Thanks AC for calling cpu6502 on it. I had no enemies in slashdot. Till now. cpu6502 will have the honor of being the first inductee into my hall of shame.
You now a days all the mouse manufacturers have switched to USB. Those with the old serial green connector that looks like S-video connector are quite rare, and many people are fond of them, even if they are totally dead and it is unlikely for them to become valuable again. So, yeah, if a cat tries swallow it, I would pry it from its mouth too.
USA all employers become de-facto uwilling agents of the IRS, since the employers are forced to collect and report data, as well as collect money and transfer them directly to the government without any judicial review?
This is precisely I am talking about. Courts have ruled that it is not undue burden. Collecting taxes is essential for the functioning of the government. You can argue about the quantum of tax, but that government has the authority to collect taxes. Government can expect reasonable levels of cooperation from all entities. Technically the government can institute draft again and put your life in peril. That is the power granted to the government by our constitution as declared by our courts.
What really surprises me is why you are willing to act so much against your own self interests? It is in your self interest to make sure no body dodges taxes. When tax dodging is socially acceptable, (you are making it socially acceptable) it becomes widespread. When tax dodging is widespread governments collapse, and take down with them all the protections afforded to you by the constitution. Once the government falls, you will be at the mercy of the local strong man.
You look at all the presently law abiding peaceful citizens, and you look at your bushmaster 450 and decide, yeah, I don't need government, I can take care of myself. What you fail to see is the whole gang of people who will move in with AK 47s and kill you before you bat an eye-lid. You will probably last me 15 seconds longer than me in Somalia or Iraq. Is that enough for you?
His entire tone, maintaining accounts is doing government job at citizen's expense, government should collect taxes without any cooperation from any citizen, all compliance costs are punishment without proving guilt suggest he is probably a freeloader and a tax dodger.
Very good. But the law requires the businesses to make you fill a form and make them report the transaction. Nothing more burdensome is asked for in the e-bay case. Why is there an expectation of privacy there?
You walk into a car dealership and try to buy a car costing over $10000 by paying cash. The feds would be on to you before you leave the lot. The car dealerships and many other businesses are required to report any transaction more than a threshold. How did the feds get Eliot Spitzer?
People have made this argument, and the courts have soundly rejected it. Otherwise every employer would save all the compliance and reporting costs related to reporting salaries and bonuses to IRS. All businesses would like to take the stand, "I would not maintain any records and would not provide anything till you get a court warrant". It is the duty of every citizen to cooperate with the government to catch the tax dodgers and free loaders.
You are probably a free loader and hate the ability of the government to find evidence of your tax dodging.
All employers are required to report salaries and bonuses paid to their employees. All businesses are required to submit detailed reports of their sales and maintain documentation for auditing. All wholesales, retailers and everyone is required to maintain clean accounting of their counterparties and submit them while being audited. Just because the commerce happens over the internet does not give you additional rights or additional expectations of privacy.
Often the actual "staff" in the cafeteria have no control over how much money gets allocated to them or the mandates being forced on them like "use less empty calories and have more wholesome foods" or "encourage kids to develop healthy eating habits". In these days of budget cuts, I would not blame the kitchen staff alone for poor fare in school cafeteria.
I was willing to pay 5% of my salary for the maid. You pay that much you will get decent maids.
The only reason that the US has stayed a superpower for so long was because you were attractive as a place to live in for the best brains in the world. Now not so much I think.
I went to IIT for BTech and IISc for ME. Let me tell you. This is the hubris I was talking about. You have absolutely no idea of what made America a super power, and you have a highly inflated valuation of yourself.
A few years back, all the 65000 visas ran out in just a few hours. I am surprised visas were available till Nov last year and it still has not run out yet this year. I am sure there are multiple causes for it. One could be that the economy is not generating that many jobs. Another could be that the internet connections have improved to the point where it is possible to do the work in India.
Also many young Indians no longer want to work in USA. Almost all the popular entertainment is now available in USA unlike the situation some 10 years ago. All the TV channels of all the languages are available either via satellite or via internet streaming. Cricket clubs are popping up everywhere and cricket channels are available from UK and Australia too. Vegetarianism support has increased tremendously over the last decade. Technically the life of a fresh immigrant Indian is much easier now than it was when were coming in, the early 1990s. But the biggest problem is the domestic chores. In India labor is so cheap, these people usually employ a maid and possibly a cook. Back then when I was earning 200$ a month as a government scientist I was spending 10$ a month on a maid. (All seven days a week, scrub the cement floor with wet rags and disinfectant, do the dishes, do the laundry and clean the bathrooms). So they don't do any household chores and consider cleaning the bathroom beneath their dignity. So now USA has lost its luster for the younger generation of India.
