larryjw

GeorgeBMac said:

rcfa said:

lkrupp said:

And if the climate change radicals get their way this is the future for the U.S. Learn to live one or two days a week without power... to save the planet of course.

Nuclear power would solve the problem once and for all; it’s by far the greenest energy, if everything is factored in (land and resource use, waste, CO2, impact on eco systems, cradle to grave) and there’s enough of it for hundreds of millions of years.

I agree!

Unfortunately it has been plagued by human stupidity.

The Chernobyl disaster was caused by human error.

The Fukishima disaster was caused by incredible stupid planning and design:   They built the plant on the edge of a sea known for tsunami's, built a protective sea wall that was far too small.  Then they put the control rooms in the basement next to that ocean so, when the tsunami struck, the control rooms were flooded and completely unusable (except with scruba gear!).

The question is not whether nuclear is safe and clean but can we end this cycle of short sighted stupidity and build a plant correctly?   Well, obviously we can.  So perhaps the question is:  do we have the will to do so?

Very old technology. Nuclear tech is used in nuclear-powered submarines. One would think placing thousands of these smaller power systems around the country might be a better idea. 

22july2013 said:

chadbag said:

darkvader said:

15% corporate tax is still FAR too low.  Ideally corporate income tax rates should be at least as high as individual income tax rates, which for Ireland the top rate seems to be 40%.

And remember, corporations only pay income taxes on profits, expenses (like salaries) are deductible.  That's why cutting the corporate tax rate is HORRIBLE if you're trying to create jobs or increase salaries, low corporate tax rates encourage layoffs and low salaries to reduce expenses so more profit can be extracted.

If tax laws are written correctly, passing off profits to smaller subsidiaries will be impossible, for minimum taxation purposes it'll be the global 'holding company' that will determine the rate.

Actually, corporate tax rates should be 0.  People would get paid more and your economy would grow.   Corporations don't pay taxes.  Their customers do. 

And don't forget, not a single corporation owns itself, either in whole or in part. Every single share of every publicly or privately traded company is owned by human beings, who are already paying capital gains taxes on the shares that they own. I don't see any value in double taxation. Just tax the owners of the corporation as much as you want. If you tax corporations 40% on their profit and then the owners of the companies another 40% on their gains, that's a double tax on the same corporate income.

I'm not saying don't collect taxes. I'm saying that taxing the same profit twice is a cheap way to hide the true tax rate. If you tax both people and corporations by 40% then that works out to people keeping (100%-40%)*(100%-40%)=36% of their income which is a tax rate of 64%. That's pretty steep. But if that's what you want, then do it.

There are no capital gains taxes until the shares are sold -- which could be never. And with the step up in basis upon death, no capital gains taxes are ever paid. The fairness violation with the US tax code is those holding shares never pay income taxes at all because they have no "income". They live off of loans using their shares as collateral. They pay interest on their loans, then deduct the interest on their taxes, which are otherwise zero (meaning they could otherwise get money back from the Feds -- which is OUR tax money). In addition, the "owner/employee" controls the company, and the company "votes" that for the most part, what for you and I are normal living expenses and assets become corporation expenses and assets, and therefore are paid and owned by the corporation thus decreasing their "profits" subject to taxation. 

The tax system is simply a scam -- pure and simple. 

This ophthalmologist is researching use the iPhone in his practice. With likely a roomful of authorized medical equipment, I’m sure he is at least theoretically capable of assessing the usefulness of the iPhone macro capability.

May prove useful, may prove not. And, of course, with telemedicine on the rise, giving the patient the ability to monitor their health might be useful — like the afib and spo2 sensors in the Apple Watch. 

I'm curious. When the Apple Watch calls for an ambulance, what does it say? I must give a location, identify the wearer, ask for an ambulance, etc. 

IreneW said:

larryjw said:

I think one can "blame" the OS. Now, I'm sure there needs to be a balance between performance and OS overhead, but it seems one role of the OS is to prevent run-away apps sucking the battery.

This might go back to the basic design of Unix. Unix is not a real-time OS and does not have preemptory capacity that would allow it to cut off applications eating up resources. 

Without knowing something more, I'd bet that all but specially designed Unix-based OSes have this same problem. 

Please elaborate. There's no reason the scheduler in iOS couldn't prevent individual apps from using more than a predefined quota. The *nix heritage had nothing to do with this, remember Android is built on top of Linux and in the sector i work we tailor the Linux kernel schedulers all the time (balancing safety, efficiency and foreground app performance).
What do you mean? Why couldn't Apple do this?

As I said, there must be a balance between performance and OS overhead. It seems that Apple has chosen a balance which precludes stopping Spotify from eating up resources. Apple doesn't use a Linux kernel but a kernel based on XNU. My first hand knowledge and experience is ancient and based on Unix System V many decades ago -- I've not looked at OS kernels since then. 

Could Apple do something to remedy problems such as this? Beats me -- anything is possible.

Apple does keep battery usage by app, so it's likely they could periodically analyze those stats to detect misbehaving apps. 

But,  I doubt the solution is something that can be dealt with in the scheduler. Applications like Spotify cannot be preempted and still maintain the quality of sound output -- even microsecond delays are detectable by listeners.