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Hear, hear. This is a point I had considered making myself, but my reply was getting rather bloated. Thanks for bringing it up--it's an absolutely crucial point in the debate surrounding entitlement (and other) programs.

Wraithmaster
www.wraithmaster.com -- Chicken soup for the spleen.

Well, this sounds adequatley alarmist so as to have us all worrying about making sure that "they" pay thier "fair share".

Hey, if we're gonna live in a society whose government taxes its citizenry, I want it to be fair. What's wrong with that?

To all of y'all, where do you get your figures (by the way, don't just quote another article which has an agenda like you do. I wanna see an unbiased account of this stuff.

Well, ya got me here. I couldn't quote a really reliable source on those figures I gave. In fact, when I posted that, I suspected that someone might comment on my numbers... My reasoning was, "well, if he's gonna throw random figures around, I will too." Until he provides really good evidence for his 10%/90% thing, I reckon I'm under no obligation to do so myself. :)

I'm a guy who had to drop out of high school and work full time at age 15 . . . [life story snipped in interest of brevity] . . .I have brought a bunch of computers to an elementry school down there and have set them up with Spanish OS and things like that.

Well, this is very inspiring (honestly, no sarcasm intended), but I assure you that you are by no means a typical case. Many members of the underclass are so immersed in a culture of ignorance, violence, drugs, mass media hypnosis, and so on that a life like this isn't even conceivable to them.

I'm a computer hardware technician and I'm not comlaining about my life or trying to toot my horn but I'm tired of the government telling me that I'm not pulling my fair share . . . [long rant again snipped in the interest of brevity] . . . give the people a real tax cut and give us an INDIVIDUAL voice in where our taxes go, the agencies who don't get enough funding because no one wants them will be shut down and should be if that many people don't want them funded.

Your main point here seems to be that you believe you could do a better job of distributing your wealth (whether it be for charity or supporting governmental programs) than the government. Well, perhaps you, personally, could. You seem to be concerned for the welfare of others. However, you are quite the rarity in that respect. I made a quip in another comment in a different thread that went something like this: "On the news one morning... 'In a press release this morning, Bill Gates, RJR Nabisco, and Time-Warner announced a joint $900 billion program to supply food, shelter, and education to those in need.'" Unlikely at best, my friend. I don't trust human nature enough to let people decide how their wealth gets redistributed by themselves.

I'd like to conclude by saying that, while I may argue in this fashion, I'm only arguing within the current framework of our society. It is entirely possible that taxation is a poor means of redistributing wealth, and that capitalism itself is too fundamentally flawed to provide an equitable solution.

Oh, one last point regarding redistributing wealth in general. I have no qualms about doing this because most of the wealthy elite in this country did not in fact earn their wealth. The vast majority of it is the product of the toil (mental and physical) of others in their employ. For example, while Bill Gates may have had some original ideas for an operating system (oh, wait, no he didn't), that doesn't justify his current multi-multi-mult-billionaire status. That's all the work of his employees, and his hordes of lawyers. :)

Wraithmaster
www.wraithmaster.com -- Chicken soup for the spleen.

No, no, no! Read my post more carefully--I'm assuming it costs $15K a year to survive. (Maybe that's not an accurate estimate, but I can adjust that any way you like and still make my point.) I'd like to see you "encourage people to save" when they can barely afford to feed their children. Beyond this, sales tax is still generally unfair because a truly rich person has incomprehensibly more money to spend on luxuries than a poor person, and could have a standard of living orders of magnitude higher while still paying proportionately far less tax. Finally, saving/investing is only one part of a healthy economy--the other component is spending. If no one spends any money, no one makes any money. Why do you think consumer confidence is considered to be such an important economic index? In fact, saving was considered to be immoral by some economists around the time of the industrial revolution. Of course, this whole spending vs. saving debate is rendered irrelevant by the aforementioned family who can barely feed and clothe themselves. Try selling mutual funds in rural Alabama, or the Bronx, and see how that goes over.... The whole problem with modern economic debate is that it's always carried out from the perspective of the priviliged classes. You must put yourself in the shoes of those whose lives you would try to govern before making decisions about them.

Wraithmaster
www.wraithmaster.com -- Chicken soup for the spleen.

Well, I guess those conditions necessary for life (specifically, an environment with a high degree of chemical activity) might indeed be fairly rare. I'm just saying we shouldn't necessarily expect life to show up only on extremely Earth-like planets. And we aren't entirely, 100% certain there's no life on Mars yet... :)

As for the reproducing thing, that was kind of an oversimplification for a personal theory on the origins of life. Consider a pool of random chemicals: As time progresses, there will be reactions. More stable compounds will tend to persist longer than others, and will eventually outnumber them. If a random group of molecules capable of reproducing itself by reacting with the chemicals around it were to somehow randomly glom together, it would have a clear advantage in this little faux-ecosystem. You can probably extrapolate on this until we have humans posting comments on /. Of course, this theory is highly suspect and has precisely zero empirical evidence to back it up, but I think it's cool. :) I guess one final point I'd mention is that by "entities" I was kind of implying self-organizing systems, not just random matter.

