No it's not a marketable skill; Word and Excel proficiency are a basic requirement.

Steam tells me I've played Planetside 2 for 72 hours. In general, it's a valid review that covers a lot of good points, despite noticing that the reviewer's player was obviously low-level.

Some that I would add however, is:

a) The game does not offer a comfortable intro to the brand-new player, it will probably spawn you into instant death and there are a lot of things to figure out. The flipside is much of the reason for that is depth.

b) It's not so vital to play with actual friends, but rather a good squad. When you join the game look at the squad tab and go through them looking for someone using voice comms and setting waypoints on the map. Provided I do look for one, I will usually find an enjoyable squad and that is despite playing at off-peak hours. Playing without a decent squad is very tiresome, lonesome, has no direction and you'll find yourself wondering what to do. Playing with a good squad is the opposite and the trouble is keeping up!

c) Unless I missed it, he didn't mention that there are 3 factions (hence the 3 colours demonstrating control on the map screen) and they are not quite symmetric. The reviewer is playing as Vanu which is the only one that has that alien-ish theme with ultra futuristic uniforms and laser type weapons. The other two are more conventional. Each faction's weapons and vehicles have attributes with that factions trend e.g. one faction has lower damage per projectile but higher rate of fire, another faction the opposite.

d) He's a bit harsh implying individual skill doesn't matter. Your l33t skillz might not be quite so obvious to everyone, you're unlikely to "pwn" everyone quite so hard with ridiculous k/d ratios. But the game is balanced pretty well so skilled fraggers will have higher k/d and certainly will make a difference, all else being equal - it's just that you cannot solely rely on your skills and will also need teamplay.

e) I think this is also where the reviewer goes wrong saying that it's hard to feel you are contributing. In an okay squad it's actually very easy and the game gives you congratulatory messages and experience point rewards making it very clear. Players are generous with the "thank you" voice command. There's also a lot more variety in the ways you can contribute than any game I can think of. Maybe you're not actually any good at FPS shooting, but maybe you'll be good at tank tactics, dogfighting, support roles like engineer or medic, infiltrating and hacking, or simply ferrying people around.

f) Agreeing with the reviewer and contradicting some other posters, I'm having difficulty finding a need to put real money into this game. I've spent about half the cost of a typical new game so far, and all of that was a splurge because I felt I should contribute given the hours I've gotten from the game. Sure you could spend a lot of money but there's really no need to. Aside from a couple of vehicle items, anything items to buy where to experience-point cost is high thus viable for real-money, they're sidegrades more for preference, like trading short-range raw damage for longer range accuracy. A complete set would cost a ton of money, but you don't want a complete set and anyway you can get everything with enough experience points so if you stick with the game you can be finding yourself picking up rare-use options for no money.

g) There is no other game where you can experience the epic, massive battles that this game can offer. If that is what you are looking for - you can also easily avoid those and go running around with a small or moderately sized squad.

Be careful with what you've agreed to, you may find you have explicitly or inadvertently agreed to long credit periods. They may have payment policies somewhere - perhaps on their requestion orders.

That said, there's a good chance that the reason your bills are so late is because either you do not know their procedures or you've slipped through the cracks when admin departments have been merged i.e. nobody there knows who is supposed to be authorising payment. Confirm all the details including your credit terms, address and FAO to send the bill to, and from whom you need purchase requestion orders - which you should send a copy of with your invoice.

Here in UK, and perhaps lots of other places, by statute (and therefore by default, though obviously it is better to state it on the invoices and contracts anyway) you are entitled to apply a high interest rate (currently 8.5%) on late commercial payments (B2B only). This is often good just to have as a negotiating point. An alternative (or combination) may be to offer early payment discounts, though bigger business are often wise to this and they wont pay early unless the discount is higher than their cost of capital (unlikely), and to make matters worse they'll often just see the discounted amount and pay that even when late.

Of course you should consider the impact with your relationship with the client.

Lastly, you could farm it out by factoring your invoices. Your bank or other company will pay you a % of the invoices immediately in return for a cut. There is a "no recourse" option whereby they'll not take the money back from you and will chase the debts for you - of course in return for a bigger cut. This has obvious cashflow advantages, but also that cut might actually be cheaper than your regular borrowing. More to the point perhaps, if the position is getting to the point where you don't want to work for them anymore, this gives the option of keeping the client.

Nothing.

