Secondly, your agent doesn't give a damn -- at least not when the house is not occupied any longer and there's nothing there but perhaps prop furniture.
Depends on the agent. I've had absolutely fantastic agents.
Besides, your agent doesn't necessarily do the showing.
While I realize that "standard practices" vary from region to region and even from neighborhood to neighborhood within a city, I expect my agent to be present.
He is my agent. My representative. Or as you put it... "a money oriented salesperson" -- Why wouldn't I want my salesman pitching the sale?
My agent was opening the places and showing them to me.
As I said, I'm aware some places use lock boxes and so forth much more extensively than others. And of course you want your agent there looking out for your interests, but I want mine there looking out for mine... I'm not paying him a $20,000 commission to put a lock box on the door, hang a sign, and put some amateur photos on the internet.*
I'm not some knucklehead who'll just go and randomly destroy things, thank you very much.
Again, that's what every knucklehead says. I've never met a knucklehead who said "Hey I'm an idiot that you really don't want to leave alone in a room with a screwdriver." That doesn't mean you are a knucklehead, but you've got to acknowledge that if a random guy you didn't know pulled out a screwdriver and headed for the nearest wall that your first thought would not be "I'm sure he knows what he's doing."
And after a few run-ins with theives and idiots one is rightfully cautious. I know people who have had things like perfume, silverware, and so forth stolen. Fixtures broken... even furniture -- some "knucklehead" climbed up on an coffee table to "inspect" something or other, and broke it.
My favorite trick is...
I don't deny there are all sorts of things you can and should do before buying a house. But its totally unreasonable to expect to be left alone in someone elses house with a screw driver.
When it comes to the outlets and paint and such, I've found that having a pair of screwdrivers with you works really well.
If I were selling and you came in with a pair of screwdrivers, I hope my agent asks you to put them away.
Your welcome to make an offer on the house, and make it subject to this sort of inspection, and after I've accepted it, you can satisfy your curiosity all you like, and if something is unearthed, we'll either get it fixed, renegotiate, or you can walk away. I'm fine with any of those scenarios.
I'd also have have someone escort you. If you jam your screwdriver where it doesn't belong and break a fixture, short something out, or otherwise fuck something up its still my house.
In any case I'm not going to tolerate every yahoo on the street walking into my home with a set of screwdrivers who thinks he is going to inspect the wiring during an open house or something. I don't know them from Adam.
While I tend to sympathize with potential buyers who don't want the agent hovering too much, I've seen too many cases of damage and theft to agree that I should let some random schmoe have the run of my house just because they might buy it.
I've posted in the past that the problem with laws about distracted driving are ineffective because people who are driving "distracted" are often driving perfectly fine when they cruise past the police. They are in the lane, centered, they are moving with traffic, and all appears to be well.
Then 2 blocks later they run over someone in a cross walk because while they were driving just fine, they weren't actually paying nearly enough attention.
Your post is a nice articulate explanation of how that works and I thank you for it.
Oh yeah sure, because intent has nothing to do with culpability in your fantasy world. Meanwhile, back in the real world, it does.
Good. So show intent that Manning's intent was to deliberately aid American enemie. Hell show it was anything other than "let the people know what its own government was doing so that what he perceived as great wrongs and crimes could be revealed and addressed".
If you want to talk about intent then lets talk about intent... what was Manning's INTENT?
Oh... suddenly its not about intent, right? Its just what he did and that his actions inadvertently may have theoretically placed American operatives at risk... its not about intent at all. Its just about what might have happened with the information?
So...Like when some one misplaces an unecrypted laptop with sensitive data. Er... no, completely different... its about intent...
I'm not saying YOU are the one participating in this circular argument, but there are a lot of people who seem to be.
Bottom line: If its about intent, then Manning was full of good intentions and guilty of bad judgement and that's about it. Dishonorable discharge, some house arrest or token jail time is all that's warranted here.
It has been valuable for thousands of years due to the incredibly persistent belief that it's worth something.
Why would that belief arise in a pre-industrial world? Why would it persist?
Gold is sufficiently rare, and sufficiently easy to work with. It is non-toxic, doesn't rot, rust, evaporate, or otherwise deteriorate, its reasonably stable and easy to store. And on top of all that it isn't particularly useful for building any essential pre-industrial weapons or infrastructure.
Gold is of little practical use in a pre-industrial environment
It is literally a "naturally occurring currency".
Between these natural characteristics and historical momentum any post-collapse civilization is all but guaranteed to use gold as a currency, at least for a time.
(Sure it will be of little practical value in areas of full on apocalyptic anarchy, but anywhere that's stable enough to warrant any sort of economy will need a currency. Straight barter will only get you so far. Iron is both too plentiful and rusts. Food is heavy and rots. Fuel is volatile, toxic, and difficult to move and store. Likewise ammo degrades over time - sure it stores well in a "cool dry storage container"... but individual bullets pass around as currency, getting wet, dirty, thrown around, left in the sun...? Forget it.
