I'm expect that using the system tools to block access to the address book is probably sufficient on Android and iOS - so long as it's done before the app is ever launched.
What surprises me more is that people don't consider geolocation. Many many facebook users share their location with Facebook. It's then trivial for facebook to see that you are repeatedly in the same location at the same time as another person.
From my experience, their geolocation is pretty shit. As is every other system designed to find people I know... because I don't know fecking any of them... often, they're not even in the same country as me. It used to have some relevance when they suggested friends of friends, but I suspect this hasn't been generating new connections in some time. Facebooks problem is with users switching off and the platform going the same way as Live Journal, MySpace and many others.
Much like their target ads, their "people you may know" is on another planet. If this is the quality of their product, I doubt they'll be able to glean anything useful from the handful of dad jokes and occasional car pic I post. We passed peak facebook a while back IMHO. Cant tell exactly when but most people are over it.
I remember way back when that there was a site that plugged itself as a "Toyota Simulator" (seems to be down now). When you went to the site, it was nothing but a looping video of a car driving way too fast down a road and a person screaming.;)
Compared to the Peugeot simulator, which is a car travelling down a stretch of road way too slow with the driver complaining about their prostate, hooligans, being half blind and the Yoofs of today.
The summary states, "it's clear engineers at the company care more about getting things right than they do about being first."
So, basically what you're saying is, Toyota is the anti-Tesla.
Basically you're saying Toyota is being Toyota (conservative to the extreme, but good at what they do).
Toyota is not the only one concerned with this, as a road user I'm concerned what will happen when Dopey Doris' automated car struggles with faded lines on a single lane road (quite common on my 18 mile commute to work). Right now, Dopey Doris can only spend half her attention on her phone, I hate to think what will happen when she puts her full attention into it and because she's so engrossed in FaceCrush or watching the latest episode of Keeping up the Cardasians that she completely tunes out the alarm throwing control back to the driver and the car veers into my lane uncontrolled.
Autonomous cars need to be 99.999999999999999% reliable before they should be considered ready for public consumption. Right now, they're nowhere near it. Google's success has been due to two factors, 1. it was all done in sunny California (I'd like to see the same car in Berkshire) and; 2. the car has been in the hands of a professional driver the whole time. The current track record for autonomous cars is nil, the record is for car and driver working together. Of course we know in the real world if you gave the Google autonomous car to Dopey Doris commuting from Finchamstead every day, she's going to assume that it will do everything for her, so we need to make sure it can operate without human intervention because it needs to, human intervention cant be counted upon from the average steering wheel attendant with a phone shoved up their nose (we get enough collisions from these types as it is without giving them a reassurance).
I keep hearing that Uber is throwing away money to make their name. Is this another example of that, and if so, where did they get the cash? Or are they actually making money now? Last I heard they were maybe profitable in the US, but still just flushing money down the toilet in China.
You make it sound as if Uber has any plan to be profitable, they're a scheme to funnel the money of gullible VC's into the private offshore accounts of their owners. Uber is losing something to the tune of US$150,000,000 a quarter, so $5,000,000 is just a drop in the bucket and nothing but a sad attempt at getting positive PR by a scummy company struggling with its image, sorry but the irrational hate of traditional taxi companies has subsided now that Uber has the same problems... and who could have predicted that.
I'm actually kinda surprised Amazon didn't see this one coming?
I mean, they're not generally stupid.....Do all the people at Amazon working on this "solution" freely admit strangers into their homes when they are away?
Amazon aren't stupid, they've just got too much spare cash so any "Hey, this sounds like a cool idea" idea gets developed. This is how we ended up with the Amazon "Dash" button that is also quite unpopular. Sure there are some people who are too lazy to go to the shop to buy bog roll, but most of us want to take a poo now, not in 24 hours after pressing a button when the delivery man arrives with the Andrex.
After it gets discontinued, there will be a small but vocally upset crowd that now has to undertake the onerous task of ordering their loo paper online.
Lots of houses have a porch which here in the UK means a small area behind the main front door that has another door that leads into the house proper. Think of it like an air lock, helps keep heat in/out depending on the time of year, but most heat in, in the UK.
Is it a porch or a vestibule?
Also, it must be a northern thing. I've lived in London and Southern England and haven't been inside a house that has a completely enclosed porch or vestibule.
But most people will get packages delivered to work. Those who work on secure sites will get them delivered to home and if they dont fit through the mail slot, are usually left with a neighbor.