Let me close by acknowledging the likelihood of this comment drawing a lot of fire. If you feel like demolishing my cherished pet theories, go ahead, but please do so civilly. :)

Wraithmaster
www.wraithmaster.com -- Chicken soup for the spleen.

Look, flamebait, when I said I don't have the time, I meant I had a class in 10 minutes. Jerk.

Feeling ashamed for even replying to this,
Wraithmaster
www.wraithmaster.com -- Chicken soup for the spleen.

Yeah, Missile Command and Asteroids do rule. I've got an Atari 2600 in my basement, with Pitfall, Frogger, Space Invaders, Pole Position II, and a whole host of other classics... One that stands out particularly in my mind is Laser Blast. Anyone else ever play that? Ah, two or three repeating screens of UFO-flying, tank-zapping goodness... Those were the days...

Wraithmaster
www.wraithmaster.com -- Chicken soup for the spleen.

The real question is, why wouldn't we be here? Everyone seems to think life is an amazing, once-in-an-eternity sort of thing. Why? It strikes me that anywhere life can exist, it will. Life precisely as we know it (carbon-based, with lots of liquid water) might be very rare indeed, but it seems reasonable to me to expect to find all sorts of reproducing entities (a loose but workable definition of life) throughout the universe. I mean, look: Life exists because entities capable of reproducing are bound to become more stable and numerous than those that aren't, right? (Well, that's arguable, I guess, but it's a fair summary of my beliefs.) If this is the case, anywhere conditions allow the evolution of such entities, they should eventually show up.

Well, that's my dos centavos. I don't have the time, or I'd read the article and go into more depth. Maybe later.

Wraithmaster
www.wraithmaster.com -- Chicken soup for the spleen.

Note that I said I wouldn't want anything removed from my mail before it got to me without my consent. I would support a program that filtered spam at the ISP level if I could specify whether I wanted it used on my email, and if I could specify domains/senders/whatever to block if I wanted to. I don't oppose filtering altogether, just its involuntary form.

Wraithmaster
www.wraithmaster.com -- Chicken soup for the spleen.

This and the parent of this thread smell strongly of troll to me, but I'd like to reply anyhow. Specifically, I'd like to remind you that sales tax is wildly unfair in favor of the rich. Why, you may ask? Because the poor spend far more of their income. Take two people, as an example, one with an income of $18K a year, another with an income of $80K. If it costs $15K a year (including $2K taxes, say) to survive, then the first person has effectively paid 11.1% income tax, and the second .025%. Fair? hardly. Of course, you seem to think that favoring the rich is fine, so maybe these words will fall on deaf ears, but that's never stopped me before!

This whole attitude that the rich are entitled to something because they're rich strikes me as arrogant in the extreme. You know why the richest 10% pay 90% of all taxes? Because the richest 1% has 99% of the money. And, if my calculations are correct, that leaves the rest of us paying, proportionately, oh, ten times as much in taxes.

Wraithmaster
www.wraithmaster.com -- Chicken soup for the spleen.

I agree. If you're for free speech and against censorware, you've got to be all out. I would much, much rather have all that spam delivered to me and have to construct my own filters or use some premade set of filters or whatever than have anything removed from my mail before it gets to me without my consent. It's no different in principle to do that than it is to censor the web in schools.

Wraithmaster
www.wraithmaster.com -- Chicken soup for the spleen.

My friend, I hate to break this to you, but the American armed forces are a bit of a joke. I won't deny the need for some kind of national defense force, but the US has taken things far, far out of proportion. Our armed strength just about rivals that of all other countries in the world combined. Now, I don't know about you, but I doubt they're all going to gang up on us at once... I'd also say that military actions *are* becoming more and more like video games as technology is continuously integrated into warfare. Mind you, I don't think violent video games are a serious threat to a normal person's view of reality, but I could see things working the other way. If all you have to do to kill someone is hit a button, and you don't see or hear them die horribly, I'd say that distances you from the consequences of your actions pretty significantly....

Finally, I'd like to ask, what relevance does someone's sexual orientation have to their views on America's bloated military? Or Linux, or the PRC (where, coincidentally, I doubt Linux is very popular)? Your homophobic remark only serves to get you mentally filed in the "bigot" bin. If you're going to argue against homosexuality, do it respectfully and logically, not at random.