The funny thing is, your comment just gave me a very clear idea. Microsoft really should have, instead of wasting all the time and energy into making Windows 8 and following the tablet crowd, tried to better integrate MCE as a core part of Windows and pushed developers for more 10 foot UIs--which Metro might have been good for coupled with kinetics for gesturing (emphasis on the might, since AFAIK, the issue is really MS's implementation, anyways).
I've got Win 8 on my HTPC, and it's actually quite solid as a 10 foot UI. The netflix metro app is pretty good.
I REALLY could not care less for kinect gesturing for control, but a good couch pointing device would be a godsend.
I currently use an Apple Magic Trackpad and Apple bluetooth keyboard with it, along with a harmony one remote and a wireless xbox controller for games. The magic trackpad is good, but not as supported as it could be.
I haven't tried using the xbox controller as a mouse, I know it can be done... a project for the weekend to fool around with.
Steam BigPicture was a welcome release. Windows 8's larger DPI settings even make the desktop usable at 10 feet, but there's the occasional software out there that pukes when the dpi is set to anything but standard... Amnesia: Dark Descent (or whatever its called) was the last title that I tried using that failed with higher DPI settings.
I actually use OSX on my laptop... but i have the dock mounted to the left, and autohide turned off... so despite using OSX daily it hadnt' occurred to me that there was a hotkey for it. -- for shame:)
Now even if I fail to commit it to memory, just knowing its there will be enough that I can look it up next time its needed.
oh, and One More Thing... we remember who our friends are, and they get a discount.
2% discount, provided you buy it on valentines day, and you don't mind that it's already engraved with "Happy Birthday Julilly-Lynn"
Re:Windows8 can be tamed, but why should you have
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Windows 8 Killing PC Sales
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Stop this please. You don't need any addons to make win8 work in desktop mode. You don't need to use any of the metro apps either.
Agreed almost 100%.
The only difference is that you get a full screen "start menu" when you hit the windows key.
Exactly. But... a) The default start menu out-of-box is a cluttered mess of live-tile garbage. It only takes a few minutes to turn off the live tiles and/or remove most of them from the start menu outright, and after you do this the start menu is perfectly fine. It might make some sense on a tablet, it might be reasonable on touch capable laptop, but its just silly on a full on desktop.
b) Its annoying to HAVE to hit the windows KEY. A lot of people are used to there being a button. And there is really no good reason whatsoever for there NOT to be a "start" button on the desktop taskbar. If you are using the desktop, then you are using a mouse. If you are using a mouse then there should be a button for an important function like this. So all I want is a button to launch the full on start screen. I know I don't actually NEED it, I know I can use the key or I can even use the hot corners, but a lot of the win8 grief would be alleviated if they'd just given people a button to push.
c) Hot corners -- just SUCK. They are ok on a touch device, but not on a desktop. They aren't intuitive when using a mouse.
And worse, they are a royal PITA to operate when the desktop isn't "full screen" such as when running in a Virtual Machine, or a Remote Desktop window, or when there are multiple monitors and the "corners" aren't necessarily the corners. Apple started this nonsense and OS X is my LEAST favorite OS to remote into by far -- seems a large number of people have the dock set to autohide and getting it to show up remotely can be a pain, not to mention the window min/max animations are always horridly laggy... but i digress.
Gold's "doesn't rust, very malleable, nice conductivity" doesn't sound like properties valuable after society collapse (also not quite rare, especially taken one by one).
And yet it served quite well as the primary currency for humanity for a few thousand pre-industrial revolution years, so I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest you are wrong.
What if you'd normally bring your own $1 lunch, but instead you've given a fancy $10 value "free" lunch, and then forced to pay $3 in tax on that?
What if you'd normally drive a $600 rusted out beater, but instead you're given a fancy new Toyota Camry as a company car and then forced to pay income tax on the perk.
I'm not sure what to tell you. I'm sorry? I'm sorry your job has nice perks?
In any case they could easily restructure the restaurant so that it charges for meals that you can then expense back to the company. And then the expense renumeration is added to your income as a taxable benefit.
That way people who bring in their own cheese and jam sandwiches for lunch won't pay any tax on a perk they don't use.
As a fan, there was never any shark-jumping. That's a very specific act of doing some over-the-top sensational act to make up for lack of stories or loss of viewership.
Disagree. I felt the whole Lorien/death/resurrection/messiah complex was a bit of a shark jump -- that could have been done better without having to invoke a precursor to the precursors that could only be found through the death and resurrection of the main character.
I stuck with the series though, and it recovered nicely. The remaining story arcs were a bit anti-climatic by comparison to the big alien showdown though which didn't help the perception. Sort of like the cleansing of the Shire after the battle at Gondor.
But all 5 seasons are worth watching. Some of the best scifi TV ever made.
You think Google is giving out free meals out of pure generosity?
