it is going to be taxed 99.9% and they only will get enough for a slice of bread. Survival is a great instint. Of course, I am not saying that it should be a desirable situation, it is just a mental exersise to show that the "if you tax people they won't want to work" motto seems a little unrealistic.
Back to the previous point, if wealth tax is regressive, then why is deflation bad? Because inflation is really a kind of wealth tax (the goods you can get with your stored $$$ is less each year). The answer: deflation is bad because gives people an incentive to just keep they stored money and don't put it to produce more. With some wealth tax, there is even more incentive (of course if it goes out of hand, even the best "incentive" won't be enough and finally all taxed wealth will be used to pay taxes).
If I purchase something online, then the tax, if I am required to pay it, should go to that small city in Pennsylvania where their warehouse is located, not my local municipal.
Well, formally, the government of where you live has the power to decide that the transaction did occur when you received the goods so it is an event taxable there (*1). Practically it also has some meanings:
As it is easier for the internet seller than to the consumer to move, if you apply the "tax where the bussiness is" rule, soon some place will afford a cheap haven for those bussiness in order to attract them, it happens all the time and the result is always that the states tax less the bussiness (and more the people, to compensate) in order to get them to locate inside them (or stay in).
The internet seller won't be undercutting local bussiness that are expensive because they have to charge the tax. The same bussiness that are interesting to your governmente because they provide jobs and also the tax income.
In fact, for exports, you'll find that most countries don't tax items being exported while taxing incoming items, because they understand how the first point works.
Of course, most of the protests here just mean "hey, I should get stuff for free (or cheaper) because I'm used to" with a little rationalitation ("magic doorway"? really? why not the "bunch of tubes"?) behind it, but there are reasons why the consumers are the ones being taxed. Of course, no rational exposition will affect the beliefs of that crowd.
Another issue is if the state should be getting its income from sales tax; I would like more to drop the sales tax in favor of taxes on income and wealth. The taxes on sales would be only to cover externalities (v.g. if you buy carbon a tax based in how much will be needed to clean the mines and grow trees there when they close) or to disincentivate use (v.g. tobacco).
(*1) In reality that is the criterium used in contability, so it is less arbitrary than it could seem to be.
Mail order has never had to collect sales tax except for in-state customers.
First, volume of internet purchases has grown manyfold and is expected to get bigger, so the amount of money of taxes that goes through the loopholes is increasing, so now there is more incentive to control it. Also, there were mail sales well before IT was advanced enough to allow bussiness to fill taxes in all of the states easily; now it may be still cumbersome but is certainly doable. Mind that with the new law mail orders will be taxed too. So, more income to win and easier to implement and control, it is clear why it is being raised now.
Please RTFineA. Currently the solar plant projects are still a difuse idea in the future. Ecologist groups want to get sure that the marketing about that cable being a step forward for renewables is not just a trap in order to allow big bussiness to build in North Africa the "bad" (contaminant, unsafe) power plants that they couldn't put in Europe due to popular pressure. Seeing how the world goes, warning the EU that they are watching them is a very sensible move.
Oh yeah, now if my house goes to live in Germany then you could format its address properly! Duh!...
Write the address in the format in use in the country it is in. In the same language, also (v.g., if you live in "Dumb Street" I won't write that you live in "Calle de la Tontería". KISVS (the V stands for Very).
I really do not understand why it is an issue at all. From my experience, a name is just free text. Even if it has its own rules to be formed, it does not affect the IT. I live and work in Spain, where everyone usually has his/her surname and two family names (one from his/her father and one from his/her mother) and every damn system I see has two fields for family names. Why? While it is understandable to separate surname from the first family name (*), there is absolutely no need to put the two family names separately because they are always processed together. Anyway, that continues to be done, causing unnecessary trouble with people with only one family name (foreigners) or with more than two.
I see the same issue with address. Lots of times I have to put my address as a multi-field info: Type of way (Street, Avenue, Road, etc.), the name of the way, number of the building, entrance, floor, door). And this info will just be useful to print all together (I do not think many people is doing stats based in if you live in a street or an avenue, on the B door or C door, etc.). Anyway, this is one of the things programmers over-engineer without no real reason (if you really need that information for your system, then the first thing you need is to forbid that the street name is a free text, and populate a list with all possible values).
