The difference between then and now is that there's plenty of highly active people in the movement towards legalization, while there were not when it was criminalized.
Chain of command? He worked for a government contractor, not the government itself, so there's no "chain of command" to go through. He was an employee of a contractor for the NSA, which means he's not actually protected under any whistleblowing laws, government or corporate, since he released information about the government while working at BAH.
His situation was pretty unique, and one I'd expect to see addressed through legislation if our Congress were reasonable right now.
First, a BMW 320i isn't even remotely comparable to a modern Accord, Camry, or Taurus, let alone a Model S. Second, when you look at a $60k car and see that it compares favorably against $100k+ cars from other manufacturers but refuse to acknowledge its' superiority in the segment, you're not putting things in perspective, you're speaking in absolutes that don't apply to the market this car is targeted for. Third, when you look at a 60k car and go "Damn, 60k is way too much for a car in absolutely any circumstance", you're not the target market and shouldn't be buying one anyway. Fourth, they don't give a damn what some anonymous shill on the internet who will never buy their car anyway because they'll die before the price goes down enough for them to get it for $500 thinks.
It's not meant to be an affordable family sedan. It's meant to be a luxury sedan. That's the point, which you completely missed. You can't compare a Model S to an Accord.
I said that a president cannot repeal a Supreme Court decision, because of the simple fact that it's not a law in the first place. I didn't even approach the fact that repeals, which by definition require a law to exist, require an entirely different branch of the government to actually happen. My original statement wasn't intended to imply a president can unilaterally repeal a law, although I see how it can be construed that way now that you mention it.
The US corporate tax rates are by no means the highest on the planet. Here's a list, but I'll explain it to you in text in case you don't decide to look.
First, the US corporate tax rate varies, from 15% to 51% (including both federal and state taxes - federal alone is 15% to 39%). On the low end, 15% is on the lower side of the list (the only large, developed countries not known as tax havens with a lower rate on the low end are Canada and Russia), and well below the highest flat rate, which is Cameroon at 38%. Notable countries with rates higher than our lowest rates are Germany, Italy, Spain, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Poland, Turkey, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Australia, France, the UK and Chile. Bangladesh has a rate that ranges from 0 to 45%, which is the highest single rate on the list - obviously above the 39% federal tax highest rate.
So, no, the US doesn't have the absolute highest corporate tax rate. It has among the highest possible corporate taxes for the largest entities, but it is not the "highest worldwide" by a wide margin for the vast majority of corporations who will fall lower on the spectrum than a giant like Apple.
Well, maybe you should tell your friends that they're idiots, and hope they don't follow your advice on getting rid of their cable package, otherwise you're only left with bars. At that point, you're paying a lot more for the alcohol than you'd save by getting rid of cable.
Yeah, except if they're worried about "[NVidia's] position as top dog" being "quite uncertain" because there's no OpenGL ES 3.0 implementation "on the horizon", they're just wrong - it is on the horizon, in less than a year. By the time they come out with Tegra 5, there probably won't even be a hell of a lot using OpenGL ES 3.0, since barely anything out now has it, and developers tend not to target platforms that just don't exist in the wild.
However, it also means that Nvidia is now the only ARM competitor without an OpenGL ES 3.0 implementation on the horizon, making Nvidia's new position as top dog quite uncertain.
Tegra 5 is supposed to be OpenGL 4.3, so I wouldn't be concerned about them not having an OpenGL ES 3.0 chip.
You think, at least in the first case, that a fully automated system like he envisions wouldn't, at a minimum, know when it's delivered and notify you? It's sending out a notice that the milk needs to be delivered, which presumably connects into a food distributor's system in some way. Why wouldn't the notice that the delivery has arrived be able to be linked in as well?
Snowden wasn't a government employee, and doesn't fall under the purview of that law as a result. From the article you linked, emphasis mine:
The Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989 is a United States federal law that protects federal whistleblowers who work for the government and report agency misconduct.
I can see what you mean about Manning not using a more legitimate channel, since Wikileaks isn't exactly the pinnacle of journalism. However, Snowden went to the Guardian, which is absolutely a legitimate channel for whistle-blowing.
You think the artist mentioned in the bar can't be a member of ASCAP? The moment an artist writes a single song, composes a single song, or distributes a single song, they fall under one of those labels. In a huge majority of cases, an artist is going to fall under one of those labels, and it's guaranteed they will for an original work, including the example this thread is based on (i.e. bar owner who performs his own original works at the bar).
It's not my responsibility to prove to every kook with his hand out that I won't use his IP.
So true. People seem to get the burden of proof mixed up here when it comes to ASCAP. It's their burden to prove you're playing songs contained under their umbrella without their permission, not yours - at least in a logical world.
ASCAP shouldn't be able to act on behalf of artists who refuse membership to ASCAP, and forcibly insert themselves as middlemen whenever they feel like it. It's that simple.
Considering that the vast majority of people, up until now, would've never known for sure that you buckled to government pressure, you're thinking in a far more optimistic plane than reality. In reality, you, as a small business owner, would buckle, nobody using your service would know about it unless you announced it outright, and it would affect your business in absolutely no way at all.
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The difference between then and now is that there's plenty of highly active people in the movement towards legalization, while there were not when it was criminalized.
Chain of command? He worked for a government contractor, not the government itself, so there's no "chain of command" to go through. He was an employee of a contractor for the NSA, which means he's not actually protected under any whistleblowing laws, government or corporate, since he released information about the government while working at BAH.