You think google is paying wages out of pure generosity? Of course not. Its your compensation for doing your job, aka income. If they give you a car, or use of the company boat or plane, or send you on a vacation to jamaica for meeting your sales quotas these are all considered compensation, and you pay income tax on the value of these perks.
A gourmet cafeteria providing thousands of dollars of free food sounds like a pretty nice perk to me. I don't think its out of line to look at it as a taxable benefit.
So, by your crazy logic, should smaller companies that have free sodas and coffee for employees require employees to account for every single cup of coffee they drink there, and pay taxes for it?
I was waiting for someone to mention this. And the short answer is probably yes, but its piddly. An employee who has a couple cokes or coffees a day working 200 days a year would be liable for an extra hundred or two in income, or 20$ or so in taxes? Is that really worth the IRS's trouble?
Moreover, lots of tax rules involve thresholds and limits. e.g. you can give gifts up to X$ before you need to declare them... the coffee maker in the office kitchenette is pretty minor. A gourmet cafeteria is something else entirely.
How about companies with parking lots? Should employees be required to pay taxes for the luxury of being able to drive to work instead of taking the bus, and not have to pay for parking?
Actually in some cities where parking is very limited and expensive a parking spot is taxable benefit. Usually the way its structured is that the company charges the employee for the spot, and then gives the employee a parking allowance to cover the cost. The allowance is taxable income.
How about companies that provide elevators for employees? Should non-disabled employees be required to pay taxes for every elevator ride they take, since they could after all just take the stairs instead?
What few people realise is that this may very well be exactly what the terrorists want.
Its not what the terrorists want.
Its worse than then what they want. They want us to stop meddling in their countries affairs and just leave them alone. The acts of terror are largely acts of 'revenge' for things they've perceived we have done to them. (And to be fair their perception though warped isn't completely wrong either.)
We respond by turning our own country into an idiotic police state.
Are we going to go after schoolchildren that trade desert cups at lunchtime because one has a higher value than another and can be called taxable income?
Do you think its worth the IRS's time to pursue 8 year olds for capital gains made by trading dessert cups on the underground schoolyard dessert cup markets? Why they might have dollars of undeclared income! Couple that with their allowance.../faceplam
If I pay the check for a date does that mean she has to declare it on her taxes?
When you say date do you mean prostitute? If so, she an independent contractor. Is the meal a business meeting? It may be a deductible expense for you.
Otherwise, you may want to look into gift taxes but your likely in the top 1% of the top 1% if you are running into your annual exclusion limits taking someone out on a date.
If the issue is whether the lunch benefit is taxable, perhaps buying the food from a supplier should already pay the tax.
That's not the point. If a valuable benefit is being provided to the employees, then the value of that benefit is counted as income, and income taxes are due. If you get a company car and you use it for personal driving then its a taxable benefit.
The only question is whether providing lunch is "work related" in the same way that providing you office supplies is "work related". If the company brings in pizza on a night everyone is working late... then no the pizza shouldn't be considered a taxable benefit. But pretty much everything with taxation works on limits and exclusions and thresholds. A gourmet cafeteria could easily cross the threshold into taxable benefit territory.
And lets say that it does. Its still a screaming good deal.If eat out $5000 worth of restaurants in a year... then I'm out $5000, plus I pay another $1000 or so in income tax on the money. I'd be delighted to not have to pay the $5000 and just have to pay the $1000. Hell, I wouldn't blink at taking a $3000 dollar reduction in income for a $5000 perk like that.
Crying over income tax on taxable benefits is nuts.
Had an iphone 3GS for 3 years. Switched to Android Galaxy S3.
Because it only seems to be Android users that have a problem with this
There's that selection bias again. People who have a problem with it avoid the phone.
"Explain the success of the hated product by claiming the customers didn't know what they were doing."
Everyone I know with an iphone (including me) think its a great phone, great user interface, and like the app store.
At the time I bought it I knew about the app store restrictions, but felt the phone was the best in class compared to the alternatives.
But pretty much everyone else I knew had no idea that they were ONLY allowed to get apps from Apple. Several of them were pissed off by this on various occasions... when they wanted software that apple either rejected or pulled from the app store. A few of them rooted their device to get around it, but many of them were not comfortable with that, and just tolerated it.
And now, Apple's just not that exciting. Its still a great phone, but unlike the 3GS it wasn't leaps ahead of the competition. The 5 is pretty staid. Its a fine device but its nothing to get excited about.
Yes, although you lack the imagination to see it, iPhone users generally like having a one stop shop.
This is simply not true. They generally like app stores. They like the idea of an app on their phone from which to get other apps. It beats the hassles of side loading. It beats the hassles of browsing a million different inconsistent websites for downloads. So yes, they LIKE app stores.
But its not like they like having just ONE and ONLY ONE and would object to even the possibility of having another one.
Now that I have android, I STILL like app stores. 19 out of 20 apps on my phone are from Google Play.