And for the rest of the issues, it is just a matter of knowing where your app is gonna be used. If your system needs to work only in USA, UTF-8 is fine. If I happen to go there I can stand if you put my name without accents; if I go to China I can stand that the bureaucrat puts the chinese character that sound like my name in their systems). Otherwise, if you want your systems to work in France or Spain, then you need to make sure they support accents and special characters like ç, ñ. Simple as that.
* Because some surnames can be typed in a variety of forms, while family names only have one right spelling. That makes sorting from family names more useful.
In fact the GP should read: If the government is stable and free of corruption enough that it is not owned by the internationals, it will be able to impose some sanity (safety, labor condicions, environment) in its operations. If the internationals own the government, then spending in any of the above will be considered just wasting money.
Corporations are part of the problem. The motto that everything that brings them money is ok has made them not only to bribe already corrupt politicians but also, when that was not possible or didn't bring the desired results, to promote coups and civil wars in order to put the corrupt in power. See Augusto Pinochet and Shah of Iran for a couple of the most outstanding examples.
Of course, many times they do not need to get to that point because the existing elite is already enough corrupt in its own so they behave reasonably.
One main advantage is that it is easier to replenish than minerals. You can grow a field of rice, collect it and then grow it again next year. If you get a mineral (v.g. carbon) from a mine, the next year your only chance to get more carbon is to dig further. Also it helps capturing CO2 from air instead of adding into it.
DISCLAIMER1: I know rice is a plant but not a tree.
DISCLAIMER2: I am not saying that this mortar has no disavantages (old buildings may have survived a long time, but they used walls several times thicker than we have now; perhaps using it with moderns bricks is not useful. Anyway, an interesting idea.
It is way better than the ones I have seen in real life where upper management screws everybody and everything to get their short term bonuses at whatever cost it takes. Of course I am talking about the big corporations where the capital is so distributed that it is difficult to get a significative minority 5% outside the boards that could oppose them.
Do you think they are going to launch torpedoes to the Zodiacs the pirates sail in? Or, to the maximum, small fishing or patrol boats that they could face from a warlord? If their trouble are African pirates, a few destroyers and supply ships would be way better, and improved by one or two escort carriers. Using submarines in surface roles has no
A submarine is a expensive piece whose only function is interdiction, let it be (principally) offensive (raiding enemy trade/supply routes) or defensive (chasing enemy raiders). And for the defensive role to be useful, you need a large force of submarines covering all the routes to fight an equally large and well protected force (if you are facing a small force you are better off with convoys protected by surface units). A fleet of submarines for China would work by avoiding enemy reinforcements coming into the zone of combat, or, in a strategical role, as ICBM launchers. But this is not something to be used against anything Africa can put into the sea.
For some reason, corporate intranet software is always the worst-designed garbage.
Because they can asume that they are working in a monoculture where they can be sure which versions of OS, browser and plugins will be already installed. This makes following standards less important in relation to other aspects (speed of development, features, etc.).
But the infrastructure doesn't work. Companies keep paying more IT staff to come-up with complex workarounds rather than fixing miniscule bugs
I think you are underestimating the costs of the fixes. It is not only the cost of the fix, but also the cost of reworking the systems that already relied or worked around those bugs (and the cost of detecting and working around possible new bugs).
I mean, we have a number of "bugs" in our systems (v.g. a HR DB in MS Access 97 where we have to work around limits to the number of modules); in these kind of systems doing changes is effectively more complicated that it should be, but as we change only little parts of systems that are already working it still is better than rewritting it from scratch. Also, the former costs are "operation" costs while the latter are "inversion" costs, and it is way easier to get operation funds than inversion funds (it has always been this way, and with the crisis it has been reinforced). To get inversion funds, we have to promise a considerable reduction of operation costs.
In the first part, the address space is not yet over so your ISP can get IPs that it needs in the usual conditions.
If it comes that IP space is finished, or that measures to avoid that happening makes getting more IPs antieconomical/unpractical for your ISP AND your ISP needs more address, it may be tempted to end this option or to translate the costs to you (of course it would normally warn you with enough time to adapt your network, it is not something that happens from a day to another after all).
If you lose your fixed IP (not available or too expensive) then there are two possibilites:
Your ISP gives you a variable IP. Maybe in your case (connection on all day) it would make no real difference for IPs availability, but for most users (on/off) it means that they can server 50 users with (maybe) 20 IPs.
