being that the agreed to a payment it seems they evaded. Why would they pay back taxes that the legally avoided and do not owe.
Sometimes you pay for other reasons than "being guilty". It may be cheaper (or more profitable) to get the issue behind you and move on.
This is the equivalent of punishing a company because France regulators suck at writing tax code. If Apple is using loopholes, that is tax avoidance. Using the tax laws to your advantage is encouraged in the accounting field. So much so, that a quote about this was on the cover of my tax accounting book in college. The philosophy stuck with me...
This is just legally due taxes that ANY other corp would have paid in time.
Tax evasion is illegally not paying due taxes, tax avoidance (tax avoidance being the legal use of tax laws to reduce one's tax burden) is legal and encouraged.
This is normal and common in the United States - often part of the building code for facilities of a certain size. So technically, it is illegal in my city for a company to NOT do it.
In many facilities, particularly large warehouses and tall office buildings, calling 911 will tell the operator the geo-coordinates of the facility, but not the floor or where in a facility the actual problem is. So, for example, in my company (HQ in a 30 story building), we have well known and well publicized alternate emergency numbers and processes that uses our internal phone system's logic to determine, down to the room, where the building emergency number was dialed. Trained first responders that are employees of the company have full and complete access to all locations in the facility and can rapidly escort external fire, police and EMT responders to the appropriate location.
Same process for all of our warehouses and smaller facilities. You have the option of dialing 911 on your cell phone, but we all know it will be more efficient to use the internal system because of the logistics involved in getting responders where they need to be.
Death is not so binary. A better analogy - you can be in a fire, near a fire or (any other degree of not in a fire). You can even temporarily be in a fire and very soon after entering the fire, be outside the fire (and several measurable degrees of "near the fire). Being in a fire and near a fire are two very different, but related things.
You can be dead or any degree of approaching death. Everyone is approaching death the moment they are born and lifespans differ greatly based on a number of factors. A near death experience is simply someone who approached death but did not cross the boundary "into death". Or maybe they even crossed the boundary into a state of death, but were brought back to life (resuscitated).
OK - adding to this... Dead battery aside, what is stopping anyone from breaking the power in line to the camera, attaching a wire to the power supply line putting an LED inline with the physical camera? Attach a capacitor inline (to maintain steady voltage to the camera) and the LED will light when the camera turns on. This is different than the "part of the camera" LED that can be bypassed in certain camera firmware in that it is inline with the power so if the camera is powered on when you didn't intend it to be powered on, it alerts you. I'm sure you can do something similar with the MIC power lead. Analyze the network traffic on each and see what you see...
>>Why should they provide any service to you? What do you provide?
I help them meet their minimum reserve requirements and loan the money I store there. This is how US banks have worked since the beginning, essentially. There are products they can sell me like loans or they can rent to me when it comes to a safe deposit box. My data and I are not a product. to be resold
Silly fees for not using my accounts enough (really, silly fees, in general) and giving away or inappropriately using my transaction data are the two top reasons I will leave a bank. Data privacy for financial institutions is critical for continued trust in that industry.
So how might this affect the companies like RedHat, Debian and the other Linux distros that are open source based? Even Mozilla and Android are largely publicly available. It is clear that their source is available for all to peruse. Is this going to add a bunch of paperwork overhead to these companies so they can continue developing and providing software to the US government?
I'm not so sure I trust Microsoft to not analyze the data from this program. This sure would be helpful in evaluating both side to determine which PAC to fund since they clearly (behind the scenes) have the support and backing they need to win.
>> sustain up to 10 Gs during the test, but Blue Origin host Ariane Cornell said "that is well within what humans can take, especially for such a short spurt of time."
How fit will you have to be to make one of these trips? If you have to be able to withstand up to 10G for any amount of time, even if just in an emergency, how do you determine who is fit enough to be a space tourist? Granted, that is less than many car wrecks but still dangerous...
I actually respect him a lot for his cartoon voice acting as much as his science contributions. He was someone who not only excelled at science and explaining concepts, but also did some funny work as a voice actor in Futurama.
To quote him, "I like physics, but I love cartoons".
If I am in an emergency row and there is an emergency, I will look out the window to see if that engine is on fire prior to opening the door. If I have a virtual window that failed for whatever reason in the crash, I cannot reasonably do that.
Being able to go "full manual process" in a life safety emergency is a good idea... If I do not have to depend on technology and the manual process is safer, I prefer the non-tech process...
Speculation about customers aside, a future rise in demand is one of the reasons the power industry is regulated in the U.S. Building a power plant is insanely expensive. Regardless of whether it is coal, nuclear, hydro, gas, renewable or any other fuel.
The incentive for anyone to be in the business, at all, is driven by customer demand as well as the ability to produce bulk quantities at reasonable rates. Demand is not only quantity, but also includes the expectation of real-time delivery "on-demand". A lot of people also like to argue what is reasonable when it comes to rates, but these are also the some folks that complain loudly when they lose power for any period of time (1 minute to a few hours). Reliability is part of the demand and resiliency comes at a cost. It is a key element of the infrastructure which technology is utterly dependent upon.
