To be fair, I do know (in the UK) two people who have made decisions that resulted in not earning more because of the tax they would pay on the additional income. One turned down a promotion to a more senior role the other turned down additional work as a self-employed accountant in both cases a major factor was that they'd got a comfortable lifestyle already and trading in time for an income that they'd lose 40% of in income tax plus some more in national insurance wasn't worth it.
Obviously that isn't true for everyone and I'm not making a statement on whether tax is or isn't too high; I just wanted to share my experience that contrasts with yours.
The people in the middle (like me, and mine) get just about nothing from the government, but the government is in our pockets,... , and we DAMNED SURE don't benefit from wars being fought halfway around the world to enrich the oil industries.
Roads, National Defence, Medicare, Schools, Federal law enforcement and about a thousand other things aside sure you poor middle class folk don't get 'anything' from that greedy old government.
As to the war nonsense maybe if the American people hadn't been hugely in favour of invading Afghanistan and hugely in favour of invading Iraq I'd take the sob story about how it isn't the people's fault a little more seriously.
All well and good except mixed martial arts apparently was part of the evolutionary process until quite recently. Guess what, shooting someone is easier still so obviously that would be how primates attacked each other... The fact that a bee often dies when stinging gives you a pretty good example of how evolution and theoretically optimal aren't intrinsically linked!
Joking aside the issue is there is no correct ratio. Different companies have different tolerances for, and prioritisation for, deadlines and project work. In my current firm a ration of estimate of time needed x 3 (for typical issues0 would probably be about right. The problem is that if they ask you to explain why something that includes maybe 40hrs work is going to take 2 months many companies won't like hearing, and sometimes accept, because people will invariably stall, get things wrong, forget, leave or change their minds.
How could gun control...or even a ban on guns...ever possibly stop a nutcase who won't obey any laws from obtaining a gun?
If you don't already own a gun then you need to buy or steal it both of which take more time, and have a higher chance of leading to the individual being intercepted. America does have a real issue because of the amount of guns already there so any change would invariably take decades.
The truth is that there is no good reason to make gun ownership as easy as it in America. The constitutional argument made is complete nonsense. The odd pistol isn't going to allow the people to overthrow their government; you'd need to massively shrink the military and allow the public to own fighter jets, nuclear subs and drones for that to be remotely plausible. Is anyone really suggesting that the public be allowed to own these types of weapons? If not, then the basic premise doesn't stand up.
If we ignore the smokescreen provided by that constitutional argument then we can at least address the true reasons why people want guns to be available 1) They believe gun restrictions are a restriction on freedom 2) They like owning guns. Neither of these are bad points or things people should be ashamed to admit and defend. The freedom argument is true and I'd love to take the position that no freedom should ever be restricted but we do that when we don't let people buy enriched uranium, run meths labs etc. Ultimately we'll never come to a workable solution to guns in the US without getting the constitutional issue out of the way of debating the real points.
Not paying more tax than you are legally required to isn't evil; being honest about not minding doing it isn't evil. People need to stop throwing around hyperbole before we get to the point where it's "OMG Google are evil, someone died somewhere of something money could solve and Google didn't give them any!"
Believe it or not it is possible to believe the system should be changed and still take advantage of the system as it is. But then given you're happy to throw generalisations like that around I doubt anything other than a black and white view of issues appeals to you.
That's a good summary. What I find really odd about Russia's position in this, and god knows how many similar events, is that they seem content to support the side obviously seen as the 'baddy' by the rest of the world; who will invariably lose. So they get some short term sales and in return are probably losing the ability to sell just about anything into Syria when the inevitable happens. As a bonus they even make themselves less popular with the West and middle eastern countries who don't support Assad.
You would think it would make far more sense to negotiate some sweeteners from the US and Europe for agreeing to support the UN position.
How would the already-clogged courts react to what amounts to denial-of-service attack on the judicial system?
