This concept may be foreign to some people living on this planet, but certainly as a U.S. citizen, I was raised believing in the idea. As an adult, I've learned what a fantasy it really is today... but that's doesn't mean it's not a worthy goal to keep striving for.
So thanks again, wikileaks -- because a govt. keeping secrets isn't a very accountable one.
Actually, I think I'm starting to "get it", but the biggest problem here is these guys are trying to push the desktop PC into the land of antiques before the successors are anywhere near ready.
The desktop will become a niche item only when wearable computing goes mainstream, IMO. Really, the entire concept of a tablet is sort of a stop-gap measure. It gives people something small enough so they can take it with them when they travel around, and can even use it effectively while still standing up -- plus delivers long enough battery life to make the battery life a relative non-issue. BUT, people would rather have something more along the lines of Google's Project Glass, where the computer is simply integrated seamlessly into your daily life.
Again, different use-cases demand different hardware....
I own several Macs but I've never bothered to buy a Magic Trackpad, and don't think I want one. Why? Well, have you ever tried to play a game like Team Fortress 2 with one instead of a mouse? Yeah, not really happening....
And really, from what I've used of it so far in stores and on friend's Macs who own it, I found it's not only poor for image work like Photoshop, but really for anything requiring a lot of precision.
It is great, like you say, for browsing content where you need to do a lot of moving back and forth through pages.
I always imagined self-driving vehicles would "track" based on some sort of magnetic strips embedded in the roads. It now appears everyone working on these systems is attempting to make them work with radar, cameras, etc. so as not to add any special requirements for the road design.
I'm not so sure that's the optimal way to go about things, and your snowplow example is probably just one scenario that makes this point.
If you really want to trust peoples' lives to self-driving cars and trucks on the roads, I think it'd be wise to modify the roadways with some sort of standardized system of markers that these vehicles could easily follow along with.
See... I could look at what you did two completely different ways, though.
1. I could agree with you completely, acknowledging the concept that you finally "made something of your life" by eliminating your debts, buying some land of your own, and building your own house by yourself.
OR...
2. I could view such actions as little more than one man's way to rationalize away the fact he was just burnt out on working a 9-5, Mon-Fri type job for someone else. I mean, quite a few people you'd ask would say they'd much rather be in a position to pay someone ELSE to build their home for them, than resorting to putting it up, stick by stick, themselves....
Truth is? I think it can go either way, because each individual has to decide for him/herself what they want to do with their life, and what they hope to get out of it. And sure, nobody wants to work until they're "old and used up" (well, almost nobody -- though you can probably find exceptions even there, with people who really define themselves by the work they do each day). But I know I've done both the "employee" and the "small business owner" thing. Both have their advantages, but for me? Owning my own business is less desirable to me, these days, than the idea of a steady job I'm paid adequately for. The problem with business ownership is you really have no security. It's ALL on you, the business owner, to make it work - so you wind up with your business encroaching pretty heavily on your "free/spare time" when things aren't going so smoothly with it. Meanwhile, the more successful you get and the more people you start hiring to work for you, the more govt. starts breathing down your back with taxes and regulations, etc. etc. And to me, that's really *not* my idea of freedom.
Actually, you're probably right, except don't forget there are some home ownership possibilities within reach by shopping the foreclosures. I have a good friend who got a really nice home for pennies on the dollar in Alabama that way, about a year ago - and he was just recently out of a bankruptcy when his business imploded.
The downside is, buying a foreclosure property is a huge nightmare of dealing with various people for months on end, doing loads of paperwork, etc. etc. And after all that, you may not even get the house you placed an offer on - so you could be back to square one. But the determined can get a good deal.
Businesses have already moved about as far towards "agile" as they could move, and many have over-extended their staff, just to hang on despite the poor economy.
What I've seen in I.T. (with my own job, with the jobs my wife has taken in I.T., and with jobs my friends have in I.T.) is a situation where employers are uncertain what to do next. They need more workers, but they lack confidence that their business can remain viable if the economy takes another big stumble.
Many are trying to hire contractors so they don't have to commit right now to taking on more workers full-time. But they're struggling because the contractors want the benefits and security of a real, full-time job as an employee. So they have a revolving door of contractors who only stay until they find the next contract job that pays a little better or has better hours or working conditions.
While you'll still find cases where there's a lot of largely useless "overhead" of middle managers that don't contribute much -- my experience is that these tend to be the "lifers" who have been entrenched in those positions from back when the economy was much better than it is today. They may know "all the right people" to hang onto those jobs, or perhaps they have some sort of sweet arrangement where it will cost the company a big severance package to eliminate then. In larger companies, sometimes a big group of these people stick together and do everything in their power to "scratch each others' backs" so the new hires get blamed for their inefficiencies. Whatever the case -- just because you see people in those positions, earning that type of paycheck, doesn't mean those jobs will exist for YOU as a new hire, when someone vacates one of them.
Basically, we're on a track where everyone in a company is valuable.... Even if that means wearing multiple hats and doing work you never imagined was part of your job description. But that said, there's still room for "project managers". They just might find themselves asked to do BOTH management and hands-on work at the same time, these days.
HP already utterly and completely blew it with tablet computing when they made the boneheaded move of cancelling the TouchPad. I bought a new 32GB model on sale for $149 as part of a closeout promotion Micro Center was running. (Basically, if you bought some other HP computer, you qualified for the $149 TouchPad too, and I had to get an HP desktop for my work.)
Despite being an Apple iPad user since day 1, I gained a lot of respect for the product HP had. They copied off a lot of the little things that made Apple successful, while managing to retain their own uniqueness. The TouchStone wireless charging dock was brilliant, for example, and was FAR more elegant than any of Apple's iPad dock solutions. The integrated login of webOS was a great concept as well. (Just create an HP user account and configure all of the online services you want to use with the TouchPad through that master account. Then you're signed in to all of them, or can select the ones you want on and off at any time with virtual switches to slide on or off. Go to the email client and all of your configured mailboxes are pulled up right there. Same for the calendars.) Even their online store had what I thought was an excellent layout -- where you browsed it like a magazine. The home page of the store would welcome you with suggestions of relevant apps you might wish to look at, based on the next holiday coming up or time of year, and there were pages of several featured apps described in more detail as you turned the pages and browsed.
If HP had any sense, they should have realized that the rush to grab up all of these discontinued tablets at blowout prices gave them a window of opportunity. All of a sudden, they had a decent-sized market out there of active users interested in the product! They needed to strike while that iron was still hot, rushing back to look at ways to improve the tablet and re-release a version 2 (hopefully at a reduced price that would keep it competitive -- but one still high enough so the sales would be profitable). From what I heard, there was actually a second TouchPad product almost completed when HP canned the project anyway.
The Palm guys who did webOS were really talented people... just the type HP needed to actually do something innovative. But in the musical CEO madness, they got thrown under the bus.