It is a pity. They don't know what they are missing. They are highly misinformed about America. They think India is going to be the super power in 20 years. They have absolutely no idea of the depth of the strength of America and the time it would take to build a society like America. Of course it would take just a few decades to undo it. But to build it, it would take a few centuries. They don't know that.
You out source when the out sourcing provider comes in and takes your IT chief and the CEO out on a nice golfing trip and gives all the members of the IT teams ball point pens with their logo on it.
Then, after a while, the in-house software provider sales manager comes around and takes CXOs for nice island get away. And you get baseball caps with the company logo. Then they undo all the out sourced services and implement it in house.
Then comes Accenture and Infosys and Wipro. They tell the CXO, "look, some of you are into golf, some into island vacations. We don't want to force you. Just take our cold hard cash. We are from India. We know how important it is to make direct cash payments instead of the indirect in kind payments". They get thrown out.
Then the McKenzies and Price Waterhouses etc come in. They speak in obtuse languages, take the cold hard cash from Accenture, Wipro and Infosys, skim something off the top and pass the rest to CXO in a perfectly legal way. Of course you will get your token appreciation trinket. Probably a bamboo drink coaster for your coffee mug.
Making the bed has always frustrated me, but not in the way most of you are bugged by this concept.
You see, I grew up in rural South India and we usually slept on a mat (of reeds) unrolled on cement floors with a pillow and a sheet. In the morning we would roll our mats with the pillow inside and stack these rolls one on top of another in one corner of the room which doubled as living area during the day. All was well till I started reading the Perry Mason novels by Erle Stanley Gardener, which were very popular. In more than one novel the clue that unraveled the whole mystery was, "But the housekeeper said the bed was not made". I had no idea how one would make a bed. I had seen pictures of cots and mattresses and I knew most Americans slept on elevated platforms. I imagined most of them would buy it somewhere. How does one "make" it? Very frustrating.
In another novel the key was, "But the food was delivered by the dumb waiter!". I could understand if it was a blind waiter he would not have seen the dead body in the middle of the floor. But the waiter was just dumb, he could still see right? Then how delivering the dinner by dumb waiter made the difference? By the time I actually saw a dumb waiter, I had forgotten the story. All I remembered was, "why the dumb waiter did not see the dead body?".
Similarly in our first year in Chemistry, the book said some thing called an orbital was shaped like a doughnut. (yes, the Brit spelling). No one in our entire class had seen a doughnut. Then one student found an American book, that called it a donut but had a picture of it. Almost every one shouted, "donut is a torus!". We knew the mathematical name of that shape!
Those who used VB6 way back when they were entry level analysts have been promoted appropriately to their level of incompetence. They have never renewed their programming skills. But they insist their underlings program in a language these guys can understand. That way they can sprinkle GOSUB hack-du-jour in the code and add their own nuggets of wisdom in. They get best of both worlds. They get to satisfy their own ego that they are as good or better than their underlings. But when such stupid tricks blow up on their face they can blame their underlings for writing stupid code. It is a self selection process. All competent underlings will leave looking for better pastures. A whole eco-system of pointy haired bosses and spineless underlings develop around VB6. It won't die anytime soon.
So, let me understand it right. There is a set of PC makers. And there is a different and distinct set of entities called tablet makers. And there is no commonality between them. And any member of one set can not join the other set. The only thing to do when pc sales fall and tablet sales zoom is to freak out and put together strange chimeras.
PC makers show chimeras in tradeshows because that is what the trade shows are meant for.
Look at any science or engineering school in the U.S. and it becomes pretty clear. There are many, many more foreigners than Americans.
Hope you realize a lot of the "foreigners" you see in engineering and medicine are actually children of naturalized American citizens. Among the children of my (Indian American, dots not feathers) friends I hardly see anyone going for liberal arts.
Theory of evolution does not talk about how life originated. It only talks about how it diversified. Origin of life has a few hypotheses, like abiogenisis, panspermia etc. Even in abiogenesis, there are things like clay based, auto catalysts, or RNA world before DNA world etc. But they have not progressed to the level to be called theory yet. As far as evolution is concerned, diversification as explained by it using natural selection and imperfect replication is proved beyond doubt.
