Positioning systems for civilian purposes shouldn't be space based due to obvious issues with satellites (expensive, hard to maintain, etc).
Hopefully, at some point, we'll have positioning systems that don't require any infrastructure all. Would be nice if they could tell the position from landmarks, the sky and Earths gravity field.;)
and even you wasted a ton of time memorizing garbage
Yes. And I don't remember much of it, so it doesn't really matter if it was garbage or not. However, I learned to memorize things, which is a skill that's still useful today.
What exactly you learn at school isn't as important as learning to actually learn.
If the car needs to know in advance where each and every stoplight is, then the whole concept needs to go back to the drawing board.
The car needs to be able recognize stoplights (and traffic signs!), determine whether they apply to the car or not, and follow them, without having a map of every stoplight and traffic sign in the world.
With a consumption tax, it's up to you how much you are taxed.
Great. So "not being taxed" becomes even easier - no tax loopholes required!
Unfortunately, this will also result in the government collecting too little tax and having to look at increasing tax rates or coming up with other ideas for taxation.
This system is basically being designed to fail.
It would also get rid of the inequity between income tax and capital gains tax, which benefits the wealthy a great deal.
There are easier ways to get rid of this obvious problem, such as not distinguishing between the sources of income in the first place. Some sources might possibly be exempt or don't fall under "income" (lottery winnings), but everything else is just added up as "income" and you pay your taxes on that.
LEGO seems to have figured out how to make a whole lot of stuff work together. Maybe they could hire LEGO.
Ask the guys who make Fischertechnik instead. LEGO ist mostly for architects (with a little bit of engineering stuff thrown in); Fischertechnik is solely for engineers.
3D-Printing is nice, but in the early phase, a space/planetary outpost may need to do a lot of chemical processing on a small scale (to create the raw materials for the 3D-printer, to manufacture all kinds of chemical products like lubricants, medications, etc). So the chemical equivalent of a 3D-printer would be extremely helpful (e.g. put in water and carbon dioxide, hook it up to power, and tell it to manufacture basic hydrocarbons).
Such a device would be helpful, if not critical, for the success of colonies away from Earth. It doesn't matter if it's not very efficient, as long as it works, since it could help expand the colonies power generating facilities, life support, etc., and it's probably easier to outfit a colony with a big power supply than with all the chemical products in might possibly need.
However, progressive taxes like this are a bit unfair because they hit the poor who save up for luxuries; it's very difficult to progressively tax _true_ consumption.
They're also highly arbitrary, because you'll have some kind of government guy/committee/whatever deciding what's necessary and what constitutes various degrees of luxury.
Should a poor photographer who saves up a lot of money to buy one really great camera and lens be taxed more than the wealthy dentist (usually) who buys it and leaves it in the box?
Very good question. It's even more interesting if the photographer earns his living with photography, so the camera may not be a luxury, but an investment.
This system of taxation appears to be even more nightmarish than the current mess.
As for consumption tax being regressive, that would have been a good point, except that TFA quite explicitly talked about progressive tax on consumption (i.e. don't tax basic goods but do tax luxury items).
That leads to all kinds of issues.
How do you define "luxury item" for tax purposes?
How do you rate degrees of luxury in order to determine which luxury items are taxed how highly?
How do you deal with the inevitable black market/smuggling issues? Making something that is desired illegal or outrageously expensive pretty much automatically creates a illegal market.
What do you do when people stop buying the defined luxury items and your tax revenue plummets?
Just tax income, regardless of the actual source. I am convinced that todays level of tax revenues could be reached with far lower actual tax rates.
Taxing consumption comes down to value-added tax, which is a relic from times where income was difficulty to assess and tax.
Also, for people with low income, taxing consumption is actually worse than taxing income, since the lower your income, the higher the percentage of it you must spend on consumption in order not to starve or freeze.
Err... okay. I'm sure you can do a lot of research into the finer points of oxytocin action, but that it is an immensely important hormone affecting all kinds of social behavior has been known for quite a while...
Too bad Kaveri wasn't available when the APUs for the consoles were designed, so they had to use Puma cores which, from a performance point of view, are quite underwhelming.
No, I'm not considering Kaveri a race car, but in comparison to Puma it has a lot more CPU horsepower.
but the problem with fusion is getting more energy than is put in...
That's just a matter of size. Fusion power release rises as a function of plasma volume, heat losses rise as a function of plasma surface, so just make it big enough.
.. and keeping that reaction sustained indefinitely.
A year or so would be nice, but shorter periods might be useful, too.
some catalysts to convert carbon dioxide and water into sugars and oxygen, and ferment it under pressure and heat for a few million years until it's in an easy-to-use portable form.