HP can spin this any way they like, pretending they're sending Microsoft a message by cancelling support for a new ARM based Win 8 tablet. But come on! I see right through that B.S. Reality is, such a product would lack any real appeal compared to what Microsoft themselves announced. It'd be yet another boring wanna-be tablet in a black plastic case, with too high of a sticker price. Honestly, I can't see why any talented engineers or designers would even make more than a minimal effort working on anything new for HP these days? They just crap all over most of it and cancel project after project without giving them enough time to mature and gain popularity.
The traffic laws are a very sore spot for me as well. The types who go around with a "cops are heroes!" attitude get under my skin, when they actually fall for the propaganda about "we're only issuing tickets because we care about your safety".
To be honest, I'm a person who has gone my entire life with probably no more than 5 traffic tickets (including a state trooper who cited me for driving 65 in a 55MPH zone on an interstate, back when I was 18 -- and that may have been one of the only really "fair" ones I think I received). So it's not a case of me constantly getting tickets for speeding or reckless driving and having a chip on my shoulder.
I just see the entire thing as little more than tax collection / revenue generation, under a guise of performing a public service. Any time an excuse can be made to increase the financial penalties for a given violation, they jump on it, regardless of its actual effectiveness. (Just a few weeks ago, I made a road trip from St. Louis to the Chicago area, and I must have gone through at LEAST 10 different "road construction zones" with signs announcing fines would be doubled or tripled for exceeding the posted speed limits. In about 9 out of 10 of those zones, there was no actual construction taking place. In a few cases, I saw a pickup truck with one or two workers at a site, but they appeared to be there only to double-check on some details of work already completed, or ?? It was abundantly clear that there was no pressing reason to slow traffic down from the 65MPH limit to as little as 35MPH (creating big traffic backups) -- and in fact, most people elected to ignore the reduced speed demands because it was so clearly pointless. Still, a cop could easily decide to sit at any one of those work zones and issue BIG $ fines -- and drivers would have no recourse.
The whole "game" of cops trying to hide so they can catch a speeder is insulting, as well. If they're *really* doing all of this to "protect and serve" as their logo always claims -- wouldn't you think they'd want their police vehicle to be very clearly visible to all of the traffic? Certainly, you wouldn't use an *unmarked* car, where someone might not even be sure they were legitimately being pulled over!
The problem I see with the "logic" that anyone drinking enough alcohol to cause slight impairment while driving should be arrested and punished is what could (should?) follow if you really believe it.
For example... Cars with partially worn tires are less capable of stopping or maneuvering out of the way of obstacles than cars with new tires. For that matter, there's very clear evidence that simply choosing one brand/model of ties over another leads to differences in a vehicle's performance -- even when all tires in question are brand new. Should we start making arrests when someone has those cheap Asian tires on their vehicle, that test results show have less traction than others? Should someone be found criminally at fault if they injure someone in a car accident and it's found their tires were really close to needing replacement?
I think as a society, we're so eager now to punish drunk driving, we've gone towards practically a "zero tolerance" policy, without much regard for reality. Yes, drinking and driving is a "bad idea" on the whole. But like most things, the majority of people are able to use common sense, deciding for themselves if they're safe to drive or not. The ones who can't (even when others around them express their concern) are the ones who pose the real threat.
With practically all other aspects of operating motor vehicles, we seem to be accepting of the idea that there's a "reasonable level of tolerance" for conditions that hamper a driver from driving optimally. We have state inspections in place to keep dangerous cars off the road until they're fixed, but we only require they be checked once every couple years or so. People driving around with a headlight burnt out may get a ticket, but cars with dimmer headlights than the norm are usually ignored as "good enough". A tired driver is generally NOT arrested, though we know they're likely just as much of a hazard on the roads as someone who drank a beer or two recently.
Of course the parent poster is right... I'd imagine any serious credit card thief would be operating through Tor, doing anonymous payment with something like Bitcoin, and not even fooling around with signing up on new sites of unknown/unverified origins.
But this is pretty typical for the FBI. They're as interested in the P.R. as anything else. They need to show they're making arrests and giving the news media something positive to print. It helps ensure their continued funding for the division handling these high-tech crimes and they probably also figure it's a deterrent to beginners, who could become tomorrow's elite card thieves otherwise.
IMO, it's tough to argue with the man's statements here, because they're pretty general, and therefore easily defensible.
I mean, yes, you can never just throw devices at kids and expect they'll magically improve learning. (For that matter, you can't just throw money at schools and expect it will magically improve their ability to educate... but that's another issue.)
When you look a little more in-depth at the situation at hand, though? You find a few details he glosses right over:
1. The standard PC has a pretty solid track record in aiding education because it has a full-size keyboard as the primary input device. Tablets, at best, have bluetooth keyboards paired up with them so you can type into the applications you've launched via their touchscreen first. When you need to navigate around in the apps, though, you're often having to take your hands off the keyboard and tap on things on the screen. In most settings, the tablets are used without ANY keyboard, save the virtual one drawn on their displays. That makes them less suited to heavy data entry... a very common use for computers in educational settings. Bill G. acknowledges this... but neglects the possibility that school would use a COMBINATION of computers and tablets, depending on what was being done. A tablet makes a pretty compelling content creation device if the user is creating artwork, or music -- and its portability itself might be a big benefit in some of those scenarios.
2. A device is only as good as its application software. Right now, the standard PC has a good 20+ year history of people developing educational software for it. Apple's iPad, a strong new contender in education, only has a couple years of development under its belt, so far, but the explosion in its popularity and promise of easy money selling one's apps via Apple's App Store caused a torrential outpouring of new apps in that brief time. So again, there's some really good stuff out there for an iPad in a school environment. Now Microsoft's new Surface tablet? Not so much.... Heck, even if it achieved the same popularity and sales numbers of the iPad, we'd need to wait at least a couple more years to build up a library of good software to run on it.
3. Part of the core problem with our educational system may lie in the structure we impose on the whole learning process. I certainly don't claim to know all the answers, but there have been enlightening TED Talks out there from people illustrating the amazing capability of children to learn without any formal instructor teaching material at all. Given the right motivation, kids wind up teaching each other in a "peer to peer" fashion, sharing the knowledge they discover individually with the rest of their group. Those experiments usually relied on some sort of device (Internet terminal, computer, tablet, whatever) as the motivator which imparted the knowledge. The current school system leaves a lot to be desired in its ability to allow individuals to learn at their own pace, or wander off the predefined "paths" to explore topics of interest in greater depth. So *maybe* it's as much a problem of these devices not integrating neatly with an educational structure designed WAY before their existence as anything else?
... will work just fine in my Apple Mac Pro! Oh wait.....
Seriously, this is the kind of boost Apple *should* have been after, since they're now stretching out the upgrade of the Mac Pro until some time in 2013..... They could at least update OS X with an incremental release and start offering this card for the now 2 year old Mac Pro they did a slight CPU speed bump to and called "updated", so there'd be SOME sane reason for people to order one.
