For the in-game currencies (WoW, EvE, etc), their value as far as the IRS is concerned is pegged to how much it sells for online. Thus if we end up paying taxes on in-game currencies it wil be because of the people who sell it out of game and thus associate a fiat currency value to it.
Well, that gets into the entire question of, is high speed trading causing negative economic effects? It is a non-trivial question, significant research and debate are going on about it and, to a degree, will continue to go on since often it comes down to different priorities. HFT does stuff to an economy, anything that redistributes massive amounts of wealth does. Who it helps, who it turns, to what degrees, and relative value of the people involved, is not all that clear.
Having said that, in theory at least this tax is designed to address the perceived increase in market volatility that HFT involves. So public policy makers are asserting that (a) HFT results in economic instability that impacts people not involved in HFT itself and (b) that this instability is something that the economy on the whole would benefit from curtailing. There is an implicit (c) that is along the lines that the people benefiting from HFT are not the ones baring the consequences of its impact, so like any situation where you have a "Group A preforms act B which benefits them but costs group C" the government is pondering if some checks need to be put on A+B to protect C.
I think the poster was referring to the idea of a tax per share rather then a tax per value, so 100 shares of $100 each would be taxed lower then 1000 shares of $10 each, which would encourage companies to have lower volumes of more expensive shares, potentially wiping out penny stocks.
I am actually kinda surprised people are surprised about this. Both British and American intelligence agencies have a long history of spying on delegates at various summits, and I suspect that the other countries just take it as part of the game, likely they are doing the same thing on smaller budgets. Not saying it is a good thing, but it is a pretty well known 'secret' at least in a general sense.
One of the things that has come out was that our two intelligence agencies are using each other to skirt domestic spying rules. The British spy on Americans citizens and vice versa, then they open up their channels to each other. So quite a bit of their information is sitting in American databanks.
Well, I think the point is that in developed nations we do not do the same types of involuntary experimentation on humans that we do on non-humans, and people are generally outraged when they hear about it being done in developing countries.
On another note though, you would be surprised at how good the simulations actually are. The issue often comes down to results being ignored if they do not have the political marketing behind them. Generally the decision makers what simulations that back up what they have already decided for political reasons.
eh, the belief that politicians are stupid is really important to many people. People often have trouble with the idea of intelligent people doing something different from what they would do and view it as a zero sum, that there is one right answer and either the politician is stupid, or they are. The whole 'conflicting goals' thing really does not factor in to some people's world views.
A lot of research has been done into what caused the 'perfect storm' of innovation starting in the 50, and it is hard to say what exactly the roots are.
It can, however, be argued that the rate of innovation has not really dropped off since then. There is an issue of how we perceive time. Just like we look back over the last few decades and pick out a few 'classic' movies to show how movies were 'better back then', we tend to look at innovation over a wide time frame and then look at a short horizon today and think things must have been moving faster then.
It could also be argued the problems are simply getting harder, that there is less and less low hanging fruit to go after.
Ironically, it is probably because of the stock market that Facebook is falling off the 'idea' wagon. Good investor relations and significant innovation are incompatible, so the more a company has to answer to stockholders, the less likely it is to come up with new ideas.
I am not sure where the author is getting the idea that these 3 companies "have generated most of the new ideas". Business momentum I can see, they had the brands, marketing department, and resources to get things out into the public sphere... but most of the new idea? Not by a long shot.
I do not accuse their engineers of sitting on their hands, they came up with some good stuff, but the bulk of the 'new ideas' tends to come from small companies, FOSS projects, research, and students screwing around. A lot of the ideas put out by those people are also crap, but then again a lot of the stuff coming out of the those big three are also pretty bad, even the ones that see the light of day.
I would say if anything it is the marketing departments and executive structures that are 'running out of steam'. As a company matures it tends to get entrenched people who have been there a while and are more interested in a steady return then experimentation and, more importantly, the companies tend to hire more and more 'classical' executives from other industries who are great at investor retaliations but tend to push the company into the 'endless sequels, people like what they have seen before!' direction.
