The long term is separation of credit and banking from the Social Security system.
How will that help?
If congress were to pass a law that forbids banks from collecting social security numbers and mandates that they destroy all social security numbers already collected, has congress just solved the Identity Theft problem?
One thing that paypal has done to try to help is that they always call you by name when they send you email. So if you get email that says, "Dear Sir" or "Dear Customer" or something like that, you can count on it being fake.
Of course, even if it calls you by your real name, a phisher could have harvested it from somewhere else, so it's no guarantee. But you can safely/dev/null any email from paypal that doesn't contain your name.
I read the linked comments, and I can tell you that I've had much worse posted to me online.
I did not take it seriously.
If you look at what Kathy wrote, she also did not take threats like that seriously until they crossed a line. For her, that line was posting some detailed and threatening images of her.
Those links that you posted, all someone did was take 3 seconds to write "die fag die". That doesn't show much commitment to the cause--it sounds like more of a recommendation than a threat.
If you look at her site, there was more than a photo of her next to a noose. There were some pretty heavily-photoshopped images and it shows a lot more commitment and hatred. I don't think you can compare that to your links, and neither do I think what you linked to constitutes a death threat.
If you were paying in actual cash federal reserve notes, they needed your SSN to fill out a cash transaction report, assuming your car cost more than 10 grand.
Other than that, I can't think of why they would need your SSN other than their own misunderstanding of the law. I know that I did not provide my SSN when I last bought a car, but I last bought a car before 9/11 (I drive cars into the ground), so I wouldn't really know.
They may not be able to buy themselves a criminal law, but they do have a compelling argument for a new law.
Think about it: Like it or not, music is protected by copyright. Like it or not, offering up a copyrighted work for distribution is not allowed. This is how it is supposed to work.
If the RIAA is not able to stop folks from distributing their labels' copyrighted works, they arguably deserve a law that helps them. Otherwise, what good is copyright law if there is no legal way to enforce it?
All of the slashdot arguments are along the lines of "don't sue your customers" and "sharing files makes me buy more CDs". Well, that all may be true, but it's not the point. The point is the RIAA-represented labels own the copyright and that means they get to decide how the copyrighted work is distributed, whether that is in their best interest or not.
I draw a parallel to one of my businesses: Landlording. Every so often, a tenant paints his apartment even though his lease prohibits it. If, when the tenant moves out, the walls are painted Putrid Pink instead of Contractor White, I'm going to charge him for it and sue (yes, sue my customer) if I have to.
Like slashdotters, who think that filesharing helps the record labels, I'm sure my tenant thought painting the walls Putrid Pink enhanced the value of my apartment. Unfortunately, I own it, and it's my decision what color gives it the most value. Just like the record labels own the rights to the songs, and they get to decide what distribution is and is not to their benefit. Just as I have decided that an apartment painted Puke Fuchsia is not to my benefit, the labels have decided that P2P distribution is not to their benefit.
They have the right to make that decision, and they ought to have the right to enforce it.
For example, suppose I spend $1000 hiring someone to stand on their head. By my spending, I caused one person to waste two person-days' worth of effort.
Who cares? How is this any different from buying concert tickets or theatre tickets? Surely the performers could be doing something more useful than entertaining me. They could be making boots or something.
Consider that your employee will most likely turn around and spend that $1000 on something you might consider a little more useful like food, clothes, etc.
As a more concrete example, my wife and I went to see a Billy Joel concert last year. The money that we paid Billy Joel for tickets will eventually be spent by him on car insurance. Most of that money will go to the victims of his poor driving who will spend it to repair their cars and bodies. Then their auto mechanics and surgeons will spend that money on something else. Economists refer to this as the Velocity of Money.
Bottom line: paying someone to stand on his head isn't has inefficient as you make it out to be.
Off the top of my head, I can think of three women who got pregnant while on the pill. I can think of one more who may have, but it's rude to ask (know she had an "oops", but asking about birth control methods is a little personal, eh?).
Good luck!
P.S. No, my wife was not one of them. All of our pregnancies were planned months in advance.
That job mom has making 1000/month is usually more like 150 after taking into account the cost of having the job such as transportation (including a second car and the accompanying payments and insurance), childcare, etc..