I don't know.... Right now, I think both AMD and nVidia have pretty good handles on how to produce graphics boards consumers think are worthwhile. They could start copying every single innovation that each other formerly had as "company secrets", to the point where both brands of board performed absolutely identically in benchmark tests -- and STILL, I suspect they'd both sell about the same number of boards as before.
The real problem is, the marketplace has consolidated so much, you really only have these two companies as your choices for a 3D accelerated video chipset. Intel is trying to work their way in as a 3rd. player with accelerated, yet integrated, graphics chipsets -- but truthfully? I doubt they'll seriously chase after the high-performance graphics market in any serious way. For them, it's more lucrative to offer decent/usable levels of performance for the typical user and compete on having a lower price.
Once upon a time, we had choices from companies like Matrox, Diamond, Hercules, Trident.... Not so much anymore.
It's possible... but I doubt that #1, your credit score is as high as they'd rank it if you did things the way I described, and #2, you can go on with that strategy indefinitely without eventually having the terms and conditions of your card changed on you.
The credit card issuers are NOT really vigilant about what's going on with all the cards out there.... Many years ago, I went through a Chapter 7 and one of the cards I was able to keep (and keep using) for many months after the fact was a Home Depot card, issued by one of the creditors I filed against. They should have immediately cancelled that card (even though I paid it off on-time and didn't have a balance on it). They finally realized their error and cancelled it, but not for close to a year.
If you don't do something that gets their attention (like failing to make a payment), they only review your account every so often. And when they do, and see that you don't owe anything? They may be betting for a while that you'll eventually use the card for some major purchase or emergency situation, and carry a balance for a while when that happens. If that never materializes though, *eventually*, they'll decide you're just not a profitable customer for them....
Yep! I'm not a big fan of govt. regulation (your basic libertarian-minded type here), but PayPal managed to skirt a lot of control that everyone else in the banking industry seems to be held to, and I never quite understood how they were granted an exception.
For example, the eBay/PayPal merger certainly seems questionable, if nothing else? eBay purchases PayPal and immediately proceeds to make it the ONLY form of payment allowed for auctions on their system. I'm not even allowed to pay with CASH (supposedly legal tender for "all debts, public and private")? Before that, you could use several forms of e-payment on eBay.... I forget the name of the business, but I know there was a service allowing you to issue a check to the seller, which they used to explicitly support, integrated into their site. I paid someone using that method at least once before.
Even THAT wouldn't be as irritating if PayPal didn't charge any fees for the eBay transactions, but they do! You have to pay eBay a listing fee and a percentage of what the item sells for when sold... but the person paying with PayPal is still subject to any transaction fees PayPal charges!
Yeah.... unfortunately, that's NOT the correct way to use a credit card, in the lenders' viewpoint. And guess who makes the rules? (Hint: Not you.)
If you repeatedly pay off a credit card in full, you're just an expense on their balance sheet. (They have to keep lending you money for as long as 25-30 days at a time without making a penny of interest on it -- not to mention maintaining your account with them, printing up fresh cards for you every so often, etc. etc.)
Sure, it shows you're fiscally responsible, but not in a way that benefits them. What they're really after (and reward with a higher credit score) are people who actually carry a balance, but always make payments on time AND keep that balance somewhere under 50% of the total limit you're allowed to borrow.
If you're really going to make sure you never carry a balance on your credit cards, you're better off not having them at all. Just save up money in an interest-earning checking account that includes a debit card and use it instead. As another poster said, the alternative eventually becomes the card issuer charging you some sort of annual fee to keep the card active. That really stinks, because it's like you're paying them interest except without even getting to borrow the money first.
Right.... Out of all the possible scenarios for taking corporate data with you upon your termination, the one that seems most viable and useful is taking customer contact info, assuming you're in a position to use it yourself.
The paranoia of stealing confidential data to sell to competitors is probably the LEAST likely to actually happen. Like you said, anyone doing such a thing would put themselves at high risk of being arrested, if word got out they supplied the information. (And they'd have to live in fear of that for MANY years after the fact, which might be just as bad as actually getting caught!)
You don't even have to be in sales to want the customer data. I once worked for an on-site PC service company where the owner seemed really paranoid about one of us taking his customer data and using it to bypass him, and work directly with his clients. Honestly, I never had ANY interest in doing such a thing myself, because among other things -- I just enjoyed getting dispatched to do the calls, without all the hassles of doing the taxes, the accounting, the advertising, and the bill collection if/when someone didn't pay. One day, he found out he was losing his office space suddenly, due to circumstances beyond his control. That was SUPPOSED to mean we'd still carry on business as usual, except I wouldn't have a physical office to report to in the morning or when calls were done. He was going to work from home for a while and call me to do what was needed.
Unfortunately, it also meant he had to let go of his office assistant... and she needed to find another job. One of his customers had recently mentioned to her that he could probably help her find work if she ever needed it, so she went through his customer database to get that guy's number, before her last day of work.
Well, the owner discovered someone had accessed that data and immediately assumed it was me, so all of a sudden, I get a threatening letter in the mail from his lawyer, when I was just sitting there wondering why my phone hadn't rang with any customers to visit yet!
After that? Yeah, I contacted as many of his customers as I knew how to reach (WITHOUT using his data!) and informed them I'd be opening my own on-site business. I still run it to this day, and he shut down his company years ago.
Unfortunately, this is one of the problems we've got today, with politicians realizing the popularity in taking an anti sex crime hard-line stance. There are few things more universally accepted than the idea a child molester deserves harsh punishment. The problem, of course, is that true child molesters really aren't very common. Certainly not common enough to sustain a division of the FBI devoted to nothing but capturing them. They need better "performance metrics" than that! So what you wind up with is all of this vast over-reaching....
Child porn is one of those convenient "value added" crimes easily attached to the pursuit of child molesters... After all, the producer of it is clearly abusing the kids involved, and it's not hard to get the public to buy into the fact that anyone obtaining that sort of material is just as guilty, right? Except no, they're very OFTEN not!
Many years ago, I ran a computer bulletin board system, and on at least 2 or 3 occasions, people uploaded child porn photo collections, zipped up into archives and incorrectly described as completely different types of files. (I recall catching one, one time, that simply said "Great OS/2 screen saver collection!") As soon as I discovered such things, I immediately deleted them -- but what if I hadn't caught it before someone else did who reported it to authorities? Yep, you can bet I would have been arrested and charged with possession and intent to redistribute, or at least something along those lines!
And perhaps some would say, "Well, you ARE guilty if you found the stuff and didn't report the person who uploaded it to you!" But again, I'm afraid I don't agree. MANY times, people using the BBS's used to download a file from source A and immediately re-upload it to destination B, without ever looking at it first. Most people just assumed the descriptions stated were accurate and they wanted to earn upload credits, so they could download something else they wanted. There's a good probability the uploader of those files had no clue what was in them, and maybe the site THEY got them from wasn't aware either.