So much of a failure that they're in almost every laptop made. The last two laptops I bought had NVidia and Intel chips in them (Intel for low power consumption, NVidia for games). They aren't good for gaming but they're fine for everyday use which is why no-one cares that their laptop hasn't got a NVidia chip in it (and its hard to find a reasonably priced laptop with a NVidia chip in it).
Now in desktop gaming, NVidia pwns the graphics market, Intel pwns the CPU market.
20 countries, ha ha, try keeping track of 50 states and 8 territories like in the US
That is not even the worst part. Sales tax in the USA can be owed to states, counties, municipalities, and other vaguely-defined-but-real government entities
We aren't talking about sales tax, that's already paid.
We're talking about company (income or profit) tax... And you can bet your tax-hating arse that Apple (and others) know exactly how much profit they've made, they have to in order know how to hide it from the governments.
Taxes suck, but they pay for civilisation. Taxes suck a bit less when megacorporations raking in billions are paying their fair share.
Or I could just stick with Google, and realise that their not only monetizing my data has provided countless improvements in my life in exchange. I give them my words for better translation. I give them my schedule for better predictive alerts. I give them my location in exchange for better navigation systems and more relevant local search results.
This, I know that Google is using my data for profit. I also know Microsoft and Apple are doing the exact same thing but are being less open about it.
Google has always been honest that they're in the business of selling data, but they've also been the only ones to give us some solid reassurance that the data is anonymised before being sold on. They state this up front instead of burying it in their T&C in lawerspeak like Apple, Microsoft and others.
Sure I know I'm trading my precious, precious data for quality services, Google hasn't been deceptive about it and its better than bartering chickens.
We still have government funded news sites. The BBC and Al-Jazeera both do good work. They might be under pressure to not report negatively on their patron but there are enough of them (with different patrons) to fill in the gaps. The TV networks once funded news sites as a status thing because news isn't profitable.
The Beeb is still pretty good with political news, they'll happily dish the dirt out on the government in power (be it Labour or Tory) as well as the opposition but I feel they weren't harsh enough on Brexit, the BBC was too afraid of upsetting people on that subject so I felt their efforts were half hearted. When the head of the BoE says that the UK would be in a boom if not for Brexit I tend to believe that over Nigel Farage.
You want moneylosing local journalism, fund it yourself. Don't expect others to fund it for you.
Thank Deity we have laws here in the UK that prevent rich people from just suing things they don't like out of existence. If a paper publishes something damaging against a rich person here, their ultimate defence is demonstrating that it was factual. If they can do that, they'll have high priced QC's (very expensive lawyers) knocking down their doors because they'll get their exorbitant fee from the losers (the rich people suing). Its nice for the little guy to be given a fair playing field.
Also, its good to have not for profit news sources. That way rich people cant simply pay their way out of legal embarrassments.
China charges 20% vat on everything, along with hefty tariffs on Western imports.
Mexico charges 17% tariffs and then gives 100 % tax break to most local companies, which includes the vat.
Most of Europe has 15-20% vats , combined with corporate taxes, even if companies operate outside of the nation.
America needs to do a 0 corporate tax on American made goods/services (start at 50% and raise to 80% by 5 each year ). Keep 35% corporate tax on.foreign goods and apply a 20% vat on everything esp imported goods/parts/services.
This will put a stop to this BS.
First off, VAT (Value Added Tax) is not a tariff on imported goods, its a sales tax. In the UK, if I by anything, from a German made car to a Chinese made TV to an entirely British sourced ham sandwich, I pay 20% VAT regardless. This system would be better than the US's current, stupidly complicated per state sales tax system, but the states will never accept it (nor will many Americans).
Secondly, And what is the quality of life in China or Mexico? Europe is also a bad example as those nations with a high quality of life is accompanied with high prices (but we can afford them as we can command very high wages).
Protectionism doesn't work. Giving tax incentives doe not work. All you end up with is the Irish situation where corporate taxes are low for HQing in Ireland, but the tax burden is picked up by the average person with high personal taxes.
Using cash to avoid payment of taxes is in fact evasion.
And the IRS pays finders fees to folks who assist them in obtaining evidence of the act.
This, what people call tax "avoidance" should really be called tax minimisation, because that's what it is. I prefer to pay cash because it lowers prices (the bank takes a percentage of all credit card transactions) but expect the merchant to meet their tax requirements (and to minimise them as much as they legally can).
However this day and age, its easier to evade tax using the spoilage/breakage loopholes than cash. That way you get the cost of the good that have "spoiled" taken off your gross earnings and still get to sell them (spoilage is hard to disprove).
