The only difference here is the relationship between Amazon and "subsidiaries" in California. Really though, states do not have the right to tax interstate commerce, only the federal government has that power. Sorry that the constitution got in the way here, but you know, it is the constitution.
The Borders brick and mortar bookstore chain is dead, 10000s of people lost their jobs, and I am out of a favourite place to explore books. All this occurred because customers flock to Amazon like buzzards to a carcass so they can buy merchandise without having to pay tax (outside of WA).
...and Borders failed to adapt to a changed world. Why didn't Borders open up an online store? Why didn't Borders look into eBooks/eReaders the way Barnes & Noble did?
It is hard to feel sympathy for large companies that fail to keep pace with new technology. If you were lamenting the failure of small, family-owned, local bookstores, you would have more of a point.
And there is nothing wrong with paying taxes. It buys civilization. I pay $40K in taxes out of my salary each year. Do your fair share.
Amazon does pay taxes. The problem is that California wants to get taxes from a business that operates out of Washington. The tax should be managed at the federal level -- you know, the part of the government that the interstate commerce clause applies to? If you are curious, see Quill v. North Dakota.
However, things like FUDCon are held in different places each year, and there are enough people who travel to such things that the web of trust can indeed become global. Whether or not this can scale to the billions of non-technical users in the world is another story.
How exactly is the $5M price tag determined? My guess is that if we only factor in the cost of electricity and Internet service, the price would be closer to $5.
Most of the TSA agents I have encountered have been absurdly polite -- my guess is that the TSA has been sending weekly reminders to its employees that they need to maintain a good image, to prevent an even worse public sentiment about the TSA from developing.
The body scanners and strip-searches have not been shown to provide any more security than that, and therefore are unconstitutional.
In fact, the body scanners may provide less security, given the results of tests where knives and guns could be carried through the scanners undetected.
Maybe we should do a better job of teaching people about computers and technology when they are in high school. CAs are able to get away with poor practices and poor security because most computer uses have no clue what a CA is. If people would start disabling Thawte's certificates en masse, Thawte would be forced to protect its business by regaining the users' trust.
It's real easy to see things at the worse point of non-slavery capitalism and think it's failed, but I don't think that the US (one of the places with larger income disparities in the developed world) is as bad as things looked like tthey would be. Capitalism has appeared to worked, perhaps slower than a revolution, but also perhaps more effectively.
You left out the part about regulations, workers rights, and the legal framework that prevents otherwise profitable exploitation. We established a large number of laws to curtail the worst excesses of capitalism, and only the most extreme libertarians would take issue with the importance and generally positive effect of those laws. You must pay your workers a certain minimum wage, you must give you workers a lunch break, the workers must be given time to go out an vote during elections, proper safety equipment must be provided for hazardous work, workers must be allowed to take time off to care for a newborn child, etc., etc., etc.
If none of these laws existed, if it were just pure market forces that guided the behavior of businesses, things would probably be a lot worse -- in fact, things were a lot worse prior to these laws being passed. It is likely that had such laws not been passed, a communist revolution would have occurred, simply because the working class would have seen no other way out.
In the end, regulated capitalism won -- market forces mostly dictate what businesses do, but there are certain things that are simply not allowed regardless of profitability.
Not nearly enough money there to offset the loss of business from social conservatives boycotting Gerber. Pornography is still frowned upon in America, and there are vast swaths of the country where the 1950s sentiments about pornography and family values are not a thing of the past. People still believe that pornography turns men into rapists and child molesters, and you can bet that Gerber does not want anyone to associate their corporate image with that sort of thing, even if there are a minority of people who have an adult-baby fetish.
Disney does wield an enormous amount of power over our culture. Think about the millions of children who grow up watching Disney films, which represent a particular set of values and ideals that are being drilled into the heads of those children. Whether or not this is comparable for pornography is another issue entirely, but it is not as if there is nothing to the argument that Disney is indoctrinating children into a particular culture (nor is it a stretch to think that Disney is subtly using this power to its advantage).
MIX was intentionally problematic to avoid dependencies on platform assumptions that might not be portable
A side-side-project that I want to work on some day is to write a "companion" for TAOCP, which presents the algorithms in Scheme or Haskell (or some similar language). I understand Knuth's point about getting to the machine level and really understanding what the machine is doing, but presenting the algorithms in a high level language would be useful for the vast majority of people who own his books.
To be fair, I have turned to Knuth for reference on a few occasions when I needed a very detailed explanation of an algorithm and the background and reasoning behind that algorithm. The way I see it, TAOCP is something that should be used as a reference, for those cases where you need a lot of detail.
A useful technique that enables code to be hacked to death and made unmaintainable deserves to lie in its shallow grave.
So do you only program in SKI or BKCW? Just about any useful programming language is going to have features that allow you to hack your code to death...
Can you name a reason why GOTO statements are a bad thing? You sound like someone who heard it from their APCS teacher, did not pay attention to the reason why, and now repeats it religiously. "All the other books" must not include compilers textbooks or textbooks on machine architecture.