Your post was modded "Funny" but I think you're probably exactly right!
If you're like any of the typical long-time Mac users I know who keep vintage hardware around? You're still happily running old versions of MacOS on it! I don't see why you'd really go looking for another commercial OS alternative for such a system, unless it promised to give you something new you couldn't do otherwise.
In this case, you'd actually lose major functionality like wireless card support by switching to it. The *only* really valid reason I can see for MorphOS is the Amiga compatibility. That's pretty cool, but like you say, very much a niche. (I do know a few former Amiga users who'd still like to be able to run some of the old software they used to use... but I doubt any of them would pay much for the ability. It'd be cheaper to just find a whole Amiga on eBay or something, wouldn't it?)
Sure they're deals.... But a set of tax rules uniformly applied to everyone doesn't entice anyone new to move to your state, if they're doing just fine where they're at (a state with a lower tax rate).
All I'm saying is, it doesn't seem unreasonable to me for a state's politicians to take an interest in attracting businesses/jobs from other states, and a limited time exemption from the normal tax rules is as good an incentive to offer as any.
So no, the fact it's a "deal" doesn't automatically strike me as the core problem here. The problem is, just as you say, with politicians acting for their own personal gain vs. having their own state's best interests at heart. The solution? Well, that gets into all sorts of arguments and possible scenarios -- many of which aren't too likely to happen since political status-quo power is so entrenched. But IMO, you should at least subject any such tax break measure to a vote by the citizens of the state. If the people don't believe it's a good deal, there should be no way to just "push it through anyway".
A better answer probably involves removal of politics as a career job... Make it a volunteer position which only pays a small salary (at least something to cover one's own costs of volunteering, such as travel expenses involved), and frankly? I think re-election shouldn't even be an option any more. It encourages too much corruption, and diverts the energy and attention of politicians from the issues at hand to concerning themselves with self-promotion for a re-election.
Some would say "Only the wealthy would ever be capable of volunteering." -- but I'd argue that #1, our nation was FOUNDED by such people in the first place, so that's not necessarily a bad thing. But more importantly, #2, I'd imagine with such a volunteer system in place, a willingness to do so for a term would look very good on one's resume. Just as broke college grads are known to go off and do volunteer work for a while for the sake of the experience, some would do the same with politics.
The real issue with states giving tax breaks to entice companies to move there isn't simply them "stealing jobs from other states rather than creating them". The reason such measures usually fail is a state's failure to demand specific goals as part of the deal.
Time and time again, companies took advantage of huge tax breaks only to plunk down some sort of office or warehouse that doesn't actually hire more than a few dozen employees. That, or they may only stay as long as the tax break continues, uprooting the whole operation after the 3 or 5 year deal ends.
IMO, there's nothing inherently wrong with state trying to encourage businesses to set up shop within their borders. Even though we're a group of 50 United States, each one still competes with each other internally, much like corporations with multiple divisions often operate each division so it competes with the others.
The PROBLEM is, states need to get a clue about such deals, ensuring it's beneficial for both parties. (Most likely, corrupt politicians simply don't care, because they're getting some kind of kickback or garnering support they need by making the deals happen, at any cost to the citizenry of the state.) Any such arrangement should include contingencies, such as "You will lose the tax break AND owe back taxes from the time you moved here if you don't consistently keep X number of people employed, at wages no less than $Y per year." and "Moving out of the state for a period of 10 years from the time this tax break expires constitutes breach of contract, and again, is subject to back taxes."
A company who genuinely has a desire to move to the state (with a belief it really benefits them in the long-haul) would still gladly accept such an arrangement, IMO. The ones who complain it's too restrictive were likely just trying to milk the system to the state's detriment anyway.
Actually, no... I don't think I was confusing cause and effect, at least in this situation.
My point is, all of those failed experiments at taking on markets Best Buy wasn't a good fit for cost them serious money... Money they would have better spent keeping stores well stocked with desirable goods for their existing customer-base, even IF those goods took a little longer to move off of shelves.
That and they lost sight of the fact that value/budget minded consumers were their core customers. They thought they could just wave a wand and "upscale" things, to attract a more wealthy demographic. Sure, that's a nice demographic to have as your core customer -- but you don't just tell everyone else to "screw off" (by making the "Reward Zone" program less useful, raising prices across the board, eliminating the ability to buy open-box goods at discounts, etc.) and then try to convince discerning shoppers to use, say, Magnolia home theater, instead of well-established local high-end AV shops with much better quality products and more knowledgeable installers.)
Ultimately, yes... I'm a libertarian-minded person myself, and I get the logic behind the "taxation = theft at gun point" argument. At the same time though? I've come to the realization that if we're collectively agreeing to be governed by some sort of centralized body (no matter how many checks and balances it may have), we've also got to agree to let this body take in some (hopefully as SMALL a part as possible) part of our earnings, for its continued operation.
Some of my once-libertarian acquaintances have moved on to more of an agorist or anarchist philosophy for this reason. (They followed things to their conclusion, and realized the world they're advocating living in HAS to be one with NO central governance!)
I think every libertarian I know can agree with the basic premise that "government is evil", yet we're not "anarchists" because we're still latching onto the ideas held by the Founding Fathers of the USA. They believed government is a NECESSARY evil if one hopes to keep a nation together for any length of time. So they did their best to design one that was as "dictator proof" as possible, while guaranteeing a number of basic individual rights and freedoms for its citizens.
All of that said? Yes, I think our nation has gotten VERY sloppy and haphazard with tax collection. It needs to be treated with a LOT more respect, as one of those inherently EVIL parts of our governmental system that we ONLY tolerate because we understand its necessity. When taxes get levied just because someone has an agenda to "make it more difficult on people to do something I don't care for them doing", or under false pretense of "safety" (like most run-of-the-mill speeding tickets handed out), I feel that govt. is betraying our collective trust -- a MAJOR problem.
Yep... Micro Center was an absolutely savior here in St. Louis. Ever since CompUSA and Conputer City closed, we really didn't have a "computer store" to speak of. You have the randomly scattered "mom and pop" type computer stores, usually run by foreigners try to con you into buying used junk at nearly new prices, or alternately, poor geeks trying to scrape by, making a living cleaning viruses and replacing bad RAM for the clueless. And you have Best Buy and WalMart at the other end of the spectrum -- increasingly similar in the pricing and availability of computer-related goods they stock.
But really, when Micro Center tries to "reach" a bit outside the computer sales area (such as selling flat panel TVs or digital camera gear), I think they fall flat. I hope they don't try to fully fill in for Best Buy, selling major appliances and everything else.... Part of what makes them great is having so much inventory and some actual knowledge about JUST the computer-related things.