Many folks are not forward thinking enough to see that we either need to start building now to meet future demand OR change the way in which we demand the service.
Ethics has a simple definition that is extremely difficult to apply.
Ethics, in a nutshell, is "Do the right things for the right reasons". Figuring out and agreeing upon what the right things are and what the right reasons are, is the hard part. Everything with ethics depends on context. Lying may or may not be ethical depending upon the situation at hand. Lying to a man who has a school full of children as hostages, ethical. Lying to your spouse about cheating, unethical. And the lying part of the unethical example I just gave may have other situational conditions that make it ethical.
Context is key and ethics are in the eye of the beholder...
Actually, that is only part of it. It is a sort of balance between three personality traits - the "Dark Triad". From Wikipedia: The dark triad is a subject in psychology that focuses on three personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Use of the term "dark" implies that people possessing these traits have malevolent qualities.
Many if not all CEOs tend to have a balance of these qualities. Where they fall within the triangle often helps define their own success and the company's success.
This has happened in several other industries as well. If a market (in this case TV content and sports broadcasts, in particular) moves in a new technological direction, to stay competitive, you have to adapt. Print media has been learning this for a while and still doesn't have it totally figured out - but they are learning. Take what they have done and improve upon it.
Here in Alabama, we already have a spectacular biometric system called RIN - the Redneck Identification System.
At each door we have a spitoon. When you approach the door, you spit into the spittoon and say anything you want. The spit velocity and composition is analyzed and the drawl of the speech is measured. No "southern bio" match, no ID match.
Dave doesn't chew Skoal and is always dead center in the pan - IMPOSTER DETECTED. GIT 'EM BOYS!
People get creative. In this case, the sale of the drugs provides the incentive and the network throughout a non-cellular covered area is the resulting creativity. WE (the technically oriented community) should be doing this as well with 802.11 networks. I imagine a day where everywhere you go, you can stay connected for general (non-secure) data transfer / searches, etc.
I am so sick of the robotic overlord's monotone voice reading my/. stories to me.
I guess he better start looking for other work. Evil henchman, anyone...
When a utiltiy builds a nuclear power plant, they are not only funding the cost of the plant itself, they are also funding 100% of your fuel cost up front plus containment and future disposal costs. See http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf02.html for the basis for some realistic cost estimates.
While it is cheaper for the consumer in the long run to run nuclear, there is a huge up front cost associated. Most banks will not accept the risks without an expensive reward. Governments can finance these types of needed infrastructure loans at a much better rate and reap the rewards (cheaper energy for the masses). If given the choice for the utilities to use an expensive bank loan or a cheap government loan, I am going to hope they choose cheap government loan. All of the costs of producing power are passed on to the customer in the rates paid by the customer. Utilities are regulated entities, and as such, are entitled to recoup the cost of providing service to the customer in the rate charged.
Slashdot Mirror
being that the agreed to a payment it seems they evaded. Why would they pay back taxes that the legally avoided and do not owe.
Sometimes you pay for other reasons than "being guilty". It may be cheaper (or more profitable) to get the issue behind you and move on.
This is the equivalent of punishing a company because France regulators suck at writing tax code. If Apple is using loopholes, that is tax avoidance. Using the tax laws to your advantage is encouraged in the accounting field. So much so, that a quote about this was on the cover of my tax accounting book in college. The philosophy stuck with me...
This is just legally due taxes that ANY other corp would have paid in time.
Tax evasion is illegally not paying due taxes, tax avoidance (tax avoidance being the legal use of tax laws to reduce one's tax burden) is legal and encouraged.
Did they avoid taxation or evade taxation?
In many facilities, particularly large warehouses and tall office buildings, calling 911 will tell the operator the geo-coordinates of the facility, but not the floor or where in a facility the actual problem is. So, for example, in my company (HQ in a 30 story building), we have well known and well publicized alternate emergency numbers and processes that uses our internal phone system's logic to determine, down to the room, where the building emergency number was dialed. Trained first responders that are employees of the company have full and complete access to all locations in the facility and can rapidly escort external fire, police and EMT responders to the appropriate location.
Same process for all of our warehouses and smaller facilities. You have the option of dialing 911 on your cell phone, but we all know it will be more efficient to use the internal system because of the logistics involved in getting responders where they need to be.
You can be dead or any degree of approaching death. Everyone is approaching death the moment they are born and lifespans differ greatly based on a number of factors. A near death experience is simply someone who approached death but did not cross the boundary "into death". Or maybe they even crossed the boundary into a state of death, but were brought back to life (resuscitated).
It involves some work, but it can be done...