Mosquitos can easily fly in rain, and also in fog and snowy conditions too. In fact the Mosquito was faster than all the German fighter planes chasing it. So they completely dispensed with all the defensive machine guns, improving its bomb payload. Darned good for something made of plywood and glue. Later they painted it black and used it as night bomber.
A lek is the courtship ritual in many species of grouse, pheasants etc. Essentially the males gather in some clearing and do their courtship dance. Females gather around and choose their mates. The most interesting thing about the lek is that, most females choose the male chosen by most other males. It is essentially the perceived popularity of the males becomes the actual popularity. Scientists have done experiments using robotic female birds, and by making the robotic females change their preferences, other real females also would switch their preferences.
Facebook is popular because most people thought it was the most popular social network and joined it. It was exactly like most businesses choosing Microsoft windows in early 1990s because they all believed most businesses were choosing Microsoft windows. One of the consequences of lek courtship behavior in birds is that, species that practiced it produce the most ostentatious males with outrageously useless features like seen in peacocks and birds of paradise. Much in the same way Microsoft in its heyday and Facebook now go for so many bells and whistles whether or not they are useful.
If you describe your idea in sufficient detail and you don't even know which tool to use, someone else will beat you to it. If you try to hide important details, you would appear to be cagey and would not be taken seriously. So best thing is learn some tool and get to work. A good idea will work even if the tool is less than optimal. A crappy idea would not flourish even with the best tool.
Most importantly, stop listening to strangers like me.
Yahweh, the god of the bible is who they believe did this.
Not Shiva.
Not some random god.
Come on. Not even the Hindus believe Shiva created the universe. It is, in fact, Brahma, who created it. Shiva is going to eventually destroy it. Vishnu is the one who is going to visit the Earth, whenever and wherever evil gains an upper hand to eradicate the evil and to (re)establish righteousness.
Evolutionists reject what is essentially the Prime Directive of Biology: Life cannot come from nonlife.
Science is finding it increasingly difficult to draw the line between life and non-life. Viruses have just DNA replication ability without anything else needed for life. They borrow these from others. People were arguing whether viruses are alive or not. Now prions are basically chemicals (mis folded amino acids) with replication ability without DNA, not even the single stranded version of DNA called RNA. In fact there is a such a gradual chain of things linking life with non-life, it is not impossible to construct a sequence of events where life could emerge from non-life.
Please read the Treaty of Tripoli. It clearly states the United States was not founded on Christian principles, it is not a Christian nation. All the founding fathers were alive at the time of its passing except old Ben. It was published in full text in three newspapers. It was ratified unanimously by the Senate. There is not single letter to the editor in protest. There is no record of any priest or pastor protesting it in sermons. There is no record of any founding father having even private doubts about that clause even in their private diaries and correspondence.
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Thanks AC for calling cpu6502 on it. I had no enemies in slashdot. Till now. cpu6502 will have the honor of being the first inductee into my hall of shame.
You now a days all the mouse manufacturers have switched to USB. Those with the old serial green connector that looks like S-video connector are quite rare, and many people are fond of them, even if they are totally dead and it is unlikely for them to become valuable again. So, yeah, if a cat tries swallow it, I would pry it from its mouth too.
USA all employers become de-facto uwilling agents of the IRS, since the employers are forced to collect and report data, as well as collect money and transfer them directly to the government without any judicial review?
This is precisely I am talking about. Courts have ruled that it is not undue burden. Collecting taxes is essential for the functioning of the government. You can argue about the quantum of tax, but that government has the authority to collect taxes. Government can expect reasonable levels of cooperation from all entities. Technically the government can institute draft again and put your life in peril. That is the power granted to the government by our constitution as declared by our courts.
What really surprises me is why you are willing to act so much against your own self interests? It is in your self interest to make sure no body dodges taxes. When tax dodging is socially acceptable, (you are making it socially acceptable) it becomes widespread. When tax dodging is widespread governments collapse, and take down with them all the protections afforded to you by the constitution. Once the government falls, you will be at the mercy of the local strong man.