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This concept may be foreign to some people living on this planet, but certainly as a U.S. citizen, I was raised believing in the idea. As an adult, I've learned what a fantasy it really is today ... but that's doesn't mean it's not a worthy goal to keep striving for.
So thanks again, wikileaks -- because a govt. keeping secrets isn't a very accountable one.
Actually, I think I'm starting to "get it", but the biggest problem here is these guys are trying to push the desktop PC into the land of antiques before the successors are anywhere near ready.
The desktop will become a niche item only when wearable computing goes mainstream, IMO. Really, the entire concept of a tablet is sort of a stop-gap measure. It gives people something small enough so they can take it with them when they travel around, and can even use it effectively while still standing up -- plus delivers long enough battery life to make the battery life a relative non-issue. BUT, people would rather have something more along the lines of Google's Project Glass, where the computer is simply integrated seamlessly into your daily life.
Again, different use-cases demand different hardware....
I own several Macs but I've never bothered to buy a Magic Trackpad, and don't think I want one. Why? Well, have you ever tried to play a game like Team Fortress 2 with one instead of a mouse? Yeah, not really happening ....
And really, from what I've used of it so far in stores and on friend's Macs who own it, I found it's not only poor for image work like Photoshop, but really for anything requiring a lot of precision.
It is great, like you say, for browsing content where you need to do a lot of moving back and forth through pages.
I always imagined self-driving vehicles would "track" based on some sort of magnetic strips embedded in the roads. It now appears everyone working on these systems is attempting to make them work with radar, cameras, etc. so as not to add any special requirements for the road design.
I'm not so sure that's the optimal way to go about things, and your snowplow example is probably just one scenario that makes this point.
If you really want to trust peoples' lives to self-driving cars and trucks on the roads, I think it'd be wise to modify the roadways with some sort of standardized system of markers that these vehicles could easily follow along with.
See... I could look at what you did two completely different ways, though.
1. I could agree with you completely, acknowledging the concept that you finally "made something of your life" by eliminating your debts, buying some land of your own, and building your own house by yourself.
OR ...
2. I could view such actions as little more than one man's way to rationalize away the fact he was just burnt out on working a 9-5, Mon-Fri type job for someone else. I mean, quite a few people you'd ask would say they'd much rather be in a position to pay someone ELSE to build their home for them, than resorting to putting it up, stick by stick, themselves....
Truth is? I think it can go either way, because each individual has to decide for him/herself what they want to do with their life, and what they hope to get out of it. And sure, nobody wants to work until they're "old and used up" (well, almost nobody -- though you can probably find exceptions even there, with people who really define themselves by the work they do each day). But I know I've done both the "employee" and the "small business owner" thing. Both have their advantages, but for me? Owning my own business is less desirable to me, these days, than the idea of a steady job I'm paid adequately for. The problem with business ownership is you really have no security. It's ALL on you, the business owner, to make it work - so you wind up with your business encroaching pretty heavily on your "free/spare time" when things aren't going so smoothly with it. Meanwhile, the more successful you get and the more people you start hiring to work for you, the more govt. starts breathing down your back with taxes and regulations, etc. etc. And to me, that's really *not* my idea of freedom.
Actually, you're probably right, except don't forget there are some home ownership possibilities within reach by shopping the foreclosures. I have a good friend who got a really nice home for pennies on the dollar in Alabama that way, about a year ago - and he was just recently out of a bankruptcy when his business imploded.
The downside is, buying a foreclosure property is a huge nightmare of dealing with various people for months on end, doing loads of paperwork, etc. etc. And after all that, you may not even get the house you placed an offer on - so you could be back to square one. But the determined can get a good deal.
Businesses have already moved about as far towards "agile" as they could move, and many have over-extended their staff, just to hang on despite the poor economy.
What I've seen in I.T. (with my own job, with the jobs my wife has taken in I.T., and with jobs my friends have in I.T.) is a situation where employers are uncertain what to do next. They need more workers, but they lack confidence that their business can remain viable if the economy takes another big stumble.
Many are trying to hire contractors so they don't have to commit right now to taking on more workers full-time. But they're struggling because the contractors want the benefits and security of a real, full-time job as an employee. So they have a revolving door of contractors who only stay until they find the next contract job that pays a little better or has better hours or working conditions.
While you'll still find cases where there's a lot of largely useless "overhead" of middle managers that don't contribute much -- my experience is that these tend to be the "lifers" who have been entrenched in those positions from back when the economy was much better than it is today. They may know "all the right people" to hang onto those jobs, or perhaps they have some sort of sweet arrangement where it will cost the company a big severance package to eliminate then. In larger companies, sometimes a big group of these people stick together and do everything in their power to "scratch each others' backs" so the new hires get blamed for their inefficiencies. Whatever the case -- just because you see people in those positions, earning that type of paycheck, doesn't mean those jobs will exist for YOU as a new hire, when someone vacates one of them.
Basically, we're on a track where everyone in a company is valuable.... Even if that means wearing multiple hats and doing work you never imagined was part of your job description. But that said, there's still room for "project managers". They just might find themselves asked to do BOTH management and hands-on work at the same time, these days.
HP already utterly and completely blew it with tablet computing when they made the boneheaded move of cancelling the TouchPad. I bought a new 32GB model on sale for $149 as part of a closeout promotion Micro Center was running. (Basically, if you bought some other HP computer, you qualified for the $149 TouchPad too, and I had to get an HP desktop for my work.)
Despite being an Apple iPad user since day 1, I gained a lot of respect for the product HP had. They copied off a lot of the little things that made Apple successful, while managing to retain their own uniqueness. The TouchStone wireless charging dock was brilliant, for example, and was FAR more elegant than any of Apple's iPad dock solutions. The integrated login of webOS was a great concept as well. (Just create an HP user account and configure all of the online services you want to use with the TouchPad through that master account. Then you're signed in to all of them, or can select the ones you want on and off at any time with virtual switches to slide on or off. Go to the email client and all of your configured mailboxes are pulled up right there. Same for the calendars.) Even their online store had what I thought was an excellent layout -- where you browsed it like a magazine. The home page of the store would welcome you with suggestions of relevant apps you might wish to look at, based on the next holiday coming up or time of year, and there were pages of several featured apps described in more detail as you turned the pages and browsed.
If HP had any sense, they should have realized that the rush to grab up all of these discontinued tablets at blowout prices gave them a window of opportunity. All of a sudden, they had a decent-sized market out there of active users interested in the product! They needed to strike while that iron was still hot, rushing back to look at ways to improve the tablet and re-release a version 2 (hopefully at a reduced price that would keep it competitive -- but one still high enough so the sales would be profitable). From what I heard, there was actually a second TouchPad product almost completed when HP canned the project anyway.
The Palm guys who did webOS were really talented people ... just the type HP needed to actually do something innovative. But in the musical CEO madness, they got thrown under the bus.