But the user experience of a single trusted store beats the pants off multiple stores, some of which are not trustworthy.
So install one store on the phone by default. Your argument is that the customer experience will be worse if there are a bunch of stores. That contradicts reality. I don't know how many android stores there are. I only use one. Its the same user experience I had on my iphone.
Except that I've directly installed a few apps from out side the store that I've acquired elsewhere -- such as cross platform licenses for games, and a line of business tool I use for work.
But the user experience of a single trusted store beats the pants off multiple stores, some of which are not trustworthy.
That's why we like planned economies and monopolies so much. Wait no... that's not right... a little choice and a little competition keeps the market customer oriented and competitive. If there's only one store... then its not really motivated to be either. And lo... the Apple App Store... arbitrary, with draconian user hostile policies, inflexible pricing models that treat $1000 software packages the same as a $1 fart app. And if you don't like something about it? Fuck you. You can't go anywhere else for 2-3 years.
Choice is vastly overrated, especially on Slashdot. Most here never read The Paradox of Choice.
The paradox of choice doesn't apply to a situation where a customer knows what they want.
Suppose you ran a furniture store. You stock 5 couches. A person comes in, doesn't know what couch to buy, and you have for him to pick from. Easy. That's a valid application of the theory behind the paradox of choice.
Another customer comes in, he wants a bright red leather loveseat, modern style, condo size. He knows Natuzzi makes one he likes. He wants that one. You don't stock it.
Apparently you tell him to go fuck himself and pick from your 5. And then you lock him in your basement so he can't go to another furniture store and get what he actually wants. That's not actually an application of the paradox of choice because the customer isn't overwhelmed or paralyzed by choic
Well, I can imagine the following: take a large water bottle, feel it with azeotropic alcohol (94%)
The counter argument to that is that I can buy a bottle of 151 Rum (75.5% alcohol) or maybe some 190 proof everclear after the security checkpoint just before I board the plane.* Or I can buy some perfume... eau de toilette is around 85% alcohol, eau de parfum is up to 96% alcohol.
If someone sets up in business making things out of wicker, then they are going to be excluded from the stores that sell pine furniture. If they want to be in the store that sells pine furniture, then they need to sell pine, not complain that the pine store is discriminating against them.
Right, but they can open their own store. And that would be fine too... except that the pine store has chained all its customers up in the basement and won't let them out.
People then move to that new land because they like the environment there, and the one stop shop Walmart store.
And companies that sell goods that are not suitable for sale in a Walmart store complain that they can't sell there.
And then people that want goods not available at walmart realize they can't buy them... at all... anywhere. Because not only did walmart prohibit other stores from opening on paradise island, but apparently they built a prison wall around it blockaded all the ports so you can't import anything from anywhere else yourself. And if you leave you can't take any of your stuff with you either.
The trouble with your analogy is that nobody moved to paradise island (or buys an iphone) because they want to be locked into only ever using one store. They might find the available store convenient, and plan to use it, but they don't generally realize that if something is not in the store they can't have it from somewhere else.
They may not even know this limitation is the case going in.
Even if they know going in that they have to get all their apps at the apple store they may have assumed that simply meant all the apps were going to be at the app store. They may not have realized some of the apps they might want won't be allowed in the app store.
Because all that has done is made doing the same things a bit faster with a bit smaller device.
Real time video communication between two people anywhere in the civilized world with devices they have in their pocket isn't something we could do before.
I guess I'm trying to see how high you've set the bar before you'll recognize something as progress. I mean, 1000x times faster, 10 times smaller, with an interface (multi-touch screen with no stylus) that was mostly science fiction 15 years ago and is usable enough to have actually displaced physical keyboards / buttons on the devices, and a data rate fast enough for real time video.
All cars did was let us go faster, farther, with fewer incidents of your engine getting spooked by loud noises? No real progress.
Stealth fighters are just faster more maneuverable biplanes that are harder to see with radar. No real progress there either.
I just don't really see where you are coming from.
No, I'm painting it as an cross-platform sales problem. IOS doens't seem to have any mechanism to support cross platform sales of apps./shrug I'm sorry if the charity reference set you off, but I do see humblebundle as a good program, that has raised millions for charity, and I do think the only reason that it can't exist on IOS too is the result of Apple inflexibilility.
I do think that if they could offer cross platform sales of ios versions they would, but there is no way to sell cross platform licenses and support ios at the same time.
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First of all, I'm not breaking anything.
That's what an idiot would say too.
Secondly, your agent doesn't give a damn -- at least not when the house is not occupied any longer and there's nothing there but perhaps prop furniture.
Depends on the agent. I've had absolutely fantastic agents.
Besides, your agent doesn't necessarily do the showing.
While I realize that "standard practices" vary from region to region and even from neighborhood to neighborhood within a city, I expect my agent to be present.