Sounds like a good way to have a towering inferno. The stuff we put inside large buildings burns quite readily. But the fire generally stops in a single room. But if you suddenly make everything out of wood, what's to stop the fire from spreading everywhere?
Solid planks do not burn that easily, especially if treated with fire retardant which is required in the EU for building regulations.
I'm speaking as a professor at a university, and I don't see why this is a bad thing.
Research at universities is a good thing, don't get me wrong, But R&D at companies is also valuable. In many cases even more valuable, because companies want research that actually leads to a practical result. Too many university researchers are farting around with abstract stuff of no foreseeable use to anyone, publishing useless results in write-only journals.
Research at a company is measured on a different scale: can it be used for something? Who thinks we would have multi-core, multi-GHz processors in our pockets, if this hadn't been driven by commercial interests? A few ideas were developed at universities, but practically the entire computer revolution has been driven by commercial research. Maybe it's now time for AI to follow that route as well - we've fiddled with it in academia since the 1950s, but finally - finally - it may lead to something more than niche applications in the real world.
This, and this makes it a cyclical thing. Real AGI/Strong AI is a long way away and still largely theoretical. Weak AI is practically here, so companies behind the ball are throwing stupid money at anyone pretending to be an AI scientist. Once the AI fad has existing products, they'll stop throwing money at anyone and a lot will return to academia because whilst its a smaller paycheque, its a steady one.
Perhaps when they stop paying football and basketball coaches obscene salaries and pay professors and grads what they are actually worth the quality at universities will improve.
Fixed it for you.
This is a European University, there are no basketball teams, the best you can hope for is an amateur soccer or rowing team. Maybe Equestrian if there is a lot of Old Money around. We've never tied athletics into academia. If you want to pursue a sporting career, you either need to do it privately I.E. in a league or via a dedicated sporting institute. You dont get a fake degree for playing sports over here.
Not where I work. We don't hire smokers. We ask about tobacco use at the very beginning of the interview process, and reject all users.
Well, that's just stupid - you would really pass up a chance to hire the next Tesla or Hawkings, because they smoke? I bet your competition loves such counterproductive thinking.
Back here in reality, chances are that its not, in fact smokers tend to have lower IQ's, probably not because of smoking but because most people who started smoking in the last 30 odd years have to be pretty daft to ignore the problems related to it.
This is perfectly legal. Smokers have no rights.
Not true - smokers have the exact same civil liberties as non-smokers. The key term here is "private company."
Smokers have no additional rights, and no inherent right to smoke. You knew this is what the GP meant, attempting to twist their words only makes you look silly.
To be 100% honest, I dont even think a smoker would win a case in Australia or the UK (who have very strong Industrial Relations laws) for not being hired because he was a smoker. All a company has to do is come up with a half arsed health and safety excuse and the chimney will be told to go jump.
1) Stop foreign companies operating - ban them, spy on them, drive them out
The first premise in your argument is completely wrong, the rest of your ill thought out post is even worse.
China does not force foreign companies from operating, quite the opposite, they encourage it as long as China is benefiting (either through access to technology they aren't able to replicate or by financial incentives). Lots of honest, god-fearing western companies use china to get around those pesky environmental or workplace protection laws. As long as a palm gets greased and they dont rock the boat, they can pretty much do what they want.
Modern china is basically a extremist right-wing wet dream.
1. No public elections (so those pesky leftists* cant be elected by accident).
2. Attempted absolute control over information (ignoring that it doesn't work, this stops that pesky "fake news" from contradicting your "Alternative Fact").
3. A compliant population via childhood indoctrination.
And it's No. 3 that is Chinas biggest defence, not the porous so-called "great wall of china" which is easy to get around (you can make a law against VPN's, but just try enforcing it).
Now Russia is not emulating China, they're trying to go back to the old style Soviet controls. In the former soviet union, state control was viciously enforced by secret police who had a variety of laws that could be applied to just about anyone. Thats what an anti-VPN law is, it's not designed to stop VPN's (Putin knows he cant, everyone knows he can't) but thats not the purpose of the law, its to charge any "subversives" with a suitably nebulous charge that is very difficult to disprove.
BTW, fascism is a far right ideology, not a left one, although that description mostly applies to China (Communist in name only).
Theresa May was (possibly still is) a Remainer, she wanted to remain in the EU. To the far-right whingers that basically makes her pro-immigrant even though most of the arguments to remain in the EU have a solid basis in economics.