Your ISP gives you a private IP that you cannot reach from outside your ISP network. Then you should get a deal from them so they redirect access to a fixed port (say 8080, or 18080) to your servers (10.0.0.1:80, for example). Only specific ports (but that is good since acts like an extra firewall). In this case you could set up a VPN into your network and get a redirection from the ISP public IP to it; and then after connecting you would be in your local network so you only need one NAT redirection, but it means trouble if you try to get in from a ciber where the VPN software is not enabled/you don't have rights to configure it.
Anyway, if it comes to that, I would expect they to chose the latter option because now most of the "casual" users must be using a variable IP already. Of course, it only matters if your ISP needs more IP (or it thinks that your IP is worth more in the market than what you are paying them).
But even then, you can only be sure of number 3, after some years have passed. For obvious reasons of there not being any test data for years of use, until years of use have passed. ^^
BEGIN PEDANTIC
In fact, if you assume a Poison distribution of failure (where two identical working chips are equally probably to fail, no matter that one of them is brand new and the other has had years of use), you could just put 10.000 to test, and, if after a year 100 of them did fail, rightfully claim that they have a MTBF of 100 years.
Of course this distribution does not fit other components (mainly those with mechanical parts -CDs, HDs-) because there is progressive wear so an older unit is more likely to fail than a new one, but maybe it works for pure chips (anyone has info on the contrary?)
In your analogy, do not forget that there is a law that states that the mail office can not distribute mail that does not have the sender name on it, and that the mail office did exactly that. You may agree or not with the law, but the more information I get it looks less of an arbitrariety than at the beginning. Hey, maybe the judge thinks that he should not fine Google, but even him has to apply it until it gets changed.
For one time I RTFA before posting, it has little or no details about the causes.
I mean, the devil lies in the details... There is a law in Brazil that allows only registered posts? Or that IPs are logged? If Google operated their service disregarding the requirements of the country, then they got themselves in trouble. Or it was that the judge just make that decision by himself?
For an example of what it could be, I just want to recall that the "italian judge" mentioned in the summary fined Google not because someone had put a video of several people harassing and beating a mentally handicaped person. The real reason is that Google did refuse to retire something like that when they were notified that it was there, and they only did retire it when they were threatened. Of course, then TFS just wrote that Google was fined "because someone had uploaded the video".
If we have to debate about facts, it would be nice if we are informed of them with a little more depth.
Slashdot Mirror
I would take a few microwaves over a bullet anytime... trouble is that if I go to protest a corrupt or insane government it is very improbable (Western Europe) that I will be met with bullets (at most anti-riot gear, and haven't seen it in use in my life).
In the other hand, police would have less restraints to use this weapon even if it blinds 1 in 1000 people (they usually excuse police brutality on demostrators and even bystanders unless they get filmed on camera, and even then). Side effects will be ignored due to ease of use (see tasers, rubber bullets and smoke grenades), and blame will be put into the people hurt.
So yeah, it is a legitimate concern.
Yeah. Police forces always are, always have been, and always will be, a model of conduct. They only hit with the force needed to violent people, non-violent demostrator or even by-stander who happen to be near are safe and won't be hit without provocation. Police brutality is an oxymoron.
The agressions from police officers caught in camera are just optical illusions.
Really, tell me... where do you live?
Okay, just a few points:
Well, formally, the government of where you live has the power to decide that the transaction did occur when you received the goods so it is an event taxable there (*1). Practically it also has some meanings:
Of course, most of the protests here just mean "hey, I should get stuff for free (or cheaper) because I'm used to" with a little rationalitation ("magic doorway"? really? why not the "bunch of tubes"?) behind it, but there are reasons why the consumers are the ones being taxed. Of course, no rational exposition will affect the beliefs of that crowd.
Another issue is if the state should be getting its income from sales tax; I would like more to drop the sales tax in favor of taxes on income and wealth. The taxes on sales would be only to cover externalities (v.g. if you buy carbon a tax based in how much will be needed to clean the mines and grow trees there when they close) or to disincentivate use (v.g. tobacco).
(*1) In reality that is the criterium used in contability, so it is less arbitrary than it could seem to be.