He is my agent. My representative. Or as you put it... "a money oriented salesperson" -- Why wouldn't I want my salesman pitching the sale?
My agent was opening the places and showing them to me.
As I said, I'm aware some places use lock boxes and so forth much more extensively than others. And of course you want your agent there looking out for your interests, but I want mine there looking out for mine... I'm not paying him a $20,000 commission to put a lock box on the door, hang a sign, and put some amateur photos on the internet.*
I'm not some knucklehead who'll just go and randomly destroy things, thank you very much.
Again, that's what every knucklehead says. I've never met a knucklehead who said "Hey I'm an idiot that you really don't want to leave alone in a room with a screwdriver." That doesn't mean you are a knucklehead, but you've got to acknowledge that if a random guy you didn't know pulled out a screwdriver and headed for the nearest wall that your first thought would not be "I'm sure he knows what he's doing."
And after a few run-ins with theives and idiots one is rightfully cautious. I know people who have had things like perfume, silverware, and so forth stolen. Fixtures broken... even furniture -- some "knucklehead" climbed up on an coffee table to "inspect" something or other, and broke it.
My favorite trick is...
I don't deny there are all sorts of things you can and should do before buying a house. But its totally unreasonable to expect to be left alone in someone elses house with a screw driver.
When it comes to the outlets and paint and such, I've found that having a pair of screwdrivers with you works really well.
If I were selling and you came in with a pair of screwdrivers, I hope my agent asks you to put them away.
Your welcome to make an offer on the house, and make it subject to this sort of inspection, and after I've accepted it, you can satisfy your curiosity all you like, and if something is unearthed, we'll either get it fixed, renegotiate, or you can walk away. I'm fine with any of those scenarios.
I'd also have have someone escort you. If you jam your screwdriver where it doesn't belong and break a fixture, short something out, or otherwise fuck something up its still my house.
In any case I'm not going to tolerate every yahoo on the street walking into my home with a set of screwdrivers who thinks he is going to inspect the wiring during an open house or something. I don't know them from Adam.
While I tend to sympathize with potential buyers who don't want the agent hovering too much, I've seen too many cases of damage and theft to agree that I should let some random schmoe have the run of my house just because they might buy it.
Its not just phones... its laptops too.
The new macbook pro retina drives me nuts... they chased thin so they dropped the gigabit ethernet port.
If it had been as thick as the last macbook pros (which is not all that thick, the gigabit port would stay, and we'd have far better battery life.)
I get that some people want thin... buy a macbook air... buy an ipad. But some people want battery life and functionality.
Very well put.
I've posted in the past that the problem with laws about distracted driving are ineffective because people who are driving "distracted" are often driving perfectly fine when they cruise past the police. They are in the lane, centered, they are moving with traffic, and all appears to be well.
Then 2 blocks later they run over someone in a cross walk because while they were driving just fine, they weren't actually paying nearly enough attention.
Your post is a nice articulate explanation of how that works and I thank you for it.
Oh yeah sure, because intent has nothing to do with culpability in your fantasy world. Meanwhile, back in the real world, it does.
Good. So show intent that Manning's intent was to deliberately aid American enemie. Hell show it was anything other than "let the people know what its own government was doing so that what he perceived as great wrongs and crimes could be revealed and addressed".
If you want to talk about intent then lets talk about intent... what was Manning's INTENT?
Oh... suddenly its not about intent, right? Its just what he did and that his actions inadvertently may have theoretically placed American operatives at risk... its not about intent at all. Its just about what might have happened with the information?
So...Like when some one misplaces an unecrypted laptop with sensitive data. Er... no, completely different... its about intent...
I'm not saying YOU are the one participating in this circular argument, but there are a lot of people who seem to be.
Bottom line: If its about intent, then Manning was full of good intentions and guilty of bad judgement and that's about it. Dishonorable discharge, some house arrest or token jail time is all that's warranted here.
It has been valuable for thousands of years due to the incredibly persistent belief that it's worth something.
Why would that belief arise in a pre-industrial world? Why would it persist?
Gold is sufficiently rare, and sufficiently easy to work with. It is non-toxic, doesn't rot, rust, evaporate, or otherwise deteriorate, its reasonably stable and easy to store. And on top of all that it isn't particularly useful for building any essential pre-industrial weapons or infrastructure.
Gold is of little practical use in a pre-industrial environment
It is literally a "naturally occurring currency".
Between these natural characteristics and historical momentum any post-collapse civilization is all but guaranteed to use gold as a currency, at least for a time.
(Sure it will be of little practical value in areas of full on apocalyptic anarchy, but anywhere that's stable enough to warrant any sort of economy will need a currency. Straight barter will only get you so far. Iron is both too plentiful and rusts. Food is heavy and rots. Fuel is volatile, toxic, and difficult to move and store. Likewise ammo degrades over time - sure it stores well in a "cool dry storage container" ... but individual bullets pass around as currency, getting wet, dirty, thrown around, left in the sun...? Forget it.