Not sure if you are trying to be funny, or just trolling, but at the risk of being trolled or whooshed I will say that perhaps you should look at a modern compilers textbook. Actually, since this is a discussion about influential books, you should see either the Dragon book or the Tiger book.
I laughed a little bit when I saw you mention TAoCP and "level of abstraction over the operating system." I get your point and I largely agree with it, but perhaps you should take a closer look at the code listing in Knuth's books...
Wouldn't it be great if students had to write basic arithmetic algorithms, to really show that they understand what they are doing? It's not that computers are useless when trying to understand the basics (at least in math), it is more that we are not bothering to use them for that purpose. We load them up with high-end "educational software," when what we really needed was just a Scheme (ok, fine, Python/Lua/whatever) interpreter. It doesn't take fancy software to make effective use of computers in a classroom, and instead of viewing computers primarily as machines that improve access to information, we should be viewing them as machines that can help students understand the mechanics of math and logic.
Of course, that lacks the "cool factor," which as we all know is what really matters here.
The proper reaction is not "blame the tool," it is, "Well, did people expect a computer to magically cause children to understand their schoolwork?" We have education problems in America, but computers are not the solution -- computers can improve access to information and enable interactive learning, but those are not the problems that need solving.
Now, if a computer could magically cause kids to think that math is cool or that it is as impressive to be a chess grand master as it is to be a line backer, that would be another story.
Have you read Brave New World? Control was based on distraction, not policing -- it was basically on the opposite end of the spectrum from 1984. People were allowed to disagree with the government and reject the society of the world; they just had to do so on an island somewhere.
It's not like the US government isn't trying to subvert foreign governments worldwide
Not the Chinese government, as it turns out. Unlike the USSR, the Chinese are such an important trading partner that we cannot afford to watch China go through any sort of revolution. Sure, when it comes to countries that are not big trading partners, the US government is gung-ho about pushing for "regime change" and "democratization," but I don't think China has much to worry about.
Is there some reason to think that gay men don't also spend 10~ minutes showering, 2~ minutes brushing their teeth, 5~ minutes shaving and 5~ minutes taking a dump? I didn't realize that sexual orientation determined how long those things take...
Slashdot Mirror
Don't let the constitution get in your way or anything...
This is why:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quill_Corp._v._North_Dakota
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quill_Corp._v._North_Dakota
The only difference here is the relationship between Amazon and "subsidiaries" in California. Really though, states do not have the right to tax interstate commerce, only the federal government has that power. Sorry that the constitution got in the way here, but you know, it is the constitution.
Why should Amazon be able to avoid paying taxes while any other business in the state does?
Why should California be able to levy a tax on a business that is run out of Washington? Oh, wait...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quill_Corp._v._North_Dakota
The Borders brick and mortar bookstore chain is dead, 10000s of people lost their jobs, and I am out of a favourite place to explore books. All this occurred because customers flock to Amazon like buzzards to a carcass so they can buy merchandise without having to pay tax (outside of WA).
It is hard to feel sympathy for large companies that fail to keep pace with new technology. If you were lamenting the failure of small, family-owned, local bookstores, you would have more of a point.
And there is nothing wrong with paying taxes. It buys civilization. I pay $40K in taxes out of my salary each year. Do your fair share.
Amazon does pay taxes. The problem is that California wants to get taxes from a business that operates out of Washington. The tax should be managed at the federal level -- you know, the part of the government that the interstate commerce clause applies to? If you are curious, see Quill v. North Dakota.
This way, if you have a man-in-the-middle attack, you will likely detect it.
Except that it is entirely possible that your Tor exit was performing the MITM, and I would bet that is more likely to happen.
However, things like FUDCon are held in different places each year, and there are enough people who travel to such things that the web of trust can indeed become global. Whether or not this can scale to the billions of non-technical users in the world is another story.
How exactly is the $5M price tag determined? My guess is that if we only factor in the cost of electricity and Internet service, the price would be closer to $5.
Most of the TSA agents I have encountered have been absurdly polite -- my guess is that the TSA has been sending weekly reminders to its employees that they need to maintain a good image, to prevent an even worse public sentiment about the TSA from developing.
The body scanners and strip-searches have not been shown to provide any more security than that, and therefore are unconstitutional.
In fact, the body scanners may provide less security, given the results of tests where knives and guns could be carried through the scanners undetected.
Maybe we should do a better job of teaching people about computers and technology when they are in high school. CAs are able to get away with poor practices and poor security because most computer uses have no clue what a CA is. If people would start disabling Thawte's certificates en masse, Thawte would be forced to protect its business by regaining the users' trust.
It's real easy to see things at the worse point of non-slavery capitalism and think it's failed, but I don't think that the US (one of the places with larger income disparities in the developed world) is as bad as things looked like tthey would be. Capitalism has appeared to worked, perhaps slower than a revolution, but also perhaps more effectively.