All of that is easy to explain.
First, volume of internet purchases has grown manyfold and is expected to get bigger, so the amount of money of taxes that goes through the loopholes is increasing, so now there is more incentive to control it. Also, there were mail sales well before IT was advanced enough to allow bussiness to fill taxes in all of the states easily; now it may be still cumbersome but is certainly doable. Mind that with the new law mail orders will be taxed too. So, more income to win and easier to implement and control, it is clear why it is being raised now.
Please RTFineA. Currently the solar plant projects are still a difuse idea in the future. Ecologist groups want to get sure that the marketing about that cable being a step forward for renewables is not just a trap in order to allow big bussiness to build in North Africa the "bad" (contaminant, unsafe) power plants that they couldn't put in Europe due to popular pressure. Seeing how the world goes, warning the EU that they are watching them is a very sensible move.
Oh yeah, now if my house goes to live in Germany then you could format its address properly! Duh!...
Write the address in the format in use in the country it is in. In the same language, also (v.g., if you live in "Dumb Street" I won't write that you live in "Calle de la Tontería". KISVS (the V stands for Very).
If you leave the street name as a free text you will always fail to update all your address.
I really do not understand why it is an issue at all. From my experience, a name is just free text. Even if it has its own rules to be formed, it does not affect the IT. I live and work in Spain, where everyone usually has his/her surname and two family names (one from his/her father and one from his/her mother) and every damn system I see has two fields for family names. Why? While it is understandable to separate surname from the first family name (*), there is absolutely no need to put the two family names separately because they are always processed together. Anyway, that continues to be done, causing unnecessary trouble with people with only one family name (foreigners) or with more than two.
I see the same issue with address. Lots of times I have to put my address as a multi-field info: Type of way (Street, Avenue, Road, etc.), the name of the way, number of the building, entrance, floor, door). And this info will just be useful to print all together (I do not think many people is doing stats based in if you live in a street or an avenue, on the B door or C door, etc.). Anyway, this is one of the things programmers over-engineer without no real reason (if you really need that information for your system, then the first thing you need is to forbid that the street name is a free text, and populate a list with all possible values).
And for the rest of the issues, it is just a matter of knowing where your app is gonna be used. If your system needs to work only in USA, UTF-8 is fine. If I happen to go there I can stand if you put my name without accents; if I go to China I can stand that the bureaucrat puts the chinese character that sound like my name in their systems). Otherwise, if you want your systems to work in France or Spain, then you need to make sure they support accents and special characters like ç, ñ. Simple as that.
* Because some surnames can be typed in a variety of forms, while family names only have one right spelling. That makes sorting from family names more useful.
In fact the GP should read: If the government is stable and free of corruption enough that it is not owned by the internationals, it will be able to impose some sanity (safety, labor condicions, environment) in its operations. If the internationals own the government, then spending in any of the above will be considered just wasting money.
.
Corporations are part of the problem. The motto that everything that brings them money is ok has made them not only to bribe already corrupt politicians but also, when that was not possible or didn't bring the desired results, to promote coups and civil wars in order to put the corrupt in power. See Augusto Pinochet and Shah of Iran for a couple of the most outstanding examples.
Of course, many times they do not need to get to that point because the existing elite is already enough corrupt in its own so they behave reasonably.
You too? I sense a slashdot poll coming..
ouch... did you read Stanislaw Lem's stories about Ijon Tichy travels (first volume).
If you haven't and you like that kind of humour I absolutely recommend it to you.
Yeah, it is not like it grows in trees...
One main advantage is that it is easier to replenish than minerals. You can grow a field of rice, collect it and then grow it again next year. If you get a mineral (v.g. carbon) from a mine, the next year your only chance to get more carbon is to dig further. Also it helps capturing CO2 from air instead of adding into it.
DISCLAIMER1: I know rice is a plant but not a tree.
DISCLAIMER2: I am not saying that this mortar has no disavantages (old buildings may have survived a long time, but they used walls several times thicker than we have now; perhaps using it with moderns bricks is not useful. Anyway, an interesting idea.
I want to buy shares from that company.
It is way better than the ones I have seen in real life where upper management screws everybody and everything to get their short term bonuses at whatever cost it takes. Of course I am talking about the big corporations where the capital is so distributed that it is difficult to get a significative minority 5% outside the boards that could oppose them.
