Remember that one of the pieces of circumstantial evidence against Hans Reiser was that he had gotten books on homicide investigations? This isn't any philosophically different.
Of course, the searches are probably more damning (but still circumstantial). I can see where an innocent person who is the target of a homicide investigation might want to read up on the process, to make sure they don't make fatal missteps.
There are sound economic reasons why global warming will never be a threat.
The U.S. economy is about to implode, due to an overuse of trading off short-term benefits for long-term problems. Most Slashdotters will be familiar with the specifics: corporations won't train entry-level people, it's unsustainable to run an economy entirely on services while creating/manufacturing nothing, etc.
An implosion of the U.S. economy will likely take the world economy with it.
Once lots of people die off from poverty-related causes, and industrial production plummets to a tiny fraction of today's levels, then CO2 emissions will be drastically reduced, mitigating further warming.
I used to work at a certain large business machine company with their own class A. There was an internal website one could go to, "iptools". You entered info on who you were, your dept, type of machine, physical location, etc. and it would assign you an IP. It had tools for when you moved a machine from one subnet to another (like when moving buildings) as well.
There were monitoring machines that could tell when IPs were being used. If you didn't use a machine for a while (months?) you'd get an email from the "IP Police" telling you to re-register or the IP would go back in the pool.
It's illegal to pay an H1-B employee less than an American citizen doing the same job.
I hear this every time the topic of H1-B's comes up. Here's a question for which I've never gotten a good answer, though:
If this is true, why do companies do it?
If an H1-B must be paid the same, and there are legal expenses on top of that, then obviously H1-B's must be more expensive than equivalent American workers. So are we to believe that companies are paying more for the same employees? That doesn't seem likely.
Maybe it's because the H1-B's are really a higher quality of worker. That would suggest companies are willing to pay more for higher quality workers. I've never seen a company actually do so, though; has anyone else?
Maybe it's because there really are zero qualified local Americans to do the work the company wants to do. My day-job employer hires H1-B's for networking hardware development in the Raleigh area. I assume this means there are zero unemployed networking hardware developers in the Raleigh area of a million people or so.
I had the same problem. After getting on an HMO, I ended up seeing the same doctor for a few in a row. She sent me to an ENT, who found the root cause (allergies). Now, I keep the dust mites down in the house, take a nose spray daily, take Zyrtec and/or Sudafed when heavy allergy season hits, and have been ear-infection-free for a few years.
Then call the IRS at 1-800-829-1040. They'll answer your questions, authoritatively, for free.
I had to do this when my wife and I set up our consultancy as a partnership. (Husband-and-wife businesses have to be partnerships, or have one as an employee of the other, or be in a community property state). Try as I might, I could not figure out how the "adjusted basis" rules would apply to us. The revenooers themselves got me the answers that I needed.
Umm... yes. Any money I bring in, from whatever source, is income and therefore subject to income tax. If I took bribes, sold drugs, ran a numbers racket, etc. the income from those activities are taxable.
Think about it. Where would we draw the line between these kinds of activities:
I mow lawns for neighbors from time to time, with a nominal charge.
I register a business name, get city licenses, advertise, and mow lawns for whoever wishes to pay me and I have time to fit in.
I am a nationwide landscaping company with thousands of employees.
There's nothing legal that distinguishes the first two cases. A lot of people think there's something special involved in being "a business", but you're a business if you charge people to do stuff or to give them stuff, simple as that.
The summary says that the attacks could compromise user accounts. This raises an interesting question... why do presidential-campaign websites even have accounts for members of the public? What non-cosmetic functionality does that provide that couldn't be done some other way?
Full disclosure: The proliferation of websites that require accounts is a personal pet peeve. There are lots of places where I can't apply for a job or buy something without creating an account, leading to a nasty proliferation of passwords. I have an encrypted password-safe, but it's still annoying. There's no reason I couldn't just paste in data from a resume, or give a billing/shipping address and CC number each time.
Credit unions are nonprofit, so there's no incentive for them to nickel-and-dime you to death with fees. (Account owners are the only shareholders anyway). I have free, interest-bearing checking through mine, as well as a credit card with actual reasonable terms and conditions (and fixed rate), a mortgage and a car loan, both at decent rates.
It's not hard to affiliate a group (e.g. an employer, church, etc.) with a credit union, and the only disadvantage over banks that I've ever noticed is that they don't have a branch on every corner. I don't understand why more people who are being screwed over by banks don't go this way.
(Disclaimer: I don't know if the U.K.'s any better than the U.S. in this regard):
In the U.S., if consumer revolt ever becomes enough of a problem, the companies will just buy some laws making it illegal for consumers to collude against them, and/or crush complainers under the weight of the civil court system.
