VISA merchant rules generally guarantee that the plastic price will match the cash price. It's true that the merchant raises prices to compensate, but paying cash doesn't avoid that charge -- everyone pays the CC tax regardless of payment method. So you might as well get some of it back.
I want to see the exchange as work for time, because I work much more effectively than many other people. An hourly-rate job is simply not attractive to me, because the hourly-rate will not effectively capture my value.
As explained by grellas above, overtime in the US is typically applied to replaceable workers who's hourly value is a more or less quantifiable resource. If I'm flipping burgers, painting a house, or banging out simple webapps based on someone else's design then it's fairly easy to quantify the value of my time.
However, if I'm working in an industry where force multipliers abound, for example software engineering, or any sufficiently advanced executive/management position, I would much rather capture the value of what I produce -- there simply cannot be a good fit with shoehorning me into an hourly value rate. It simply isn't an accurate way to represent my value.
This is best exemplified by jobs which supply equity stakes. If you give me a chunk of your company I'm no longer working for free, when I work overtime.
> I want to see the exchange as work for time, because I work much more effectively than many other people. An hourly-rate job is simply not attractive to me, because the hourly-rate will not effectively capture my value.
Why not? If you provide better value per hour than others, you should also get higher hourly rate. If you just work more hours without more compensation, then you're just cheap.
"That's a bad deal for Tesla. It could mean financial ruin if there are too many irresponsible owners."
On the contrary, if there are too many irresponsible owners then Tesla is ruined if they DON'T cover it. Imagine what "too many Tesla bricked cars" would do to their product image.
Look, this is very simple. Warranty systems are underwritten like insurance policies. It's little risk to Tesla -- the question is the underwriter's risk assessment. If the underwriter won't cover it on affordable terms, it suggests the risk is too high and the product is poorly designed. At that point, the path of failure is chosen (expensive underwriting policy vs expensive PR debacle) is irrelevant. The only issue is whether the risk assessment is accurate -- it becomes a gamble.
In short, a judge will grant a person legal immunity from prosecution. This removes the fifth amendment argument, as you cannot be prosecuted for the child porn, and you can be compelled to testify.
For example, an accomplice to a crime might be offered immunity -- after which the accomplice cannot refuse to testify under the fifth amendment. Remember, the fifth only guarantees that you will not be compelled to serve as a witness against yourself -- it does NOT grant you the right to remain silent at all times, contrary to popular belief.
You said: "Actively impeding the prosecution, in the form of refusing to decrypt a drive known to contain inculpatory evidence, is in many ways tantamount to destroying that evidence."
But it isn't /actively/ impeding, it's passive. One is refraining from taking an action.
No, there is no such requirement. Fair Use is judged on a four prong test, none of which involve crediting the author:
the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
the nature of the copyrighted work;
the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
I've run down the battery on my car, motorcycle, mower, or other vehicles I don't often use. It is not an expensive ($40,000) fix -- often it just takes a recharge because lead-acid batteries are not as easily damaged as lithium-ion. Replacement is relatively cheap too.
When you talk about tire deformation, this is rare and would not happen before many years of disuse. And engine seizure? Again, unlikely to happen even if left to sit for a decade. You're more likely to have issues with rust in the gas tank and bad, coagulated gas, than a seized engine.
The point is that it is relatively safe to leave a vehicle unattended in a garage for long periods of time. The vast majority of its value will remain undamaged. Contrast to the Tesla, where if left for a year with a low charge it is alleged that it's likely to lose fully half of the car's value ($40,000).
Firstly, given that gas contains up to 10% ethanol now, no, your engine will be seriously damaged if you leave your car with gasoline in it for ten years and then start it without flushing it first. That's because the ethanol attracts water, and water does not compress as easily as gasoline, and the attempt to spray a high volume of water into your cylinder and then compress it will likely destroy something along the way. Agreed though that what passes for gasoline in that tank is anything but gasoline.
Now, add further that all of the rubber hosing, if your car was built in the last two decades, will likely have dry-rot, and the vehicle is unlikely to run again without replacement on all of them. Should a rear main, or other important seal have been damaged, you'll be looking at around $1,000 in labor alone to disassemble the engine. How much was that car worth again?
I've had lifters separate on me while driving taking out the engine block, radiator, and several other components along the way - the cost to replace with a -new- engine and radiator exceeded 40% of what I paid for the vehicle. (Don't be confused by the pricing on a used, junk-yard engine, and a new crate engine. Gets even worse with a V8 - have you seen the price on a 6.1L crate Hemi?)
I still don't see what the big deal is - if I leave -any- electronic device with an li-ion battery in it discharged for a long period of time, that battery is toast. You think it's absurd that the battery in the car costs $40k? I'm sure mac laptop batteries would be even more expensive once you chained enough of them together to get to that level of sustained discharge capability.