You're suggesting to do what to prefectly good beer?
Slashdot Mirror
Positioning systems for civilian purposes shouldn't be space based due to obvious issues with satellites (expensive, hard to maintain, etc). Hopefully, at some point, we'll have positioning systems that don't require any infrastructure all. Would be nice if they could tell the position from landmarks, the sky and Earths gravity field. ;)
Am I the only one who doesn't care about ever-thinner cellphones/smartphones? They're just getting harder to hold and use, and easier to break.
Oh, and when both collide, the results are probably similar.
Yes. And I don't remember much of it, so it doesn't really matter if it was garbage or not. However, I learned to memorize things, which is a skill that's still useful today.
What exactly you learn at school isn't as important as learning to actually learn.
I think I developed critical thinking and problem solving skills just fine despite memorizing stuff in school.
The car needs to be able recognize stoplights (and traffic signs!), determine whether they apply to the car or not, and follow them, without having a map of every stoplight and traffic sign in the world.
Great. So "not being taxed" becomes even easier - no tax loopholes required!
Unfortunately, this will also result in the government collecting too little tax and having to look at increasing tax rates or coming up with other ideas for taxation.
This system is basically being designed to fail.
It would also get rid of the inequity between income tax and capital gains tax, which benefits the wealthy a great deal.
There are easier ways to get rid of this obvious problem, such as not distinguishing between the sources of income in the first place. Some sources might possibly be exempt or don't fall under "income" (lottery winnings), but everything else is just added up as "income" and you pay your taxes on that.
If it does have this "critical mass" of assets, it has the potential to grow exponentially.
Ask the guys who make Fischertechnik instead. LEGO ist mostly for architects (with a little bit of engineering stuff thrown in); Fischertechnik is solely for engineers.
Such a device would be helpful, if not critical, for the success of colonies away from Earth. It doesn't matter if it's not very efficient, as long as it works, since it could help expand the colonies power generating facilities, life support, etc., and it's probably easier to outfit a colony with a big power supply than with all the chemical products in might possibly need.
They're also highly arbitrary, because you'll have some kind of government guy/committee/whatever deciding what's necessary and what constitutes various degrees of luxury.
Should a poor photographer who saves up a lot of money to buy one really great camera and lens be taxed more than the wealthy dentist (usually) who buys it and leaves it in the box?
Very good question. It's even more interesting if the photographer earns his living with photography, so the camera may not be a luxury, but an investment.
This system of taxation appears to be even more nightmarish than the current mess.
That leads to all kinds of issues.
How do you define "luxury item" for tax purposes?
How do you rate degrees of luxury in order to determine which luxury items are taxed how highly?
How do you deal with the inevitable black market/smuggling issues? Making something that is desired illegal or outrageously expensive pretty much automatically creates a illegal market.
What do you do when people stop buying the defined luxury items and your tax revenue plummets?
Just tax income, regardless of the actual source. I am convinced that todays level of tax revenues could be reached with far lower actual tax rates.
Also, for people with low income, taxing consumption is actually worse than taxing income, since the lower your income, the higher the percentage of it you must spend on consumption in order not to starve or freeze.
Why, if everyone else is super-intelligent, the last person on earth who can stand being just a janitor will make a killing.
If you have access to capacitors advanced enough to make this feasible, why should you bother putting batteries in cars?
... why aren't there mandatory whippings for blatant disregard of the Constitution when making laws?
Err ... okay. I'm sure you can do a lot of research into the finer points of oxytocin action, but that it is an immensely important hormone affecting all kinds of social behavior has been known for quite a while ...
What happens when you vent a few kilograms of tritium?
No, I'm not considering Kaveri a race car, but in comparison to Puma it has a lot more CPU horsepower.
That's just a matter of size. Fusion power release rises as a function of plasma volume, heat losses rise as a function of plasma surface, so just make it big enough.
A year or so would be nice, but shorter periods might be useful, too.
Oh, that one ... the one that causes millions of cases of skin cancer each year, among other things ... that's yours?
Wait a minute while I call my lawyers.
You're suggesting to do what to prefectly good beer?
Maybe the people complaining about the numbers should try driving more efficiently?
Yes, you can!
The only problem is that your satire will become reality sooner than you think.
If you presume another vessel to be sufficiently hostile to unleash a swarm of robot boats armed with, among other things,
".50-caliber machine gun and a microwave direct energy weapon or heat ray."
on it, then you might as well give it a warning shot and, if it doesn't react, shoot it with a real gun.