Tech enthusiasts often get satisfaction from helping others in this way. But you should always understand that you are not responsible for doing so, and they should understand that too. If they are difficult or unappreciative, well it's not your problem. If they don't follow your advice, it's not your problem. Your goal in doing it is because it's a nice and helpful i.e. good thing to do; when it stops feeling like that then you're not achieving the goal, it's not really nice and helpful no matter what your intentions, how right you may be or how much safer they might be for following it.

If your uncle knew a lot about cars and you were going to buy one, would you consider that he was obliged to find you a good runner and teach you how to drive? Would he even go into lots of detail or just give a handful of key general points? Would you definitely follow his advice to the letter or would you take it on board and do what you want to do?

The best advice I've given is that if there's any kind of account then you do not use links in emails, go to the site normally. Seeing as he went about asking you what the link was, perhaps that might already have sunk in.

FYI an email with your address in the "from" and his in the "to" field doesn't offer any clue which has been compromised, or if anyone has. One possibility would be if anyone has sent one of those stupid "forward 1000 times and Bill Gates donates $1b to charity" with both of your email addresses.

I expect the reality is less dramatic than the statistic. 10 years ago I just ticked the "Christian" box figuring that's what I should tick because I'd been christened, last time I just ticked the other one. I haven't changed my attitudes or behaviour in any meaningful way with respect to my religion (or lack thereof).

The manager most likely asked her to leave on the basis that buying a lot of iPhones (unclear whether the full $16k worth) is out of the ordinary and he simply didn't want to be involved in it. Maybe he wasn't willing to take the risk that the money was fake, or the proceeds of crime which might lead to the money being taken back by the authorities.

Or whatever. Shit, maybe he simply didn't want her exporting them. It is really not relevant to the story whether or not me or you like the reason why he didn't want to sell her iPhones, nobody is obliged to sell anyone anything and that applies to Apple stores like anyone else.

The next point is that she "refused", or perhaps simply didn't understand, to leave the store. I have my doubts that she didn't understand because gesturing should communicate this easily, but whatever, this is only relevant in that the police were called because she wouldn't leave the store. Not because she wanted to buy a lot of iPhones.

Next we come to the real part of the story, which, as shown in the video, is two policemen tasing a small 44 year old woman even while they have her pinned to the ground. The force isn't justifiable and it is further evidence that some police seem to consider the taser as a go-to, something of little consequence to be used whenever convenient to them, instead of what it is: a weapon.

The fundamental point is that tax is applied to profits where the economic activity takes place. This is very obviously both appropriate and necessary. If you have an economic operation in a country then your operation is benefiting from that nation's resources. In an economic sense your taxation is buying whatever it is that gave you reason to operate in that country. If you are making an economic profit then by definition you are benefiting from that nation's resources (to clarify, I mean resources in economic terms thus customers with money are resources, or consider that they have money due to resources).

If you only tax where profits are remitted to individuals, then the taxation takes place where the owners are - not where the resources are being used to generate the profits. This is fundamentally uneconomic, illogical and simply not right.

It also means your objective is failed anyway because wealthy people are far more able to go live in low-tax jurisdictions like Monaco. Also, you realise that individuals are avoiding and evading tax as much as corporations are? You're left with all the same problems, plus new ones.

Secondly, if you only tax when income is remitted then taxation becomes regressive. Wealthy individuals simply store their wealth in corporate vehicles and the income compounds gross. If taxation were only to occur once remitted to individuals, then:

* if individual's company makes $100 and he leaves it there at a 5% return pa then after 5 years he comes out with 127.63 less say 20% tax rate = 102.10 is the net cash position.
* if remitted to an individual $100, then tax man takes 20% cut in year 1 so the base amount is only $80 and the after-tax interest rate is 4%. He comes out with a net cash position of $97.33.

If we make it a 10% rate of return and 10 year investment, the guy with the company comes out with $207 while the individual ends up with $173k. The difference gets ever more starker the higher the rate of return and the longer the money is retained in the company - something wealthy people are far more able to do. The difference is what the tax authorities would be getting if they were making the same investment with the tax payments.

Some claim that it would be better not to tax money left in the company because it is there to be reinvested. Perhaps, but every dollar extra for company reinvestment is a dollar not available for the purposes to which taxation is put - like investing in education and infrastructure. The optimal position between profit and tax is always going to be a balance but 0:1 is unlikely to be it.

Public CCTV has a different nature to it, making it less bothersome.

Most importantly, it tracks you when you are already out in public and therefore cannot reasonably expect much privacy anyway.