You look at all the presently law abiding peaceful citizens, and you look at your bushmaster 450 and decide, yeah, I don't need government, I can take care of myself. What you fail to see is the whole gang of people who will move in with AK 47s and kill you before you bat an eye-lid. You will probably last me 15 seconds longer than me in Somalia or Iraq. Is that enough for you?
His entire tone, maintaining accounts is doing government job at citizen's expense, government should collect taxes without any cooperation from any citizen, all compliance costs are punishment without proving guilt suggest he is probably a freeloader and a tax dodger.
Very good. But the law requires the businesses to make you fill a form and make them report the transaction. Nothing more burdensome is asked for in the e-bay case. Why is there an expectation of privacy there?
You walk into a car dealership and try to buy a car costing over $10000 by paying cash. The feds would be on to you before you leave the lot. The car dealerships and many other businesses are required to report any transaction more than a threshold. How did the feds get Eliot Spitzer?
You are probably a free loader and hate the ability of the government to find evidence of your tax dodging.
All employers are required to report salaries and bonuses paid to their employees. All businesses are required to submit detailed reports of their sales and maintain documentation for auditing. All wholesales, retailers and everyone is required to maintain clean accounting of their counterparties and submit them while being audited. Just because the commerce happens over the internet does not give you additional rights or additional expectations of privacy.
Often the actual "staff" in the cafeteria have no control over how much money gets allocated to them or the mandates being forced on them like "use less empty calories and have more wholesome foods" or "encourage kids to develop healthy eating habits". In these days of budget cuts, I would not blame the kitchen staff alone for poor fare in school cafeteria.
The only reason that the US has stayed a superpower for so long was because you were attractive as a place to live in for the best brains in the world. Now not so much I think.
I went to IIT for BTech and IISc for ME. Let me tell you. This is the hubris I was talking about. You have absolutely no idea of what made America a super power, and you have a highly inflated valuation of yourself.
Also many young Indians no longer want to work in USA. Almost all the popular entertainment is now available in USA unlike the situation some 10 years ago. All the TV channels of all the languages are available either via satellite or via internet streaming. Cricket clubs are popping up everywhere and cricket channels are available from UK and Australia too. Vegetarianism support has increased tremendously over the last decade. Technically the life of a fresh immigrant Indian is much easier now than it was when were coming in, the early 1990s. But the biggest problem is the domestic chores. In India labor is so cheap, these people usually employ a maid and possibly a cook. Back then when I was earning 200$ a month as a government scientist I was spending 10$ a month on a maid. (All seven days a week, scrub the cement floor with wet rags and disinfectant, do the dishes, do the laundry and clean the bathrooms). So they don't do any household chores and consider cleaning the bathroom beneath their dignity. So now USA has lost its luster for the younger generation of India.
It is a pity. They don't know what they are missing. They are highly misinformed about America. They think India is going to be the super power in 20 years. They have absolutely no idea of the depth of the strength of America and the time it would take to build a society like America. Of course it would take just a few decades to undo it. But to build it, it would take a few centuries. They don't know that.
You out source when the out sourcing provider comes in and takes your IT chief and the CEO out on a nice golfing trip and gives all the members of the IT teams ball point pens with their logo on it.
Then, after a while, the in-house software provider sales manager comes around and takes CXOs for nice island get away. And you get baseball caps with the company logo. Then they undo all the out sourced services and implement it in house.
Then comes Accenture and Infosys and Wipro. They tell the CXO, "look, some of you are into golf, some into island vacations. We don't want to force you. Just take our cold hard cash. We are from India. We know how important it is to make direct cash payments instead of the indirect in kind payments". They get thrown out.
Then the McKenzies and Price Waterhouses etc come in. They speak in obtuse languages, take the cold hard cash from Accenture, Wipro and Infosys, skim something off the top and pass the rest to CXO in a perfectly legal way. Of course you will get your token appreciation trinket. Probably a bamboo drink coaster for your coffee mug.
You see, I grew up in rural South India and we usually slept on a mat (of reeds) unrolled on cement floors with a pillow and a sheet. In the morning we would roll our mats with the pillow inside and stack these rolls one on top of another in one corner of the room which doubled as living area during the day. All was well till I started reading the Perry Mason novels by Erle Stanley Gardener, which were very popular. In more than one novel the clue that unraveled the whole mystery was, "But the housekeeper said the bed was not made". I had no idea how one would make a bed. I had seen pictures of cots and mattresses and I knew most Americans slept on elevated platforms. I imagined most of them would buy it somewhere. How does one "make" it? Very frustrating.
