[F]ree web services are not like free software. If your free software project suddenly gets popular, you gain resources: testers, developers and people willing to pitch in. If your free website takes off, you lose resources. Your time is spent firefighting and your money all goes to the nice people at Linode.
Maciej, from Don’t be a Free User [pinborad.in] blog post at Pinboard.
Category: quotes
Always loved a good quote
beggs
Categories
Neurotic Guess
Neurosis can be the sign of a decent guess
Prof. Tom Murphy, from Wind Fights Solar; Triangle Wins [physics.ucsd.edu] a post on his blog; Do The Math
Bonus points for spotting the reference to They Might Be Giants song Particle Man. Wonder if the author knows it from the album or from the Animaniacs episode?
Thirty corporations paid less than nothing in aggregate federal income taxes over the entire 2008-10 period. These companies, whose pretax U.S. profits totaled $160 billion over the three years, included: Pepco Holdings (–57.6% tax rate), General Electric (–45.3%), DuPont (–3.4%), Verizon (–2.9%), Boeing (–1.8%), Wells Fargo (–1.4%) and Honeywell (–0.7%).
…
DuPont and Monsanto both produce chemicals. But over the 2008-10 period, Monsanto paid 22 percent of its profits in U.S. corporate income taxes, while DuPont actually paid a negative tax rate of –3.4 percent.
Department store chain Macy’s paid a three-year rate of 12.1 percent, while competing chain Nordstrom’s paid 37.1 percent.
In computer technology, Hewlett-Packard paid 3.7 of its three-year U.S. profits in federal income taxes, while Texas Instruments paid 33.5 percent.
FedEx paid 0.9 percent over three years, while its competitor United Parcel Service paid 24.1 percent.
Robert S. McIntyre, Matthew Gardner, Rebecca J. Wilkins and Richard Phillips. Taken from Corporate Taxpayers & Corporate Tax Dodgers, 2008-2010
Stop having a tax or find some way of making companies pay it.
Categories
No pony for humanity…
we’re not taking care of our gerbil, so we have not demonstrated that we deserve a pony
Tom Murphy [physics.ucsd.edu], in his blog post Sustainable Means Bunkty to Me [physics.ucsd.edu]
I’ve been reading Tom Murphy’s blog on “astrophysicist’s-eye view of societal issues relating to energy production, climate change, and economic growth” since I first came across it a few months ago. It’s a wonderful blog for anyone remotely math capable who is interested in the details of what it would take to ‘fix’ the current issues of human impact on the earth. Somehow in the age of social updates via Facebook, Google+, Twitter and the like I have never plug it on this site… Consider that oversight fixed.
The articles are long and a bit math heavy, as might be expected of an astrophysicist, but you don’t need to focus on the math to understand the conclusions. In fact the only reason to focus on the math would be to try and disagree with him or because you could actually do that level of math and enjoy the challenge. As long as you trust his ability to actually setup and solve the equations the math is just a tool to lead to the inevitable and, bleak, conclusions that our gluttony is leading the world to, spelled out in metaphor and examples that a non-astrophysicist can actually understand.
Categories
Hegemony through holy genocide
My concept of God does not allow for God’s blessing of genocide as a means for one country’s hegemony over the earth.
Andrew Sullivan in Exceptional and Unexceptional America [theatlantic.com]
He is obviously not a fan of the Old Testament God of Deuteronomy and Numbers.
When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them
Deuteronomy 7:1-2, King James version
Sounds like hegemony through genocide to me. And it’s not even the worst thing in the Old Testament; remember the Moabites and Midianites?