There are a lot of people who voluntarily take on lots of unpaid overtime. They sincerely believe that this will get them ahead, put them lower on layoff lists, get them higher raises, etc.
I'm a staunch 40-hour guy, and have yet to be laid off from this particular job, for 5 years now, where there are a lot of people like that. I suppose if I'd worked 70 or 80 hours a week, I might be making a few percent more, though. If you work that out per hour, I'd be way better off doing a side job with that time. Oh, there's stock options, though; I shit you not, when this employer got bought a while back, I stood to gain $4000 before taxes from my 4.5 years' worth of stock options. I'm sure that would have been good incentive to work 50% more.
I'm not worried about layoffs. My job will go to India when it goes to India. There won't be anything I (or anyone else, right on down from the CEO of the company) can do to prevent or delay it, so why bust my ass trying?
What I find useful about Wikipedia's coverage of controversial topics, is that it's usually apparent from the article that a controversy exists. Once you know a controversy exists, you know to look to other sources (which might include the WP article's history) to get other sides to the story.
Often, sources that are biased to one side of a controversial topic will not make it clear at all that any controversy exists.
Exactly. If things got so bad that there was enough anti-government sentiment to make an armed revolt succeed, there would be enough sentiment to elect a government more friendly to the people's grievances.
Noplace in the U.S. that I know of requires political candidates to be of a recognized party. For example, in North Carolina, anyone can run by petition, with signatures of 4% of the registered voters in the constituency for which they're running.
It would be a lot easier to run reform candidates by petition (and have them win) than to get enough people involved in likely-to-be-fatal rebellion.
Caveat: This particular failsafe does require fair elections. However, I would place at least as much trust in election officials to not put up with funny business around elections as I would in the Army to not fire upon Americans.
How can anyone believe that the Democrats will "restore our personal freedoms"?
How about codifying the freedom to sodomize one's significant other? How about allowing one to marry the person of one's choice without regard to gender? I doubt I'll ever see Republicans fighting for those freedoms.
Given the hysteria surrounding child porn, molestation, etc. I doubt this could have possibly turned out any other way.
Prosecutor decides not to go after them? The next election, attack ads say "he let a child pornographer off scot-free" and he's history. Possibly he gets suspected of being a "prevert" himself, and his life ruined.
Legislators try to fix the child-porn laws to align with the age-of-consent laws? Same thing.
I'm surprised there was a dissenting opinion among the judges. That took serious balls.
if our children can engage in consequence-free sex
I know you're quoting the abstinence-only crowd here, so that opinion's not necessarily your own, but I wanted to point out:
There's no such thing as consequence-free sex. Even if there was 100%-effective pregnancy and STD prevention, there are still the emotional issues to deal with. An awful lot of teenage girls learn the hard way that guys will lie to get into their pants, for example. Then there are love triangles, etc. That might be a useful point to make to the abstinence-only crowd (not that anyone can change anyone else's mind on such issues...)
Good advice about living below one's means. I, personally, at least stay within them, I wish I could go as low as you.
I wonder sometimes, because consumer spending drives the economy, if one day advocating living below your means becomes illegal, e.g. "economic terrorism". (There are a lot of powerful forces interested in keeping the GDP growing at all costs).
That's my favorite hypothetical example of anti-terrorism laws gone awry; even if there's an ironclad promise of "we'll only circumvent the legal process for terrorists", the loophole is in the definition of "terrorist". I could see anti-consumerism being demonized in this way...
the negotiated rate will always be at least high enough per patient so that the provider can make *some* profit on the transaction
I know personally of one case where this isn't true... my daughter.
Born 6 weeks early, she had "Apnea of Prematurity", where the nervous system controlling breathing wasn't quite mature enough, and so she'd very occasionally forget to breathe. Before she could come home, she had to go 5 days without forgetting to breathe.
She was in the NICU for 5 weeks 2 days, on a monitor to see when breathing stopped. This required 1/4 of a nurse, 24/7 during that time.
The hospital bill alone (not counting the occasional neonatologist) was $58000ish. BCBS-NC paid them $5400 and I paid $600 as my 10% coinsurance. The rest was written off. (This bothers me... were I uninsured, I'd be on the hook for the whole amount).
There's no possible way that the hospital broke even on that, even if you only consider the nursing salary.
A reply to a post about this in a discussion some weeks ago posited the theory that the insurance company found some reason to deny payment, and told the hospital, "take 10% or we'll pay nothing and you can take your chances appealing for years".
I've heard that law is starting to get offshored... makes sense, a lot of law work doesn't require physical presence (really it's just court appearances that require it), and Indians can learn US law as easily as USians can.
I wonder if someday we'll ship our cars to China to get fixed, rather than pay a premium for onshore mechanics [sigh]...