The funny thing is, your comment just gave me a very clear idea. Microsoft really should have, instead of wasting all the time and energy into making Windows 8 and following the tablet crowd, tried to better integrate MCE as a core part of Windows and pushed developers for more 10 foot UIs--which Metro might have been good for coupled with kinetics for gesturing (emphasis on the might, since AFAIK, the issue is really MS's implementation, anyways).
I've got Win 8 on my HTPC, and it's actually quite solid as a 10 foot UI. The netflix metro app is pretty good.
I REALLY could not care less for kinect gesturing for control, but a good couch pointing device would be a godsend.
I currently use an Apple Magic Trackpad and Apple bluetooth keyboard with it, along with a harmony one remote and a wireless xbox controller for games. The magic trackpad is good, but not as supported as it could be.
I haven't tried using the xbox controller as a mouse, I know it can be done... a project for the weekend to fool around with.
Steam BigPicture was a welcome release. Windows 8's larger DPI settings even make the desktop usable at 10 feet, but there's the occasional software out there that pukes when the dpi is set to anything but standard... Amnesia: Dark Descent (or whatever its called) was the last title that I tried using that failed with higher DPI settings.
Is general jackass territory the place where they don't have quality broadband?
Not based on my experience with multiplayer gaming.
I actually use OSX on my laptop... but i have the dock mounted to the left, and autohide turned off ... so despite using OSX daily it hadnt' occurred to me that there was a hotkey for it. -- for shame :)
Now even if I fail to commit it to memory, just knowing its there will be enough that I can look it up next time its needed.
Thanks!
I wouldn't be surprised if South Korea were to veto such a deal too.
oh, and One More Thing... we remember who our friends are, and they get a discount.
2% discount, provided you buy it on valentines day, and you don't mind that it's already engraved with "Happy Birthday Julilly-Lynn"
Stop this please. You don't need any addons to make win8 work in desktop mode. You don't need to use any of the metro apps either.
Agreed almost 100%.
The only difference is that you get a full screen "start menu" when you hit the windows key.
Exactly. But...
a) The default start menu out-of-box is a cluttered mess of live-tile garbage. It only takes a few minutes to turn off the live tiles and/or remove most of them from the start menu outright, and after you do this the start menu is perfectly fine. It might make some sense on a tablet, it might be reasonable on touch capable laptop, but its just silly on a full on desktop.
b) Its annoying to HAVE to hit the windows KEY. A lot of people are used to there being a button. And there is really no good reason whatsoever for there NOT to be a "start" button on the desktop taskbar. If you are using the desktop, then you are using a mouse. If you are using a mouse then there should be a button for an important function like this. So all I want is a button to launch the full on start screen. I know I don't actually NEED it, I know I can use the key or I can even use the hot corners, but a lot of the win8 grief would be alleviated if they'd just given people a button to push.
c) Hot corners -- just SUCK. They are ok on a touch device, but not on a desktop. They aren't intuitive when using a mouse.
And worse, they are a royal PITA to operate when the desktop isn't "full screen" such as when running in a Virtual Machine, or a Remote Desktop window, or when there are multiple monitors and the "corners" aren't necessarily the corners. Apple started this nonsense and OS X is my LEAST favorite OS to remote into by far -- seems a large number of people have the dock set to autohide and getting it to show up remotely can be a pain, not to mention the window min/max animations are always horridly laggy... but i digress.
Gold's "doesn't rust, very malleable, nice conductivity" doesn't sound like properties valuable after society collapse (also not quite rare, especially taken one by one).
And yet it served quite well as the primary currency for humanity for a few thousand pre-industrial revolution years, so I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest you are wrong.
What if you'd normally bring your own $1 lunch, but instead you've given a fancy $10 value "free" lunch, and then forced to pay $3 in tax on that?
What if you'd normally drive a $600 rusted out beater, but instead you're given a fancy new Toyota Camry as a company car and then forced to pay income tax on the perk.
I'm not sure what to tell you. I'm sorry? I'm sorry your job has nice perks?
In any case they could easily restructure the restaurant so that it charges for meals that you can then expense back to the company. And then the expense renumeration is added to your income as a taxable benefit.
That way people who bring in their own cheese and jam sandwiches for lunch won't pay any tax on a perk they don't use.
This doesn't seem remarkably hard to resolve.
As a fan, there was never any shark-jumping. That's a very specific act of doing some over-the-top sensational act to make up for lack of stories or loss of viewership.
Disagree. I felt the whole Lorien/death/resurrection/messiah complex was a bit of a shark jump -- that could have been done better without having to invoke a precursor to the precursors that could only be found through the death and resurrection of the main character.
I stuck with the series though, and it recovered nicely. The remaining story arcs were a bit anti-climatic by comparison to the big alien showdown though which didn't help the perception. Sort of like the cleansing of the Shire after the battle at Gondor.