Can the editors please stop feeding the worst aspects of groupthink and allowing this kind of nonsense onto the site. In no way is equatable to a DOS attack on the justice system. How sympathetic would you be of a bank that took £100 from each customer and then when they all sued used the defence 'all these cases are like a DOS on the justice system'?
Feel free to dislike the tactics and people involved but lets at least keep the level of the front page marginally higher than blatant trolling.
Would be interesting to see the case say Rugby Union.. Plenty more bashes to unprotected heads than American football.
The thing is that brain trauma is down to movement of the head. You may get more cuts and bruises playing without a helmet (and may even get more broken bones etc as well) because the force of impact is dissapated by the helmet across the whole head; but the brain doesn't know that, all that matters for it is that it is being violently thrown about.
Google will have hordes of experts ready to fly out to your site and help you migrate... then what Microsoft?
Gold will flow from springs, mana will pour from heaven and pigs will learn to levitate. Google's customer service is fucking appalling* for just about all its services; you'd have to be smoking some heavy duty crack to think any desktop release they'll do would look anything like that, as would the people who modded it up.
*Said as a massive Google product fan; they power most of what I do in terms of hardware and software.
Or actually have two numbers and make the first question for the 'free' support line to ask for some kind of authentication. You could show the relevant number based on which version of the software they are running (ie whether it is premium supported or not).
If, as you believe, the people needing support aren't even aware that they haven't got supported software (and I can understand that logic) then I think anything short of offering support won't go down well.
If there was one thing that could ever drive me to 'hate' Jews it would be the constant attempts by people (possibly not even Jewish) to equate criticism of a person or nation who is Jewish, for reasons completely unrelated to religion, with racism. Israel has been given an incredible amount of leeway because of the atrocities committed by a regime, opposed by most of the western world 60 years ago; it's about time that they stop trying to live life by incessantly playing of the victim card.
Oh we fucked it up big time by allowing this to start. That said, we know it was a stupid mistake but there's fuck all we can do about it while America keeps propping up the Israeli position for political reasons rather than do what is needed to bring about something a little bit closer to peace.
You're absolutely right about some companies using policy to do what management would solve. If someone keeps responding to my emails without including others then I'll reply to them saying something like "You haven't included x, y and z on the email could you let them know?" it's slow progress but you can make it easier for people to do it right the first time and be reasonable about it and they'll get better.
When I changed roles loads of people had me on distribution lists that I repeatedly asked to be taken off. After about 6 weeks of asking I created rules for them that deleted they sent me and sent them a polite reply saying due to the unwanted emails I was rejecting all emails from them, that they would get a mail saying this each time they send me one, could they please remove me and let me know by phone. Of the 7 hold outs 5 worked it out eventually. Ultimately making doing it wrong more annoying than doing it right works.
But you're rather naive in thinking their is some easy black and white line between ok tac avoidance and wrong tax avoidance. If you had dropped your tax to 30% would that be ok? 25%, 20%, 15%, 10% and why would that be ok but 0.00001% lower would be henious behaviour.
We have tax laws and it is folly to try and replace laws with some fuzzy statement saying "You should pay the tax that we think it is appropriate you pay (decided at our discretion)" which is exactly what you do when you stop using the legality of tax payment as a baseline.
Simplify tax laws, remove loopholes etc by all means but until we do we can't really be shocked if this happens.
What I can't understand is how you can conceivably imagine that the content of the link is relevant to the discussion; Hamas can be terrorists, Palestinians could hold racist views about Jews and it can still be true that Israel is committing war crimes and that the claims of anti-Semitism made against anyone who says anything that isn't flattering regarding Israel can be bollocks.
Exactly the same logic can be used to argue that with criminality existing it isn't a bad idea to just tag everyone. Suffice to say it is poor logic and nonsensical solution. Children are safer now than any time in the past these badges aren't going to stop them being abducted or buying drugs. If your schools weren't treating the children like a threat then maybe you'd do a better job of educating them.
The only thing thing anti-Semitic that is alive and well is the ignorant people who try and equate any criticism of a nation or of a person to anti-Semitism as if it is impossible that the criticism might be based on a valid concern rather than racist motive.