Don't forget to factor in the cost of her reentering the workforce when the kids start going to school. That decade lapse in her career is going to cost her a fortune in reduced earning power and further education costs.
Using cloth diapers for the first year alone will save over two thousand dollars on average - including the cost of washing them.
Absurd. Disposable diapers cost just under $0.13 apiece at Costco when they are not on sale (they frequently are). Assuming your baby has unprecedented medical issues that cause her to go through 8 diapers per day through the entire first year, you've spent a total of 365 * 8 * 0.13 = $379.60 on disposables. If you can figure out how to save me $2,000 on a $380 expense item, I need you as my accountant! Seriously. Call me if you've figured this one out.
Now we turn to the other high cost of young children: formula. Again, by taking the natural route you can save thousands.
Here you go again with the funny math. Formula at Costco costs $0.10 per wet ounce. The most formula a healthy baby should ever drink in a day is 32 oz. 365 * 32 *.1 = $1168.00. How are you going to save me thousands on a $1200 expense item (in reality much less. Your baby is not going to drink 32 oz per day until she's like 3-6 mo. old, and once she starts eating solids at 4-6 months, you'll reduce the formula accordingly)?
Just to illustrate how wrong you are, consider this. My wife has to take nasty medication that shows up in breast milk, but it isn't necessary that she get in the meds right away after giving birth, so she'd breastfeed for a while before switching to formula. Do you have any idea how much extra food she would wind up eating in order to make breastmilk? She'd eat way more than me, and she'd be dropping weight like mad! She easily ate more that $3 worth of extra food each day while she was breastfeeding , which is more than the cost of formula.
Yes, you read right. Breastfeeding, at least in my wife's case, is more expensive than formula feeding.
news flash: a separate nursery for the new baby with beds, changing tables, etc. is also entirely unnecessary. Another several thousand dollars you don't need to spend. Baby should sleep with mom and dad for the first year or so. Don't worry dad, if mom is breastfeeding you'll still sleep well -usually better even.
Several thousand on a nursery?
One bucket of paint: $20
One dresser bought off Craigslist: $75
One glider: $95 at Baby Depot
One crib: $250
Look on your face while I'm laughing in it: priceless.
We didn't have fancy cars, big TVs, etc., this is true. But seriously, we didn't need it either. Quite frankly nobody *needs* it.
Thank god you started talking sense at some point. I was getting worried. My tenants have nicer cars and TVs than I do. We don't even have cable.
Skip the big wedding and "two month salary" BS.
Hey, how come you started talking sense? I would have never responded to you if I knew you had some sense in you. My wife's engagement ring cost less than one day's salary.
Lest you think that living this way is "a tour of duty in hell", I've seen a lot of families enjoy their lives much better. Not because of a notion that living "simpler" is somehow more satisfying. Rather it removes any guilt associated with the occasional treat,
Very, very true.
Ok, I learned my lesson. I won't respond anymore before reading all the way to the bottom. You somehow got to the right conclusion, even if you started off based on incorrect assumptions.
I just wish we could figure who is forcing people to have kids.
I dunno. I mean, what is the point of life, anyhow?
You can't take your slashdot karma with you to the afterlife, you know.
At any rate, consider:
The joys of parenthood should not be reserved for the wealthy.
Your current financial situation is not necessarily your future situation. You don't turn your kids back in if you lose your job or ability to work (accident, medical problems, etc.)
It is possible to conceive a child while using birth control. Knowing a lot of parents, you hear about a lot more "oops"s.
I'd say it's better for both parents to work than for the family to do without basic necessities.
And just how many families are going to give up that unnecessary second income?
I'm guessing that you are not a parent, which is fine.
It turns out there is a lot of pressure associated with paying for housing in a good school district, saving for college, etc. It would be very difficult for your average family to do all of these things on a single income. Have you tried to buy a house? Have you looked at what college is projected to cost in 20 years?
Parental responsibility includes a recognition that your needs aren't important compared to your family's. You like your job, but don't need it to support your kids? You have a moral obligation to quit if it is getting in the way at all of being a parent.
There is no reason that having both parents working should get in the way of being a parent. What is mommy supposed to do all day while Jr. is in school? Watch Springer?