We now have a grammar nazi post on the front page. Slashdot has really evolved, from the nascent grammar troll posts, through the mercurial grammar nazi years, to a full fledged front page grammar post.
I'm going to continue to say Daylight Savings Time, because that is how nearly everyone says it, and alter the language irrevocably. In 50 years, hopefully we will have done away with daylight savings time completely and this topic will be dead, but if we have not, Daylight Savings Time will be the correct way to say it.
This, there is a lot of phrases and words in languages that are grammatically incorrect, however they're in the language because they're in popular use. Languages are not a science, they're also living things and change over time. Languages are based on what people use, not what is set out in a book of rules. Heaps of words are completely wrong like "ain't" which is a bastardisation of "isn't" and not a contraction of anything (isn't == is not) but its in popular use in some places much the same as "innit" in the UK (also a bastardisation of isn't).
After that we have localisations, a word can mean different things in different places. Americans and Australians use the word "pants" to refer to any pair of clothing with separate legs, however in British English it refers exclusively to underwear (pants are trousers here). Neither definition is strictly incorrect, it just depends on where you are as to which one you use.
And that mein Grammar Nazi's is just the tip of the mother fucking iceberg.
English is an incredibly fault tolerant language. You can use completely the wrong sausage and everyone will still understand what you bacon. This is what makes the language so powerful and widely used. No other language in the world has the same robustness which is why it will remain the language of business for a long time.
Finally, this is far from the worst issue with grammar these days. Priorities people, get some.
Sigh, it seems that a lot of people want to change the meaning of the word bias to "He said something I dont like and I'm butt hurt".
Having an opinion column in a news publication is not bias, bias in a news publication is deliberately skewing the facts, omitting relevant information, adding falsifications or other means to distort facts to suit your point of view. The point is, its deliberate and hidden al a Fox News, the Daily Mail or Russia Today. Unbiased news is presenting the facts and allowing the audience to make their own inferences.
Now reputable news organisations have opinion columns, but these are clearly marked as opinion. With many news agencies, the entire theme of the site changes to make it clear they are not presenting facts, but opinions... And there is nothing wrong with having opinion columns as long as they are clearly marked as such. Issues with bias in news start to occur when opinion is dressed up to masquerade as news.
This article is pretty much non-news, we cant even call it fake news its such a non event. Why, well the magical combination of "Wales", "Wiki" and "Bias" are the perfect thing to drag unwitting eyeballs to this site practically no-one has ever heard of. It was set up last year by some random dude who wanted to make a political blog, claiming to be biased but after about 2 minutes of reading it, it's clearly anti-Trump (and I can say that as someone who thinks Trump is the worst thing to happen to a country, worse than Brexit) and ladies and gents, let me save your eyeballs, the sites layout and colour scheme is atrocious. Its like Geocities for Web 2.0 and its an exclusively mobile setup, so looks even worse on a 24" 4K monitor.
There's a lot of things that I consider annoying in people, does that mean I get to forbid talking loudly, people scratching themselves in private places, people being obnoxious to the wait staff, children in general, people who are visibly sick but still handle my food,...
Erm, no.
If I scratch my nuts next to you, it doesn't affect you. Any issues you have with that are your problem. If someone starts smoking next to me, it DEFINITELY affects me. I'm an ex smoker, after 15 years of not smoking, if someone sparks up in a well ventilated room I will smell it within a minute. Yes smokers, its that bad. Now tell me that if someone has an itchy ball sack, you'll be able to tell if they've scratched it without seeing it.
Now remember that anti-smoking laws ended up this way not because of health reasons, but because smokers were so annoying and intractable, if politely requested to take their habit elsewhere, they'd stamp their feet like an impudent child shouting "Its my right, my right, my right, my right, my right". So we took said rights away and they have no-one to blame but themselves.
Sadly the same thing is happening with vapers. I think vaping is good as it's helped several of my friends and family members kick the habit and it looks like its for good this time but there are a large subset of vapers who have no idea of common courtesy and so we're ending up with the same problems as smokers for the same reasons. There's a reason the vape pipe is now colloquially known as a "douche flute".
Slashdot Mirror
I'm expect that using the system tools to block access to the address book is probably sufficient on Android and iOS - so long as it's done before the app is ever launched.
What surprises me more is that people don't consider geolocation. Many many facebook users share their location with Facebook. It's then trivial for facebook to see that you are repeatedly in the same location at the same time as another person.
