OS X is free now on the condition of using only Mac hardware. Windows is the only OS that isn't free and their market share has been gobbled up by Apple in the last decade or so.
I think the only place where Windows is still pricey is the enterprise, but Apple has made it a point to give away their OS completely free to everyone. Apple got out of the server game mostly because Linux has and will take over in the long run (especially with platforms like docker which should make it easier to deploy apps).
> By that metric, Windows is also free if you buy a Surface.
There's a difference between Microsoft's model (using a hardware product to better market a software product) and Apple's model (using a software product to better market a hardware product). Microsoft is a software company first and foremost, while Apple is a hardware company first and foremost.
That's the root cause of the reason why your particular comparison isn't exactly valid: that OS X is not at all designed to work on hardware that wasn't built by Apple (and, indeed, getting OS X to work on non-Apple hardware requires a modified OS X and installer on top of matching the hardware of a Mac almost perfectly).
The austerity measures was the only rational thing that Greece did and even then they complained.
There's really no out for Greece on this one: their economy seems to be dependent on tourism, they have little to no manufacturing, probably little exports, and imports many of their goods. Greece's economy was never stable to begin with and I do think that they ought to exit the Euro not for Greece's sake but for the Euro's sake.
No, the "austerity" was very half-hearted and almost exclusively hurt the little people, i.e. those who relied on state pensions, health care, or unemployment benefits.
Still, I hope Greece suffers hard and suffers long.
Portugal, Italy, Spain, and France need all the encouragement they can get...
The issue of tax burden is that the only loser are the people. Government issues taxes and can enforce it violently, so Government is the only winner in the tax game. For the wealthy, the move to a FairTax is neutral they don't benefit from it just as they don't have the same negative effects that a progressive system has with its loopholes. Also, we need to stop thinking that our economy will get better if we somehow increase the tax burden on the rich. What we need to start thinking is how to improve the plight of the poor and the needy.
The reason why I supported the FairTax because of the prebate and it increases the purchasing power of the poor. When the poor can keep 100% of their pay, they control what they can spend on. For the middle class, the same deal: we can have families improve their lives, save up for college, be masters of their spending, and pave the way for more charity. The rich will continue being rich, regardless but if we can ease the tax burden on the middle class and the poor by removing income taxes it'd be a big break.
The FairTax replaces all taxes and the prebate makes it progressive. The rich actually have no net benefit because in the income tax world, they're still rich and in the fairtax world, they're still rich. What progressive income taxation says is that you want to pull down the rich to bring up the poor. We need to pull up the poor and leave the rich alone. The rich have their wealth and will continue to maintain it. A tax plan should be transparent and it should allow the poor to save money and invest their way out of being poor.
I'd vote for any system that gives the poor more opportunity to pull themselves up. With FairTax they would have more income, pay no tax on essentials, could save/invest more, and reduce dependence on the government. That combined with no capital gains makes investment attractive to all classes.
If you give someone the opportunity, but they choose to remain poor then it is not the government's job to take care of them.
If however you do not give them that opportunity then we are just encouraging the poor to stay poor and depend on the government.
I have to imagine no capital gains would have more meaning to the middle class saving for retirement as compared to a wealthy person netting 15% more.
Lastly - expenditures are at least linear with regards to income if not exponential past $150k looking at a recent census. If you read the FairTax proposal it states that the rich would end up paying more tax overall then they do today.
The poor don't tend to have the money to invest in things that generate capital gains in any meaningful capacity. That such a thing is touted as a benefit for the poor is indicative of either disingenuousness or naïveté on the part of FairTax backers.
FactCheck.org has a well researched and well citied piece at http://www.factcheck.org/2007/05/unspinning-the-fairtax/. Among the findings - anyone making between $15-30k and $200k suffers under the plan, while the rich see their tax burden drop dramatically.
I read the article in its entirety. While what they propose (a very small fractional increase in taxes among the middle class) is entirely plausible, it misses the point entirely.
A consumption tax is optional. Meaning I only pay that tax if I consume above a poverty level. An income tax however is not. If I earn an income, I pay the tax.
The reason this is such a big deal is that it empowers the individual to change their financial situation. For example my taxes may decrease by 50% under FairTax, simply because I live a simple life style.