Slashdot Mirror
Remember that one of the pieces of circumstantial evidence against Hans Reiser was that he had gotten books on homicide investigations? This isn't any philosophically different.
Of course, the searches are probably more damning (but still circumstantial). I can see where an innocent person who is the target of a homicide investigation might want to read up on the process, to make sure they don't make fatal missteps.
There are sound economic reasons why global warming will never be a threat.
The U.S. economy is about to implode, due to an overuse of trading off short-term benefits for long-term problems. Most Slashdotters will be familiar with the specifics: corporations won't train entry-level people, it's unsustainable to run an economy entirely on services while creating/manufacturing nothing, etc.
An implosion of the U.S. economy will likely take the world economy with it.
Once lots of people die off from poverty-related causes, and industrial production plummets to a tiny fraction of today's levels, then CO2 emissions will be drastically reduced, mitigating further warming.
Problem solved!
I used to work at a certain large business machine company with their own class A. There was an internal website one could go to, "iptools". You entered info on who you were, your dept, type of machine, physical location, etc. and it would assign you an IP. It had tools for when you moved a machine from one subnet to another (like when moving buildings) as well.
There were monitoring machines that could tell when IPs were being used. If you didn't use a machine for a while (months?) you'd get an email from the "IP Police" telling you to re-register or the IP would go back in the pool.
I hear this every time the topic of H1-B's comes up. Here's a question for which I've never gotten a good answer, though:
If this is true, why do companies do it?
If an H1-B must be paid the same, and there are legal expenses on top of that, then obviously H1-B's must be more expensive than equivalent American workers. So are we to believe that companies are paying more for the same employees? That doesn't seem likely.
Maybe it's because the H1-B's are really a higher quality of worker. That would suggest companies are willing to pay more for higher quality workers. I've never seen a company actually do so, though; has anyone else?
Maybe it's because there really are zero qualified local Americans to do the work the company wants to do. My day-job employer hires H1-B's for networking hardware development in the Raleigh area. I assume this means there are zero unemployed networking hardware developers in the Raleigh area of a million people or so.
I had the same problem. After getting on an HMO, I ended up seeing the same doctor for a few in a row. She sent me to an ENT, who found the root cause (allergies). Now, I keep the dust mites down in the house, take a nose spray daily, take Zyrtec and/or Sudafed when heavy allergy season hits, and have been ear-infection-free for a few years.
Just sayin'.
Then call the IRS at 1-800-829-1040. They'll answer your questions, authoritatively, for free.
I had to do this when my wife and I set up our consultancy as a partnership. (Husband-and-wife businesses have to be partnerships, or have one as an employee of the other, or be in a community property state). Try as I might, I could not figure out how the "adjusted basis" rules would apply to us. The revenooers themselves got me the answers that I needed.
I've not seen the video, but I'll bet something on this page applies.
The IRS's response, with legal citations, to the most common frivolous tax arguments
Umm... yes. Any money I bring in, from whatever source, is income and therefore subject to income tax. If I took bribes, sold drugs, ran a numbers racket, etc. the income from those activities are taxable.
Think about it. Where would we draw the line between these kinds of activities:
There's nothing legal that distinguishes the first two cases. A lot of people think there's something special involved in being "a business", but you're a business if you charge people to do stuff or to give them stuff, simple as that.
The summary says that the attacks could compromise user accounts. This raises an interesting question... why do presidential-campaign websites even have accounts for members of the public? What non-cosmetic functionality does that provide that couldn't be done some other way?
Full disclosure: The proliferation of websites that require accounts is a personal pet peeve. There are lots of places where I can't apply for a job or buy something without creating an account, leading to a nasty proliferation of passwords. I have an encrypted password-safe, but it's still annoying. There's no reason I couldn't just paste in data from a resume, or give a billing/shipping address and CC number each time.
Not true in the U.S though. There's an equivalent to FDIC for credit unions.
... credit unions! (in the U.S. at least)
Credit unions are nonprofit, so there's no incentive for them to nickel-and-dime you to death with fees. (Account owners are the only shareholders anyway). I have free, interest-bearing checking through mine, as well as a credit card with actual reasonable terms and conditions (and fixed rate), a mortgage and a car loan, both at decent rates.
It's not hard to affiliate a group (e.g. an employer, church, etc.) with a credit union, and the only disadvantage over banks that I've ever noticed is that they don't have a branch on every corner. I don't understand why more people who are being screwed over by banks don't go this way.
(Disclaimer: I don't know if the U.K.'s any better than the U.S. in this regard):
In the U.S., if consumer revolt ever becomes enough of a problem, the companies will just buy some laws making it illegal for consumers to collude against them, and/or crush complainers under the weight of the civil court system.
A Linksys WRT54GL, running OpenWRT. I'm in the midst of replacing my 486-based firewall and cheap 802.11 access point with it.