But we can't say that today because that's "sexist" and "backward." Funny how well "modernity" seems to be working out for families. Divorce rates through the roof, kids screwed up right and left, but hey, let's ignore all of that and focus on abstract ideas that make us feel good, right?
Divorce rates are up, but do you really think it's due to mommy not spending enough time cleaning the house and changing diapers? Is mommy scrubbing the floor what kept families together all those years?
More likely, it was due to the fact that women were not able to make much of an income in the workforce, so they felt trapped in their unhappy marriages. Now that women are more independent, they are able to leave if they want to.
Regarding kids getting screwed up, I think that has more to do with the intense pressure we place on our children. American children are overscheduled (gotta have 2 dozen extracurriculars in order to get into college!) and overworked (gotta be in the top 5% of your class, too!). That is why they're messed up.
I don't want an easy way for my 3 year old to be exposed to it....
I've never tried this, but I'm pretty sure if you plopped a porno into the DVD player, your 3 year old would become bored very quickly and demand to watch Dora The Explorer or The Wiggles or something like that (why are those all of a sudden sounding like pornos, themselves?)
On the other hand, an older child who knew what sex was, but wasn't ready to watch would run from the room screaming, "Ewwww! Gross!"
And then you have your teenagers, who you are ok with being exposed to porn, anyway.
If you think about it, kids have been exposed to sex for centuries. Ever watch Little House on the Prairie? I sure as hell did not, but we're talking families with 5+ kids living in a 1 room (not 1 bedroom, 1 room) shack. I'm pretty sure those kids were exposed to mommy and daddy having sex, and they survived.
When you are salary and not punching the clock, your cost is fixed and you are judged on performance alone. Whether you work 10 hours or 60 hours.
Have you really found it to work that way in practice?
Consider Alice, Bob, and Carol. All three are peers, working for their Manager, Melvin:
Alice is superhuman. She can get work done in 10 hours, that would take mere mortals 40 hours to complete.
Bob is your average, dependable salaried worker. When you assign him 40 hours of work, he completes it in exactly 40 hours. Not a minute sooner, not a minute later.
Carol is a nincompoop and a slacker. It takes her 50% longer to do work than her peers. If you assign her 40 hours of work, don't even think about looking for it until she's worked on it for 60 hours. Trust me, it ain't done.
On Monday, Melvin hands Alice, Bob, and Carol their assignments for the week. In your experience, would Melvin typically assign his Top Performer, Alice, the same amount of work as he assigned Carol, who is currently on a Performance Improvement Plan? That has not been my experience.
Perhaps where you work, Alice, Bob, and Carol would be assigned the same workload despite differences in their abilities. Even in that situation, I think you'll find that being a superstar is not adequately rewarded. If this hypothetical equal workload situation were to exist, ask yourself the following questions:
When Alice gets her assignment, she might say, "Gee whiz. This is easy. I can knock this out in one 10 hour caffeine-enhanced coding session." and then proceed to do so. When she goes home Monday night, does she get to take the rest of the week off? I mean, really. Are you not going to see or hear from Alice until the following Monday?
Not likely. In my experience, Alice will come back Tuesday morning for another 10 hour assignment. And then Wednesday for another, and so on. The most I've ever seen any of the salarieds duck out of work is to maybe leave at 3 on a Friday if things are particularly slow. Have you ever seen top performers on salary consistently work 35 or fewer hours per week, excluding deadlines?
Bob is boring. He got 40 hours of work and he did it in 40 hours. He merits no further discussion.
Carol is generally expected to get her work done by the Start of Business on Monday, however long it takes. She is expected to toil for 60 hours with no further compensation for her time. Not that we feel sorry for her, because she is probably in the wrong position to begin with. But she is probably unhappy with her compensation.
This is why I laugh at those who defend their salaries as opposed to being compensated hourly. I have not yet found a non-managerial employee for whom being on salary as objectively worked out in his favor. Maybe you will be the first, but I can name 100 people off the top of my head who are doing obscene amounts of volunteer work because of their exempt status.
Bye-bye! We hope you are in need of a job 6 months from now when we're willing to contract you again!
What's wrong with that? I like repeat clients. You already know their business and culture and can be effective that much more quickly.
Of course, you're not sitting on your behind during that "6 months" or whatever. You're working for another client or working another stream of income. One time in between clients I managed to buy 5 properties.