From my experience, their geolocation is pretty shit. As is every other system designed to find people I know... because I don't know fecking any of them... often, they're not even in the same country as me. It used to have some relevance when they suggested friends of friends, but I suspect this hasn't been generating new connections in some time. Facebooks problem is with users switching off and the platform going the same way as Live Journal, MySpace and many others.
Much like their target ads, their "people you may know" is on another planet. If this is the quality of their product, I doubt they'll be able to glean anything useful from the handful of dad jokes and occasional car pic I post. We passed peak facebook a while back IMHO. Cant tell exactly when but most people are over it.
I remember way back when that there was a site that plugged itself as a "Toyota Simulator" (seems to be down now). When you went to the site, it was nothing but a looping video of a car driving way too fast down a road and a person screaming. ;)
Compared to the Peugeot simulator, which is a car travelling down a stretch of road way too slow with the driver complaining about their prostate, hooligans, being half blind and the Yoofs of today.
The summary states, "it's clear engineers at the company care more about getting things right than they do about being first."
So, basically what you're saying is, Toyota is the anti-Tesla.
Basically you're saying Toyota is being Toyota (conservative to the extreme, but good at what they do).
Toyota is not the only one concerned with this, as a road user I'm concerned what will happen when Dopey Doris' automated car struggles with faded lines on a single lane road (quite common on my 18 mile commute to work). Right now, Dopey Doris can only spend half her attention on her phone, I hate to think what will happen when she puts her full attention into it and because she's so engrossed in FaceCrush or watching the latest episode of Keeping up the Cardasians that she completely tunes out the alarm throwing control back to the driver and the car veers into my lane uncontrolled.
Autonomous cars need to be 99.999999999999999% reliable before they should be considered ready for public consumption. Right now, they're nowhere near it. Google's success has been due to two factors, 1. it was all done in sunny California (I'd like to see the same car in Berkshire) and; 2. the car has been in the hands of a professional driver the whole time. The current track record for autonomous cars is nil, the record is for car and driver working together. Of course we know in the real world if you gave the Google autonomous car to Dopey Doris commuting from Finchamstead every day, she's going to assume that it will do everything for her, so we need to make sure it can operate without human intervention because it needs to, human intervention cant be counted upon from the average steering wheel attendant with a phone shoved up their nose (we get enough collisions from these types as it is without giving them a reassurance).
I keep hearing that Uber is throwing away money to make their name. Is this another example of that, and if so, where did they get the cash? Or are they actually making money now? Last I heard they were maybe profitable in the US, but still just flushing money down the toilet in China.
You make it sound as if Uber has any plan to be profitable, they're a scheme to funnel the money of gullible VC's into the private offshore accounts of their owners. Uber is losing something to the tune of US$150,000,000 a quarter, so $5,000,000 is just a drop in the bucket and nothing but a sad attempt at getting positive PR by a scummy company struggling with its image, sorry but the irrational hate of traditional taxi companies has subsided now that Uber has the same problems... and who could have predicted that.
I'm actually kinda surprised Amazon didn't see this one coming?
I mean, they're not generally stupid.....Do all the people at Amazon working on this "solution" freely admit strangers into their homes when they are away?
Amazon aren't stupid, they've just got too much spare cash so any "Hey, this sounds like a cool idea" idea gets developed. This is how we ended up with the Amazon "Dash" button that is also quite unpopular. Sure there are some people who are too lazy to go to the shop to buy bog roll, but most of us want to take a poo now, not in 24 hours after pressing a button when the delivery man arrives with the Andrex.
After it gets discontinued, there will be a small but vocally upset crowd that now has to undertake the onerous task of ordering their loo paper online.
Lots of houses have a porch which here in the UK means a small area behind the main front door that has another door that leads into the house proper. Think of it like an air lock, helps keep heat in/out depending on the time of year, but most heat in, in the UK.
Is it a porch or a vestibule? Also, it must be a northern thing. I've lived in London and Southern England and haven't been inside a house that has a completely enclosed porch or vestibule.
But most people will get packages delivered to work. Those who work on secure sites will get them delivered to home and if they dont fit through the mail slot, are usually left with a neighbor.
Makes sense. Intel graphics are still a failure.
So much of a failure that they're in almost every laptop made. The last two laptops I bought had NVidia and Intel chips in them (Intel for low power consumption, NVidia for games). They aren't good for gaming but they're fine for everyday use which is why no-one cares that their laptop hasn't got a NVidia chip in it (and its hard to find a reasonably priced laptop with a NVidia chip in it).
Now in desktop gaming, NVidia pwns the graphics market, Intel pwns the CPU market.