HP can spin this any way they like, pretending they're sending Microsoft a message by cancelling support for a new ARM based Win 8 tablet. But come on! I see right through that B.S. Reality is, such a product would lack any real appeal compared to what Microsoft themselves announced. It'd be yet another boring wanna-be tablet in a black plastic case, with too high of a sticker price. Honestly, I can't see why any talented engineers or designers would even make more than a minimal effort working on anything new for HP these days? They just crap all over most of it and cancel project after project without giving them enough time to mature and gain popularity.
The traffic laws are a very sore spot for me as well. The types who go around with a "cops are heroes!" attitude get under my skin, when they actually fall for the propaganda about "we're only issuing tickets because we care about your safety".
To be honest, I'm a person who has gone my entire life with probably no more than 5 traffic tickets (including a state trooper who cited me for driving 65 in a 55MPH zone on an interstate, back when I was 18 -- and that may have been one of the only really "fair" ones I think I received). So it's not a case of me constantly getting tickets for speeding or reckless driving and having a chip on my shoulder.
I just see the entire thing as little more than tax collection / revenue generation, under a guise of performing a public service. Any time an excuse can be made to increase the financial penalties for a given violation, they jump on it, regardless of its actual effectiveness. (Just a few weeks ago, I made a road trip from St. Louis to the Chicago area, and I must have gone through at LEAST 10 different "road construction zones" with signs announcing fines would be doubled or tripled for exceeding the posted speed limits. In about 9 out of 10 of those zones, there was no actual construction taking place. In a few cases, I saw a pickup truck with one or two workers at a site, but they appeared to be there only to double-check on some details of work already completed, or ?? It was abundantly clear that there was no pressing reason to slow traffic down from the 65MPH limit to as little as 35MPH (creating big traffic backups) -- and in fact, most people elected to ignore the reduced speed demands because it was so clearly pointless. Still, a cop could easily decide to sit at any one of those work zones and issue BIG $ fines -- and drivers would have no recourse.
The whole "game" of cops trying to hide so they can catch a speeder is insulting, as well. If they're *really* doing all of this to "protect and serve" as their logo always claims -- wouldn't you think they'd want their police vehicle to be very clearly visible to all of the traffic? Certainly, you wouldn't use an *unmarked* car, where someone might not even be sure they were legitimately being pulled over!
The problem I see with the "logic" that anyone drinking enough alcohol to cause slight impairment while driving should be arrested and punished is what could (should?) follow if you really believe it.
For example... Cars with partially worn tires are less capable of stopping or maneuvering out of the way of obstacles than cars with new tires. For that matter, there's very clear evidence that simply choosing one brand/model of ties over another leads to differences in a vehicle's performance -- even when all tires in question are brand new. Should we start making arrests when someone has those cheap Asian tires on their vehicle, that test results show have less traction than others? Should someone be found criminally at fault if they injure someone in a car accident and it's found their tires were really close to needing replacement?
I think as a society, we're so eager now to punish drunk driving, we've gone towards practically a "zero tolerance" policy, without much regard for reality. Yes, drinking and driving is a "bad idea" on the whole. But like most things, the majority of people are able to use common sense, deciding for themselves if they're safe to drive or not. The ones who can't (even when others around them express their concern) are the ones who pose the real threat.
With practically all other aspects of operating motor vehicles, we seem to be accepting of the idea that there's a "reasonable level of tolerance" for conditions that hamper a driver from driving optimally. We have state inspections in place to keep dangerous cars off the road until they're fixed, but we only require they be checked once every couple years or so. People driving around with a headlight burnt out may get a ticket, but cars with dimmer headlights than the norm are usually ignored as "good enough". A tired driver is generally NOT arrested, though we know they're likely just as much of a hazard on the roads as someone who drank a beer or two recently.
Of course the parent poster is right... I'd imagine any serious credit card thief would be operating through Tor, doing anonymous payment with something like Bitcoin, and not even fooling around with signing up on new sites of unknown/unverified origins.
But this is pretty typical for the FBI. They're as interested in the P.R. as anything else. They need to show they're making arrests and giving the news media something positive to print. It helps ensure their continued funding for the division handling these high-tech crimes and they probably also figure it's a deterrent to beginners, who could become tomorrow's elite card thieves otherwise.
IMO, it's tough to argue with the man's statements here, because they're pretty general, and therefore easily defensible.
I mean, yes, you can never just throw devices at kids and expect they'll magically improve learning. (For that matter, you can't just throw money at schools and expect it will magically improve their ability to educate ... but that's another issue.)
When you look a little more in-depth at the situation at hand, though? You find a few details he glosses right over:
1. The standard PC has a pretty solid track record in aiding education because it has a full-size keyboard as the primary input device. Tablets, at best, have bluetooth keyboards paired up with them so you can type into the applications you've launched via their touchscreen first. When you need to navigate around in the apps, though, you're often having to take your hands off the keyboard and tap on things on the screen. In most settings, the tablets are used without ANY keyboard, save the virtual one drawn on their displays. That makes them less suited to heavy data entry ... a very common use for computers in educational settings. Bill G. acknowledges this ... but neglects the possibility that school would use a COMBINATION of computers and tablets, depending on what was being done. A tablet makes a pretty compelling content creation device if the user is creating artwork, or music -- and its portability itself might be a big benefit in some of those scenarios.
2. A device is only as good as its application software. Right now, the standard PC has a good 20+ year history of people developing educational software for it. Apple's iPad, a strong new contender in education, only has a couple years of development under its belt, so far, but the explosion in its popularity and promise of easy money selling one's apps via Apple's App Store caused a torrential outpouring of new apps in that brief time. So again, there's some really good stuff out there for an iPad in a school environment. Now Microsoft's new Surface tablet? Not so much .... Heck, even if it achieved the same popularity and sales numbers of the iPad, we'd need to wait at least a couple more years to build up a library of good software to run on it.
3. Part of the core problem with our educational system may lie in the structure we impose on the whole learning process. I certainly don't claim to know all the answers, but there have been enlightening TED Talks out there from people illustrating the amazing capability of children to learn without any formal instructor teaching material at all. Given the right motivation, kids wind up teaching each other in a "peer to peer" fashion, sharing the knowledge they discover individually with the rest of their group. Those experiments usually relied on some sort of device (Internet terminal, computer, tablet, whatever) as the motivator which imparted the knowledge. The current school system leaves a lot to be desired in its ability to allow individuals to learn at their own pace, or wander off the predefined "paths" to explore topics of interest in greater depth. So *maybe* it's as much a problem of these devices not integrating neatly with an educational structure designed WAY before their existence as anything else?
... will work just fine in my Apple Mac Pro! Oh wait.....
Seriously, this is the kind of boost Apple *should* have been after, since they're now stretching out the upgrade of the Mac Pro until some time in 2013..... They could at least update OS X with an incremental release and start offering this card for the now 2 year old Mac Pro they did a slight CPU speed bump to and called "updated", so there'd be SOME sane reason for people to order one.
