All posts tagged business
From TechCruch:
Today, Senators Charles Schumer and Bob Casey are expected to announce a plan they have to re-impose the taxes on Saverin, part of a bigger scheme to go after expatriates who give up citizenship in order to avoid taxes. On top of that, they want to make it official that people who do avoid paying their taxes by renouncing citizenship are unable from ever re-entering the country again.
So, let me make sure I’m getting this straight. Eduardo Severin was born in Brazil and lived there for the first 16 years of his life. He has lived in Singapore for the past few years. He created Facebook with Zukerberg, and with the impending IPO, is about to owe about $67 million in taxes. So he renounced his US citizenship to avoid paying the taxes. And now he needs his own law.
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Posted by Jim Caccamo on May 17, 2012
https://rewiringvirtue.com/2012/05/17/senators-abandon-national-priorities-for-personal-ones/
Inriguing story over at the The Atlantic by Jordan Weissmann on a new study by Jeremy Greenwood (an economist at Penn) and Emin Dinlersoz (from the Census Bureau) on occupational change between 1983 and 2002. A good deal of the change in occupations had to do with changes in technology. As Weissmann puts it:
In roughly 20 years, entire categories of factory work nearly disappeared. If your job hinged on your aptitude with a shoe machine, it was in danger. Likewise if you worked a lathe every day for a living, or had a spot anywhere else on a classic production line, where dozens of hands handled simple, discreet tasks.
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Posted by Jim Caccamo on May 16, 2012
https://rewiringvirtue.com/2012/05/16/technology-jobs-unions-and-professional-education/
One of the key problems with innovating is that you frequently run into problems that were totally unforeseen. That’s why engineering practice—driven my robust professional ethics commitments—require that systems be tested and reevaluated both during the creation phase and after deployment in order to catch problems as they arise. This process drives companies to do physical product recalls and software updates. Innovation requires thoughtful consideration of possibilities, good and bad. It also requires a boatload of humility, because you will make mistakes.
Failing to account adequately for unforeseen consequences is one thing. Failing to account for known negative consequences is something altogether different.
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Posted by Jim Caccamo on May 13, 2012
https://rewiringvirtue.com/2012/05/13/innovation-and-failing-the-customer/
One argument I frequently hear from students in class in support of expanded surveillance is that spying is ok, because if you aren’t doing anything wrong, you don’t need to worry. Nothing bad will happen to you. Tell that to the folks who run the music site Dajaz1.com. Their domain was seized by the federal government on the complaint of the RIAA. Problem was, they didn’t do anything wrong.
Apparently, however, the RIAA and music labels’ evidence against Dajaz1, a music blog, never came. Or, if it did, it was not enough to build a case and the authorities returned the site nearly 13 months later without explanation or apology.
They didn’t have any illegal files on their servers. And they were put out of business.
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Posted by Jim Caccamo on May 7, 2012
https://rewiringvirtue.com/2012/05/07/but-they-did-nothing-wrong-or-who-really-owns-the-courts/
Well, there you go. According to the New York Post, it looks like Hulu is going to be switching over to a new revenue system. The site, owned by News Corp., Disney, Comcast and Providence, has used an ad and subscription supported model that enabled people to watch cable and network shows without subscribing to cable. The problem is, people are leaving cable. So, Hulu is going change to an “authentication model” that will require you to enter your cable subscriber number before you watch. No cable, no Hulu.
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Posted by Jim Caccamo on April 30, 2012
https://rewiringvirtue.com/2012/04/30/creative-industries/
From President Obama at the White House Correspondents Dinner,
And plenty of journalists are here tonight. I’d be remiss if I didn’t congratulate the Huffington Post on their Pulitzer Prize. (Applause.) You deserve it, Arianna. There’s no one else out there linking to the kinds of hard-hitting journalism that HuffPo is linking to every single day. (Laughter and applause.) Give them a round of applause. And you don’t pay them — it’s a great business model. (Laughter.)
When the President of the United States starts giving you crap about your strategy, you know something is wrong.
Posted by Jim Caccamo on April 30, 2012
https://rewiringvirtue.com/2012/04/30/all-the-awards-in-the-world-cant/
Rewiring Virtue 