No they're not honest scientific dissenters. The evidence is that they shift from one unsupported hypothesis to another as their ideas are disproven by data and careful analysis.

That's how you know they're scientists. If they were religious people, they'd form hypotheses that are not actually falsifiable or they would persist in believing them after they were falsified.

Of course, ideally they'd perform the experiments to test their own hypotheses, but not doing so makes means they are (at best) otherwise occupied/having trouble getting grants or (at worst) lazy, not unscientific.

Stock compensation will require an immediate tax payment ONLY if it is without conditions. If, for example, the company granting the stock to you puts a two year period in which you must maintain employment before you can sell the stock then you can avoid immediate payment of taxes and it gives you time to take advantage of some benefits (though it gets pretty hairy from that point trying to claim value reductions or reduced value for the limitation of liquidity).

You lost me. I get paid in part like this - stock units that vest after so much time has passed provided I still work there. The stock units don't all make it to my brokerage account at vesting time; some disappear to pay the taxes just like when I'm paid in cash. Matching income and withholdings show up on my W2. Maybe there's something trickier (/more sleazy) I or my employer could be doing, but I don't think what you're saying is always true. Ehh, maybe I will consult a CPA next time as you suggest, just to see...

In response to your other comment about being able to take a like amount of cash and buy the stock at fair-market value to achieve the same tax rate that is not true because you would expose yourself to double taxation ... If you received a million dollars in cash you would end up paying your income taxes on that amount and then capital gains taxes on the stock as well.

How is that double taxation? The initial investment and the gains are different money. Each dollar is only taxed once, right?

One of the real brilliant things these billionaires do is, after covering basic taxes, not sell the stock at all. If you don't sell it you avoid tax consequences. Larry Ellison "borrowed" against the value of his stock to buy his giant yacht and doesn't pay a dime in taxes. If he keeps them for his whole life he can pass them to his heirs and the income tax will never have been paid (heirs only pay a tax on appreciation of value since the death of the owner, often a fraction of the true value of the stock).

Brilliant, maybe; also disgraceful. There's little point in blaming Larry Ellison for trying this - he is what he is, and that's certainly not someone who will change his behavior in response to my opinion of him - but I wish we didn't allow it. I'd like to see Congress make a real effort to stop "coddling the super-rich", to use Warren Buffett's phrase. In this case, why do heirs not inherit his "cost basis"?

Taxed at an extraordinarily low rate...

Yes and no.

My understanding is that if an employer gives you stock outright as part of your compensation, you must pay federal earned income tax on the fair-market value of the stock as of when they gave it to you, which would be 35% for the last dollar earned by someone in the top tax bracket. You also pay federal capital gains tax on any increase in price since then, up to 35% if you held the stock less than a year, likely 15% if you held it more than a year. (It could be 0% if more than a year and your income is less than a certain amount, but if so you probably don't have any stock anyway.)

You might say the 15% is an extraordinary low rate, but then again, if you were just paid a like amount of cash, you could have used it to buy the stock at its fair-market value and achieved the same overall tax rate anyway. The real trick is to (1) have enough spare money that you don't need this income for at least a year, possibly a lot longer depending on market conditions, and to (2) know what stocks will gain so dramatically that your initial investment seems insignificant. If you can do those things on most of your income, the low tax rate is just the icing on the extraordinarily large cake you can easily afford to have and eat, too...

Of course there are some loopholes, but I think they're only practical for "job-creators" like Mitt Romney, not regular folk like you and me. (And for the record, some of my income was considered long-term capital gains, but apparently not nearly as much as Romney's; my tax rate was much higher.)

Mod parent up. There is no way this doesn't come out hung jury. It just takes one white supremacist to find his way onto that jury.

The facts of the case as I understand them are that Martin was walking along, Zimmerman thought Martin was up to no good, called 911, pursued Martin against the 911 operator's advice with a gun, and stupidly created a situation where one person attacked the other (conflicting reports on who attacked who), and felt he had to use his gun. Does that match your understanding / what you expect an honest jury to find?

Assuming so, I think the jury will just say he's not guilty of second-degree murder. (Presumably the hypothetical white supremacist would go along with that.) They would have been a lot more likely to find him guilty of voluntary manslaughter due to "imperfect self-defense":

Imperfect self-defense: Allowed only in a limited number of jurisdictions in the United States, self-defense is a complete defense to murder.[clarification needed (see talk page)] However, a person who acted in self defense with an honest but unreasonable belief that deadly force was necessary to do so could still be convicted of voluntary manslaughter or deliberate homicide committed without criminal malice. Malice is found if a person killed intentionally and without legal excuse or mitigation.

"An honest but unreasonable belief that deadly force was necessary" is as good a description of the situation as any. It seems like the prosecutor was overcorrecting the lack of action until now and overreached in going for second-degree murder instead of voluntary manslaughter.

