Comment Re:The old classic... (Score 1) 533
I suspect that the "Hello, World" program is the most commonly *printed* (on paper, in books) piece of code, ever.
For the love of Pete. Has this American sickness infected everyone?
This one is more like a Danish sickness festering. The sad reality is that Denmark has been a habitual user solitary confinement of suspects for a long time. A long time both in terms of how long it has been used (the first explicit rules on its use came in 1978) as well as the duration of solitary confinement: Often it will last until the trial is over, a long time after the actual investigation has ended. Sometimes suspects are confined in solitary for more than a year. Fortunately, it seems that the solitary confinement is over for Gottfrid.
I used to use their "classic" (old-fashioned) mail but they forced me and everyone else out of that last year.
You can actually still switch to an even more old-fashioned UI. I know, because I did. The main reason was that their new and "improved" UI hides folders, so you cannot see new mail in your folders unless you actively expand your folders list. Secondary reason was that you could no longer move your mouse over a sender and get a tooltip stating the address of the sender.
But what Yahoo has going for it is that the high-inertia crowd has been using it for a while and won't budge from it. I know a lot of tech un-savvy baby boomers who won't leave Yahoo because they don't know how to transfer their information and don't want to lose their history. (It's the same crowd that still pays for AOL.)
The main reason not to leave your current provider is that decade worth of friends and contacts who know your email address and will most likely continue to use your old email address for quite a while after you switch. I know from experience: I switched from hotmail 8 years ago, and still get the occasional email from a friend there.
Your initial statement was a bit more important than you may have thought. At a 0% profit rate, ANY business would have to do something or face being driven out of business. And at a 100% tax rate, well, it would be close to impossible to run a modern business, so the point is moot.
You argue that any tax increase on profits will be sent directly to the consumer. This, however, carries a number of implicit assumptions:
1) Increasing the price will not impact sales: Increasing the price by x% may make fewer consumers buy the product, decreasing the sales by y%. This could easily lead to lower total profits for the corporation.
2) No competition: Competing companies may opt not to increase prices and be able to undercut prices. This allows them to build a larger market share by attracting the customers of those corporations that increased prices.
Regarding your arguments on cutting cost, this will happen regardless of taxation. Any corporation in a Capitalist economy will look for ways to minimize costs in order to become more competitive and drive out competition.
Without life, Biology itself would be impossible.
