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Animals have lived for millions of years without any money.

And yet somehow humans are the only stupid animal who can't figure this shit out.

> The right is inherent in the very nature of society

[[Citation]] because you are talking about only _one_ government and assuming that there is nothing better.

> real society

Define "real society".

Taxation IS theft. PERIOD. It is fantastical thinking has absolutely no relation to how a advanced society could ever function.

Your entire concept of money is based in a flawed premise -- there is never enough -- so we are going to create artificial scarcity to give it some "perceived" value -- and then take it from you without your permission.

As one alien said : "You mean you have to PAY to live on the planet you were born on???"

If people could dictate what X% of their taxes went towards education vs the genocide (military) far less people would have a problem with the complete and total mis-management of it. What other company do you know that is allowed to run decades with TRILLIONS of debt -- yet somehow it is magically OK when the government does it ??? WTF!!!

2001 $2.3 TRILLION Missing from Pentagon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

2004
http://blog.visual.ly/wp-conte...

2008
http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs1...

2009
http://www.infohow.org/wp-cont...

2011
http://www.coolinfographics.co...

2012
http://chiefmartec.com/post_im...

* A decade into a project to digitize U.S. immigration forms, just 1 is online
https://www.washingtonpost.com...

Lastly, the problem is not the taxes per say. Instead of having over 2,600 pages of BULLSHIT you could summarize the ENTIRE tax law with one sentence -- but since everyone is too fucking stupid to do anything about it we are stuck with a broken, in-debt, slave system.

I think you're thinking of mini vs micro USB http://visual.ly/micro-usb-vs-... . The third type is micro USB upside down http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id... .

It's an interesting theory, but based on preliminary digging I did into it, the data doesn't back it up.

Here's Alcohol consumption per capita. The U.S. is towards the bottom (least) of the pack.

Here's Rate of alcohol-related deaths. Eastern European countries top the list. Germany, France, Denmark Sweden, Norway, Finland, Austria, Poland, hell even Canada all have higher death rates than the U.S. Italy and Spain have much lower death rates.

Here's a list of countries with the highest alcoholism rates. All have no drinking age or 18 year drinking age.

Based on a quick perusal of these stats, I can't find any real pattern or correlation with consumption, minimum age, addiction, and death rate. The one interesting stat was that this is predominantly a white and Hispanic problem. Blacks and Asians are less than half as likely to binge drink. Suggesting either genetics or social culture is the distinguishing factor, since all of those people grew up and live under the same laws.

Agreed.
And I want to pile on with my rant.

Regarding infectious disease vs chronic diseases.
This is largely a case of truly innocent vs people who are causing their own problems.

As for chronic diseases, "obesity, cancer and heart disease epidemics in poor nations", umm, poor nations rates of those are less than affluent nations.
Is Gates supposed to drop helping the truly innocent and poor people and instead focus on diseases of the affluent?

Obesity isn't a disease. It is a life-style choice and the causes and cures are well known. No amount of Gates money can solve that problem.

Premature heart disease is also largely due to life-style choices, is well understood, and the methods to prevent are well known. What is Gates supposed to do about cigarette smokers? What about people who refuse to exercise? Fund involuntary work camps in China? That one was already handled by Steve Jobs.

Cancer? The disease also known as "the disease of affluence"?
http://visual.ly/cancers-globa...
Many people believe the rising rates of those diseases are solely due to increases in longevity.
Does the author have some suggestion for reducing longevity? Oh, well, yes - stop vaccination programs.Two birds with one stone, eh?
Also, the increase in certain rare 3rd world cancers are due to cancers resulting from infectious agents - a problem the affluent don't have so much.

Is the author seriously suggesting Gates drop funding that saves millions of lives in third world countries in order to put more money into the already highly funded cancer research?

Exactly. We don't have a collection problem, we have an outradeous spending problem.

Federal Budget Death & Taxes:
2004
2007
2008
2009
2011
2012

I.e. The government collect more tax dollars from the people than any nation in recorded history, still spend a Trillion dollars more than it has per year - for total spending of $7 Million PER MINUTE and complain that it doesn't have nearly enough money!?!?

Spending money to kill other people is NOT the solution to balance the budget.

Except when they are copying Braun and others?

Braun: http://visual.ly/braun-or-appl...
Swiss transit clock: http://www.cnet.com/news/time-...

The clock sure looks like the one from the swiss transit, except it is missing the trademark logos. I guess Apple didnt think about Braun and the Swiss having access to time machines and going back into the past after stealing apple designs?

Damn, someone's going to have to update the graph.

+1 for you. Some sort of "30 year celebration" nonsense. What, 30 years ago jobs visited PARC "borrowed" all the ideas and did a better job marketing it then Xerox did?

