If a U.S. company opens a store in France, when they sell an item in the French store at a profit, who collects the taxes on the sale - the US or France?
The Microsoft tax 'dodge' is the belief that taxes are owed in France, as long as the profits stay in France.
The populist argument is that Microsoft owes taxes in France AND the U.S. Because, well, because Microsoft is rich!
Some argue that only US taxes should be paid... Now, turn the example around, a French company opens a store in the U.S. And sells an item at a profit - does the French company owe US or France taxes on those profits?
Taxes are owed where the profits are made, and for an international company like MS that tends to be overseas.
You're right - let's get rid of mortgage interest deductions, since they only benefit the wealthy aspiring landowners and do nothing for renters and the truly poor.
Visions of these faded after the 2008 recession when the legislature cut $4 billion from K-12 and higher education spending in part to cover the coming legalization and amnesty for Microsoft's Nevada tax dodge.
So Microsoft is 100% responsible for legislation that benefited numerous other companies, not just Microsoft?
And that $4BN in education cuts, how many years did those cuts accumulate (10?) to reach $4BN, or was it $4BN/year?
When I was growing up there were thousands of games that had horrible displays and were fun because we didn't have access to anything better - I'm thinking of the battery-operated "football" and "baseball" games that had a few buttons, a handful of LEDs, a generic playing field on the case, and some obnoxious sound effects.
How will this "toy" engage a child that was raised on today's video consoles and smart phones?
I stand corrected - I only glanced at the device briefly.
This "platform" requires even more "bits" to setup than a Raspberry Pi, which is really saying something because the Raspberry Pi includes almost nothing by design: - no case - no power supply - no input device (keyboard/mouse) - no output device (monitor)
This Micro Bit has no case and trivial input/output (a 5x5 grid of LEDs and two (2!) momentary switches. No provision for a keyboard, no provision for a display, and to program it requires a complete Windows (I assume) system to develop downloadable programs.
What games will children program on a 5x5 LED display? Word games are out, as are anything but the most trivial logic puzzle. Someone that is very, very interested could find a way to have some fun with this I'm certain, but as you said, this will be a huge step backwards for them, the average student, raised on iPhones and cheap Android tablets will look at this and yawn. Their teacher will march them through step-by-step instructions designed to teach the kids some abstract concept, but will instead only convince them that studying computers in school is a waste of time.
the old machines were usually programmed in BASIC, with a simple command line interface.
100 % non-standard, un-documented, buggy, programs from the 1980s?
Uhm, the programs were as "un-documented, buggy" as YOU made them because YOU PROGRAMMED them. And Computers from the early 80s came with well-documented user manuals that explained the interface and the programming language in the system ROMs. There was a lot of quality software available, all one needed was to go down the the local ComputerLand and pull out your credit card.
Back then, the computer came with a book designed to teach a bit of rudimentary programming.
Except in order to actually get anything done on those "old computers" you needed hardware manuals that didn't come with the computer.
Radio Shack sold the hardware reference manual for their TRS-80 in their stores, right next to their "Learning TRS-80 Level I BASIC" books.
(Very few inventory, accounting, or word processing applications, let alone even fewer games required any hardware modifications to your computer.)
On a modern computer, you'll have to find and install the right tools first
yeah those tools DO NOT EVEN EXIST on the older systems.
You mean compliers, linkers, debuggers, disassemblers, etc? They absolutely existed - there were multiple mail order software houses that made small fortunes selling developer tools for early computers - especially popular were FORTRAN, CBASIC, and some folks liked COBOL, while others ran C COMPILERS.
if you know what to look for.
Holy Fucking Christ, there is a URL ON THE BOX that directs you to the documentation. OMFG, it works for cereal boxes!
URL requires ANOTHER device to access the documentation - how is that superior to, say, a spiral-bound book you could sit down and read at your leisure, under a tree or on your sofa, away from your computer?
Let's see it has a couple buttons and a what, 8x8 grid of LEDs for output? No keyboard input, no video display, no ability to program the device without a much more powerful computer on which to prepare executable code to be downloaded onto the device.
Uhm, how exactly does this bring computer programming to the masses? Why couldn't the kids be taught to use the same programming language natively on the much more powerful computer that is needed to program this circuit board?
Aside from the processing speed of the CPU, this board has specs very similar to the popular battery-powered 'electronic games' of the late 70s... But without the case or the internal battery.
In America, borrowers that lied on their applications and bought houses they couldn't afford DID get free money - it was called 'debt forgiveness' and the borrowers had to pay taxes on the 'free money'.
the younger generation, that did nothing to cause this mess, and is expected to live in debt slavery for it? I can't blame them for saying "no."
I firmly expect that same delightful argument to play out in the U.S. Soon after we hit $20 Trillion in national debt and social security AND Medicare go bankrupt. Today's 20-something's will blame previous generations and refuse to accept austerity measures to balance the economy... Just like the Greeks are doing today...