I help them meet their minimum reserve requirements and loan the money I store there. This is how US banks have worked since the beginning, essentially. There are products they can sell me like loans or they can rent to me when it comes to a safe deposit box. My data and I are not a product. to be resold
Silly fees for not using my accounts enough (really, silly fees, in general) and giving away or inappropriately using my transaction data are the two top reasons I will leave a bank. Data privacy for financial institutions is critical for continued trust in that industry.
So how might this affect the companies like RedHat, Debian and the other Linux distros that are open source based? Even Mozilla and Android are largely publicly available. It is clear that their source is available for all to peruse. Is this going to add a bunch of paperwork overhead to these companies so they can continue developing and providing software to the US government?
I'm not so sure I trust Microsoft to not analyze the data from this program. This sure would be helpful in evaluating both side to determine which PAC to fund since they clearly (behind the scenes) have the support and backing they need to win.
How fit will you have to be to make one of these trips? If you have to be able to withstand up to 10G for any amount of time, even if just in an emergency, how do you determine who is fit enough to be a space tourist? Granted, that is less than many car wrecks but still dangerous...
I want my fries coated in a light mist of space grease. MMMMMM, space fats.......
To quote him, "I like physics, but I love cartoons".
If I am in an emergency row and there is an emergency, I will look out the window to see if that engine is on fire prior to opening the door. If I have a virtual window that failed for whatever reason in the crash, I cannot reasonably do that.
Being able to go "full manual process" in a life safety emergency is a good idea... If I do not have to depend on technology and the manual process is safer, I prefer the non-tech process...
The incentive for anyone to be in the business, at all, is driven by customer demand as well as the ability to produce bulk quantities at reasonable rates. Demand is not only quantity, but also includes the expectation of real-time delivery "on-demand". A lot of people also like to argue what is reasonable when it comes to rates, but these are also the some folks that complain loudly when they lose power for any period of time (1 minute to a few hours). Reliability is part of the demand and resiliency comes at a cost. It is a key element of the infrastructure which technology is utterly dependent upon.
Many folks are not forward thinking enough to see that we either need to start building now to meet future demand OR change the way in which we demand the service.
Ethics, in a nutshell, is "Do the right things for the right reasons". Figuring out and agreeing upon what the right things are and what the right reasons are, is the hard part. Everything with ethics depends on context. Lying may or may not be ethical depending upon the situation at hand. Lying to a man who has a school full of children as hostages, ethical. Lying to your spouse about cheating, unethical. And the lying part of the unethical example I just gave may have other situational conditions that make it ethical.
Context is key and ethics are in the eye of the beholder...
>> "factual news and authentic debate"
Where can I get this, so called, factual news?
All news sources have a slant. Some much worse than others...
Actually, that is only part of it. It is a sort of balance between three personality traits - the "Dark Triad". From Wikipedia: The dark triad is a subject in psychology that focuses on three personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Use of the term "dark" implies that people possessing these traits have malevolent qualities. Many if not all CEOs tend to have a balance of these qualities. Where they fall within the triangle often helps define their own success and the company's success.
Delta tried this last year and got called to the carpet on it. BA needs to learn from other's mistakes...
Knot me..
This has happened in several other industries as well. If a market (in this case TV content and sports broadcasts, in particular) moves in a new technological direction, to stay competitive, you have to adapt. Print media has been learning this for a while and still doesn't have it totally figured out - but they are learning. Take what they have done and improve upon it.
Here in Alabama, we already have a spectacular biometric system called RIN - the Redneck Identification System.
At each door we have a spitoon. When you approach the door, you spit into the spittoon and say anything you want. The spit velocity and composition is analyzed and the drawl of the speech is measured. No "southern bio" match, no ID match.
Dave doesn't chew Skoal and is always dead center in the pan - IMPOSTER DETECTED. GIT 'EM BOYS!
People get creative. In this case, the sale of the drugs provides the incentive and the network throughout a non-cellular covered area is the resulting creativity. WE (the technically oriented community) should be doing this as well with 802.11 networks. I imagine a day where everywhere you go, you can stay connected for general (non-secure) data transfer / searches, etc.
I am so sick of the robotic overlord's monotone voice reading my /. stories to me.
I guess he better start looking for other work. Evil henchman, anyone...
When a utiltiy builds a nuclear power plant, they are not only funding the cost of the plant itself, they are also funding 100% of your fuel cost up front plus containment and future disposal costs. See http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf02.html for the basis for some realistic cost estimates.
While it is cheaper for the consumer in the long run to run nuclear, there is a huge up front cost associated. Most banks will not accept the risks without an expensive reward. Governments can finance these types of needed infrastructure loans at a much better rate and reap the rewards (cheaper energy for the masses). If given the choice for the utilities to use an expensive bank loan or a cheap government loan, I am going to hope they choose cheap government loan. All of the costs of producing power are passed on to the customer in the rates paid by the customer. Utilities are regulated entities, and as such, are entitled to recoup the cost of providing service to the customer in the rate charged.
You expect the US government to advertise without streatching the truth a little? Come on. Polititians?