Of course, if you are the type to sit at home and play WoW, this is not a good field for you.
What percentage of their cases that have gone to court has the RIAA actually won?
Probably obscenely high, but that's extremely misleading.
The RIAA wins a ton of default judgments (defendant doesn't show up), which they can technically put in the "Win column". However, I've never read about a case where they have prevailed if the defendant submits an actual defense.
What the court awards and what the RIAA collects are two very different things.
All the judge can do in a civil case is say, "Defendant owes Plaintiff $x. Have a nice day." After that, it's up to Plaintiff to figure out how to collect.
My slightly (I am a Landlord, so I have some experience with judgments and collections) uneducated guess is that in the case of default judgments, their actual collections do not exceed their legal, court, and collection fees.
The money here is made on the settlements (a $3000 settlement just for sending a few First Class letters and operating a small call center. Score!), and the real money (they hope) is made when they discourage people from sharing files with each other.
Is a 2 days old baby really selfaware ? Does it even have emotions, or what we see are only mechanical and biological reflexes ?
A 2 day old baby is definitely self-aware, but lacks the physical dexterity to communicate much of his or her self-awareness. The baby's only form of communication with the outside world at that age is "crying" and "not crying".
A 2 day old baby certainly knows if he is hungry or otherwise in pain. He knows if he is being held or spoken to or sung to. That may not be much when compared with the great philosophers, but if you want to get philosophical, I'd argue that most kids under age 45 or so could not be considered to be self-aware, either.
Indeed, fetuses show awareness inside the womb, as well. If you poke 'em a bit, they'll move around. Some fetuses respond to different types of music. They certainly respond to the mother-to-be's movement.
Maybe we've got it all wrong, and "recognizable humanity" only starts some days (months ?) after birth.
Most likely you would not make that claim after seeing your own future child's 18 week ultrasound. The fetus at that point objectively looks more or less like a cross between a human and a fish, but when it is your own fish, you'll love it like only a parent can love his child.;)
Then again, since we live in "a society of laws, not men", we do have to draw an specific line somewhere, and time of birth is as good as any, and better than most, even if somewhat arbitrary.
I have a hard time seeing the issue as black and white.
First of all, at what moment does the birth occur? The actual "pushing" part of childbirth (the part you see on TV), can last up to 2 hours or so. Typical is 30-60 minutes. At what point is the baby born? When the OB can first feel the head? Many times the head can be felt days or even a week or two before birth (the woman's cervix may be dilated up to 5 or 6 cm. long before going into labor). When the first body part is presented (hopefully the head!)? When the entire baby is out? If that, what about a C section? The surgeon could pull the baby out and put him back in 10 times. How many times would he be born then? And could the surgeon put the baby back in and then kill him?
Other proposed standards come with problems of their own:
Prohibiting abortion at the end of the 1st trimester fails to account for the many horrid birth defects that can be detected early in the second trimester. Do we as a society want to take it upon ourselves to force children we know will be born with defects to live short, miserable lives? There are some where no child has ever survived past 2-3 years and the quality of life during those years is abysmal.
Prohibiting at the end of the second trimester ignores the health of the mother. There are complications where the fetus is not yet viable and the mother's life is in jeopardy. Do we feel comfortable trading the life of one living, breathing, actual human being for the life of the unborn?
Prohibiting at birth. What if the child (born at this point) sustains a terminal injury and is beyond the capabilities of modern medicine to save his life. On other other hand, he is still alive an suffering immensely. Should we end his life out of mercy? (I suppose in this case we can use Morphine in this instance. I'm just brainstorming here.)
I think we'll have to resign ourselves that we will never come up with an acceptable standard that can be codified into law. Any attempt at this always fails to account for this or that special case. Personally, I have a hard time asking the state to interfere with the judgment of a woman and her doctor.
I would prefer not to come up with a standard, but if I had to come up with standard, I would say: permit through trimester 1 for any reason, permit through trimester 2 for the health of the eventual child, and permit up until birth for the health of the mother.
But really I think this is best left up to the judgment of the family and the family doctor.
I know plenty of 30 or 40-somethings that cannot be relied upon to make adult decisions.
18 is an arbitrary age where we decide that society is going to hold you responsible for your actions. No aptitude test is given--it's all "social promotion".