Simply put, the Greeks ran out of money, borrowed a truckload of money from the EU, spent all that too, then defaulted on a debt payment.
Yesterday they voted to NOT cut spending, and they are out looking for more money to spend... Oddly, no one wants to loan them any money.
I think of it like this:
You have a crazy aunt, she lives on fixed income. She ran up her credit cards buying collector plates. You loan her a bunch of money to make household repairs and get her affairs in order. She bought more collector plates. When it came time for her to start paying you back, she says I don't have the money - in fact, I could use some more. you say sure, just stop buying collector plates. She holds a referendum vote over the weekend and decides that she rejects your austerity program and will continue to buy collector plates.
The bill, as written, was designed to force states to do the federal government's bidding - namely expand Medicare and establish state-run exchanges... Failure to do either would result in the loss of ALL federal Medicare funding or the state's citizens would lose access to federal subsidies (respectively).
This was not a case of poor word choices or an in artful choice of words, this was discussed and debated before the bill passed.
Once passed, both measures were challenged in court, all the way up to the Supreme Court. After fighting to keep the all or nothing position on Medicare, the federal government lost and had to fund Medicare in states that did not expand Medicare. And in today's decision, the government argued their much-discussed threat to the state's was really a typo.
These were calculated risks to force the state's to act in certain ways, both failed in their mission.
The regulatory agency rules and implementation conflicted with the legislation as passed. The words Democrsts passed were clear, subsidies only for customers on the state exchanges.
The IRS decided to give all customers, those on the state exchanges and those on the federal exchanges both subsidies.
SCOTUS argued that yes, as written it should go onecway, but darn it, we know what they would have wanted the law to be, so we'll just declare plain language 'ambiguous' and then invert the meaning of the words to suit our desired outcome.
Wait until the next head of the EPA decides to ratchet down legislated limits on pollutants because they know what the politicians really wanted, or when the IRS starts rolling back tax rates because they think the higher tax rates are detrimental to the economy...
It's really coming to something when victim culture is so bad people get upset when helping other people makes them feel like it's some giant feminazi conspiracy to keep them poor and uneducated.
Please point out the comparable computer education program that ONLY serves young boys that this program attempts to counter-balance...
A better example would be shower facilities. If you offered homeless people a shower, only had room for one communal facility so decided to limit it to just women, would that be sexist? There are good reasons for segregating communal showers.
Yes, it is sexist - can't you imagine a mechanism where by women and men take turns using the communal shower? You could alternate genders on the hour, for example...
The FCC has removed incentives for monopolistic ISPs to increase backbone network capacity since they are not allowed to derive any additional revenue to offset the cost of those investments...
Local governments authorize geographical monopolies, and the federal government says that ISPs can't charge content providers for faster service, so what is the motivation for improvements?
What you wanted was competition, instead you settled for net neutrality, solving a non-existent problem and changing the nature of the Internet to a heavily-regulated telcom service, so that it would remain as it was before regulation.
You changed the very nature of the Internet, in order to save it - reminds me of something a previous President said - he had to violate free market principles to save the free market... And oh how you all laughed when he said it, now you borrowed his logic.
The conclusion was the Microsoft was a bit off with the numbers in its calculations, 17 million is way too low, that would only be the cost to upgrade from NT to XP with upgrade licenses. It doesn't include the cost for new hardware, the hours spend to upgrade, and more importantly the cost to upgrade to newer version of Windows since XP is no longer supported.
You don't have any experience with Microsoft corporate licensing, do you?
Microsoft doesn't have different license prices for different desktop OSes, they only offer licenses for current OSes, with downgrade rights to the previous version or two. For example, a desktop license sold today would cover Windows 8.1, with downgrade rights to Windows 7 (and maybe Vista). That same license, sold today (June 23rd, 2015) would entitle the purchaser to upgrade to Windows 10 after July 29th, or keep running Win 8.1, and Win 7 (but maybe not Vista).
I can't speak to hardware upgrade costs, I assume the City of Munich has refreshed their hardware once or twice during this ten year experiment, and I further assume some portion of their current desktops could support Win 8.1 currently, some could probably be upgraded to support Win 8.2, and still some others would need to be replaced.
When you sign an agreement with MS, you are licensing the software for a 12 month period - in education,the environment I'm familiar with, an annual desktop license is about $35/yr, and includes not only the current desktop OS but also the current MS Office version, with downgrade rights for both. I would assume a commercial desktop license to run about twice that number, but that is just a guess.
Hillary Clinton has been found to pay women less than men.
The math of the so-called 'gender pay gap' is calculated one way (add up the salaries of all women and all men, then divide each by the number of working women and men (respectively)) yet used to prove a completely different point, pretending the previous calculation considered the work done by each, the experience of each, etc. when that is *clearly* not what the study cited did.