His situation was pretty unique, and one I'd expect to see addressed through legislation if our Congress were reasonable right now.
Hummers are dangerous to other people. The Model S isn't. The Model S is definitively safer for the occupants. The Hummer isn't.
Depends on the times though. Right now, we're on the tail end of a peak in rental prices.
First, a BMW 320i isn't even remotely comparable to a modern Accord, Camry, or Taurus, let alone a Model S. Second, when you look at a $60k car and see that it compares favorably against $100k+ cars from other manufacturers but refuse to acknowledge its' superiority in the segment, you're not putting things in perspective, you're speaking in absolutes that don't apply to the market this car is targeted for. Third, when you look at a 60k car and go "Damn, 60k is way too much for a car in absolutely any circumstance", you're not the target market and shouldn't be buying one anyway. Fourth, they don't give a damn what some anonymous shill on the internet who will never buy their car anyway because they'll die before the price goes down enough for them to get it for $500 thinks.
It's not meant to be an affordable family sedan. It's meant to be a luxury sedan. That's the point, which you completely missed. You can't compare a Model S to an Accord.
It would also be more likely if the person arrested wasn't described as a "Romanian national" by both the summary and the article.
How many desktops run Android?
I said that a president cannot repeal a Supreme Court decision, because of the simple fact that it's not a law in the first place. I didn't even approach the fact that repeals, which by definition require a law to exist, require an entirely different branch of the government to actually happen. My original statement wasn't intended to imply a president can unilaterally repeal a law, although I see how it can be construed that way now that you mention it.
No president can repeal Roe v. Wade at all actually. It's a Supreme Court decision, not a law.
The US corporate tax rates are by no means the highest on the planet. Here's a list, but I'll explain it to you in text in case you don't decide to look.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates
First, the US corporate tax rate varies, from 15% to 51% (including both federal and state taxes - federal alone is 15% to 39%). On the low end, 15% is on the lower side of the list (the only large, developed countries not known as tax havens with a lower rate on the low end are Canada and Russia), and well below the highest flat rate, which is Cameroon at 38%. Notable countries with rates higher than our lowest rates are Germany, Italy, Spain, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Poland, Turkey, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Australia, France, the UK and Chile. Bangladesh has a rate that ranges from 0 to 45%, which is the highest single rate on the list - obviously above the 39% federal tax highest rate.
So, no, the US doesn't have the absolute highest corporate tax rate. It has among the highest possible corporate taxes for the largest entities, but it is not the "highest worldwide" by a wide margin for the vast majority of corporations who will fall lower on the spectrum than a giant like Apple.
Well, maybe you should tell your friends that they're idiots, and hope they don't follow your advice on getting rid of their cable package, otherwise you're only left with bars. At that point, you're paying a lot more for the alcohol than you'd save by getting rid of cable.
One it's counted by hand, there would be a discrepancy between the two, on a large scale.
There's nothing wrong with having a barcode, reading the votes electronically, then having hand counts to verify.
I'm pretty sure you're making shit up, since the US is almost 5 times larger than the horn of Africa.
Yeah, except if they're worried about "[NVidia's] position as top dog" being "quite uncertain" because there's no OpenGL ES 3.0 implementation "on the horizon", they're just wrong - it is on the horizon, in less than a year. By the time they come out with Tegra 5, there probably won't even be a hell of a lot using OpenGL ES 3.0, since barely anything out now has it, and developers tend not to target platforms that just don't exist in the wild.
However, it also means that Nvidia is now the only ARM competitor without an OpenGL ES 3.0 implementation on the horizon, making Nvidia's new position as top dog quite uncertain.
Tegra 5 is supposed to be OpenGL 4.3, so I wouldn't be concerned about them not having an OpenGL ES 3.0 chip.
You think, at least in the first case, that a fully automated system like he envisions wouldn't, at a minimum, know when it's delivered and notify you? It's sending out a notice that the milk needs to be delivered, which presumably connects into a food distributor's system in some way. Why wouldn't the notice that the delivery has arrived be able to be linked in as well?
Food hasn't exactly been getting cheaper...
Snowden wasn't a government employee, and doesn't fall under the purview of that law as a result. From the article you linked, emphasis mine:
The Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989 is a United States federal law that protects federal whistleblowers who work for the government and report agency misconduct.
I can see what you mean about Manning not using a more legitimate channel, since Wikileaks isn't exactly the pinnacle of journalism. However, Snowden went to the Guardian, which is absolutely a legitimate channel for whistle-blowing.
You think the artist mentioned in the bar can't be a member of ASCAP? The moment an artist writes a single song, composes a single song, or distributes a single song, they fall under one of those labels. In a huge majority of cases, an artist is going to fall under one of those labels, and it's guaranteed they will for an original work, including the example this thread is based on (i.e. bar owner who performs his own original works at the bar).
It's not my responsibility to prove to every kook with his hand out that I won't use his IP.
So true. People seem to get the burden of proof mixed up here when it comes to ASCAP. It's their burden to prove you're playing songs contained under their umbrella without their permission, not yours - at least in a logical world.
ASCAP shouldn't be able to act on behalf of artists who refuse membership to ASCAP, and forcibly insert themselves as middlemen whenever they feel like it. It's that simple.
Considering that the vast majority of people, up until now, would've never known for sure that you buckled to government pressure, you're thinking in a far more optimistic plane than reality. In reality, you, as a small business owner, would buckle, nobody using your service would know about it unless you announced it outright, and it would affect your business in absolutely no way at all.