Secondly, but also important, there are open rules and regs. You require licence to operate CCTV which covers public land, and this is (well, theoretically) viewable by the public who can file an objection to it - and take court action if you want. This includes local/national government cameras.

Thirdly, the nature of the data. The online tracking would be constant and it would be very easy to obtain a complete listing of any individual's communications, which could be processed very efficiently. With CCTV footage, it's not just some massive database to query. Various organisations hold the data, and it's difficult and efficient to find you on it. It's just too inefficient to go around snooping on a whim or on the sly.

This funding bill does not make it illegal to teach your kids anything.

It does however set down requirements that certain things have to be taught in order to be funded by the taxpayer. It does not say that you can't also be critical of those things: you have to give a strong "for" case, but there is no curtailment of the "against".

It has no effect on privately-funded education.

I find it disturbing that any parent would want not only to monitor their child so closely. This guy wants to read every email, chat, and instant message his 12/13 year old boy sent and received. Secretly.

That is extremely strange behaviour. Its creepy. Also, I consider parenting to be about preparing kids for adult life.

This isn't even some ignoramus, but an FBI agent. A professional in an organisation with elevated privilege, control over others and heavily involved with surveillance, and therefore has a very strong ethics requirement. I would hope he will have been trained and tested to think about ethics in similar matters.

Perhaps there are exceptional circumstances rendering the surveillance appropriate, but if so it seems remiss that there is no hint of any in the article. The dad investigating unofficially yet flashing his FBI badge does not bode well.

I am confused by the question. If you're already doing the job, don't you know the tools you need?

If you do not already know that you need it, you probably don't.

Maybe where you are, but LTE comes with substantial infrastructure issues. The main issue is usually availability of the radio spectrum. Here it was being used for other things until recently, my understanding is that in North America it was not, leaving the much lesser but still significant matter of putting equipment on towers.

Cellphones require global economies of scale. Some have minor variants to adapt global models to national or even carrier-specific requirements, but the rest of the phone wouldn't be an option (at that price) if there wasn't global scale economics substantially involved. Hence there are relatively few phones with LTE and for nearly all of them it is effectively a variant of the main SKU. The Nexus is a niche handset sold directly without knowing the carrier.

I suspect some of your surprise with your being at the forefront is due to novelty. It so happens many places in North America were well positioned for the LTE infrastructure to roll out. When it comes to how far behind NA is compared to many other countries with broadband on the other hand, a two year gap suddenly seems rather brief.

Ask your kids. They may well already know of games they want to play / are playing with their friends.

I don't see the point of just buying another console unless you know of games you want to play on it. There's no point buying solely in anticipation of good games in the future because you may as well just save the cash and buy when those games do come out.

Difficult to comment on the option of buying more games and controllers as you don't say whether there's any games you wish to buy nor if you need any more controllers.

I suspect it may have been more productive if you had asked "what are some good games for kids?" I'm not in a position to offer suggestions though.

My biggest complaint with most word processors is their default behaviour to change e-mail addresses and web addresses into blue, underlined hyperlinks.

There's a configuration option for that. I don't have Word on this computer but I recall it being reasonably obvious.

And while I'm at it, I can't think of a single time when I wanted the formatting from a web page to be carried into a printed document when I copied and pasted a block of text. Surely the sensible default should be to paste in plain text and pick up formatting from the destination document? At the very least this should be an optional default.

In Word, right-click where you want to paste and a context menu will come up with the options to paste it while keeping source formatting, merge formatting or plain text.

If you hover over each option it shows a preview of how it will turn out.

Main assumption is he's taking cash and not stock. Plausible for a $5m deal.

He'd lose about 5-10% in fees, say $500k. Admittedly this might be avoidable, but not safe to assume.

Here in UK he'd probably be taxed at about 10% due to entrepreneurs relief, say $450k.

Provided be bought outside London, he could get a nice place (not dramatically exciting, but a good 3 bed flat in a nice area of a nice city) for $400k. Could go quite a bit higher without significantly altering the result.

Rounding down for other costs, giving some nice things at family/friends, say $3.5m left. I'm getting 3% on a tiny bank deposit, less 20% taxes, gives $84k a year.

To me it'd be £4,375 per month in pocket, after taxes, with no rent/mortgage, no health insurance. Working backwards, that's equivalent to having a mortgage on a salary in the region of £100k - approx 4x the average salary in the UK.