BTW - we have had equal pay laws for decades - anyone that can prove a gender pay bias has a case they can take to the EEOC and get justice... The famous Lily Ledbetter bill Democrats claimed was to help eliminate the pay gap merely extended the statute of limitations of the *existing* laws...
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Like Germany, where they spent $14 million to save $11 million?
If a U.S. company opens a store in France, when they sell an item in the French store at a profit, who collects the taxes on the sale - the US or France?
The Microsoft tax 'dodge' is the belief that taxes are owed in France, as long as the profits stay in France.
The populist argument is that Microsoft owes taxes in France AND the U.S. Because, well, because Microsoft is rich!
Some argue that only US taxes should be paid... Now, turn the example around, a French company opens a store in the U.S. And sells an item at a profit - does the French company owe US or France taxes on those profits?
Taxes are owed where the profits are made, and for an international company like MS that tends to be overseas.
In the 'olden days' there was no such thing as Income Taxes...
You're right - let's get rid of mortgage interest deductions, since they only benefit the wealthy aspiring landowners and do nothing for renters and the truly poor.
So Microsoft is 100% responsible for legislation that benefited numerous other companies, not just Microsoft?
And that $4BN in education cuts, how many years did those cuts accumulate (10?) to reach $4BN, or was it $4BN/year?
This has no effect on H-1b visas because the money is for K-12 education...
When I was growing up there were thousands of games that had horrible displays and were fun because we didn't have access to anything better - I'm thinking of the battery-operated "football" and "baseball" games that had a few buttons, a handful of LEDs, a generic playing field on the case, and some obnoxious sound effects.
How will this "toy" engage a child that was raised on today's video consoles and smart phones?
I stand corrected - I only glanced at the device briefly.
This "platform" requires even more "bits" to setup than a Raspberry Pi, which is really saying something because the Raspberry Pi includes almost nothing by design:
- no case
- no power supply
- no input device (keyboard/mouse)
- no output device (monitor)
This Micro Bit has no case and trivial input/output (a 5x5 grid of LEDs and two (2!) momentary switches. No provision for a keyboard, no provision for a display, and to program it requires a complete Windows (I assume) system to develop downloadable programs.
What games will children program on a 5x5 LED display? Word games are out, as are anything but the most trivial logic puzzle. Someone that is very, very interested could find a way to have some fun with this I'm certain, but as you said, this will be a huge step backwards for them, the average student, raised on iPhones and cheap Android tablets will look at this and yawn. Their teacher will march them through step-by-step instructions designed to teach the kids some abstract concept, but will instead only convince them that studying computers in school is a waste of time.
Are you off your meds?
Uhm, the programs were as "un-documented, buggy" as YOU made them because YOU PROGRAMMED them. And Computers from the early 80s came with well-documented user manuals that explained the interface and the programming language in the system ROMs. There was a lot of quality software available, all one needed was to go down the the local ComputerLand and pull out your credit card.
Radio Shack sold the hardware reference manual for their TRS-80 in their stores, right next to their "Learning TRS-80 Level I BASIC" books.
(Very few inventory, accounting, or word processing applications, let alone even fewer games required any hardware modifications to your computer.)
You mean compliers, linkers, debuggers, disassemblers, etc? They absolutely existed - there were multiple mail order software houses that made small fortunes selling developer tools for early computers - especially popular were FORTRAN, CBASIC, and some folks liked COBOL, while others ran C COMPILERS.
URL requires ANOTHER device to access the documentation - how is that superior to, say, a spiral-bound book you could sit down and read at your leisure, under a tree or on your sofa, away from your computer?
Let's see it has a couple buttons and a what, 8x8 grid of LEDs for output? No keyboard input, no video display, no ability to program the device without a much more powerful computer on which to prepare executable code to be downloaded onto the device.
Uhm, how exactly does this bring computer programming to the masses? Why couldn't the kids be taught to use the same programming language natively on the much more powerful computer that is needed to program this circuit board?
Aside from the processing speed of the CPU, this board has specs very similar to the popular battery-powered 'electronic games' of the late 70s... But without the case or the internal battery.
In America, borrowers that lied on their applications and bought houses they couldn't afford DID get free money - it was called 'debt forgiveness' and the borrowers had to pay taxes on the 'free money'.
I firmly expect that same delightful argument to play out in the U.S. Soon after we hit $20 Trillion in national debt and social security AND Medicare go bankrupt. Today's 20-something's will blame previous generations and refuse to accept austerity measures to balance the economy... Just like the Greeks are doing today...
Simply put, the Greeks ran out of money, borrowed a truckload of money from the EU, spent all that too, then defaulted on a debt payment.
Yesterday they voted to NOT cut spending, and they are out looking for more money to spend... Oddly, no one wants to loan them any money.