And, when it comes down to it, politicians do what maximizes their chances for re-election, not what has actual value for their country or districts. It is all about doing what the people you represent THINK is a good idea, not what some ivory tower domain expert (who has actually done the work) says would benefit.
Eh, personally I think that if his goals actually are political in nature, Hong Kong was a bad choice since it lends itself too easily to the idea that he is selling out to the Chinese. A better choice would have been some neutral nation that does not have a strong 'enemy' association in the public's mind.
Individuals within both parties yes, but not the whole of both parties. If not for the fact the majority of people do not seem to care one way or the other this could have made excellent material for the next round of elections.
True, there is the donation element. Though looking at historical examples of citizens who pissed off the US government but managed to get enough cash to live elsewhere generally end up having fairly stressed lives and it does not take long for the money to start running thin. Though naturally it is possible that he simply did not think things through or far enough in the future.
I can easily buy the idea that he overstated the effectiveness and reach of the surveillance. From my own experience, people on the inside WAY overestimate, esp in terms of presentations, the real capabilities of the system. I would not be surprised if the NSA's equivalent of a marketing division really believes the documents and others have bought into it.
If I was going to be really generous with intent, I could say they seem to be trying to say the damage is real but he inflated his own access, so pure character assassination.
Yeah.. it would be easier to take the comity seriously if not for the long and (some of it now declassified) pattern of the interagency community using discreditation and slander as a way to silence someone, or at least get enough people not believing the person that the political fallout becomes negligible.
Now, it is completely possible that is is lying, but we have more of a history of organized slander then highly paid professionals torching their life for made up stuff. Next I expect to see 'ties to communists' or 'oh look he is a pedophile', both of which are classics.
I can see skepticism, but the 29 year old put a lot on the line and will probably never lead a normal life again, while the the people on the House Intelligence Comity only have to worry about reelection and are unlikely to be all that personally impacted no matter what they say. So I would say their incentive to lie is currently greater.
Generally the high resolution film was for situations where resolution mattered. You generally did not see many general consumers using it. Kinda like medium and large format.. not much extra functionality if you are filling a scrap book, but much better for other situations.
Well, setting aside the various quirks of the two technologies, it can be argued that digital has not quite caught up with film when it comes to resolution, though it is a tricky argument since both have such a wide range depending on how much you are willing to spend. By price point though, esp at the higher end, I would argue film still has a pretty good buffer.... though at the high end the lenses become cost prohibitive for actually getting any use out of the best film.
Eh, 'hipster fad' is just code for 'people doing stuff I do not care about', so if someone likes digital cameras and other people dare to not, well, they must be following a hipster fad otherwise they would do what the speaker is doing.
Personally I have seen quite a bit of interest in film around, some people just happen to really enjoy the process.. and when it comes down to it that is what hobbies are all about, doing what you enjoy. Though I have seen a pretty good economic argument for sticking to film when it comes to medium format stuff. For the price of a digital back you can get a whole lot of film+chemicals and a damn good scanner.
I highly doubt our 'rulers' are all that scared. What they are, however, is opportunistic since random people who do not know much about fabricators (3D printers, CNCs, whatever) or the history of improvised guns;... those people are scared. Politicians are just capitalizing on it.
People tend to forget that, as much as we would like to believe otherwise, our elected officials are neither evil nor stupid. They are, however, generally aware of what might help or hurt their chances of keeping their jobs, and paying their own mortgage comes first.
Thing is, the US has been caught using state resources to spy on foreign companies for local ones before, so this is not really a case of the US 'recognizing the difference' while China does not, and more a case of the US wanting the image of being different. So they act indignant and try to put on a public face like they are not doing it too.
*nod* if we finally start seeing low cost external expansion chassis again, that could really be a game changer in terms of upgradibility. I always really liked the modularity of them back in the NuBus days.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, that is how they got Al Capone...