The statement about mean IQ is somewhat accurate. However, there are subtle issues going on here. ... So in this single issue he is hitting on a potentially true statement, but even that statement is somewhat misguided.

You're way too generous. The statement may be true, but in context it was more than misguided. It was racist. Compare these statements:

• "The mean intelligence of poor Americans is much lower than for middle-class Americans." Wouldn't you be shocked to see a statement like this not followed by a statement of disbelief or some theory? (Poor early nutrition leads to poor brain development, lack of sleep or breakfast that day leads to inattention during the test, other distractions in the test environment, stereotype threat, IQ tests are influenced by quality of education, nonsense studies full of scientific fraud, etc.) For the purpose of today's discussion, I don't care what which theories are examined, if there is a high quality of analysis and scholarly citation, whether I believe the theories are true, or if the person who made the statement accepts them as true. My point is that I'd expect almost anyone (and particularly a well-educated American who has probably been brought up on rags-to-riches stories and the scientific method) to at least spend a moment thinking of alternatives to the simplistic implication that poor people are inherently inferior. And I'd expect to never see the statement without mention of that search.
• "The mean intelligence of blacks is much lower than for whites." No explanation. The lack of such follow-up suggests acceptance of the statement at face value (blacks are inferior) in a way the same person probably wouldn't accept about a different group. That's racism.

I don't believe in facts we shouldn't be allowed to say, but I do believe that an unbiased, intellectually honest person would never present those facts in the way this guy did.

The message, if the USA Legal System manages to delivery it, will be : "We will catch you, no matter how much time it takes."

We will catch you and then do what?

Even if IBM gets amount they are seeking, $1.3B is only 0.60% of MSFT's market cap today. Microsoft's business has been climbing the exponential-like part of the logistic curve for 17 years since this happened; their market cap grew from $23.06B on 1 Jan 1994 to $216.78B now. Dollar figures that were meaningful then are just not meaningful now. By pushing the damages out 18 years, Microsoft got a giant interest-free loan from the government which they were able to invest into their illegal, profitable, and fast-growing business.

We need to be able to deter corporate actions contrary to the common interest (ones which are anticompetitive, risky to the economy at large, environmentally damaging, harmful to consumers, or exploitative of employees). If not through our legal system, then how will we accomplish this? If through our legal system, it needs to be quick or at the very least have damages structured in a way to have much more teeth years later. In particular, if the damages were structured as "$XB or $XB*(market cap when paid)/(market cap when alleged violation took place), whichever is greater", the second half of the 'or' would kick in and make the damages nearly 10X greater. That would be 5.6% of MSFT's market capitalization (or $12.2B). I'm not sure that'd be enough to act as a real deterrent, but it'd be much closer anyway.

It was definitely the 'build team' who did this.

Hmm. My first impression is they did the right thing but had an unforeseeable freak accident, but on the other hand maybe it was another "What's on the other side of that berm?" moment. IMHO one should know what's on the other side of a berm before sending a car its way at 70 mph (even if there was supposed to be a braking system). There was a "don't try this at home; we're professionals"-style line later in that episode, and it was hard to take them seriously. It seemed to be a low moment in Mythbusters safety planning / professionalism...

"Got milk" is just shortened from "Honey, did you remember to pick up some milk"...

The innovation is being able to say "yes" (because your phone reminded you just as you approached the dairy section) instead of having to drive back to the store. Location/time of the reminder matter a lot. Obvious, maybe (I haven't read the patents; there might be details not mentioned in the summary), but also useful and not currently implemented in a mass-market product.

(Full disclosure: I work for one of these companies but not on this.)

That's a silly argument. Let's assume you're right: Bob has made his fortune, no longer cares about profit, and won't move back. Well, if the head of the company no longer cares, that's a short-term problem that will be resolved by the market. So let's look first at Carol, who still produces things in the US (there are some of these left) and is considering moving to China today. She sees we're about to create a tariff on goods manufactured in China (or even are just thinking about doing so) and hesistates. The tariff has been successful. Now let's look at David, who has just bought a company from Bob, which was foundering because Bob was off at the North Pole instead of keeping prices competitive, introducing new products, updating marketing/advertising efforts for changes in media, etc. David says that it's better to move manufacturing back because of the tariff.

Having no pressure to keep jobs in the US (a country with strong labor and environmental laws) essentially means that we're gutting its economy in favor of sending jobs to places where companies can do whatever the hell they want. Not only is that bad for the US, one could argue it's bad for the world. (Obviously China's economy is improving as a result, but they and other countries are paying an environmental cost for that.) I'm not decided on the issue, but I could see the merits of a tariff imposes on goods manufactured in any country that hasn't signed some key environmental and labor regulation (and perhaps passes audits by the UN or some other relatively neutral party) that starts at near-zero and increases to something huge over a period of 20 years. At the end, either there really is a relatively level playing field in terms of laws or there's an artificial incentive that keeps manufacturing in a better place. And the gradual increase hopefully avoids any major impact on the economy from a major price change.