But all 5 seasons are worth watching. Some of the best scifi TV ever made.
You think Google is giving out free meals out of pure generosity?
You think google is paying wages out of pure generosity? Of course not. Its your compensation for doing your job, aka income. If they give you a car, or use of the company boat or plane, or send you on a vacation to jamaica for meeting your sales quotas these are all considered compensation, and you pay income tax on the value of these perks.
A gourmet cafeteria providing thousands of dollars of free food sounds like a pretty nice perk to me. I don't think its out of line to look at it as a taxable benefit.
So, by your crazy logic, should smaller companies that have free sodas and coffee for employees require employees to account for every single cup of coffee they drink there, and pay taxes for it?
I was waiting for someone to mention this. And the short answer is probably yes, but its piddly. An employee who has a couple cokes or coffees a day working 200 days a year would be liable for an extra hundred or two in income, or 20$ or so in taxes? Is that really worth the IRS's trouble?
Moreover, lots of tax rules involve thresholds and limits. e.g. you can give gifts up to X$ before you need to declare them... the coffee maker in the office kitchenette is pretty minor. A gourmet cafeteria is something else entirely.
How about companies with parking lots? Should employees be required to pay taxes for the luxury of being able to drive to work instead of taking the bus, and not have to pay for parking?
Actually in some cities where parking is very limited and expensive a parking spot is taxable benefit. Usually the way its structured is that the company charges the employee for the spot, and then gives the employee a parking allowance to cover the cost. The allowance is taxable income.
How about companies that provide elevators for employees? Should non-disabled employees be required to pay taxes for every elevator ride they take, since they could after all just take the stairs instead?
Sorry this example is just absurd.
What few people realise is that this may very well be exactly what the terrorists want.
Its not what the terrorists want.
Its worse than then what they want. They want us to stop meddling in their countries affairs and just leave them alone. The acts of terror are largely acts of 'revenge' for things they've perceived we have done to them. (And to be fair their perception though warped isn't completely wrong either.)
We respond by turning our own country into an idiotic police state.
Are we going to go after schoolchildren that trade desert cups at lunchtime because one has a higher value than another and can be called taxable income?
Do you think its worth the IRS's time to pursue 8 year olds for capital gains made by trading dessert cups on the underground schoolyard dessert cup markets? Why they might have dollars of undeclared income! Couple that with their allowance... /faceplam
If I pay the check for a date does that mean she has to declare it on her taxes?
When you say date do you mean prostitute? If so, she an independent contractor. Is the meal a business meeting? It may be a deductible expense for you.
Otherwise, you may want to look into gift taxes but your likely in the top 1% of the top 1% if you are running into your annual exclusion limits taking someone out on a date.
If the issue is whether the lunch benefit is taxable, perhaps buying the food from a supplier should already pay the tax.
That's not the point. If a valuable benefit is being provided to the employees, then the value of that benefit is counted as income, and income taxes are due. If you get a company car and you use it for personal driving then its a taxable benefit.
The only question is whether providing lunch is "work related" in the same way that providing you office supplies is "work related". If the company brings in pizza on a night everyone is working late... then no the pizza shouldn't be considered a taxable benefit. But pretty much everything with taxation works on limits and exclusions and thresholds. A gourmet cafeteria could easily cross the threshold into taxable benefit territory.
And lets say that it does. Its still a screaming good deal.If eat out $5000 worth of restaurants in a year... then I'm out $5000, plus I pay another $1000 or so in income tax on the money. I'd be delighted to not have to pay the $5000 and just have to pay the $1000. Hell, I wouldn't blink at taking a $3000 dollar reduction in income for a $5000 perk like that.
Crying over income tax on taxable benefits is nuts.
Are you an iPhone user?
Had an iphone 3GS for 3 years. Switched to Android Galaxy S3.
Because it only seems to be Android users that have a problem with this
There's that selection bias again. People who have a problem with it avoid the phone.
"Explain the success of the hated product by claiming the customers didn't know what they were doing."
Everyone I know with an iphone (including me) think its a great phone, great user interface, and like the app store.
At the time I bought it I knew about the app store restrictions, but felt the phone was the best in class compared to the alternatives.
But pretty much everyone else I knew had no idea that they were ONLY allowed to get apps from Apple. Several of them were pissed off by this on various occasions... when they wanted software that apple either rejected or pulled from the app store. A few of them rooted their device to get around it, but many of them were not comfortable with that, and just tolerated it.
And now, Apple's just not that exciting. Its still a great phone, but unlike the 3GS it wasn't leaps ahead of the competition. The 5 is pretty staid. Its a fine device but its nothing to get excited about.
Yes, although you lack the imagination to see it, iPhone users generally like having a one stop shop.
This is simply not true. They generally like app stores. They like the idea of an app on their phone from which to get other apps. It beats the hassles of side loading. It beats the hassles of browsing a million different inconsistent websites for downloads. So yes, they LIKE app stores.
