He did. We didn't believe him. He proved it. We got angry. Killing. More proof. More killing. More proof.
Moments of beauty. More killing. Oh, and we are flawed. All of us. He knew that.
Silence.
He came to us. Proof. We mostly didn't believe Him. This time we killed Him. He rose again to prove it again. We still don't believe Him until he proves it to each one of us. Individually.
We are still flawed. All of us. Now some of us kill because we're still flawed. Some of us try really hard to be better. Nope, still flawed. He loves us anyways.
"what keeps them from trying to entrap me on some social media platform"
Nothing. Nothing at all.
Perhaps, however, laws, enforced, can either prevent them from actually convicting you of a crime you did not intend to commit, or at least permit a court to refuse to prosecute if you were manipulated into doing so surreptitiously. Maybe.
And then, knowing this has happened, others can refuse to empower those authorities, by vote or rejection.
And there's a solution to the anti-social behavior you rail against, the misplaced anti-conservative complaint you have.
Exercise your freedom to live where you want. While you can.
Perhaps you would be happier in Los Angeles, or Seattle, or more likely in a small town in Illinois. A suburb in Maryland.
You see, freedom that includes the freedom to avoid what you want to avoid, if possible*, is precious. Not like living in some other nations where you will be required to adhere to customs and rituals you have no belief in, or will be required to accept as neighbors some people who, literally, want to kill you just because of where you were born.
* - Some things cannot be avoided if you participate in modern urban society, and diseases are one of them. Unless you're wearing effective respiratory filters, engaging in proper handwashing on a nearly continuous basis, and a few other measures that make life distressingly uncomfortable, you're at risk of contracting any of several communicable diseases. And actually, even in a small town, you're at risk. You've lost. Living in the woods exposes you to a variety of disease organisms waiting patiently for you arrival. Living in the desert just leaves you exposed to fungi that are patient and long-lived.
"Approximately 76.4 million or 44.4% of Americans won’t pay any federal income tax in 2018, up from 72.6 million people or 43.2% in 2016..."
"For the most part, they don’t earn enough money. However, many people who work and who don’t owe any federal income taxes still give money to Uncle Sam, because money comes out of their paychecks for Social Security and Medicare,"
“Many low- and below-average-income families pay more in payroll taxes every year than they pay in federal income taxes,” Burtless said. “This means you have to be careful describing the federal tax liabilities of U.S. families. The U.S. individual income tax is quite progressive, with much heavier tax liabilities as we move up the income distribution and very low or even negative income tax liabilities at the bottom of the income distribution.”
“After all federal taxes are factored in, the U.S. tax system as a whole is progressive, according to Pew. “The top 0.1% of families pay the equivalent of 39.2% and the bottom 20% have negative tax rates. That is, they get more money back from the government in the form of refundable tax credits than they pay in taxes.”
Now, do we divert the discussion from taxes and consider the mess that is entitlement programs, those funds having been raided relentlessly for decades, now insolvent in every meaningful sense, and doomed, deliberately, to collapse in my lifetime? No. Similar problem, different causes and results, mostly. Much harder to fix. State and city pension crises are forerunners of this problem.
"include in executives' income any non-monetary compensation"
Already law in the US.
Also, this note:
"The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a rule requiring U.S.-based publicly traded companies to disclose how median employee pay compares with CEO compensation. Employers must reveal this information for their first fiscal year beginning on or after Jan. 1, 2017. After that, they must identify the median worker wage once every three years—or more frequently if their workforce or pay arrangements significantly change."
The corporation I work for used to pay its CEO years late, based not on the immediate performance, but on the long-term performance. Or, to put it another way, if the leadership doesn't result in multi-year sustainable performance, he may not get paid as much, or at all. I say 'used to' because we got a new CEO, and his arrangement isn't known to me. And our former CEO will get paid this year for his performance 3-5 years ago. Much of it non-monetary compensation.
As if corporations actually pay taxes. As an expense, these are costs. Price is often expressed as Cost + profit. Mind you, this is too simplistic to be acceptable economics. So obfuscate.
I would happily settle for a minimum corporate income tax, like 0.5% of gross revenue. While corporations never actually pay taxes (their stockholders or their customers do, duh), an end to profitable corps avoiding taxes is overdue.
And a similar minimum on individuals, aimed roughly at a day's wages, like 0.4%? Since nearly everyone is in withholding, this should give back the interest-free loan you've made, minus at least a little. And then, filing as minimum, see the withholding go way down, so you get to the point you can see the tax paid as maybe 30-50% of withholding, and play the game of gentle economic truth-or-consequences...
Or not. No one in Washington will want to touch this treasure chest, and many states live off the rules of the IRS. Nope, never gonna happen. Forget it.