That is not even the worst part. Sales tax in the USA can be owed to states, counties, municipalities, and other vaguely-defined-but-real government entities
We aren't talking about sales tax, that's already paid.
We're talking about company (income or profit) tax... And you can bet your tax-hating arse that Apple (and others) know exactly how much profit they've made, they have to in order know how to hide it from the governments.
Taxes suck, but they pay for civilisation. Taxes suck a bit less when megacorporations raking in billions are paying their fair share.
Or I could just stick with Google, and realise that their not only monetizing my data has provided countless improvements in my life in exchange. I give them my words for better translation. I give them my schedule for better predictive alerts. I give them my location in exchange for better navigation systems and more relevant local search results.
This, I know that Google is using my data for profit. I also know Microsoft and Apple are doing the exact same thing but are being less open about it.
Google has always been honest that they're in the business of selling data, but they've also been the only ones to give us some solid reassurance that the data is anonymised before being sold on. They state this up front instead of burying it in their T&C in lawerspeak like Apple, Microsoft and others.
Sure I know I'm trading my precious, precious data for quality services, Google hasn't been deceptive about it and its better than bartering chickens.
We still have government funded news sites. The BBC and Al-Jazeera both do good work. They might be under pressure to not report negatively on their patron but there are enough of them (with different patrons) to fill in the gaps. The TV networks once funded news sites as a status thing because news isn't profitable.
The Beeb is still pretty good with political news, they'll happily dish the dirt out on the government in power (be it Labour or Tory) as well as the opposition but I feel they weren't harsh enough on Brexit, the BBC was too afraid of upsetting people on that subject so I felt their efforts were half hearted. When the head of the BoE says that the UK would be in a boom if not for Brexit I tend to believe that over Nigel Farage.
You want moneylosing local journalism, fund it yourself. Don't expect others to fund it for you.
Thank Deity we have laws here in the UK that prevent rich people from just suing things they don't like out of existence. If a paper publishes something damaging against a rich person here, their ultimate defence is demonstrating that it was factual. If they can do that, they'll have high priced QC's (very expensive lawyers) knocking down their doors because they'll get their exorbitant fee from the losers (the rich people suing). Its nice for the little guy to be given a fair playing field.
Also, its good to have not for profit news sources. That way rich people cant simply pay their way out of legal embarrassments.
China charges 20% vat on everything, along with hefty tariffs on Western imports. Mexico charges 17% tariffs and then gives 100 % tax break to most local companies, which includes the vat. Most of Europe has 15-20% vats , combined with corporate taxes, even if companies operate outside of the nation. America needs to do a 0 corporate tax on American made goods/services (start at 50% and raise to 80% by 5 each year ). Keep 35% corporate tax on.foreign goods and apply a 20% vat on everything esp imported goods/parts/services. This will put a stop to this BS.
First off, VAT (Value Added Tax) is not a tariff on imported goods, its a sales tax. In the UK, if I by anything, from a German made car to a Chinese made TV to an entirely British sourced ham sandwich, I pay 20% VAT regardless. This system would be better than the US's current, stupidly complicated per state sales tax system, but the states will never accept it (nor will many Americans). Secondly, And what is the quality of life in China or Mexico? Europe is also a bad example as those nations with a high quality of life is accompanied with high prices (but we can afford them as we can command very high wages).
Protectionism doesn't work. Giving tax incentives doe not work. All you end up with is the Irish situation where corporate taxes are low for HQing in Ireland, but the tax burden is picked up by the average person with high personal taxes.
Using cash to avoid payment of taxes is in fact evasion.
And the IRS pays finders fees to folks who assist them in obtaining evidence of the act.
This, what people call tax "avoidance" should really be called tax minimisation, because that's what it is. I prefer to pay cash because it lowers prices (the bank takes a percentage of all credit card transactions) but expect the merchant to meet their tax requirements (and to minimise them as much as they legally can).
However this day and age, its easier to evade tax using the spoilage/breakage loopholes than cash. That way you get the cost of the good that have "spoiled" taken off your gross earnings and still get to sell them (spoilage is hard to disprove).
Sorry I hurt your feelings little snowflake, but where exactly did you determine I'm an "SJW".
You seem to misunderstand.
"SJW" simply means "You said something I don't like and cant rationally refute". In that regard, you are definitely an SJW..
"As we've seen from London, England, concrete towers clad in flammable plastic are more of a fire trap than wood timber buildings are."
I missed the wood tower catching on fire offering that comparison. When did that happen?
During WW I and WW II when cities burnt.