Isnt this the same company now filing lawsuits over rounded corners after plagiarizing others for years? What about Jobs "themonuclear war" against android, spending "every last cent of apples money" which is actually the SHAREHOLDERS not his to spend? Good thing Xerox/Braun and others didnt do the same to Apple. I guess when you are rich/powerful you get to make rules to prevent others from doing what you did?
One of my fav's
http://visual.ly/braun-or-appl...
So please apple fans tell us about how "innovative" the products are when they are lifted from the 60's.

This just in: The homeless and unemployed mobbed a bus full of people perceived to be rich, perhaps unaware of the 60-80 hour work weeks endured by software engineers, that once you take that into consideration, many in the industry make at, or less, than minimum wage.

The *entry level* salaries for Google and Apple engineers in Silicon Valley is $105K. That's over fifty bucks an hour assuming a 40-hour work week.

Now assume an 80-hour work week, so it's still over 25 bucks an hour. And these engineers get *lots* of perks, including high end health care plans and free transportation to work. Bear in mind that a substantial chunk of a working class salary is spent taking care of these kinds of expenses, and there are lots of non-monetary hassles associated with maintaining a car in a big city.

It's a reference to the fact that many Apple products look like other, older products.

There is of course no shame in taking inspiration from what other people are doing. That's the way the world works and we are all better for it. Apple's problem is they then try to patent the design and sue the person they copied for using it.

FRAND terms were not offered

Yes they were, Apple just didn't like them. Most companies do a patent exchange to avoid paying any actual cash, but Apple doesn't have any tech patents to offer and it refuses to license design patents. So Apple was obliged to pay the same percentage as everyone else, it's just that because Apple products are rather expensive that translated into a several dollars per device which they thought was too much. Well, you know what Apple, too bad, everyone else agreed to this deal and now the court agreed that it was fair.

Samsung has at times blatantly ripped off a number of its competitors, most recently Apple

If you mean that they look somewhat similar then I would direct your attention to Braun's product line which pre-dates Apple's.

And all of this won't matter much in the end anyway

It certainly will because this isn't the only tech patent that falls under FRAND rules which Apple has tried to ignore, and Samsung isn't going to relent on those. Its the nature of litigation that it takes years and in the mean time new products come out, so at the end you apply for a quick judgement on other patents and the new gear based on the arguments that were resolved during the trial. On top of that you can expect Samsung to press for damages and of course the unpaid license fees.

This has been coming to Apple for a long time. You can't just ignore patents vital to implementing standards because you don't like the FRAND terms that everyone else has agreed to. That is the price of joining the club, the alternative being to go set up your own world-wide cell data network.

what was the form factor precedent for an original Mac?

It was a smaller version of any number of workstation computers available at the time.

Or a 1st gen iMac?

Small televisions, obviously. The shape was largely determined by the shape of the CRT tube. Making the corners more rounded and using bondi blue plastic is not innovation, it's just decoration.

Or a modern iMac?

Hardly the first computer to be built into the form factor of an LCD monitor. Plus it looks exactly like an old Braun product.

Or an original iPod?

It looked like many other music players, only with the wheel which wasn't invented by Apple (it was Synaptics for trackpad fame). They couldn't patent the design because it was functional anyway - how else would you arrange the screen and buttons in a usable way?

Plus it looks exactly like an old Braun radio.

what was the form factor precedent for an original Mac?

It was a smaller version of any number of workstation computers available at the time.

Or a 1st gen iMac?

Small televisions, obviously. The shape was largely determined by the shape of the CRT tube. Making the corners more rounded and using bondi blue plastic is not innovation, it's just decoration.

Or a modern iMac?

Hardly the first computer to be built into the form factor of an LCD monitor. Plus it looks exactly like an old Braun product.

Or an original iPod?

It looked like many other music players, only with the wheel which wasn't invented by Apple (it was Synaptics for trackpad fame). They couldn't patent the design because it was functional anyway - how else would you arrange the screen and buttons in a usable way?

Plus it looks exactly like an old Braun radio.

Why? I would almost be more surprised if they *didn't* check that kind of data. After all, in the information age, knowing what works and what doesn't is really key to success. Considering that places like this can find information on things like crashes, when people uninstall apps, etc (yes, they are using a specific piece of software for that), then I'd almost expect Apple themselves to be doing it. It would certainly make sense for their own apps at least - promote the ones that people use, drop the ones that don't get used (though the same metric applies to promoting things on their App Store, too).

http://visual.ly/braun-or-apple
http://www.metrohippie.com/dieter-rams-top-10/

What saddens me is that Canonical's roots are in Africa. A huge place where there is sporadic 3G connection.

And many monster movies have been set there. Monsters! What are they thinking? Do you want monsters on your desktop?

(I don't need saracsm tags on this, do I?)

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