I'm with you. From the G1 to the Sensation 4G, M7, M8, and now the U11. It's not just the flaky software, with Android 8.whatever just not very reliable on this phone, but having crunched the screen corner and asking about repair, I got a disturbing response from Customer Service, essentially 'won't know how much until you send it in', and 'won;t know how long until you send it in'. The many horror stories of months waiting for repair, demanding a solution, and getting the phone returned not just unrepaired, but in pieces (I do wonder of the truth of those). Last request I made, having finally cracked it through, was a nonbinding estimate of $230 but no time frame.
This is the last HTC phone for me. They just can't do it.
Having said all that, if they are going to persist, this app cull could be prep for Android 9 releases. It would be smarter for them to go Android One for future phones, though if they are indeed circling the drain they may not release for any existing phones, and we may never see a new model than the Exodus. Kinda sad, they can manufacture, and I still think the M7 was what the iPhone should have looked like at the time.
If you're going to get there at 8:30, pretending does no good. The flight will take as long as it takes. Setting the schedule to reflect reality is just plain right, for customer service and management.
If you consistently arrive 'late', many airports will have the gate empty for that interval, wasteful perhaps, depending on demand. If you schedule realistically but arrive early, think tailwinds, you wait somewhere with the engines turning. Being 'on time' is the goal.
If you were thinking of improving customer (passenger) efficiency, then redesign the security processes. Planes do not magically fly faster or slower because you want them to, and peak fuel efficiency is well understood. It's more passenger miles than miles per pound of fuel.
And so TMO, in the midst of a merger plan with the Sad Sack of the industry, is also working on Band 71 deployment as a rural broadband (oh, and yes, mobile service) solution. This is an excellent time to refocus on fiber, engage in another round of subsidized buildout, and let this new fiber, 'everywhere', sit dark.
How much fiber was laid by Ma Bell pre-breakup, and how much was resold to us for long-distance rate reductions that never actually happened?
How much of that fiber was laid as expense, not investment, and paid for by ratepayers?
And how much was resold for data, when it was laid for LD voice? At voice ratepayer cost?
How much money in the Universal Service Fund goes to rural equity?
It's not that the free markets have failed, it's that the market has never been very free. And where it has, somewhat, it's thrived. Look at dedicated data circuits - T1/E1 is not very useful today, but we're arguing over business service at 100MB for $100-300/month as gouging, when T1 service not so long ago was $1200/month, and would give you trouble. Even DDS2 was outrageous then. Even GPRS was faster than that.
Getting the Federal government out of this as much as can be tolerated, encouraging the states to permit local deals, that's the way to move forward. Of course, in the State House, you're going to see bribery and corruption routinely practiced, in a manner not so erudite as the federal level. But more pervasive. And in the big cities this is another of the many fights against corruption top to bottom.
My previous home had two cable services to it. The joy of one coming in and literally cutting off the other (with snips, as in snip-snip) was too much, Finally the big bought out the little. I lived with a DSL pedestal literally in my back yard, and could have gottten 20MB+ out of it, but never did. Now where I live DSL is just long enough to make 60MB the max, and the carrier is well past lazy and on to incompetent, conducting system upgrades without notice and leavign me down for TC and Internet for 36+ hours on a Super Bowl Sunday, yes the one that drops 911 service as often as french fries are dropped at a McDonalds.
Telecom regulation is as bad as the physical layer craft is. Pus.
I dabble in Arduino programming, and the IDE doesn't lend itself to being turned into a web app. It could be, but developers are probably not going to accept that.
And devs are a tiny fraction of users. Right.
So delivering apps as web apps makes sens for, what, 60-80% of users? Good deal, 'virtualize' the desktop.
The UI was usable. Most of the forums I'm trying to use are terrible, and the others are not very popular.
The dilution is unfortunate. I can't yet get the quality and volume of content I had on Google+, and it's going to be a while.
Many of the forums I'm being encouraged to use are focused on free exchange, freedom from moderation. I'm blocking what I don't like, since censoring my own feed is my own choice. But it's nasty out there.
All in all, Google will come back with another try at this. They just didn't want to fix Google+. They may want to be in the social media business.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure.
He did. We didn't believe him. He proved it. We got angry. Killing. More proof. More killing. More proof.
Moments of beauty. More killing. Oh, and we are flawed. All of us. He knew that.
Silence.
He came to us. Proof. We mostly didn't believe Him. This time we killed Him. He rose again to prove it again. We still don't believe Him until he proves it to each one of us. Individually.
We are still flawed. All of us. Now some of us kill because we're still flawed. Some of us try really hard to be better. Nope, still flawed. He loves us anyways.
We can't. He can. We should let Him.
End of the written record.
Truer than you might think. Today's comedians don't actually need to be funny. Just popular.
"what keeps them from trying to entrap me on some social media platform"
Nothing. Nothing at all.