You obviously an activist due to your selective reading.
who the fuck really thinks a pidgeon is more important to any human than their pet dog.
Talk of the pot calling the kettle black.
His point and it is a fair one is that most people see the reason for killing an animal and method as important in determining if it should be allowed. That is why we are happy to eat chickens but generally don't approve of cock fighting. Why we have protected species but will still kill a Shark/Lion/Bear that is believed to attack humans.
Personally I think the killing/harming of animals where amusement is the only, or clearly primary, point is wrong. I would vote for laws to stop it; I wouldn't however disrupt others from doing it if it was legal.
The story is about pigeon shooting, how many times has 'little Suzy' been pecked to death by rabid pigeons (which are housed in cages until a few moments before they are released and shot)?
Besides which regardless of what was being done if the 'hunters' were breaking the law by shooting the drone then they should be prosecuted. If the activists were then they should be prosecuted. Acting like shooting stuff is the standard acceptable response to legal actions you disagree with is a pretty fucking stupid basis for a civilised society.
I was already going to respond by pointing out that there are plenty of racist cunts out there who'd bitch about burqa's; thanks for providing a well placed example. For the sake of avoiding indignant responses, I appreciate that some people object to burqa's on idealogical grounds to do with oppression of women and not because of it's link to Islam.
I have never heard anyone in the UK talk of a BBC tax, I would assume they are dumbing down the concept of the license fee for their audience. As someone who has never paid the license fee yet happily uses various TVs for games, dvds, BBC iPlayer and Sky Player I can assure you that there is no tax on tvs in the UK.
If that were the case, why put Larson-Green in his place? She's the one behind Metro (and Ribbon before that)...
That's an informative point and it's a shame you posted it AC as it means that many people may not get to see it. Microsoft promoted up the person who has been leading the changes in Microsoft's user interfaces; if anything this means expect more of it.
I've actually upgraded my home PC to Windows 8 since release. Is it better/worse than 7? I really can't say yet as there are some annoying shortcomings but I prefer the new 'start' system (as someone who just uses the win key as a search hotkey anyway).
Actually my first source for most of that information, in the BBC's credit, was BBC radio 4s coverage of the story. It is quite likely that some of the people who named him specifically on Twitter will be receiving a court summons for defamation of character soon which again will be an interesting case in the field of both news and technology.
Slashdot Mirror
To be fair, I do know (in the UK) two people who have made decisions that resulted in not earning more because of the tax they would pay on the additional income. One turned down a promotion to a more senior role the other turned down additional work as a self-employed accountant in both cases a major factor was that they'd got a comfortable lifestyle already and trading in time for an income that they'd lose 40% of in income tax plus some more in national insurance wasn't worth it.
Obviously that isn't true for everyone and I'm not making a statement on whether tax is or isn't too high; I just wanted to share my experience that contrasts with yours.
Roads, National Defence, Medicare, Schools, Federal law enforcement and about a thousand other things aside sure you poor middle class folk don't get 'anything' from that greedy old government.
As to the war nonsense maybe if the American people hadn't been hugely in favour of invading Afghanistan and hugely in favour of invading Iraq I'd take the sob story about how it isn't the people's fault a little more seriously.
All well and good except mixed martial arts apparently was part of the evolutionary process until quite recently. Guess what, shooting someone is easier still so obviously that would be how primates attacked each other... The fact that a bee often dies when stinging gives you a pretty good example of how evolution and theoretically optimal aren't intrinsically linked!
Joking aside the issue is there is no correct ratio. Different companies have different tolerances for, and prioritisation for, deadlines and project work. In my current firm a ration of estimate of time needed x 3 (for typical issues0 would probably be about right. The problem is that if they ask you to explain why something that includes maybe 40hrs work is going to take 2 months many companies won't like hearing, and sometimes accept, because people will invariably stall, get things wrong, forget, leave or change their minds.