For the in-game currencies (WoW, EvE, etc), their value as far as the IRS is concerned is pegged to how much it sells for online. Thus if we end up paying taxes on in-game currencies it wil be because of the people who sell it out of game and thus associate a fiat currency value to it.
Well, that gets into the entire question of, is high speed trading causing negative economic effects? It is a non-trivial question, significant research and debate are going on about it and, to a degree, will continue to go on since often it comes down to different priorities. HFT does stuff to an economy, anything that redistributes massive amounts of wealth does. Who it helps, who it turns, to what degrees, and relative value of the people involved, is not all that clear.
Having said that, in theory at least this tax is designed to address the perceived increase in market volatility that HFT involves. So public policy makers are asserting that (a) HFT results in economic instability that impacts people not involved in HFT itself and (b) that this instability is something that the economy on the whole would benefit from curtailing. There is an implicit (c) that is along the lines that the people benefiting from HFT are not the ones baring the consequences of its impact, so like any situation where you have a "Group A preforms act B which benefits them but costs group C" the government is pondering if some checks need to be put on A+B to protect C.
I think the poster was referring to the idea of a tax per share rather then a tax per value, so 100 shares of $100 each would be taxed lower then 1000 shares of $10 each, which would encourage companies to have lower volumes of more expensive shares, potentially wiping out penny stocks.
I am actually kinda surprised people are surprised about this. Both British and American intelligence agencies have a long history of spying on delegates at various summits, and I suspect that the other countries just take it as part of the game, likely they are doing the same thing on smaller budgets. Not saying it is a good thing, but it is a pretty well known 'secret' at least in a general sense.
One of the things that has come out was that our two intelligence agencies are using each other to skirt domestic spying rules. The British spy on Americans citizens and vice versa, then they open up their channels to each other. So quite a bit of their information is sitting in American databanks.
Well, I think the point is that in developed nations we do not do the same types of involuntary experimentation on humans that we do on non-humans, and people are generally outraged when they hear about it being done in developing countries.
On another note though, you would be surprised at how good the simulations actually are. The issue often comes down to results being ignored if they do not have the political marketing behind them. Generally the decision makers what simulations that back up what they have already decided for political reasons.
The cost tends to be considered worth it when someone else (or some other group) is the one paying it.
eh, the belief that politicians are stupid is really important to many people. People often have trouble with the idea of intelligent people doing something different from what they would do and view it as a zero sum, that there is one right answer and either the politician is stupid, or they are. The whole 'conflicting goals' thing really does not factor in to some people's world views.
A lot of research has been done into what caused the 'perfect storm' of innovation starting in the 50, and it is hard to say what exactly the roots are.
It can, however, be argued that the rate of innovation has not really dropped off since then. There is an issue of how we perceive time. Just like we look back over the last few decades and pick out a few 'classic' movies to show how movies were 'better back then', we tend to look at innovation over a wide time frame and then look at a short horizon today and think things must have been moving faster then.
It could also be argued the problems are simply getting harder, that there is less and less low hanging fruit to go after.
Ironically, it is probably because of the stock market that Facebook is falling off the 'idea' wagon. Good investor relations and significant innovation are incompatible, so the more a company has to answer to stockholders, the less likely it is to come up with new ideas.
I am not sure where the author is getting the idea that these 3 companies "have generated most of the new ideas". Business momentum I can see, they had the brands, marketing department, and resources to get things out into the public sphere... but most of the new idea? Not by a long shot.
I do not accuse their engineers of sitting on their hands, they came up with some good stuff, but the bulk of the 'new ideas' tends to come from small companies, FOSS projects, research, and students screwing around. A lot of the ideas put out by those people are also crap, but then again a lot of the stuff coming out of the those big three are also pretty bad, even the ones that see the light of day.
I would say if anything it is the marketing departments and executive structures that are 'running out of steam'. As a company matures it tends to get entrenched people who have been there a while and are more interested in a steady return then experimentation and, more importantly, the companies tend to hire more and more 'classical' executives from other industries who are great at investor retaliations but tend to push the company into the 'endless sequels, people like what they have seen before!' direction.