Perhaps, however, laws, enforced, can either prevent them from actually convicting you of a crime you did not intend to commit, or at least permit a court to refuse to prosecute if you were manipulated into doing so surreptitiously. Maybe.
And then, knowing this has happened, others can refuse to empower those authorities, by vote or rejection.
I know, naive.
"It's this thing called "entrapment".
Police officers have to "identify" themselves as such.
"
You don't believe that all movies are based on reality, do you?
And there's a solution to the anti-social behavior you rail against, the misplaced anti-conservative complaint you have.
Exercise your freedom to live where you want. While you can.
Perhaps you would be happier in Los Angeles, or Seattle, or more likely in a small town in Illinois. A suburb in Maryland.
You see, freedom that includes the freedom to avoid what you want to avoid, if possible*, is precious. Not like living in some other nations where you will be required to adhere to customs and rituals you have no belief in, or will be required to accept as neighbors some people who, literally, want to kill you just because of where you were born.
* - Some things cannot be avoided if you participate in modern urban society, and diseases are one of them. Unless you're wearing effective respiratory filters, engaging in proper handwashing on a nearly continuous basis, and a few other measures that make life distressingly uncomfortable, you're at risk of contracting any of several communicable diseases. And actually, even in a small town, you're at risk. You've lost. Living in the woods exposes you to a variety of disease organisms waiting patiently for you arrival. Living in the desert just leaves you exposed to fungi that are patient and long-lived.
Non-Cash Compensation. A concept. Indirect compensation is s similar concept.
I did this also.
From MarketWatch
"Approximately 76.4 million or 44.4% of Americans won’t pay any federal income tax in 2018, up from 72.6 million people or 43.2% in 2016..."
"For the most part, they don’t earn enough money. However, many people who work and who don’t owe any federal income taxes still give money to Uncle Sam, because money comes out of their paychecks for Social Security and Medicare,"
“Many low- and below-average-income families pay more in payroll taxes every year than they pay in federal income taxes,” Burtless said. “This means you have to be careful describing the federal tax liabilities of U.S. families. The U.S. individual income tax is quite progressive, with much heavier tax liabilities as we move up the income distribution and very low or even negative income tax liabilities at the bottom of the income distribution.”
“After all federal taxes are factored in, the U.S. tax system as a whole is progressive, according to Pew. “The top 0.1% of families pay the equivalent of 39.2% and the bottom 20% have negative tax rates. That is, they get more money back from the government in the form of refundable tax credits than they pay in taxes.”
Now, do we divert the discussion from taxes and consider the mess that is entitlement programs, those funds having been raided relentlessly for decades, now insolvent in every meaningful sense, and doomed, deliberately, to collapse in my lifetime? No. Similar problem, different causes and results, mostly. Much harder to fix. State and city pension crises are forerunners of this problem.
"include in executives' income any non-monetary compensation"
Already law in the US.
Also, this note:
"The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a rule requiring U.S.-based publicly traded companies to disclose how median employee pay compares with CEO compensation. Employers must reveal this information for their first fiscal year beginning on or after Jan. 1, 2017. After that, they must identify the median worker wage once every three years—or more frequently if their workforce or pay arrangements significantly change."
The corporation I work for used to pay its CEO years late, based not on the immediate performance, but on the long-term performance. Or, to put it another way, if the leadership doesn't result in multi-year sustainable performance, he may not get paid as much, or at all. I say 'used to' because we got a new CEO, and his arrangement isn't known to me. And our former CEO will get paid this year for his performance 3-5 years ago. Much of it non-monetary compensation.
Woot. lucky you.
When was that?
I'm confused. Are you agreeing with my premise, did you miss it, or are you trying another line of questioning to avoid it?
As if we care what share of federal revenue is derived from what form of taxes. Consumers pay it all, in one fashion or another. The buck stops there.
As if corporations actually pay taxes. As an expense, these are costs. Price is often expressed as Cost + profit. Mind you, this is too simplistic to be acceptable economics. So obfuscate.
Or whatever.
Imagine your employer didn't withhold some of your salary to pay taxes. That would be yours. To pay taxes with.
I would happily settle for a minimum corporate income tax, like 0.5% of gross revenue. While corporations never actually pay taxes (their stockholders or their customers do, duh), an end to profitable corps avoiding taxes is overdue.
And a similar minimum on individuals, aimed roughly at a day's wages, like 0.4%? Since nearly everyone is in withholding, this should give back the interest-free loan you've made, minus at least a little. And then, filing as minimum, see the withholding go way down, so you get to the point you can see the tax paid as maybe 30-50% of withholding, and play the game of gentle economic truth-or-consequences...
Or not. No one in Washington will want to touch this treasure chest, and many states live off the rules of the IRS. Nope, never gonna happen. Forget it.