But its not like they like having just ONE and ONLY ONE and would object to even the possibility of having another one.
Now that I have android, I STILL like app stores. 19 out of 20 apps on my phone are from Google Play.
But the user experience of a single trusted store beats the pants off multiple stores, some of which are not trustworthy.
So install one store on the phone by default. Your argument is that the customer experience will be worse if there are a bunch of stores. That contradicts reality. I don't know how many android stores there are. I only use one. Its the same user experience I had on my iphone.
Except that I've directly installed a few apps from out side the store that I've acquired elsewhere -- such as cross platform licenses for games, and a line of business tool I use for work.
But the user experience of a single trusted store beats the pants off multiple stores, some of which are not trustworthy.
That's why we like planned economies and monopolies so much. Wait no... that's not right... a little choice and a little competition keeps the market customer oriented and competitive. If there's only one store... then its not really motivated to be either. And lo... the Apple App Store... arbitrary, with draconian user hostile policies, inflexible pricing models that treat $1000 software packages the same as a $1 fart app. And if you don't like something about it? Fuck you. You can't go anywhere else for 2-3 years.
Choice is vastly overrated, especially on Slashdot. Most here never read The Paradox of Choice.
The paradox of choice doesn't apply to a situation where a customer knows what they want.
Suppose you ran a furniture store. You stock 5 couches. A person comes in, doesn't know what couch to buy, and you have for him to pick from. Easy. That's a valid application of the theory behind the paradox of choice.
Another customer comes in, he wants a bright red leather loveseat, modern style, condo size. He knows Natuzzi makes one he likes. He wants that one. You don't stock it.
Apparently you tell him to go fuck himself and pick from your 5. And then you lock him in your basement so he can't go to another furniture store and get what he actually wants. That's not actually an application of the paradox of choice because the customer isn't overwhelmed or paralyzed by choic
Well, I can imagine the following: take a large water bottle, feel it with azeotropic alcohol (94%)
The counter argument to that is that I can buy a bottle of 151 Rum (75.5% alcohol) or maybe some 190 proof everclear after the security checkpoint just before I board the plane.* Or I can buy some perfume ... eau de toilette is around 85% alcohol, eau de parfum is up to 96% alcohol.
If someone sets up in business making things out of wicker, then they are going to be excluded from the stores that sell pine furniture. If they want to be in the store that sells pine furniture, then they need to sell pine, not complain that the pine store is discriminating against them.
Right, but they can open their own store. And that would be fine too... except that the pine store has chained all its customers up in the basement and won't let them out.
People then move to that new land because they like the environment there, and the one stop shop Walmart store.
And companies that sell goods that are not suitable for sale in a Walmart store complain that they can't sell there.
And then people that want goods not available at walmart realize they can't buy them... at all... anywhere. Because not only did walmart prohibit other stores from opening on paradise island, but apparently they built a prison wall around it blockaded all the ports so you can't import anything from anywhere else yourself. And if you leave you can't take any of your stuff with you either.
The trouble with your analogy is that nobody moved to paradise island (or buys an iphone) because they want to be locked into only ever using one store. They might find the available store convenient, and plan to use it, but they don't generally realize that if something is not in the store they can't have it from somewhere else.
They may not even know this limitation is the case going in.
Even if they know going in that they have to get all their apps at the apple store they may have assumed that simply meant all the apps were going to be at the app store. They may not have realized some of the apps they might want won't be allowed in the app store.
Fair enough if people have a general consensus and align (just like with morals), but this need not be the case.
How do you know it need not be the case?
Maybe a set of specific general moral imperatives are required for a society to function. Perhaps you can't form a functioning society without them.
That would make them anything but arbitrary.
Because all that has done is made doing the same things a bit faster with a bit smaller device.
Real time video communication between two people anywhere in the civilized world with devices they have in their pocket isn't something we could do before.
I guess I'm trying to see how high you've set the bar before you'll recognize something as progress. I mean, 1000x times faster, 10 times smaller, with an interface (multi-touch screen with no stylus) that was mostly science fiction 15 years ago and is usable enough to have actually displaced physical keyboards / buttons on the devices, and a data rate fast enough for real time video.
All cars did was let us go faster, farther, with fewer incidents of your engine getting spooked by loud noises? No real progress.
Stealth fighters are just faster more maneuverable biplanes that are harder to see with radar. No real progress there either.
I just don't really see where you are coming from.
You trying to paint this as a charity problem
No, I'm painting it as an cross-platform sales problem. IOS doens't seem to have any mechanism to support cross platform sales of apps. /shrug I'm sorry if the charity reference set you off, but I do see humblebundle as a good program, that has raised millions for charity, and I do think the only reason that it can't exist on IOS too is the result of Apple inflexibilility.
I do think that if they could offer cross platform sales of ios versions they would, but there is no way to sell cross platform licenses and support ios at the same time.