Are we going to have one article for every multinational corporation that uses tax shelters/accounting tricks to avoid paying taxes?

Personally, I don't think what they are doing is "morally" right - but then again, I'm one of those morons who don't think that corporations are people. Frankly, I'm not sure why companies pay taxes (specifically taxes on profits) - I think the rate should be 0 percent. The employees pay taxes (from the CEO to the night custodian). Employees pay taxes to drive to work, use facilities, etc.

If they are using land, they should pay tax on that (i.e. physical presence) - just like any homeowner. If they are using electricity, the pay the utility company (and they shouldn't get a subsidized power bill, unless they have an agreement with a private utility company). A company can't do much with money in isolation. It needs to spend it or invest it and pay capital gains tax.

The biggest flaw that I see is that the company starts "gifting" executives cars and accommodation. The employee might not pay tax on it - it isn't bought from their income. The executive is happy - they get "lower" tax rate effectively (since they don't pay for the car/house). But you can't stop companies from having their own vehicles - Fedex can and should own aircrafts. I don't see a clean way to distinguish these cases.

Maybe someone can enlighten me on why companies are taxed, and other flaws with eliminating corporate tax?

Hmm... nice choice there - especially since doctors and lawyers can't generally practice in other countries based on their Indian degrees. On the other hand, a lot of Indian engineers (or engineers from most countries) can take up jobs wherever they get the opportunity. Bitter much?

Whenever I read submissions like this, I wonder why they put a sentence like "genius in flunked out of ...". Unless the area they were a genius in was the same one he/she failed at, it seems kind of flame-bait - trying to start an "school is useless - look at these outliers" discussion.

Ramanujan was brilliant at mathematics, and there is no denying that. But like any school/college, his was made for the average person. Sure, it would be great if education was tailored to each individual's aptitude. But we don't have a good way of finding out what that is directly yet. Instead, we throw a bunch of subjects at students, and they figure out where there relative strengths are. And they focus on one or two areas where their natural aptitude lies (or more realistically, where their job prospects and abilities/interests combine to give "best" results; best being chosen by the student. Some may chase money, others fame, others just want to solve interesting problems - applications/paycheck be damned).

And discovering outliers early is hard when the teachers themselves are not much better at their subjects than the students. If some kindergarten student started using calculus for loading of building blocks, it won't be much use if her teacher doesn't realize that what she is doing is phenomenal (especially since the child will have her own notations/symbols). Obviously, that is an extreme example, but the point remains - outliers will have a tough time in the current system.

Alternatively, we can let everyone do what they find interesting, but a majority of students will just spend time doing "fun" things like sports - which is not necessarily bad. But as long as we have the current system where you starve if you can't hold down a job doing "productive things", I think the educational system prepares most people for such a world.

Outliers are great - and can help speed up society's progress significantly. But at the end of the day, they are just that - outliers. If you design a system to help the outliers, most people (myself included) would wind up getting a very bad outcome - because most people aren't phenomenally skilled at anything (and no, being the best me I can be doesn't cut it). And if you have a lot of starving deadbeats on the street (instead of the mediocre, but holding down a job majority) I expect society to completely break down - and that won't help the outliers either.

I think he is using the wrong tool for the job, and then blaming the tool. I don't know about the collaboration features, having never used them. But Google docs was never (IMO) intended to be a replacement for a professional editing tool.

He talks about style sheet feature in the professional writers world. I don't know what that is, because I use Google docs for simple things. Sharing a to-do list with colleagues. Sharing a grocery list with my family. Short story writing in my spare time. Yes, a lot of professional writers need particular features - but MOST people don't. If you try to include features that everyone and their dog would want, you'd get a mess that is unusable, especially in a browser (I can configure MS Word to some extent. Change the layout, add shortcuts to the ribbon, etc).

The closest I have come to a specialized writing software is Scrivener - and I love it. It has features MS Word doesn't have. And I don't expect Word to have them. But that isn't Word's fault - not everyone wants a pinboard and notes section while writing technical papers. They want to send a letter to Grandma thanking her for the check.

And while Word might have some of the features he wants, that comes at a cost - I think MS realized it when they made Microsoft Works. A simple Word editor, a simple spreadsheet etc. It was much easier to use. But it tanked for reasons I don't know. Maybe (pure guesswork) because the mentality while buying software is - "I don't know what this feature is. But hey, I might want it some day!".

Do you expect Paint to have all the features of Photoshop? Frankly, I couldn't use photoshop because I found it too complex, and I use Paintshop Pro. But that isn't Paint/Paintshop's flaw - if I need the features, I'll find the tool that fits the job.

I think the answer to whether the computer "revolution" has run its course is no for two reasons: (1) Shift in paradigm, and (2) Applications.

For the first few decades, the focus was on two aspects - making computers easier and faster. Easier via interfaces (and devices) and via algorithm improvements, and faster was mostly higher clock speeds, pipelining, etc. Only relatively recently, has the push been on distributed/parallel computing (which is different from "cloud" computing) - formulating problems in a way that parallel computing can greatly reduce execution time. Most languages have very manual ways (i.e. great programming effort) to use multiple processors. Additionally, the state of distributed algorithms and optimization is starting to get more focus now. But we have a long way to go.