The pit Take-Two has dug for itself will be patently clear next week when I strike back. Oh, and by the way, the entire Take-Two management and board will be gone on March 23, so this pit-digging comes at a very bad time indeed.
You heard it here first. On March 23, 2007, the entire Take-Two management and board will be gone.
Guess we'll just have to wait until Friday. I'm not holding my breath.
Setting aside the fact that it's just stupid to tell a doctor not to treat something so you can try to scam the insurance company, and that no doctor in his or her right mind would do that, most of the expensive ailments will either kill you or come close to killing you if you leave them that long, so don't even think about it.
Multiple Sclerosis.
It's extremely expensive to treat, but most sufferers can safely go off treatment for 6 months or a year or so with no deleterious effects.
Every time we have a kid, my wife goes off treatment for a year or so. Don't want to blast a fetus and its fragile immune system with nasty, nasty drugs.
Actually, it's really not that expensive to treat now that I think about it. Yearly MRI ($5k) and regular interferon injections (about $12k/yr) and a few neurologist visits ($1k or so, tops). Every so often, a round of steroids (not sure what that costs, but it's got to be low since they've been around forever). On the whole, not too bad when you add it up.
Slashdot Mirror
If congress were to pass a law that forbids banks from collecting social security numbers and mandates that they destroy all social security numbers already collected, has congress just solved the Identity Theft problem?
(Hint: the answer is "no")
One thing that paypal has done to try to help is that they always call you by name when they send you email. So if you get email that says, "Dear Sir" or "Dear Customer" or something like that, you can count on it being fake.
/dev/null any email from paypal that doesn't contain your name.
Of course, even if it calls you by your real name, a phisher could have harvested it from somewhere else, so it's no guarantee. But you can safely
I read the linked comments, and I can tell you that I've had much worse posted to me online.
I did not take it seriously.
If you look at what Kathy wrote, she also did not take threats like that seriously until they crossed a line. For her, that line was posting some detailed and threatening images of her.
Those links that you posted, all someone did was take 3 seconds to write "die fag die". That doesn't show much commitment to the cause--it sounds like more of a recommendation than a threat.
If you look at her site, there was more than a photo of her next to a noose. There were some pretty heavily-photoshopped images and it shows a lot more commitment and hatred. I don't think you can compare that to your links, and neither do I think what you linked to constitutes a death threat.
If you were paying in actual cash federal reserve notes, they needed your SSN to fill out a cash transaction report, assuming your car cost more than 10 grand.
Other than that, I can't think of why they would need your SSN other than their own misunderstanding of the law. I know that I did not provide my SSN when I last bought a car, but I last bought a car before 9/11 (I drive cars into the ground), so I wouldn't really know.
I would have walked out.
They may not be able to buy themselves a criminal law, but they do have a compelling argument for a new law.
Think about it: Like it or not, music is protected by copyright. Like it or not, offering up a copyrighted work for distribution is not allowed. This is how it is supposed to work.
If the RIAA is not able to stop folks from distributing their labels' copyrighted works, they arguably deserve a law that helps them. Otherwise, what good is copyright law if there is no legal way to enforce it?
All of the slashdot arguments are along the lines of "don't sue your customers" and "sharing files makes me buy more CDs". Well, that all may be true, but it's not the point. The point is the RIAA-represented labels own the copyright and that means they get to decide how the copyrighted work is distributed, whether that is in their best interest or not.
I draw a parallel to one of my businesses: Landlording. Every so often, a tenant paints his apartment even though his lease prohibits it. If, when the tenant moves out, the walls are painted Putrid Pink instead of Contractor White, I'm going to charge him for it and sue (yes, sue my customer) if I have to.
Like slashdotters, who think that filesharing helps the record labels, I'm sure my tenant thought painting the walls Putrid Pink enhanced the value of my apartment. Unfortunately, I own it, and it's my decision what color gives it the most value. Just like the record labels own the rights to the songs, and they get to decide what distribution is and is not to their benefit. Just as I have decided that an apartment painted Puke Fuchsia is not to my benefit, the labels have decided that P2P distribution is not to their benefit.
They have the right to make that decision, and they ought to have the right to enforce it.
My wife is looking to purchase a laptop in the next week or so.
Thanks for taking yourselves out of the running.