I think of it like this:
You have a crazy aunt, she lives on fixed income. She ran up her credit cards buying collector plates. You loan her a bunch of money to make household repairs and get her affairs in order. She bought more collector plates. When it came time for her to start paying you back, she says I don't have the money - in fact, I could use some more. you say sure, just stop buying collector plates. She holds a referendum vote over the weekend and decides that she rejects your austerity program and will continue to buy collector plates.
Would YOU give her more money?
The bill, as written, was designed to force states to do the federal government's bidding - namely expand Medicare and establish state-run exchanges... Failure to do either would result in the loss of ALL federal Medicare funding or the state's citizens would lose access to federal subsidies (respectively).
This was not a case of poor word choices or an in artful choice of words, this was discussed and debated before the bill passed.
Once passed, both measures were challenged in court, all the way up to the Supreme Court. After fighting to keep the all or nothing position on Medicare, the federal government lost and had to fund Medicare in states that did not expand Medicare. And in today's decision, the government argued their much-discussed threat to the state's was really a typo.
These were calculated risks to force the state's to act in certain ways, both failed in their mission.
The regulatory agency rules and implementation conflicted with the legislation as passed. The words Democrsts passed were clear, subsidies only for customers on the state exchanges.
The IRS decided to give all customers, those on the state exchanges and those on the federal exchanges both subsidies.
SCOTUS argued that yes, as written it should go onecway, but darn it, we know what they would have wanted the law to be, so we'll just declare plain language 'ambiguous' and then invert the meaning of the words to suit our desired outcome.
Wait until the next head of the EPA decides to ratchet down legislated limits on pollutants because they know what the politicians really wanted, or when the IRS starts rolling back tax rates because they think the higher tax rates are detrimental to the economy...
Have you not seen this behavior before? The user is asked, but the box is prefilled, you have to opt out, rather than opt in.
Whoosh!
Ask, questionable... Come on, you didn't see that coming?
Please point out the comparable computer education program that ONLY serves young boys that this program attempts to counter-balance...
Yes, it is sexist - can't you imagine a mechanism where by women and men take turns using the communal shower? You could alternate genders on the hour, for example...
Well then there may be some boys that are also interested but are equallydisadvantaged but ignored because of their gender.
FIFY
...before women will finally be 'equal'?
In my experience, women typically don't want programmer jobs as much as they want the perks and benefits of the job (high salary, benefits, etc)...
The FCC has removed incentives for monopolistic ISPs to increase backbone network capacity since they are not allowed to derive any additional revenue to offset the cost of those investments...
Local governments authorize geographical monopolies, and the federal government says that ISPs can't charge content providers for faster service, so what is the motivation for improvements?
What you wanted was competition, instead you settled for net neutrality, solving a non-existent problem and changing the nature of the Internet to a heavily-regulated telcom service, so that it would remain as it was before regulation.
You changed the very nature of the Internet, in order to save it - reminds me of something a previous President said - he had to violate free market principles to save the free market... And oh how you all laughed when he said it, now you borrowed his logic.
You don't have any experience with Microsoft corporate licensing, do you?
Microsoft doesn't have different license prices for different desktop OSes, they only offer licenses for current OSes, with downgrade rights to the previous version or two. For example, a desktop license sold today would cover Windows 8.1, with downgrade rights to Windows 7 (and maybe Vista). That same license, sold today (June 23rd, 2015) would entitle the purchaser to upgrade to Windows 10 after July 29th, or keep running Win 8.1, and Win 7 (but maybe not Vista).
I can't speak to hardware upgrade costs, I assume the City of Munich has refreshed their hardware once or twice during this ten year experiment, and I further assume some portion of their current desktops could support Win 8.1 currently, some could probably be upgraded to support Win 8.2, and still some others would need to be replaced.
When you sign an agreement with MS, you are licensing the software for a 12 month period - in education,the environment I'm familiar with, an annual desktop license is about $35/yr, and includes not only the current desktop OS but also the current MS Office version, with downgrade rights for both. I would assume a commercial desktop license to run about twice that number, but that is just a guess.
Hillary Clinton has been found to pay women less than men.
The math of the so-called 'gender pay gap' is calculated one way (add up the salaries of all women and all men, then divide each by the number of working women and men (respectively)) yet used to prove a completely different point, pretending the previous calculation considered the work done by each, the experience of each, etc. when that is *clearly* not what the study cited did.
BTW - we have had equal pay laws for decades - anyone that can prove a gender pay bias has a case they can take to the EEOC and get justice... The famous Lily Ledbetter bill Democrats claimed was to help eliminate the pay gap merely extended the statute of limitations of the *existing* laws...
Yes.
Because 'girl-focused engineering toys' are 'focused' on girls how? By making them conform to female stereotypes.