Yes, I mentioned the gas/rust/coagulation issue in the post you replied to. I should mention that I have been through this process myself and I am well aware of the steps necessary to restore a long-sitting gas vehicle to service.
If a car is left to sit for a year the gas will be bad, but there will likely be no further repair necessary other than flushing the fuel system. This is relatively cheap. Even if one mistakenly tries to start it and gets water in the engine, the repairs are far less costly than the $40,000 battery price tag on the tesla.
I had mentioned a decade specifically in regard to engine seizure -- you will not have this problem over a shorter time period such as one year. Nor will you have dry-rot of your hosing or any other major mechanical malfunction. Ruined gas and a dead battery are about the limits of damage in the one year period -- possibly a tire may go flat.
The big deal is that if I leave my $80k gasoline car in a garage for a year it will take very little to get it running again. Probably a few hundred bucks. Perhaps up to several thousand dollars if I foolishly try to start it and get very unlucky. But you can't reasonably construct a scenario where a garaged gasoline car is likely to sustain $40,000 in damages just from safely sitting out of the elements. It's just not possible, period.
Except we aren't talking about letting this car sit 10 years, try a few weeks or months, depending on the initial charge.
If Adama had to plan for an FTL jump ever 33 days instead of 33 minutes, the Galactica crew wouldn't have been nearly as frazzled.
It's not the fact that maintenance is required, it's the short timeframe in which a mistake can cause you to have a 3k pound immovable object and/or a 40k bill. (I have no idea what it weighs, just made that up)
> When you talk about tire deformation, this is rare and would not happen before many years of disuse.
My Ford owner's manual says otherwise. According to it, the tires will be damaged at a prolonged period, if the car sits at the same spot. Maybe not deformed per se, but damaged. It's recommended that the car should be placed on supports if long-term (say, more than a month) storage is required.
Yes, it isn't recommended as it may cause the tires to fail. But, this is very, very rare. The manual recommends all manner of preventative measures and while they're all good ideas they're also not at all necessary.
anthonyb is saying that logs and stray bales are available in large quantities. And he's right, there's no issue of scale here, other than labor. I have family who have built straw houses and they're cheap, straw is very plentiful, and you really can't tell the difference from a traditional drywall/fiberglass insulation home (it wasn't stylized like this one).
The only thing I see being an issue with the house from the article is the composting toilet. However, running a sewer to this style of house is no different than running a sewer to a traditional house.
It's more than just the building material. I live in a 65 story building..8 units per floor (I'm sure it thins out near the top though). How many people per sqft of land do you think we take? How much would be taken by free-standing (single) homes?
How much do you think we save in heating and cooling given that only 2 out of 4 walls are exposed (and in some apartments, it might be 1/4)?
If I wasn't tired, I'd look it up, but I have to imagine that apartment-style "dense" living, is way more sustainable than almost any type of house.
I have seen a few studies that suggest New York City is the most environmentally friendly place to live in the US. But, mostly it comes down to transportation costs. And being that close to a harbor is actually a huge net gain.
It seems your issue is with the concept of single family homes and urban sprawl, not this particular method of building. That's a bit of a different issue -- many people don't want to live in the middle of a city (such as myself: I'm on a rather large lot in a 4 bedroom home)
It's true that high density housing is efficient, but if you are going to build a single family home, strawbale is a great way to do it.
I don't mean to rant on you, but I do like having this conversation :)
I don't think limiting what we view as sustainable to only the things we want is being reasonable. Sure, there's degrees of sustainability, and we can talk about it in those terms. But, when I look at the world, I no longer believe that we are necessarily entitled to things that we want. Greeks, for example, would like to continue living well beyond their financial means. Should they be allowed to simply because they wish for it?
We have a good system to measure the financial cost of thing. So, at the very least, what you want is something you need to be able to afford (although that plays to the disadvantage of the truly poor). However, there are few checks in places for the social costs, and even fewer for the environmental cost.
So while you want to live in a big house, and you can afford it, do you have a greater social responsibility? Or, put differently (and possibility unfairly), what impact would it have if the considerable number of people who lived in such a dwelling moved to something more sustainable?
Actually it would be very different to run a sewer to this house than to a traditional house.
When you are piping large amounts of raw sewage around you need strict rules to protect people, property and the environment. So now you need to get it up to code, and pay trained people to check that it complies.
Straw is a promising material but I think we've already tried harvesting logs in "large quantities" and it hasn't worked out perfectly.
As I said, I have people in my family who have built strawbale houses to code (California code including earthquake provisions, no less). The stylized aspect is distinct from the strawbale and inset-in-land aspect.
Regarding logs, I'm currently sitting in a house with wood framing in the suburbs, and every house around me as far as I can see is also framed with wood.
Overture, a completely different company, sued Google in 2002, two years before their IPO.
Yahoo purchased Overture in 2003. After this, Google settled.
Google's IPO wasn't until 2004.