Sorry you've been on another planet.
Which I'm sure had nothing to do with the incendiary bombs people were dropping left, right and centre.
BTW, not many wood buildings in London during WWII. Most were brick or concrete by that stage.
Sounds like a good way to have a towering inferno. The stuff we put inside large buildings burns quite readily. But the fire generally stops in a single room. But if you suddenly make everything out of wood, what's to stop the fire from spreading everywhere?
Solid planks do not burn that easily, especially if treated with fire retardant which is required in the EU for building regulations.
I'm speaking as a professor at a university, and I don't see why this is a bad thing.
Research at universities is a good thing, don't get me wrong, But R&D at companies is also valuable. In many cases even more valuable, because companies want research that actually leads to a practical result. Too many university researchers are farting around with abstract stuff of no foreseeable use to anyone, publishing useless results in write-only journals.
Research at a company is measured on a different scale: can it be used for something? Who thinks we would have multi-core, multi-GHz processors in our pockets, if this hadn't been driven by commercial interests? A few ideas were developed at universities, but practically the entire computer revolution has been driven by commercial research. Maybe it's now time for AI to follow that route as well - we've fiddled with it in academia since the 1950s, but finally - finally - it may lead to something more than niche applications in the real world.
This, and this makes it a cyclical thing. Real AGI/Strong AI is a long way away and still largely theoretical. Weak AI is practically here, so companies behind the ball are throwing stupid money at anyone pretending to be an AI scientist. Once the AI fad has existing products, they'll stop throwing money at anyone and a lot will return to academia because whilst its a smaller paycheque, its a steady one.
Perhaps when they stop paying football and basketball coaches obscene salaries and pay professors and grads what they are actually worth the quality at universities will improve.
Fixed it for you.
This is a European University, there are no basketball teams, the best you can hope for is an amateur soccer or rowing team. Maybe Equestrian if there is a lot of Old Money around. We've never tied athletics into academia. If you want to pursue a sporting career, you either need to do it privately I.E. in a league or via a dedicated sporting institute. You dont get a fake degree for playing sports over here.
Lazy people exist everywhere. And often managers notice. But only smokers are across the board taking many more breaks than everyone else.
Yes, how dare a private company reward employees for not having bad habits and working more productively. Shame on them.
Not where I work. We don't hire smokers. We ask about tobacco use at the very beginning of the interview process, and reject all users.
Well, that's just stupid - you would really pass up a chance to hire the next Tesla or Hawkings, because they smoke? I bet your competition loves such counterproductive thinking.
Back here in reality, chances are that its not, in fact smokers tend to have lower IQ's, probably not because of smoking but because most people who started smoking in the last 30 odd years have to be pretty daft to ignore the problems related to it.
This is perfectly legal. Smokers have no rights.
Not true - smokers have the exact same civil liberties as non-smokers. The key term here is "private company."
Smokers have no additional rights, and no inherent right to smoke. You knew this is what the GP meant, attempting to twist their words only makes you look silly.
To be 100% honest, I dont even think a smoker would win a case in Australia or the UK (who have very strong Industrial Relations laws) for not being hired because he was a smoker. All a company has to do is come up with a half arsed health and safety excuse and the chimney will be told to go jump.
Basically China has show the way
1) Stop foreign companies operating - ban them, spy on them, drive them out
The first premise in your argument is completely wrong, the rest of your ill thought out post is even worse.
China does not force foreign companies from operating, quite the opposite, they encourage it as long as China is benefiting (either through access to technology they aren't able to replicate or by financial incentives). Lots of honest, god-fearing western companies use china to get around those pesky environmental or workplace protection laws. As long as a palm gets greased and they dont rock the boat, they can pretty much do what they want.
Modern china is basically a extremist right-wing wet dream.
1. No public elections (so those pesky leftists* cant be elected by accident).
2. Attempted absolute control over information (ignoring that it doesn't work, this stops that pesky "fake news" from contradicting your "Alternative Fact").
3. A compliant population via childhood indoctrination.
And it's No. 3 that is Chinas biggest defence, not the porous so-called "great wall of china" which is easy to get around (you can make a law against VPN's, but just try enforcing it).
Now Russia is not emulating China, they're trying to go back to the old style Soviet controls. In the former soviet union, state control was viciously enforced by secret police who had a variety of laws that could be applied to just about anyone. Thats what an anti-VPN law is, it's not designed to stop VPN's (Putin knows he cant, everyone knows he can't) but thats not the purpose of the law, its to charge any "subversives" with a suitably nebulous charge that is very difficult to disprove.