If you don't already own a gun then you need to buy or steal it both of which take more time, and have a higher chance of leading to the individual being intercepted. America does have a real issue because of the amount of guns already there so any change would invariably take decades.
The truth is that there is no good reason to make gun ownership as easy as it in America. The constitutional argument made is complete nonsense. The odd pistol isn't going to allow the people to overthrow their government; you'd need to massively shrink the military and allow the public to own fighter jets, nuclear subs and drones for that to be remotely plausible. Is anyone really suggesting that the public be allowed to own these types of weapons? If not, then the basic premise doesn't stand up.
If we ignore the smokescreen provided by that constitutional argument then we can at least address the true reasons why people want guns to be available 1) They believe gun restrictions are a restriction on freedom 2) They like owning guns. Neither of these are bad points or things people should be ashamed to admit and defend. The freedom argument is true and I'd love to take the position that no freedom should ever be restricted but we do that when we don't let people buy enriched uranium, run meths labs etc. Ultimately we'll never come to a workable solution to guns in the US without getting the constitutional issue out of the way of debating the real points.
Not paying more tax than you are legally required to isn't evil; being honest about not minding doing it isn't evil. People need to stop throwing around hyperbole before we get to the point where it's "OMG Google are evil, someone died somewhere of something money could solve and Google didn't give them any!"
Believe it or not it is possible to believe the system should be changed and still take advantage of the system as it is. But then given you're happy to throw generalisations like that around I doubt anything other than a black and white view of issues appeals to you.
That's a good summary. What I find really odd about Russia's position in this, and god knows how many similar events, is that they seem content to support the side obviously seen as the 'baddy' by the rest of the world; who will invariably lose. So they get some short term sales and in return are probably losing the ability to sell just about anything into Syria when the inevitable happens. As a bonus they even make themselves less popular with the West and middle eastern countries who don't support Assad.
You would think it would make far more sense to negotiate some sweeteners from the US and Europe for agreeing to support the UN position.
Can the editors please stop feeding the worst aspects of groupthink and allowing this kind of nonsense onto the site. In no way is equatable to a DOS attack on the justice system. How sympathetic would you be of a bank that took £100 from each customer and then when they all sued used the defence 'all these cases are like a DOS on the justice system'?
Feel free to dislike the tactics and people involved but lets at least keep the level of the front page marginally higher than blatant trolling.
The thing is that brain trauma is down to movement of the head. You may get more cuts and bruises playing without a helmet (and may even get more broken bones etc as well) because the force of impact is dissapated by the helmet across the whole head; but the brain doesn't know that, all that matters for it is that it is being violently thrown about.
Gold will flow from springs, mana will pour from heaven and pigs will learn to levitate. Google's customer service is fucking appalling* for just about all its services; you'd have to be smoking some heavy duty crack to think any desktop release they'll do would look anything like that, as would the people who modded it up.
*Said as a massive Google product fan; they power most of what I do in terms of hardware and software.
Or actually have two numbers and make the first question for the 'free' support line to ask for some kind of authentication. You could show the relevant number based on which version of the software they are running (ie whether it is premium supported or not).
If, as you believe, the people needing support aren't even aware that they haven't got supported software (and I can understand that logic) then I think anything short of offering support won't go down well.
If there was one thing that could ever drive me to 'hate' Jews it would be the constant attempts by people (possibly not even Jewish) to equate criticism of a person or nation who is Jewish, for reasons completely unrelated to religion, with racism. Israel has been given an incredible amount of leeway because of the atrocities committed by a regime, opposed by most of the western world 60 years ago; it's about time that they stop trying to live life by incessantly playing of the victim card.
Oh we fucked it up big time by allowing this to start. That said, we know it was a stupid mistake but there's fuck all we can do about it while America keeps propping up the Israeli position for political reasons rather than do what is needed to bring about something a little bit closer to peace.
You're absolutely right about some companies using policy to do what management would solve. If someone keeps responding to my emails without including others then I'll reply to them saying something like "You haven't included x, y and z on the email could you let them know?" it's slow progress but you can make it easier for people to do it right the first time and be reasonable about it and they'll get better.