The other is the applications of computing - most of the computer revolution was focused on end users (which, relatively, focused on the well-off/rich people). Apart from a few government/research groups, massive improvements in computing resources have not been used to tackle "hard" problems - sociological, economical, policy decisions, etc. We saw a bit of that in the elections - figuring out how people will vote. But there is so much more to do there.

As to whether robots/automation will make human labor irrelevant (even educated people) - I hope so. Not because I am against education; I am all for people getting smarter. But right now, survival seems to be the driving motivator for people having jobs - work or starve. I might be overly optimistic, but I think life would get much better if people had the freedom to do what they loved without fearing starvation. Some people think that if you don't have the stick, people would just sit around in their underwear and watch TV all day. I disagree. I know lots of smart people who won't take risks and follow their passion because they need to put food on their table, or need health insurance or something along those lines (I am guilty of that as well). But I believe that if people are allowed to follow their passion, you will find a much improved society. The great leaps and bounds in society took place because people didn't have to spend every second wondering about survival or getting eaten. If everyone had to hunt for each meal, we would be much further back in technology, arts, etc. I believe that if you remove the threat to survival, people can do wonderful things. (Just to be clear: I am not a commie saying that all wealth has to be distributed. If you want a yacht, work for it - build your own or get money. But you shouldn't have to worry about starving in case your yacht business doesn't take off. The worst that might happen is you still have a basic standard of living - not a mansion, but you don't need to fear frostbite).

My favorite web comic for several years has been Looking for Group

Seriously. I think it is high time that we started proselytizing bears. It is the disappearance of God from those pagan woodland surroundings (what's left of them) that is responsible for atrocities by bears.

And while we are on the topic, there are no laws prohibiting a bear from buying an automatic gun! They don't even have a mandatory background checks. Won't someone think of the children?

While I don't care much if VLC is ported, the idea of a community sponsored software development is interesting to me. I have often felt that software design decisions appear arbitrary for me (small time no-influence user). This gives people an actual insight into what are popular features, and a heads-up on future changes.

While many companies have feedback (submit suggestions) on their website, it seems like it is flushed down the tubes. I get a "Thank you for blah blah blah" and have no idea of what happened. The only token I had that my suggestion was heard was this one time where the company representative called me up with follow up questions and to discuss what could be done (again, I am a no-name client, not someone who pays millions for "privileged status").

I'd also like to see software with easy in-application access to feedback - the moment you think of something, you should be able to send off a report asking for the feature. And it should analyze the data and tell you if there is something similar to this request so you can upvote that instead. Basically, listen to your damn users and let them know that you are aware of their suggestions in a meaningful (not generic email) type of way.

Well, that depends. If you are looking for a camera with a lot of different settings and good file formats (such as RAW data for images, lots of white balance options, and manual settings (aperture, focus, ISO, DOF) there are much better options for that price. Even wifi can be obtained by using special SD cards. However, the reason I have one is because of the robust housing - I can dive to 130 feet without it leaking.

The camera is targeted for people who want to take decent images that can survive harsh environments - I don't know why they can't make inexpensive housing for great cameras for less. But if you want a waterproof housing for a DSLR, it can really set you back much than this whole setup (camera+housing) costs. When I am taking regular shoots in non-extreme environments, I use my prosumer camera. But there aren't really any good competitors at a significantly cheaper price point for what these cameras can survive.

... is the animated gif pornography and scanned images from magazines ;) Now with their copyright-laws-this and paywall-that... sheesh. Is there nothing big companies won't ruin???
(Hold on, I want to watch this hot video on Youtube)

Seriously - there is a lot more content now. Create a dummy account if you don't want to share your information. Don't let yourself get tagged on photos. Give a false name and location. It isn't too hard to access 99% of the content with just a few keystrokes with little risk to privacy.

Complaining about sharing? What was the equivalent of Wikipedia or Sourceforge? Search algorithms weren't as good then. Even forgetting the social networking stuff - a lot more open and free pages exist today to provide you with information.

While I do think so, my final point (like yours) was whether we should be trying to "fix" it or start looking for recovery solutions (i.e. assume the climate will change on a global scale causing effects like ocean rise, extreme weather - irrespective of the cause - and start looking at survival methods). Right now if a place floods people are evacuated. Once the waters recede, they go back to the same place and rebuild. That is like a band-aid - fixing one local problem, rather than relocating them (and telling them that if they choose to go back, no one is coming to save you next time).

Disclaimer: I am honestly not trolling here. I really wonder about this.

TL/DR version: Can we really change our behavior, or just start planning for a worst-case scenario?

Should we be trying to combat climate change in the sense that is it really possible? I think that, as a species, we would rather let people in the future (even if they are future versions of ourselves) deal with the problems rather than take hit in the near term for long term benefits.

Coupled with the fact that the most populated countries have a majority of their population relatively poor, I think it is impractical to expect them to stop burning fossil fuels and force clean energy solutions that might be more expensive/impractical (I believe that the industrialized nations consume most of the energy now, but with India and China becoming more economically important and successful, they will also start consuming more energy).

I saw the article about Thorium reactors a few days ago, but I doubt that we can stop burning things for energy in a short term. With all the infrastructure and interests of powerful groups to keep us on fossil fuels (In the words of comedian John Oliver: BP going green? Only in their logo), I don't expect major change in the near future.

Maybe I am too cynical and need to have hope for the future, but I wonder if we shouldn't start planning backup mechanisms to permanently help people when changes happen - right now, we seem to be doing short-term "deal with this disaster now" fixes.