Actually there is some quite good ASCII porn out there.
There are a lot of people who voluntarily take on lots of unpaid overtime. They sincerely believe that this will get them ahead, put them lower on layoff lists, get them higher raises, etc.
I'm a staunch 40-hour guy, and have yet to be laid off from this particular job, for 5 years now, where there are a lot of people like that. I suppose if I'd worked 70 or 80 hours a week, I might be making a few percent more, though. If you work that out per hour, I'd be way better off doing a side job with that time. Oh, there's stock options, though; I shit you not, when this employer got bought a while back, I stood to gain $4000 before taxes from my 4.5 years' worth of stock options. I'm sure that would have been good incentive to work 50% more.
I'm not worried about layoffs. My job will go to India when it goes to India. There won't be anything I (or anyone else, right on down from the CEO of the company) can do to prevent or delay it, so why bust my ass trying?
What I find useful about Wikipedia's coverage of controversial topics, is that it's usually apparent from the article that a controversy exists. Once you know a controversy exists, you know to look to other sources (which might include the WP article's history) to get other sides to the story.
Often, sources that are biased to one side of a controversial topic will not make it clear at all that any controversy exists.
Exactly. If things got so bad that there was enough anti-government sentiment to make an armed revolt succeed, there would be enough sentiment to elect a government more friendly to the people's grievances.
Noplace in the U.S. that I know of requires political candidates to be of a recognized party. For example, in North Carolina, anyone can run by petition, with signatures of 4% of the registered voters in the constituency for which they're running.
It would be a lot easier to run reform candidates by petition (and have them win) than to get enough people involved in likely-to-be-fatal rebellion.
Caveat: This particular failsafe does require fair elections. However, I would place at least as much trust in election officials to not put up with funny business around elections as I would in the Army to not fire upon Americans.
How about codifying the freedom to sodomize one's significant other? How about allowing one to marry the person of one's choice without regard to gender? I doubt I'll ever see Republicans fighting for those freedoms.
Given the hysteria surrounding child porn, molestation, etc. I doubt this could have possibly turned out any other way.
Prosecutor decides not to go after them? The next election, attack ads say "he let a child pornographer off scot-free" and he's history. Possibly he gets suspected of being a "prevert" himself, and his life ruined.
Legislators try to fix the child-porn laws to align with the age-of-consent laws? Same thing.
I'm surprised there was a dissenting opinion among the judges. That took serious balls.
I know you're quoting the abstinence-only crowd here, so that opinion's not necessarily your own, but I wanted to point out:
There's no such thing as consequence-free sex. Even if there was 100%-effective pregnancy and STD prevention, there are still the emotional issues to deal with. An awful lot of teenage girls learn the hard way that guys will lie to get into their pants, for example. Then there are love triangles, etc. That might be a useful point to make to the abstinence-only crowd (not that anyone can change anyone else's mind on such issues...)
Also, people would not be as worried about the climate change anymore...
... insulting the inferior entries.
(Search his site for "The Doghouse" for some smackdowns of snake-oil crypto products.)
Good advice about living below one's means. I, personally, at least stay within them, I wish I could go as low as you.
I wonder sometimes, because consumer spending drives the economy, if one day advocating living below your means becomes illegal, e.g. "economic terrorism". (There are a lot of powerful forces interested in keeping the GDP growing at all costs).
That's my favorite hypothetical example of anti-terrorism laws gone awry; even if there's an ironclad promise of "we'll only circumvent the legal process for terrorists", the loophole is in the definition of "terrorist". I could see anti-consumerism being demonized in this way...
I know personally of one case where this isn't true... my daughter.
Born 6 weeks early, she had "Apnea of Prematurity", where the nervous system controlling breathing wasn't quite mature enough, and so she'd very occasionally forget to breathe. Before she could come home, she had to go 5 days without forgetting to breathe.
She was in the NICU for 5 weeks 2 days, on a monitor to see when breathing stopped. This required 1/4 of a nurse, 24/7 during that time.
The hospital bill alone (not counting the occasional neonatologist) was $58000ish. BCBS-NC paid them $5400 and I paid $600 as my 10% coinsurance. The rest was written off. (This bothers me... were I uninsured, I'd be on the hook for the whole amount).
There's no possible way that the hospital broke even on that, even if you only consider the nursing salary.
A reply to a post about this in a discussion some weeks ago posited the theory that the insurance company found some reason to deny payment, and told the hospital, "take 10% or we'll pay nothing and you can take your chances appealing for years".
I've heard that law is starting to get offshored... makes sense, a lot of law work doesn't require physical presence (really it's just court appearances that require it), and Indians can learn US law as easily as USians can.
I wonder if someday we'll ship our cars to China to get fixed, rather than pay a premium for onshore mechanics [sigh]...