You left out the part about regulations, workers rights, and the legal framework that prevents otherwise profitable exploitation. We established a large number of laws to curtail the worst excesses of capitalism, and only the most extreme libertarians would take issue with the importance and generally positive effect of those laws. You must pay your workers a certain minimum wage, you must give you workers a lunch break, the workers must be given time to go out an vote during elections, proper safety equipment must be provided for hazardous work, workers must be allowed to take time off to care for a newborn child, etc., etc., etc.
If none of these laws existed, if it were just pure market forces that guided the behavior of businesses, things would probably be a lot worse -- in fact, things were a lot worse prior to these laws being passed. It is likely that had such laws not been passed, a communist revolution would have occurred, simply because the working class would have seen no other way out.
In the end, regulated capitalism won -- market forces mostly dictate what businesses do, but there are certain things that are simply not allowed regardless of profitability.
Not nearly enough money there to offset the loss of business from social conservatives boycotting Gerber. Pornography is still frowned upon in America, and there are vast swaths of the country where the 1950s sentiments about pornography and family values are not a thing of the past. People still believe that pornography turns men into rapists and child molesters, and you can bet that Gerber does not want anyone to associate their corporate image with that sort of thing, even if there are a minority of people who have an adult-baby fetish.
Disney does wield an enormous amount of power over our culture. Think about the millions of children who grow up watching Disney films, which represent a particular set of values and ideals that are being drilled into the heads of those children. Whether or not this is comparable for pornography is another issue entirely, but it is not as if there is nothing to the argument that Disney is indoctrinating children into a particular culture (nor is it a stretch to think that Disney is subtly using this power to its advantage).
MIX was intentionally problematic to avoid dependencies on platform assumptions that might not be portable
A side-side-project that I want to work on some day is to write a "companion" for TAOCP, which presents the algorithms in Scheme or Haskell (or some similar language). I understand Knuth's point about getting to the machine level and really understanding what the machine is doing, but presenting the algorithms in a high level language would be useful for the vast majority of people who own his books.
To be fair, I have turned to Knuth for reference on a few occasions when I needed a very detailed explanation of an algorithm and the background and reasoning behind that algorithm. The way I see it, TAOCP is something that should be used as a reference, for those cases where you need a lot of detail.
A useful technique that enables code to be hacked to death and made unmaintainable deserves to lie in its shallow grave.
So do you only program in SKI or BKCW? Just about any useful programming language is going to have features that allow you to hack your code to death...
Can you name a reason why GOTO statements are a bad thing? You sound like someone who heard it from their APCS teacher, did not pay attention to the reason why, and now repeats it religiously. "All the other books" must not include compilers textbooks or textbooks on machine architecture.
Not sure if you are trying to be funny, or just trolling, but at the risk of being trolled or whooshed I will say that perhaps you should look at a modern compilers textbook. Actually, since this is a discussion about influential books, you should see either the Dragon book or the Tiger book.
I laughed a little bit when I saw you mention TAoCP and "level of abstraction over the operating system." I get your point and I largely agree with it, but perhaps you should take a closer look at the code listing in Knuth's books...
basic math
Wouldn't it be great if students had to write basic arithmetic algorithms, to really show that they understand what they are doing? It's not that computers are useless when trying to understand the basics (at least in math), it is more that we are not bothering to use them for that purpose. We load them up with high-end "educational software," when what we really needed was just a Scheme (ok, fine, Python/Lua/whatever) interpreter. It doesn't take fancy software to make effective use of computers in a classroom, and instead of viewing computers primarily as machines that improve access to information, we should be viewing them as machines that can help students understand the mechanics of math and logic.
Of course, that lacks the "cool factor," which as we all know is what really matters here.
The proper reaction is not "blame the tool," it is, "Well, did people expect a computer to magically cause children to understand their schoolwork?" We have education problems in America, but computers are not the solution -- computers can improve access to information and enable interactive learning, but those are not the problems that need solving.
Now, if a computer could magically cause kids to think that math is cool or that it is as impressive to be a chess grand master as it is to be a line backer, that would be another story.
Have you read Brave New World? Control was based on distraction, not policing -- it was basically on the opposite end of the spectrum from 1984. People were allowed to disagree with the government and reject the society of the world; they just had to do so on an island somewhere.
It's not like the US government isn't trying to subvert foreign governments worldwide
Not the Chinese government, as it turns out. Unlike the USSR, the Chinese are such an important trading partner that we cannot afford to watch China go through any sort of revolution. Sure, when it comes to countries that are not big trading partners, the US government is gung-ho about pushing for "regime change" and "democratization," but I don't think China has much to worry about.
Is there some reason to think that gay men don't also spend 10~ minutes showering, 2~ minutes brushing their teeth, 5~ minutes shaving and 5~ minutes taking a dump? I didn't realize that sexual orientation determined how long those things take...