Wraithmaster
www.wraithmaster.com -- Chicken soup for the spleen.

Quarantining the AIDS/HIV-infected populaces of Britain and America wouldn't help anything. Africa is currently getting hammered by AIDS--I forget the exact ratio, but something like 1 out of 6 people in Africa has HIV or AIDS. As for quaratining all of them... Ha! Good luck. Okay, from a hypothetical standpoint, perhaps this would work, but it is unfortunately entirely impractical in reality. Now we must rely on education and, hopefully, medicine.

Wraithmaster
www.wraithmaster.com -- Chicken soup for the spleen.

This is the most benighted, offensive thing I've seen on /. Do you honestly believe the government should not try to provide succor to those in need? I assure you, the private citizenry with the power to do so rarely will. ("And in the news this morning, Bill Gates, RJR Nabisco, and Time-Warner have announced a jointly-funded $900 billion program to provide education, food, and shelter to the needy...") And don't try to convince me welfare is simply supporting freeloaders and unproductive members of society--I'd like to see you grow up in an inner city, drop out of your grossly underfunded school by grade nine, either become a perpetuator of or have to deal with a culture of violence, drugs, and internal self-oppression every moment of your life, and then tell me you don't think there's a place for governmental programs to help the underclasses of our sick society. "More of our own money to spend on food, clothing, and shelter," eh? Yeah, I'd like to see a lifelong drug addict whose parents left him on the street at age 12 spend his $35 tax refund from his minimum-wage McDonald's job he's only had for a month to buy "food, clothing, and shelter." Crackwhore baby factories indeed. You are so obviously ignorant of the true conditions the destitute members of this nation's populace live in it sickens me.

Wraithmaster
www.wraithmaster.com -- Chicken soup for the spleen.

Okay, I'm gonna have to mention Final Fantasy VI here. I know it's SNES, and so maybe not quite old school enough for some of you, but I'd say it's one of the very best video/computer games ever. Certainly its music was phenomenal--does anyone not get the shivers when the music for the intro scene of the three Magitek Knights running towards Narshe starts up? Christ, what a fantastic bit that was! The armor! The snow! The music! Aaahah! It's all toooo muuuuch!

Ahem. Sorry about that. :) Seriously, though, FF6 is of the highest caliber.

Wraithmaster
www.wraithmaster.com -- Chicken soup for the spleen.

Whoa there, killer. I won't pretend to have comprehensive knowledge of said history, but the fact of the matter is that Rambus' tech isn't that great, and their business practices are absurd. I'll adress these points in order:

1. Sure, some of the tech is good, but I understand it has some severe latency issues that limit its performance to barely more than that of SDRAM. Maybe DDR tech owes a lot to Rambus--I won't claim to know that, either. But what I *do* know is that I'd rather have had to wait a year for well-developed RDRAM (from some other company, preferably) and the genesis of DDR RAM than deal with...

2. Rambus' way of doing "business." Sure, there are other companies out there acting immorally. But Rambus has taken things to a whole new level. I read an article (sorry, can't remember what or where; I think it was a report on someone's lawsuit v. Rambus) detailing Rambus' sneaky methods of procuring the patents it has so it can extract the licensing fees it does. Apparently, they were/are a member of an industry body that sets standards, etc. (JEDEC, maybe? I don't remember!). After skulking around there for a while, they pulled out in a flurry of random reports and patent filings, buried within which were those for the patents allowing them to get license fees from SDRAM manufacturers. All right, maybe that's a little vague, but I read it a while ago. The point is, Rambus kinda pulled this whole thing off like a theif in the night, going against established industry practices.

In closing, I would ask that you not attack people for posting honest, polite opinions. I'm just trying to make a point about Rambus and their MO, not start a flamewar.

Sincerely,
Wraithmaster
www.wraithmaster.com -- Chicken soup for the spleen.

Hear, hear! It seems like the population of /. is largely intelligent, but then there's this paranoid streak a mile wide. Freaking about ancient bacteria, thinking the government exists specifically to oppress and manipulate every one of us, individually... the list goes on. Where does it come from? A healthy dose of skepticism, coupled with common sense and an ability to see things from a bigger perspective, can go a long way in this world, folks.

Well, I guess that was kind of off-topic, but after reading this thread and the comments about the Sally Struthers satire, I felt it had to be said.

Wraithmaster
www.wraithmaster.com -- Chicken soup for the spleen.

Weeeeell, I'd say you make some valid points--everyone likes parroting popular geek opinion in order to look smart, but does that make the original opinions invalid? In this specific case (Intel vs. AMD, etc.), I'd say Intel does indeed come out the loser. AMD's chips are technically superior (that is, they perform better, even at the same clock speeds), and are generally a bit cheaper for slightly better performance.