If someone chooses to improve their situation, they can take all the extra money, save, invest without capital gains, and see the turnaround much quicker.
This is in contrast to today's system which penalizes saving & investment and HEAVILY penalizes those who go out and start a business (I pay quite a bit more tax as a self employed individual).
It is also much more logical to be penalized for consumption vs. contributing to society (similar to the OP).
Same here, the FairTax is a pretty good idea. I believe that Bill Gates even advocated that the US shift away from income based taxation to consumption base. If there's anything our economy that we can bank on, it will be consumption.
I found that communication in projects and time-off is important. A company I worked for had unlimited PTO and it worked because we all planned accordingly. I took a three week trip to Europe in 2013, no one else took anything more than a day off when I was gone. My other colleague took a three week trip early in 2013, I didn't take any time off at all.
When we can, we also managed remote work. So I would go back to Chicago for one week stretches to hang with my family but I would work during the day. Even though it was a trade off (work remote or wait until another time to go back) it wasn't nearly as bad. We also communicated with business when we would be gone which really help manage our backlog.
As a team we communicated our time offs to each other. LIke we would go into each other's office (since my team was small, there's three of us) and have discussions as to when we would be gone so we each knew and expected it. It also helped us manage our sprints.
Unlimited PTO requires a bit more dancing and managing than having it tracked, but honestly, the pain is worth it. I never had to worry about being sick because if I'm sick, I'm encouraged to take time off to get well. It made it less stressful and, coincidentally, could de-stress faster in my vacay than I did when I had limited PTO.
I think many companies dive head first into unlimited vacation policy without really thinking things through. I had a job where we had it and it somehow worked (despite the CTO's inability to follow any kind of project management structure).
Our PTO's were scheduled ahead which was policy. So if you took a two week trip, you filed it three months in advanced. You let your team, your PM, and business know you'll be out of town so they can manage expectations (e.g., less work). Our sprints were based on how much work we can do based on the existing resource. My team had a team of 3 so we never scheduled PTO's were two or more people were off for any prolonged period of time. Sometimes schedules collide, but we do our best to be transparent about big trips so that we can all plan accordingly.
You know, it worked well. I'm glad it worked well for you at Trulia (which, btw, helped me butt loads when I was shopping for a home, so thanks!). I'd work for you guys except I'm not a mobile dev, I like where I'm at, and I'm not looking to move. :)
People often forget that testing cross platform functionality is difficult and time consuming. It can easily tie down designing and add more constraints than necessary. This is why I advocate focusing on essentials like usability, experience, and functionality rather than some gung-ho attitude of "we MUST be mobile first regardless."
I personally make decisions based on what the project requires rather than some template. Most websites for me are informational, so mobile-first works well. Not a whole lot of functionality to test so we can focus on building the website and make it look on any size device.
However, apps are a different ball game. I'd rather focus on usability, experience, and functionality. I'm not going to try and hobble the app by trying to beat a round peg into a triangle, square, whatever shaped hole. I find that most web applications which have large swathes of functionality benefit from native code, so I usually skip mobile-first design and just do a native app (Xamarin or Titanium works). Why? Because I don't want to sacrifice usability, experience, and functionality. Most apps, I've found out, have different experience, usability, and functionality on difference devices.
You can do great mobile experiences on web, but it does require extra time and extra thinking. I don't want to download a new app for every new service I want to try, so I will say that there's still space for really good mobile web apps.
Try and not all web apps should have a mobile web app. But there's are instances where a productivity app will benefit from having a mobile app than just a responsive website. I've worked on a couple of web apps that made mobile-first their paradigm and it sucked. Testing sucked. Dev'ing it sucked. We had to sacrifice a lot on usability and experience which sucked a lot. A mobile app would have made more sense than a responsive site. Then again, I used trulia and having them ask me to download their app was just stupid as the app provided zero value to me (their responsive site was perfectly fine).
Finally. I'm glad Google's giving Java the boot. I had a feeling they were heading that direction after the lawsuit and the subsequent change to AOT compilation in Android 5.0.
I think the only place where Windows is still pricey is the enterprise, but Apple has made it a point to give away their OS completely free to everyone. Apple got out of the server game mostly because Linux has and will take over in the long run (especially with platforms like docker which should make it easier to deploy apps).