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Comment Speed is indeed important (Score 1) 6

Not everyone has a brand-new computer; The manuscript of the book I'm about to publish is in Open Office Word, about 400 pages and full of large images, and autosave is a real pain because it takes minutes to save the file.

Like another commenter said, I wouldn't make it the most important thing, overall efficiency is. But software speed is important to anyone with an older computer, especially a Windows computer, because the computer slows as the registry grows, and the registry never gets smaller, only bigger.

Comment Re:TL;DR (Score 1) 367

Relatively speaking, it ends much worse for the wealthy than it did for the poor.

People who are starving and hopeless lose less than people who "have it all". Just a teeny bit of generosity would allow the poor to live much better. And on the high end, the wealthy don't even live worse. If everyone has $800,000 instead of $900,000 then you'll find the total cost of the expensive things cost $100,000 less.

Societies which have more even income spreads are measurably happier. To be fair, I'm not sure if they are more stable.

Then again, tyranny can be stable for a long time so stability isn't the best measure.

Comment Re:Sounds like reasonable changes to me (Score 1) 116

I agree. Reviews from someone who bought the item are more valuable.

The change might cut out people who bought the item thru another channel.

My main issue are fake reviews. And a company can always "sell" an item to it's employees who then give it glowing reviews. And buy products from competitors and give them terrible reviews.

Comment Re:$100,000,000 (Score 1) 205

I made over 100,000 and I assure you that I would have felt a $1000 fine.

Now- if you are saying , "made an extra $100,000 and was fined $1,000 for it" then I agree with you.

That was the problem with the investment bank fines. The fines were smaller than the extra profits.

I'm not sure AT&T made that much extra just from denying 1% of their customers some bandwidth.

User Journal

Journal Journal: Number Five 2

I just sent off for the fifth and, I hope, last pre-publication copy of Yesterday's Tomorrows. I was sure it would be finished a month ago, but there were problems printing it due to some of the illustrations being too high of a resolution. It took a month to get the fourth printed.

Comment Re:Whats wrong with US society (Score 1) 609

Based on federalist paper commentary, it's a common view that the 2nd amendment is also about keeping the state free from the state itself turning tyrannical. You also have to consider that when it was written government oppression by England was in the immediate past. Only by being armed were the colonists able to stop England's oppression.

However, when you consider that today a person in an apache helicoptor flying over 2 miles away can put a half dozen 30 millimeter shells in your chest, center of mass, at night, modern weapons civilians can own don't stand a chance against the government.

So then you have to ask, have we reached a point where the cost in blood of our citizens killing themselves is worth it.

Comment Re:$100,000,000 (Score 1) 205

No I don't. I saw that line of reasoning but don't agree with it

For example, if I have a moving business and I have to pay three guys $60,000 a year and I take in $100,000 a year- I only get to keep $40,000 a year. If I were shareholders, we would split $40,000 per year.

The government has always recognized that costs of doing business are not part of your gross revenue. Other than occasional abuses, the government has never allowed buying of toys and cool cars to come off of gross revenue.

Businesses typically have net profit ratios of 3% to 7%. If you fined them based on their gross revenues, most would immediately be at a loss for the year. It's obviously unreasonable to bankrupt companies with fines. It's not good for society to constantly throw people out of work and destroy businesses that way.

At best with your line of reasoning, a fixed amount or deduction should be used. Because people overspend on cars, housing, clothing, food and only a base amount should be allowed to be ignored. A person shouldn't get a smaller speeding ticket because they bought a really nice house and an expensive sports car.

For people, fines are too high for the poor and too low for the rich. In some countries, they recognize this and fines are actually percentage based so a wealthy person can get a multithousand dollar speeding ticket while a poor person gets a fine for less than a middle income person.

But for middle income people- most fines are set based on their remaining income- not their gross income.

Comment Re:$100,000,000 (Score 2) 205

I understand where you are coming from but...

Revenues are not profits.

AT&T's profits in 2014 were about 6 billion. Their annual average profits over the last 6 years were about 10 billion a year.

Fines are usually not a tax deductible expense so they lower profits not revenue.

So the fine was over 1% of last years net profits and about 1% of their average net profits.

That would be like getting a $1,000 fine if you made $100,000 a year. You'd notice.

Comment Re:Hmmm. Sponsor copyright free music? (Score 1) 389

I was speaking about the restaurant industry as a whole. It would cost them less than a penny each to have songs created. You know- just like programmers collectively write programs and make them public domain.

Even Houston alone has 4000 restaurants so $25000 for songs would be a one time expense of about $6.25 per restaurant.

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