I don't know.... Right now, I think both AMD and nVidia have pretty good handles on how to produce graphics boards consumers think are worthwhile. They could start copying every single innovation that each other formerly had as "company secrets", to the point where both brands of board performed absolutely identically in benchmark tests -- and STILL, I suspect they'd both sell about the same number of boards as before.
The real problem is, the marketplace has consolidated so much, you really only have these two companies as your choices for a 3D accelerated video chipset. Intel is trying to work their way in as a 3rd. player with accelerated, yet integrated, graphics chipsets -- but truthfully? I doubt they'll seriously chase after the high-performance graphics market in any serious way. For them, it's more lucrative to offer decent/usable levels of performance for the typical user and compete on having a lower price.
Once upon a time, we had choices from companies like Matrox, Diamond, Hercules, Trident .... Not so much anymore.
It's possible ... but I doubt that #1, your credit score is as high as they'd rank it if you did things the way I described, and #2, you can go on with that strategy indefinitely without eventually having the terms and conditions of your card changed on you.
The credit card issuers are NOT really vigilant about what's going on with all the cards out there.... Many years ago, I went through a Chapter 7 and one of the cards I was able to keep (and keep using) for many months after the fact was a Home Depot card, issued by one of the creditors I filed against. They should have immediately cancelled that card (even though I paid it off on-time and didn't have a balance on it). They finally realized their error and cancelled it, but not for close to a year.
If you don't do something that gets their attention (like failing to make a payment), they only review your account every so often. And when they do, and see that you don't owe anything? They may be betting for a while that you'll eventually use the card for some major purchase or emergency situation, and carry a balance for a while when that happens. If that never materializes though, *eventually*, they'll decide you're just not a profitable customer for them....
Yep! I'm not a big fan of govt. regulation (your basic libertarian-minded type here), but PayPal managed to skirt a lot of control that everyone else in the banking industry seems to be held to, and I never quite understood how they were granted an exception.
For example, the eBay/PayPal merger certainly seems questionable, if nothing else? eBay purchases PayPal and immediately proceeds to make it the ONLY form of payment allowed for auctions on their system. I'm not even allowed to pay with CASH (supposedly legal tender for "all debts, public and private")? Before that, you could use several forms of e-payment on eBay.... I forget the name of the business, but I know there was a service allowing you to issue a check to the seller, which they used to explicitly support, integrated into their site. I paid someone using that method at least once before.
Even THAT wouldn't be as irritating if PayPal didn't charge any fees for the eBay transactions, but they do! You have to pay eBay a listing fee and a percentage of what the item sells for when sold ... but the person paying with PayPal is still subject to any transaction fees PayPal charges!
Yeah.... unfortunately, that's NOT the correct way to use a credit card, in the lenders' viewpoint. And guess who makes the rules? (Hint: Not you.)
If you repeatedly pay off a credit card in full, you're just an expense on their balance sheet. (They have to keep lending you money for as long as 25-30 days at a time without making a penny of interest on it -- not to mention maintaining your account with them, printing up fresh cards for you every so often, etc. etc.)
Sure, it shows you're fiscally responsible, but not in a way that benefits them. What they're really after (and reward with a higher credit score) are people who actually carry a balance, but always make payments on time AND keep that balance somewhere under 50% of the total limit you're allowed to borrow.
If you're really going to make sure you never carry a balance on your credit cards, you're better off not having them at all. Just save up money in an interest-earning checking account that includes a debit card and use it instead. As another poster said, the alternative eventually becomes the card issuer charging you some sort of annual fee to keep the card active. That really stinks, because it's like you're paying them interest except without even getting to borrow the money first.
Right.... Out of all the possible scenarios for taking corporate data with you upon your termination, the one that seems most viable and useful is taking customer contact info, assuming you're in a position to use it yourself.
The paranoia of stealing confidential data to sell to competitors is probably the LEAST likely to actually happen. Like you said, anyone doing such a thing would put themselves at high risk of being arrested, if word got out they supplied the information. (And they'd have to live in fear of that for MANY years after the fact, which might be just as bad as actually getting caught!)
You don't even have to be in sales to want the customer data. I once worked for an on-site PC service company where the owner seemed really paranoid about one of us taking his customer data and using it to bypass him, and work directly with his clients. Honestly, I never had ANY interest in doing such a thing myself, because among other things -- I just enjoyed getting dispatched to do the calls, without all the hassles of doing the taxes, the accounting, the advertising, and the bill collection if/when someone didn't pay. One day, he found out he was losing his office space suddenly, due to circumstances beyond his control. That was SUPPOSED to mean we'd still carry on business as usual, except I wouldn't have a physical office to report to in the morning or when calls were done. He was going to work from home for a while and call me to do what was needed.
Unfortunately, it also meant he had to let go of his office assistant ... and she needed to find another job. One of his customers had recently mentioned to her that he could probably help her find work if she ever needed it, so she went through his customer database to get that guy's number, before her last day of work.
Well, the owner discovered someone had accessed that data and immediately assumed it was me, so all of a sudden, I get a threatening letter in the mail from his lawyer, when I was just sitting there wondering why my phone hadn't rang with any customers to visit yet!
After that? Yeah, I contacted as many of his customers as I knew how to reach (WITHOUT using his data!) and informed them I'd be opening my own on-site business. I still run it to this day, and he shut down his company years ago.
Unfortunately, this is one of the problems we've got today, with politicians realizing the popularity in taking an anti sex crime hard-line stance. There are few things more universally accepted than the idea a child molester deserves harsh punishment. The problem, of course, is that true child molesters really aren't very common. Certainly not common enough to sustain a division of the FBI devoted to nothing but capturing them. They need better "performance metrics" than that! So what you wind up with is all of this vast over-reaching....
Child porn is one of those convenient "value added" crimes easily attached to the pursuit of child molesters... After all, the producer of it is clearly abusing the kids involved, and it's not hard to get the public to buy into the fact that anyone obtaining that sort of material is just as guilty, right? Except no, they're very OFTEN not!
Many years ago, I ran a computer bulletin board system, and on at least 2 or 3 occasions, people uploaded child porn photo collections, zipped up into archives and incorrectly described as completely different types of files. (I recall catching one, one time, that simply said "Great OS/2 screen saver collection!") As soon as I discovered such things, I immediately deleted them -- but what if I hadn't caught it before someone else did who reported it to authorities? Yep, you can bet I would have been arrested and charged with possession and intent to redistribute, or at least something along those lines!
And perhaps some would say, "Well, you ARE guilty if you found the stuff and didn't report the person who uploaded it to you!" But again, I'm afraid I don't agree. MANY times, people using the BBS's used to download a file from source A and immediately re-upload it to destination B, without ever looking at it first. Most people just assumed the descriptions stated were accurate and they wanted to earn upload credits, so they could download something else they wanted. There's a good probability the uploader of those files had no clue what was in them, and maybe the site THEY got them from wasn't aware either.