Consider that your employee will most likely turn around and spend that $1000 on something you might consider a little more useful like food, clothes, etc.
As a more concrete example, my wife and I went to see a Billy Joel concert last year. The money that we paid Billy Joel for tickets will eventually be spent by him on car insurance. Most of that money will go to the victims of his poor driving who will spend it to repair their cars and bodies. Then their auto mechanics and surgeons will spend that money on something else. Economists refer to this as the Velocity of Money.
Bottom line: paying someone to stand on his head isn't has inefficient as you make it out to be.
At least you think you'll wait.
Off the top of my head, I can think of three women who got pregnant while on the pill. I can think of one more who may have, but it's rude to ask (know she had an "oops", but asking about birth control methods is a little personal, eh?).
Good luck!
P.S. No, my wife was not one of them. All of our pregnancies were planned months in advance.
Just to illustrate how wrong you are, consider this. My wife has to take nasty medication that shows up in breast milk, but it isn't necessary that she get in the meds right away after giving birth, so she'd breastfeed for a while before switching to formula. Do you have any idea how much extra food she would wind up eating in order to make breastmilk? She'd eat way more than me, and she'd be dropping weight like mad! She easily ate more that $3 worth of extra food each day while she was breastfeeding , which is more than the cost of formula.
Yes, you read right. Breastfeeding, at least in my wife's case, is more expensive than formula feeding.Several thousand on a nursery?
- One bucket of paint: $20
- One dresser bought off Craigslist: $75
- One glider: $95 at Baby Depot
- One crib: $250
- Look on your face while I'm laughing in it: priceless.
Thank god you started talking sense at some point. I was getting worried. My tenants have nicer cars and TVs than I do. We don't even have cable.Hey, how come you started talking sense? I would have never responded to you if I knew you had some sense in you. My wife's engagement ring cost less than one day's salary.Very, very true.Ok, I learned my lesson. I won't respond anymore before reading all the way to the bottom. You somehow got to the right conclusion, even if you started off based on incorrect assumptions.
Cheers!
Don't be so smug.
You can't take your slashdot karma with you to the afterlife, you know.
At any rate, consider:
I'd say it's better for both parents to work than for the family to do without basic necessities.
It turns out there is a lot of pressure associated with paying for housing in a good school district, saving for college, etc. It would be very difficult for your average family to do all of these things on a single income. Have you tried to buy a house? Have you looked at what college is projected to cost in 20 years?There is no reason that having both parents working should get in the way of being a parent. What is mommy supposed to do all day while Jr. is in school? Watch Springer?Divorce rates are up, but do you really think it's due to mommy not spending enough time cleaning the house and changing diapers? Is mommy scrubbing the floor what kept families together all those years?
More likely, it was due to the fact that women were not able to make much of an income in the workforce, so they felt trapped in their unhappy marriages. Now that women are more independent, they are able to leave if they want to.
Regarding kids getting screwed up, I think that has more to do with the intense pressure we place on our children. American children are overscheduled (gotta have 2 dozen extracurriculars in order to get into college!) and overworked (gotta be in the top 5% of your class, too!). That is why they're messed up.
On the other hand, an older child who knew what sex was, but wasn't ready to watch would run from the room screaming, "Ewwww! Gross!"
And then you have your teenagers, who you are ok with being exposed to porn, anyway.
If you think about it, kids have been exposed to sex for centuries. Ever watch Little House on the Prairie? I sure as hell did not, but we're talking families with 5+ kids living in a 1 room (not 1 bedroom, 1 room) shack. I'm pretty sure those kids were exposed to mommy and daddy having sex, and they survived.
Consider Alice, Bob, and Carol. All three are peers, working for their Manager, Melvin:
On Monday, Melvin hands Alice, Bob, and Carol their assignments for the week. In your experience, would Melvin typically assign his Top Performer, Alice, the same amount of work as he assigned Carol, who is currently on a Performance Improvement Plan? That has not been my experience.
Perhaps where you work, Alice, Bob, and Carol would be assigned the same workload despite differences in their abilities. Even in that situation, I think you'll find that being a superstar is not adequately rewarded. If this hypothetical equal workload situation were to exist, ask yourself the following questions:
Not likely. In my experience, Alice will come back Tuesday morning for another 10 hour assignment. And then Wednesday for another, and so on. The most I've ever seen any of the salarieds duck out of work is to maybe leave at 3 on a Friday if things are particularly slow. Have you ever seen top performers on salary consistently work 35 or fewer hours per week, excluding deadlines?