Do you think they are going to launch torpedoes to the Zodiacs the pirates sail in? Or, to the maximum, small fishing or patrol boats that they could face from a warlord? If their trouble are African pirates, a few destroyers and supply ships would be way better, and improved by one or two escort carriers. Using submarines in surface roles has no
A submarine is a expensive piece whose only function is interdiction, let it be (principally) offensive (raiding enemy trade/supply routes) or defensive (chasing enemy raiders). And for the defensive role to be useful, you need a large force of submarines covering all the routes to fight an equally large and well protected force (if you are facing a small force you are better off with convoys protected by surface units). A fleet of submarines for China would work by avoiding enemy reinforcements coming into the zone of combat, or, in a strategical role, as ICBM launchers. But this is not something to be used against anything Africa can put into the sea.
Because they can asume that they are working in a monoculture where they can be sure which versions of OS, browser and plugins will be already installed. This makes following standards less important in relation to other aspects (speed of development, features, etc.).
I think you are underestimating the costs of the fixes. It is not only the cost of the fix, but also the cost of reworking the systems that already relied or worked around those bugs (and the cost of detecting and working around possible new bugs).
I mean, we have a number of "bugs" in our systems (v.g. a HR DB in MS Access 97 where we have to work around limits to the number of modules); in these kind of systems doing changes is effectively more complicated that it should be, but as we change only little parts of systems that are already working it still is better than rewritting it from scratch. Also, the former costs are "operation" costs while the latter are "inversion" costs, and it is way easier to get operation funds than inversion funds (it has always been this way, and with the crisis it has been reinforced). To get inversion funds, we have to promise a considerable reduction of operation costs.
Yes and no.
In the first part, the address space is not yet over so your ISP can get IPs that it needs in the usual conditions.
If it comes that IP space is finished, or that measures to avoid that happening makes getting more IPs antieconomical/unpractical for your ISP AND your ISP needs more address, it may be tempted to end this option or to translate the costs to you (of course it would normally warn you with enough time to adapt your network, it is not something that happens from a day to another after all).
If you lose your fixed IP (not available or too expensive) then there are two possibilites:
Anyway, if it comes to that, I would expect they to chose the latter option because now most of the "casual" users must be using a variable IP already. Of course, it only matters if your ISP needs more IP (or it thinks that your IP is worth more in the market than what you are paying them).
But even then, you can only be sure of number 3, after some years have passed. For obvious reasons of there not being any test data for years of use, until years of use have passed. ^^
BEGIN PEDANTIC
In fact, if you assume a Poison distribution of failure (where two identical working chips are equally probably to fail, no matter that one of them is brand new and the other has had years of use), you could just put 10.000 to test, and, if after a year 100 of them did fail, rightfully claim that they have a MTBF of 100 years.
Of course this distribution does not fit other components (mainly those with mechanical parts -CDs, HDs-) because there is progressive wear so an older unit is more likely to fail than a new one, but maybe it works for pure chips (anyone has info on the contrary?)
END PEDANTIC
He would not be working, he would be returning the access to the systems to his ex-employer. Just like returning a work cell phone or laptop.
In your analogy, do not forget that there is a law that states that the mail office can not distribute mail that does not have the sender name on it, and that the mail office did exactly that. You may agree or not with the law, but the more information I get it looks less of an arbitrariety than at the beginning. Hey, maybe the judge thinks that he should not fine Google, but even him has to apply it until it gets changed.
For one time I RTFA before posting, it has little or no details about the causes.
I mean, the devil lies in the details... There is a law in Brazil that allows only registered posts? Or that IPs are logged? If Google operated their service disregarding the requirements of the country, then they got themselves in trouble. Or it was that the judge just make that decision by himself?
For an example of what it could be, I just want to recall that the "italian judge" mentioned in the summary fined Google not because someone had put a video of several people harassing and beating a mentally handicaped person. The real reason is that Google did refuse to retire something like that when they were notified that it was there, and they only did retire it when they were threatened. Of course, then TFS just wrote that Google was fined "because someone had uploaded the video".
If we have to debate about facts, it would be nice if we are informed of them with a little more depth.
Not "give"; "sell"
I live in an European island, you insensitive clod!
Yeah! Feed the Pandas with the Owls!