Your post was modded "Funny" but I think you're probably exactly right!
If you're like any of the typical long-time Mac users I know who keep vintage hardware around? You're still happily running old versions of MacOS on it! I don't see why you'd really go looking for another commercial OS alternative for such a system, unless it promised to give you something new you couldn't do otherwise.
In this case, you'd actually lose major functionality like wireless card support by switching to it. The *only* really valid reason I can see for MorphOS is the Amiga compatibility. That's pretty cool, but like you say, very much a niche. (I do know a few former Amiga users who'd still like to be able to run some of the old software they used to use ... but I doubt any of them would pay much for the ability. It'd be cheaper to just find a whole Amiga on eBay or something, wouldn't it?)
Sure they're deals.... But a set of tax rules uniformly applied to everyone doesn't entice anyone new to move to your state, if they're doing just fine where they're at (a state with a lower tax rate).
All I'm saying is, it doesn't seem unreasonable to me for a state's politicians to take an interest in attracting businesses/jobs from other states, and a limited time exemption from the normal tax rules is as good an incentive to offer as any.
So no, the fact it's a "deal" doesn't automatically strike me as the core problem here. The problem is, just as you say, with politicians acting for their own personal gain vs. having their own state's best interests at heart. The solution? Well, that gets into all sorts of arguments and possible scenarios -- many of which aren't too likely to happen since political status-quo power is so entrenched. But IMO, you should at least subject any such tax break measure to a vote by the citizens of the state. If the people don't believe it's a good deal, there should be no way to just "push it through anyway".
A better answer probably involves removal of politics as a career job... Make it a volunteer position which only pays a small salary (at least something to cover one's own costs of volunteering, such as travel expenses involved), and frankly? I think re-election shouldn't even be an option any more. It encourages too much corruption, and diverts the energy and attention of politicians from the issues at hand to concerning themselves with self-promotion for a re-election.
Some would say "Only the wealthy would ever be capable of volunteering." -- but I'd argue that #1, our nation was FOUNDED by such people in the first place, so that's not necessarily a bad thing. But more importantly, #2, I'd imagine with such a volunteer system in place, a willingness to do so for a term would look very good on one's resume. Just as broke college grads are known to go off and do volunteer work for a while for the sake of the experience, some would do the same with politics.
The real issue with states giving tax breaks to entice companies to move there isn't simply them "stealing jobs from other states rather than creating them".
The reason such measures usually fail is a state's failure to demand specific goals as part of the deal.
Time and time again, companies took advantage of huge tax breaks only to plunk down some sort of office or warehouse that doesn't actually hire more than a few dozen employees. That, or they may only stay as long as the tax break continues, uprooting the whole operation after the 3 or 5 year deal ends.
IMO, there's nothing inherently wrong with state trying to encourage businesses to set up shop within their borders. Even though we're a group of 50 United States, each one still competes with each other internally, much like corporations with multiple divisions often operate each division so it competes with the others.
The PROBLEM is, states need to get a clue about such deals, ensuring it's beneficial for both parties. (Most likely, corrupt politicians simply don't care, because they're getting some kind of kickback or garnering support they need by making the deals happen, at any cost to the citizenry of the state.) Any such arrangement should include contingencies, such as "You will lose the tax break AND owe back taxes from the time you moved here if you don't consistently keep X number of people employed, at wages no less than $Y per year." and "Moving out of the state for a period of 10 years from the time this tax break expires constitutes breach of contract, and again, is subject to back taxes."
A company who genuinely has a desire to move to the state (with a belief it really benefits them in the long-haul) would still gladly accept such an arrangement, IMO. The ones who complain it's too restrictive were likely just trying to milk the system to the state's detriment anyway.
Actually, no... I don't think I was confusing cause and effect, at least in this situation.
My point is, all of those failed experiments at taking on markets Best Buy wasn't a good fit for cost them serious money... Money they would have better spent keeping stores well stocked with desirable goods for their existing customer-base, even IF those goods took a little longer to move off of shelves.
That and they lost sight of the fact that value/budget minded consumers were their core customers. They thought they could just wave a wand and "upscale" things, to attract a more wealthy demographic. Sure, that's a nice demographic to have as your core customer -- but you don't just tell everyone else to "screw off" (by making the "Reward Zone" program less useful, raising prices across the board, eliminating the ability to buy open-box goods at discounts, etc.) and then try to convince discerning shoppers to use, say, Magnolia home theater, instead of well-established local high-end AV shops with much better quality products and more knowledgeable installers.)
Ultimately, yes ... I'm a libertarian-minded person myself, and I get the logic behind the "taxation = theft at gun point" argument.
At the same time though? I've come to the realization that if we're collectively agreeing to be governed by some sort of centralized body (no matter how many checks and balances it may have), we've also got to agree to let this body take in some (hopefully as SMALL a part as possible) part of our earnings, for its continued operation.
Some of my once-libertarian acquaintances have moved on to more of an agorist or anarchist philosophy for this reason. (They followed things to their conclusion, and realized the world they're advocating living in HAS to be one with NO central governance!)
I think every libertarian I know can agree with the basic premise that "government is evil", yet we're not "anarchists" because we're still latching onto the ideas held by the Founding Fathers of the USA. They believed government is a NECESSARY evil if one hopes to keep a nation together for any length of time. So they did their best to design one that was as "dictator proof" as possible, while guaranteeing a number of basic individual rights and freedoms for its citizens.
All of that said? Yes, I think our nation has gotten VERY sloppy and haphazard with tax collection. It needs to be treated with a LOT more respect, as one of those inherently EVIL parts of our governmental system that we ONLY tolerate because we understand its necessity. When taxes get levied just because someone has an agenda to "make it more difficult on people to do something I don't care for them doing", or under false pretense of "safety" (like most run-of-the-mill speeding tickets handed out), I feel that govt. is betraying our collective trust -- a MAJOR problem.
Yep... Micro Center was an absolutely savior here in St. Louis. Ever since CompUSA and Conputer City closed, we really didn't have a "computer store" to speak of. You have the randomly scattered "mom and pop" type computer stores, usually run by foreigners try to con you into buying used junk at nearly new prices, or alternately, poor geeks trying to scrape by, making a living cleaning viruses and replacing bad RAM for the clueless. And you have Best Buy and WalMart at the other end of the spectrum -- increasingly similar in the pricing and availability of computer-related goods they stock.
But really, when Micro Center tries to "reach" a bit outside the computer sales area (such as selling flat panel TVs or digital camera gear), I think they fall flat. I hope they don't try to fully fill in for Best Buy, selling major appliances and everything else.... Part of what makes them great is having so much inventory and some actual knowledge about JUST the computer-related things.