I'm with you. From the G1 to the Sensation 4G, M7, M8, and now the U11. It's not just the flaky software, with Android 8.whatever just not very reliable on this phone, but having crunched the screen corner and asking about repair, I got a disturbing response from Customer Service, essentially 'won't know how much until you send it in', and 'won;t know how long until you send it in'. The many horror stories of months waiting for repair, demanding a solution, and getting the phone returned not just unrepaired, but in pieces (I do wonder of the truth of those). Last request I made, having finally cracked it through, was a nonbinding estimate of $230 but no time frame.
This is the last HTC phone for me. They just can't do it.
Having said all that, if they are going to persist, this app cull could be prep for Android 9 releases. It would be smarter for them to go Android One for future phones, though if they are indeed circling the drain they may not release for any existing phones, and we may never see a new model than the Exodus. Kinda sad, they can manufacture, and I still think the M7 was what the iPhone should have looked like at the time.
Well then whip our your BB10.
Oh yea. You're with the government, right?
Sorry, I would not have included these in the consumer phone universe. Ever.
Yes, it is basic customer service.
If you're going to get there at 8:30, pretending does no good. The flight will take as long as it takes. Setting the schedule to reflect reality is just plain right, for customer service and management.
If you consistently arrive 'late', many airports will have the gate empty for that interval, wasteful perhaps, depending on demand. If you schedule realistically but arrive early, think tailwinds, you wait somewhere with the engines turning. Being 'on time' is the goal.
If you were thinking of improving customer (passenger) efficiency, then redesign the security processes. Planes do not magically fly faster or slower because you want them to, and peak fuel efficiency is well understood. It's more passenger miles than miles per pound of fuel.
For starters, the 'lower 48 states' are still 48 states.
Since there's no version of QNX for phones, you're asking too much.
Now go crawl back down the stairs and finish your mom's yogurt smoothie.
And so TMO, in the midst of a merger plan with the Sad Sack of the industry, is also working on Band 71 deployment as a rural broadband (oh, and yes, mobile service) solution. This is an excellent time to refocus on fiber, engage in another round of subsidized buildout, and let this new fiber, 'everywhere', sit dark.
How much fiber was laid by Ma Bell pre-breakup, and how much was resold to us for long-distance rate reductions that never actually happened?
How much of that fiber was laid as expense, not investment, and paid for by ratepayers?
And how much was resold for data, when it was laid for LD voice? At voice ratepayer cost?
How much money in the Universal Service Fund goes to rural equity?
It's not that the free markets have failed, it's that the market has never been very free. And where it has, somewhat, it's thrived. Look at dedicated data circuits - T1/E1 is not very useful today, but we're arguing over business service at 100MB for $100-300/month as gouging, when T1 service not so long ago was $1200/month, and would give you trouble. Even DDS2 was outrageous then. Even GPRS was faster than that.
Getting the Federal government out of this as much as can be tolerated, encouraging the states to permit local deals, that's the way to move forward. Of course, in the State House, you're going to see bribery and corruption routinely practiced, in a manner not so erudite as the federal level. But more pervasive. And in the big cities this is another of the many fights against corruption top to bottom.
My previous home had two cable services to it. The joy of one coming in and literally cutting off the other (with snips, as in snip-snip) was too much, Finally the big bought out the little. I lived with a DSL pedestal literally in my back yard, and could have gottten 20MB+ out of it, but never did. Now where I live DSL is just long enough to make 60MB the max, and the carrier is well past lazy and on to incompetent, conducting system upgrades without notice and leavign me down for TC and Internet for 36+ hours on a Super Bowl Sunday, yes the one that drops 911 service as often as french fries are dropped at a McDonalds.
Telecom regulation is as bad as the physical layer craft is. Pus.
What? Really?
How did you get this misinformed? This takes a genuine effort.
Will, I think of Atmel studio and MPLab X as heavy weight, but useful. The compilers are dope. I'll go out and look at the web versions.
Great! I'll go out and get my Win 7 and 8 containers to do dev work there, for legacy users. Until they do go away, of course...
I dabble in Arduino programming, and the IDE doesn't lend itself to being turned into a web app. It could be, but developers are probably not going to accept that.
And devs are a tiny fraction of users. Right.
So delivering apps as web apps makes sens for, what, 60-80% of users? Good deal, 'virtualize' the desktop.
The UI was usable. Most of the forums I'm trying to use are terrible, and the others are not very popular.
The dilution is unfortunate. I can't yet get the quality and volume of content I had on Google+, and it's going to be a while.
Many of the forums I'm being encouraged to use are focused on free exchange, freedom from moderation. I'm blocking what I don't like, since censoring my own feed is my own choice. But it's nasty out there.
All in all, Google will come back with another try at this. They just didn't want to fix Google+. They may want to be in the social media business.