This is why I laugh at those who defend their salaries as opposed to being compensated hourly. I have not yet found a non-managerial employee for whom being on salary as objectively worked out in his favor. Maybe you will be the first, but I can name 100 people off the top of my head who are doing obscene amounts of volunteer work because of their exempt status.
Of course, you're not sitting on your behind during that "6 months" or whatever. You're working for another client or working another stream of income. One time in between clients I managed to buy 5 properties.
Of course, if you are the type to sit at home and play WoW, this is not a good field for you.
The RIAA wins a ton of default judgments (defendant doesn't show up), which they can technically put in the "Win column". However, I've never read about a case where they have prevailed if the defendant submits an actual defense.
What the court awards and what the RIAA collects are two very different things.
All the judge can do in a civil case is say, "Defendant owes Plaintiff $x. Have a nice day." After that, it's up to Plaintiff to figure out how to collect.
My slightly (I am a Landlord, so I have some experience with judgments and collections) uneducated guess is that in the case of default judgments, their actual collections do not exceed their legal, court, and collection fees.
The money here is made on the settlements (a $3000 settlement just for sending a few First Class letters and operating a small call center. Score!), and the real money (they hope) is made when they discourage people from sharing files with each other.
A 2 day old baby certainly knows if he is hungry or otherwise in pain. He knows if he is being held or spoken to or sung to. That may not be much when compared with the great philosophers, but if you want to get philosophical, I'd argue that most kids under age 45 or so could not be considered to be self-aware, either.
Indeed, fetuses show awareness inside the womb, as well. If you poke 'em a bit, they'll move around. Some fetuses respond to different types of music. They certainly respond to the mother-to-be's movement.Most likely you would not make that claim after seeing your own future child's 18 week ultrasound. The fetus at that point objectively looks more or less like a cross between a human and a fish, but when it is your own fish, you'll love it like only a parent can love his child.
First of all, at what moment does the birth occur? The actual "pushing" part of childbirth (the part you see on TV), can last up to 2 hours or so. Typical is 30-60 minutes. At what point is the baby born? When the OB can first feel the head? Many times the head can be felt days or even a week or two before birth (the woman's cervix may be dilated up to 5 or 6 cm. long before going into labor). When the first body part is presented (hopefully the head!)? When the entire baby is out? If that, what about a C section? The surgeon could pull the baby out and put him back in 10 times. How many times would he be born then? And could the surgeon put the baby back in and then kill him?
Other proposed standards come with problems of their own:
I think we'll have to resign ourselves that we will never come up with an acceptable standard that can be codified into law. Any attempt at this always fails to account for this or that special case. Personally, I have a hard time asking the state to interfere with the judgment of a woman and her doctor.
I would prefer not to come up with a standard, but if I had to come up with standard, I would say: permit through trimester 1 for any reason, permit through trimester 2 for the health of the eventual child, and permit up until birth for the health of the mother.
But really I think this is best left up to the judgment of the family and the family doctor.
No, really. You can't change schools in India. And if you're at IIT, you sure as heck wouldn't want to.
I know plenty of 30 or 40-somethings that cannot be relied upon to make adult decisions.
18 is an arbitrary age where we decide that society is going to hold you responsible for your actions. No aptitude test is given--it's all "social promotion".
Yes, and we use all that money we save to purchase toothbrushes, toothpaste, and even dental floss.
Guess we'll just have to wait until Friday. I'm not holding my breath.
It's extremely expensive to treat, but most sufferers can safely go off treatment for 6 months or a year or so with no deleterious effects.
Every time we have a kid, my wife goes off treatment for a year or so. Don't want to blast a fetus and its fragile immune system with nasty, nasty drugs.
Actually, it's really not that expensive to treat now that I think about it. Yearly MRI ($5k) and regular interferon injections (about $12k/yr) and a few neurologist visits ($1k or so, tops). Every so often, a round of steroids (not sure what that costs, but it's got to be low since they've been around forever). On the whole, not too bad when you add it up.