Mr. Pincus' employees need to start wearing voice recorders to meetings.

Bad advice. That's illegal in California without the consent of all parties. I know of a guy who got fired (ostensibly) for that reason. (It was really because he was a jerk who didn't do any work, but the HR people were too risk-adverse to fire him until this convenient excuse came along.) I think Mr. Pincus's employees should carefully avoid giving him "cause" to fire them right now.

You know, returning an insult such as, "So what you're saying is, you don't trust educational systems at technical universities like MIT or RPI, or certification boards like CompTIA capable of weeding out good minds from poor ones."

"Trust but verify." Someone who is really good can answer my dead-simple question in a couple minutes, leaving plenty of time to go on to something more interesting. But unable or unwilling, the result is the same: "don't hire".

Keep in mind that interviewers aren't just trying to establish if someone is smart; they're also trying to establish "culture fit". Successful candidates have to work as part of a team of smart people, some more junior, some more senior. They have to be prepared to learn and to teach. They have to contribute to a pleasant environment where people want to stay. They have to accept that they're not going to be calling all the shots; in fact that for every patch they write they'll have to get a code reviewer to sign off on their change. They have to be that code reviewer many times as well. They have to give and receive yearly peer performance reviews in which strengths and weaknesses are communicated in a respectful way. They have to interview candidates themselves. None of this is a major focus of my interviews, but occasionally people make it obvious to me that they can't do it, and those people never get hired. If I were you, I'd gently suggest to your friends that they adjust their attitudes before they get rejected from many positions for this reason.

Like some of my PhD friends have told me, putting a technical quiz in front of well educated and experienced job candidate is a great way to insult them, and is deserving of a good punch in the face.

I don't ask the multiple-choice, one-right-answer, no-need-to-show-work questions you seem to be referring to, but you've reinforced my belief that it's good to start with dead-simple technical problems.

* I already do so because I've met enough supposedly well-educated and experienced job candidates who have completely failed simple technical problems that I know it's absolutely necessary to start from scratch in an interview, no matter how impressive their resume may be. (And I mean failed. Getting some syntax wrong or even initially writing buggy code is not a deal-breaker, but being unable to debug their own buggy code when I simulate the execution environment for them surely is.) And candidates who don't know these idiots are floating around are either inexperienced (forgivable...if this fact matches their resume and expected seniority at my company) or don't realize they are the idiots (don't hire).

* You've reminded me of another reason: I don't want to work with people who are easily insulted and potentially violent. Apparently these questions sometimes reveal such people. Good interview question then. I wouldn't hire your friends.

I think it's crazy that only 50% of the country pays federal income taxes, but I don't think making them pay them without otherwise changing their situation is the right answer.

$12k is about what our household spends on sales taxable expenses per year. I have a family of four. Granted, I excluded "big ticket" items such as cars because they, if purchased at all, are almost always purchased used and around every 5 years or so at the low end of the economic ladder... If it pleases you, add an extra $1000-$2000 per year for big ticket items.

Hmm, interesting. I guess sales taxable doesn't include rent - I was thinking that it was just part of the check I write, but I was wrong - looks like there's no sales tax on rent in California. Okay, point taken.

The point I think you are missing is that it doesn't matter HOW much other taxes they pay if none of it contributes to the Fed.

I heard you, but I just don't think this matters so much. We all pay taxes, we all understand that programs are paid for with taxes, most people hope to some day be more prosperous than they are today and know that means they're likely to pay higher taxes (including federal ones), etc...

I think it's crazy that only 50% of the country pays taxes, but I don't think making them pay taxes without otherwise changing their situation is the right answer.

Explain to me how it is moral for the government to do what would be immoral for you individually to do. If we have a government of delegated powers, then how can you delegate a power you yourself do not have?

Every government in history has used the threat of jail and violence to do things which advance the common good in violation of individual's wishes. Police, military, IRS, etc. It sounds like you're unsure about that basic principle. And specifically with regard to progressive taxation:

The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. A tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be anything very unreasonable. It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion

That's a quote from Adam Smith, often called the father of modern capitalism. If you don't accept that argument, you're so far ideologically from myself or voters in our democracy that your best move is probably to move to this floating city and talk with its other inhabitant about Atlas Shrugged all day.

"Investing in the poor" has been the rallying cry for ever expanding government and ever expanding pubic debt for the last 100 years. How has that worked out for us? Have the poor been raised up? Surely after 100 years of social programs, welfare, public education the poor are now well off, right? Oh, they aren't? More people are on public assistance than every before and there are no signs of that changing?

You started with a pretty reasonable question, but I think you're oversimplifying the answer...