And, when it comes down to it, politicians do what maximizes their chances for re-election, not what has actual value for their country or districts. It is all about doing what the people you represent THINK is a good idea, not what some ivory tower domain expert (who has actually done the work) says would benefit.
Eh, personally I think that if his goals actually are political in nature, Hong Kong was a bad choice since it lends itself too easily to the idea that he is selling out to the Chinese. A better choice would have been some neutral nation that does not have a strong 'enemy' association in the public's mind.
Individuals within both parties yes, but not the whole of both parties. If not for the fact the majority of people do not seem to care one way or the other this could have made excellent material for the next round of elections.
True, there is the donation element. Though looking at historical examples of citizens who pissed off the US government but managed to get enough cash to live elsewhere generally end up having fairly stressed lives and it does not take long for the money to start running thin. Though naturally it is possible that he simply did not think things through or far enough in the future.
I can easily buy the idea that he overstated the effectiveness and reach of the surveillance. From my own experience, people on the inside WAY overestimate, esp in terms of presentations, the real capabilities of the system. I would not be surprised if the NSA's equivalent of a marketing division really believes the documents and others have bought into it.
If I was going to be really generous with intent, I could say they seem to be trying to say the damage is real but he inflated his own access, so pure character assassination.
Yeah.. it would be easier to take the comity seriously if not for the long and (some of it now declassified) pattern of the interagency community using discreditation and slander as a way to silence someone, or at least get enough people not believing the person that the political fallout becomes negligible.
Now, it is completely possible that is is lying, but we have more of a history of organized slander then highly paid professionals torching their life for made up stuff. Next I expect to see 'ties to communists' or 'oh look he is a pedophile', both of which are classics.
I can see skepticism, but the 29 year old put a lot on the line and will probably never lead a normal life again, while the the people on the House Intelligence Comity only have to worry about reelection and are unlikely to be all that personally impacted no matter what they say. So I would say their incentive to lie is currently greater.
Generally the high resolution film was for situations where resolution mattered. You generally did not see many general consumers using it. Kinda like medium and large format.. not much extra functionality if you are filling a scrap book, but much better for other situations.
Well, setting aside the various quirks of the two technologies, it can be argued that digital has not quite caught up with film when it comes to resolution, though it is a tricky argument since both have such a wide range depending on how much you are willing to spend. By price point though, esp at the higher end, I would argue film still has a pretty good buffer.... though at the high end the lenses become cost prohibitive for actually getting any use out of the best film.
Eh, 'hipster fad' is just code for 'people doing stuff I do not care about', so if someone likes digital cameras and other people dare to not, well, they must be following a hipster fad otherwise they would do what the speaker is doing.
Personally I have seen quite a bit of interest in film around, some people just happen to really enjoy the process.. and when it comes down to it that is what hobbies are all about, doing what you enjoy. Though I have seen a pretty good economic argument for sticking to film when it comes to medium format stuff. For the price of a digital back you can get a whole lot of film+chemicals and a damn good scanner.
I highly doubt our 'rulers' are all that scared. What they are, however, is opportunistic since random people who do not know much about fabricators (3D printers, CNCs, whatever) or the history of improvised guns;... those people are scared. Politicians are just capitalizing on it.
People tend to forget that, as much as we would like to believe otherwise, our elected officials are neither evil nor stupid. They are, however, generally aware of what might help or hurt their chances of keeping their jobs, and paying their own mortgage comes first.
Thing is, the US has been caught using state resources to spy on foreign companies for local ones before, so this is not really a case of the US 'recognizing the difference' while China does not, and more a case of the US wanting the image of being different. So they act indignant and try to put on a public face like they are not doing it too.
*nod* if we finally start seeing low cost external expansion chassis again, that could really be a game changer in terms of upgradibility. I always really liked the modularity of them back in the NuBus days.