Good points. BG is advocating more research in the progressive taxation on consumption IIRC as well.

A tax on labor increases the cost to hire employees as well. An increase cost in labor, increases unemployment. So getting rid of tax on labor, should increase employment.

All things being equal, a tax on consumption lowers demand for goods and services and should cause stagnation. The important element in his proposal is the _progressive_ tax on consumption. The larger a person's wealth, the larger discretionary spending. Say a person has $100million. Once the basics are consumed (food, shelter, clothing, education), what's left over is going to go either to some form of investment or "luxuries". So the progressive tax will incentivize more investment. More investment=more expansion=more employment.

But, in practice, that person with $100 million will have incentive to spend it elsewhere in other countries that won't tax spending on luxury goods. And of course, there will be ways around it locally. Hire a contractor to build your yacht, plane, or other goods. You pay for the materials. So now the government has lost the tax on labor with nothing to offset it. Like my grandaddy told me, "He who has the jewels makes the rules."

If we want to manipulate incentives through tax why not be direct and just implement a wealth gap tax? If more people increase their wealth, the wealthiest get a lower wealth-gap tax, all thing being equal. I'm sure there's problems with too though.

The environment bashes you for 99 Hit Points! You are dead.

What was that my Comp Sci friend was quoting, something about Computer Science is as much about computers as Astronomy is about telescopes?

Great they did this. Don't know how well the study is designed. But if it is a good design, then maybe they should look for traits that High IQ people do not have.

If it is a bad design, do it again, better.

Why do devs choose Ubuntu over Linux? (Ok, I'm baiting, but really why do they choose it?)

RedHat does have MySQL, so some of the presumptions of the post are false. True, RedHat now is moving into MariaDB a MySQL branch currently, fork in the future. But RedHat is a great choice for developers. What about Tomcat or JBoss? Their long support window and awesome packaging makes a great choice for risk-averse organization. I see lots of orgs adopting these app servers supported by RedHat.

I see it as a difference in startups and other businesses (those other businesses being shooting stars, cash cows, dogs, etc.). Startups _need_ to produce something fast, but it doesn't have to be maintainable, strongly supported, etc.

Gotta go, but keep in mind some of the assumptions here...

Lay off people. Close up products. Anybody can do this. It's standard MBA algorithm, squeeze a little here and there. Bob Lutz says that's the style that ruined American automobile industries.

The whole of Microsoft's strategy was laid bare by BG a long time ago: Sell OS licenses. Office was used to create a feedback loop. Now, Active Directory is part of that.

RT runs office, so it supports that strategy.

Make me CEO; I'll charge $250,000 a year. Problems solved, miracles cost extra.

Am I too lazy to figure out what this means? What is DRM? If you create something cool I think you should get some credit for it if you want credit. If you don't want credit that's cool too. If there's a business that has employees, we should at least respect their limited time on earth. Producing high quality work (for me anyway) takes sacrifice of something. That's me though. I ramble, but is DRM a bad thing and why?

Martin Fowler discusses the NoSQL moniker and seems to agree with you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... It' NoSQL Distilled to an hour by Martin Fowler from NoSQL Matters Conference

http://www.cs.fsu.edu/~baker/devices/lxr/http/source/linux/kernel/timer.c?v=2.6.25.8#L1059

?

"When Terman first used the IQ test to select a sample of child geniuses, he unknowingly excluded a special child whose IQ did not make the grade. Yet a few decades later that talent received the Nobel Prize in physics: William Shockley, the cocreator of the transistor. Ironically, not one of the more than 1,500 children who qualified according to his IQ criterion received so high an honor as adults." Simonton, Dean Keith (1999). Origins of genius: Darwinian perspectives on creativity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-512879-6. Lay summary (14 August 2010).

Exceptional output requires access to tools, training, and environment (food, health, relationships) that enable the person to devote (obssess?) over solving the problems or creating something. And, the person's exceptional output must be recognized as such. So being highly intelligent won't make it. It may even be a hindrance. For instance, it would be easy to imagine the first ever person to be able to repeatedly create fire would not score well on any measure of intelligence today, but to the tribe, that person may not only be considered a genius but a god.

Ok, I'm incorrect. It did imply "learning things without being specifically taught" was common sense. I do not believe this to be a good definition, as common sense is as much idiom than anything. Semantically, the phrase is derogatory, political, and a criticism on the value of intelligence versus many other things. That's my problem with the title. Assuming the TFA did not have an agenda, then it and of itself has no common sense. The irony is so palpable, it makes this wretch wanna wretch.