In another novel the key was, "But the food was delivered by the dumb waiter!". I could understand if it was a blind waiter he would not have seen the dead body in the middle of the floor. But the waiter was just dumb, he could still see right? Then how delivering the dinner by dumb waiter made the difference? By the time I actually saw a dumb waiter, I had forgotten the story. All I remembered was, "why the dumb waiter did not see the dead body?".
Similarly in our first year in Chemistry, the book said some thing called an orbital was shaped like a doughnut. (yes, the Brit spelling). No one in our entire class had seen a doughnut. Then one student found an American book, that called it a donut but had a picture of it. Almost every one shouted, "donut is a torus!". We knew the mathematical name of that shape!
Those who used VB6 way back when they were entry level analysts have been promoted appropriately to their level of incompetence. They have never renewed their programming skills. But they insist their underlings program in a language these guys can understand. That way they can sprinkle GOSUB hack-du-jour in the code and add their own nuggets of wisdom in. They get best of both worlds. They get to satisfy their own ego that they are as good or better than their underlings. But when such stupid tricks blow up on their face they can blame their underlings for writing stupid code. It is a self selection process. All competent underlings will leave looking for better pastures. A whole eco-system of pointy haired bosses and spineless underlings develop around VB6. It won't die anytime soon.
The trick is simple. Don't fill it with water if you are planning to keep peacocks in it.
PC makers show chimeras in tradeshows because that is what the trade shows are meant for.
Look at any science or engineering school in the U.S. and it becomes pretty clear. There are many, many more foreigners than Americans.
Hope you realize a lot of the "foreigners" you see in engineering and medicine are actually children of naturalized American citizens. Among the children of my (Indian American, dots not feathers) friends I hardly see anyone going for liberal arts.
Theory of evolution does not talk about how life originated. It only talks about how it diversified. Origin of life has a few hypotheses, like abiogenisis, panspermia etc. Even in abiogenesis, there are things like clay based, auto catalysts, or RNA world before DNA world etc. But they have not progressed to the level to be called theory yet. As far as evolution is concerned, diversification as explained by it using natural selection and imperfect replication is proved beyond doubt.
Mosquitos can easily fly in rain, and also in fog and snowy conditions too. In fact the Mosquito was faster than all the German fighter planes chasing it. So they completely dispensed with all the defensive machine guns, improving its bomb payload. Darned good for something made of plywood and glue. Later they painted it black and used it as night bomber.
most females choose the male chosen by most other males. wrong
most females choose the male chosen by most other females. right
Facebook is popular because most people thought it was the most popular social network and joined it. It was exactly like most businesses choosing Microsoft windows in early 1990s because they all believed most businesses were choosing Microsoft windows. One of the consequences of lek courtship behavior in birds is that, species that practiced it produce the most ostentatious males with outrageously useless features like seen in peacocks and birds of paradise. Much in the same way Microsoft in its heyday and Facebook now go for so many bells and whistles whether or not they are useful.
Most importantly, stop listening to strangers like me.
Yahweh, the god of the bible is who they believe did this.
Not Shiva. Not some random god.
Come on. Not even the Hindus believe Shiva created the universe. It is, in fact, Brahma, who created it. Shiva is going to eventually destroy it. Vishnu is the one who is going to visit the Earth, whenever and wherever evil gains an upper hand to eradicate the evil and to (re)establish righteousness.
Evolutionists reject what is essentially the Prime Directive of Biology: Life cannot come from nonlife.
Science is finding it increasingly difficult to draw the line between life and non-life. Viruses have just DNA replication ability without anything else needed for life. They borrow these from others. People were arguing whether viruses are alive or not. Now prions are basically chemicals (mis folded amino acids) with replication ability without DNA, not even the single stranded version of DNA called RNA. In fact there is a such a gradual chain of things linking life with non-life, it is not impossible to construct a sequence of events where life could emerge from non-life.
Please read the Treaty of Tripoli. It clearly states the United States was not founded on Christian principles, it is not a Christian nation. All the founding fathers were alive at the time of its passing except old Ben. It was published in full text in three newspapers. It was ratified unanimously by the Senate. There is not single letter to the editor in protest. There is no record of any priest or pastor protesting it in sermons. There is no record of any founding father having even private doubts about that clause even in their private diaries and correspondence.