Wraithmaster
www.wraithmaster.com -- Chicken soup for the spleen.

Well, you may be right in that Intel aren't suddenly turning to sweetness and light, but I see no reason they wouldn't disapprove of the tollkeeper model. Consider your point about market share and product pricing: Rambus is driving up the cost of products in the PC market generally, not just specifically of RDRAM-based stuff--buying ANY PC, including non-RDRAM-based Intel products, is getting more and more expensive, and then your worries about people turning to Apple crop up. In symbolic logic: Rambus' business practices = bad for Intel and other PC industry companies -> Intel et. al. shaft Rambus. Or so we can hope. :)

Wraithmaster
www.wraithmaster.com -- Chicken soup for the spleen.

Yes. RDRAM is barely faster than SDRAM, and if it weren't for Rambus being the aforementioned pack of lawyers, we'd be enjoying cheap, perfectly adequate SDRAM right now, and could look forward to cheap, kickass DDR SDRAM in the future. ARGH! I want Rambus to DIE! DIE, I SAY!

Ahem. Sorry. It's true, though.

Wraithmaster
www.wraithmaster.com -- Chicken soup for the spleen.

Pah. RDRAM sucks. It's *marginally* faster than SDRAM, and way more expensive--or would be, if Rambus wasn't the scummy law firm it has been noted to be. Your point about P4s working better with RDRAM is also due to Rambus' highly unethical business practices, so basically you're saying, "Hah! You fool, depending on companies not to steal intellectual property, sue everyone in sight, and establish an evil empire." (Hey, wait a minute... Where have I seen this before?) Basically, if Rambus weren't such jerks, the P4 would work perfectly well with SDRAM.

Wraithmaster
www.wraithmaster.com -- Chicken soup for the spleen.

Uh, Rambus really is sucky. I won't argue that Intel *isn't* kinda sucky, but Rambus is worse. I totally agree with Intel's statements regarding Rambus' focus on "collecting tolls." By carrying on with all this bullshit licensing business, Rambus is simply unethically lining their pockets at the expense of progress throughout the industry. It's a shortsighted, greedy, stupid move, and Intel is right in criticising them. To sum up: Intel is kind of sucky in a "big business" sort of way, but at least innovates and produces stuff, while Rambus just has unethical business practices and a really mediocre product going for them.

Wraithmaster
www.wraithmaster.com -- Chicken soup for the spleen.

Except for the fact that Micron's stock is currently worth less than it was a year ago, and isn't paying dividends...

Wraithmaster
www.wraithmaster.com -- Chicken soup for the spleen.

You know, I would usually disagree with you, and say that because of the importance of the election this year (probable Supreme Court Justice replacement, close race, etc.), you should vote for Gore. But, and this may just be the kooky mood I'm in right now, I'm currently inclined to say, let the rest of 'em go to hell and let's do things our own way. It seems that the only way to achieve the return of some sort of usefullness to American politics may indeed be to ignore all the bullshit clogging the system and simply speak up, vote for, and generally promote the ideals and freedoms we want to see persist.

Wraithmaster
www.wraithmaster.com -- Chicken soup for the spleen.

No, you really could come up with some meaningful, simple algorithm. Like, I dunno, map electron spin to the binary system. Or distribution of electrons in their orbital shells. Whatever. The point is, you can develop a real, tangible connection btw. these behaviors and the test. You don't have to just come up with some AI. For that matter, come up with some entirely different example if you wish. I'm just trying to say that maybe the Turing test isn't all it's cracked up to be. By trivializing this concept, you miss an important philosophical implication. Not that the trivialization wasn't funny. :)

Wraithmaster
www.wraithmaster.com -- Chicken soup for the spleen.

Hahahah! Yeah... I'm actually in a course at RPI right now entitled "Minds and Machines," and I definitely hear where you're coming from. Our class discussions lately have been centering on the question of rights, whether they should be granted to non-human persons, and what a non-human person may be (e.g. chimpanzees, AIs). A central point in this debate, if you ask me, is if adequate mimicry of intelligent behavior constitutes intelligence itself. In other words, if an entity can pass a Turing test, is it necessarily intelligent? I used to think so, but I'm really not so sure anymore. My professor pointed out that you could find a large group of atoms in any given object whose random subatomic behaviors, if mapped to some output algorithm, could supply appropriate responses in a Turing test. Does this mean all matter is sentient? I kind of doubt it.

Okay, I've gotten perhaps a wee bit off the topic of the Aibo, but it's interesting stuff. I'd recommend "Can Animals and Machines Be Persons?" by Justin Leiber as further reading, btw.

Wraithmaster
www.wraithmaster.com -- Chicken soup for the spleen.