BTW, fascism is a far right ideology, not a left one, although that description mostly applies to China (Communist in name only).
Thersa May is pro-migrant? lolwut?
Theresa May was (possibly still is) a Remainer, she wanted to remain in the EU. To the far-right whingers that basically makes her pro-immigrant even though most of the arguments to remain in the EU have a solid basis in economics.
We now have a grammar nazi post on the front page. Slashdot has really evolved, from the nascent grammar troll posts, through the mercurial grammar nazi years, to a full fledged front page grammar post.
I'm going to continue to say Daylight Savings Time, because that is how nearly everyone says it, and alter the language irrevocably. In 50 years, hopefully we will have done away with daylight savings time completely and this topic will be dead, but if we have not, Daylight Savings Time will be the correct way to say it.
This, there is a lot of phrases and words in languages that are grammatically incorrect, however they're in the language because they're in popular use. Languages are not a science, they're also living things and change over time. Languages are based on what people use, not what is set out in a book of rules. Heaps of words are completely wrong like "ain't" which is a bastardisation of "isn't" and not a contraction of anything (isn't == is not) but its in popular use in some places much the same as "innit" in the UK (also a bastardisation of isn't).
After that we have localisations, a word can mean different things in different places. Americans and Australians use the word "pants" to refer to any pair of clothing with separate legs, however in British English it refers exclusively to underwear (pants are trousers here). Neither definition is strictly incorrect, it just depends on where you are as to which one you use.
And that mein Grammar Nazi's is just the tip of the mother fucking iceberg.
English is an incredibly fault tolerant language. You can use completely the wrong sausage and everyone will still understand what you bacon. This is what makes the language so powerful and widely used. No other language in the world has the same robustness which is why it will remain the language of business for a long time.
Finally, this is far from the worst issue with grammar these days. Priorities people, get some.
Sigh, it seems that a lot of people want to change the meaning of the word bias to "He said something I dont like and I'm butt hurt".
Having an opinion column in a news publication is not bias, bias in a news publication is deliberately skewing the facts, omitting relevant information, adding falsifications or other means to distort facts to suit your point of view. The point is, its deliberate and hidden al a Fox News, the Daily Mail or Russia Today. Unbiased news is presenting the facts and allowing the audience to make their own inferences.
Now reputable news organisations have opinion columns, but these are clearly marked as opinion. With many news agencies, the entire theme of the site changes to make it clear they are not presenting facts, but opinions... And there is nothing wrong with having opinion columns as long as they are clearly marked as such. Issues with bias in news start to occur when opinion is dressed up to masquerade as news.
This article is pretty much non-news, we cant even call it fake news its such a non event. Why, well the magical combination of "Wales", "Wiki" and "Bias" are the perfect thing to drag unwitting eyeballs to this site practically no-one has ever heard of. It was set up last year by some random dude who wanted to make a political blog, claiming to be biased but after about 2 minutes of reading it, it's clearly anti-Trump (and I can say that as someone who thinks Trump is the worst thing to happen to a country, worse than Brexit) and ladies and gents, let me save your eyeballs, the sites layout and colour scheme is atrocious. Its like Geocities for Web 2.0 and its an exclusively mobile setup, so looks even worse on a 24" 4K monitor.
There's a lot of things that I consider annoying in people, does that mean I get to forbid talking loudly, people scratching themselves in private places, people being obnoxious to the wait staff, children in general, people who are visibly sick but still handle my food, ...
Erm, no.
If I scratch my nuts next to you, it doesn't affect you. Any issues you have with that are your problem. If someone starts smoking next to me, it DEFINITELY affects me. I'm an ex smoker, after 15 years of not smoking, if someone sparks up in a well ventilated room I will smell it within a minute. Yes smokers, its that bad. Now tell me that if someone has an itchy ball sack, you'll be able to tell if they've scratched it without seeing it.
Now remember that anti-smoking laws ended up this way not because of health reasons, but because smokers were so annoying and intractable, if politely requested to take their habit elsewhere, they'd stamp their feet like an impudent child shouting "Its my right, my right, my right, my right, my right". So we took said rights away and they have no-one to blame but themselves.
Sadly the same thing is happening with vapers. I think vaping is good as it's helped several of my friends and family members kick the habit and it looks like its for good this time but there are a large subset of vapers who have no idea of common courtesy and so we're ending up with the same problems as smokers for the same reasons. There's a reason the vape pipe is now colloquially known as a "douche flute".