When I changed roles loads of people had me on distribution lists that I repeatedly asked to be taken off. After about 6 weeks of asking I created rules for them that deleted they sent me and sent them a polite reply saying due to the unwanted emails I was rejecting all emails from them, that they would get a mail saying this each time they send me one, could they please remove me and let me know by phone. Of the 7 hold outs 5 worked it out eventually. Ultimately making doing it wrong more annoying than doing it right works.
But you're rather naive in thinking their is some easy black and white line between ok tac avoidance and wrong tax avoidance. If you had dropped your tax to 30% would that be ok? 25%, 20%, 15%, 10% and why would that be ok but 0.00001% lower would be henious behaviour.
We have tax laws and it is folly to try and replace laws with some fuzzy statement saying "You should pay the tax that we think it is appropriate you pay (decided at our discretion)" which is exactly what you do when you stop using the legality of tax payment as a baseline.
Simplify tax laws, remove loopholes etc by all means but until we do we can't really be shocked if this happens.
What I can't understand is how you can conceivably imagine that the content of the link is relevant to the discussion; Hamas can be terrorists, Palestinians could hold racist views about Jews and it can still be true that Israel is committing war crimes and that the claims of anti-Semitism made against anyone who says anything that isn't flattering regarding Israel can be bollocks.
Exactly the same logic can be used to argue that with criminality existing it isn't a bad idea to just tag everyone. Suffice to say it is poor logic and nonsensical solution. Children are safer now than any time in the past these badges aren't going to stop them being abducted or buying drugs. If your schools weren't treating the children like a threat then maybe you'd do a better job of educating them.
The only thing thing anti-Semitic that is alive and well is the ignorant people who try and equate any criticism of a nation or of a person to anti-Semitism as if it is impossible that the criticism might be based on a valid concern rather than racist motive.
Talk of the pot calling the kettle black.
His point and it is a fair one is that most people see the reason for killing an animal and method as important in determining if it should be allowed. That is why we are happy to eat chickens but generally don't approve of cock fighting. Why we have protected species but will still kill a Shark/Lion/Bear that is believed to attack humans.
Personally I think the killing/harming of animals where amusement is the only, or clearly primary, point is wrong. I would vote for laws to stop it; I wouldn't however disrupt others from doing it if it was legal.
The story is about pigeon shooting, how many times has 'little Suzy' been pecked to death by rabid pigeons (which are housed in cages until a few moments before they are released and shot)?
Besides which regardless of what was being done if the 'hunters' were breaking the law by shooting the drone then they should be prosecuted. If the activists were then they should be prosecuted. Acting like shooting stuff is the standard acceptable response to legal actions you disagree with is a pretty fucking stupid basis for a civilised society.
I was already going to respond by pointing out that there are plenty of racist cunts out there who'd bitch about burqa's; thanks for providing a well placed example. For the sake of avoiding indignant responses, I appreciate that some people object to burqa's on idealogical grounds to do with oppression of women and not because of it's link to Islam.
I have never heard anyone in the UK talk of a BBC tax, I would assume they are dumbing down the concept of the license fee for their audience. As someone who has never paid the license fee yet happily uses various TVs for games, dvds, BBC iPlayer and Sky Player I can assure you that there is no tax on tvs in the UK.
That's an informative point and it's a shame you posted it AC as it means that many people may not get to see it. Microsoft promoted up the person who has been leading the changes in Microsoft's user interfaces; if anything this means expect more of it.
I've actually upgraded my home PC to Windows 8 since release. Is it better/worse than 7? I really can't say yet as there are some annoying shortcomings but I prefer the new 'start' system (as someone who just uses the win key as a search hotkey anyway).
Actually my first source for most of that information, in the BBC's credit, was BBC radio 4s coverage of the story. It is quite likely that some of the people who named him specifically on Twitter will be receiving a court summons for defamation of character soon which again will be an interesting case in the field of both news and technology.