Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Bouncing, Taxing, Releasing
"The layout of our Web page doesn't do a great job of showing that the story continues on a second page. That's where I explain what is up for taxing.He also provides this link to the full, uninterrupted text.Quoting the story now:
'...That brings them under the purview of the proposed rule, which includes computer networks as 'substitute communications systems' -- subject to a 9.17 percent state tax, plus local option taxes.
In Orange County, the local tax typically runs between 5.5 percent and 6.5 percent. That would bring the total tax to between 14-15 percent.
[end of first page, you hafta click to get to the rest of the story]
Computer networks would be taxed at that percent on either annual lease payments or depreciation.'"
Willie Sutton has met his betters.
Syphtor writes "DE Tech has responded to a reporters inquiries as to their patent claims (DE Tech refuses to say why NZ firms were targeted first)
DE Tech appeared previously in the /. article, Australian Gov't Moves To Block E-commerce Patent. Latest: the patent has been just granted in Virginia 'after five years of making changes in the application.'
Legitimate protection of IP or a 'fishing expedition worthy of a Sicilian Mafia protection racket.'?"
Well, not releasing everything, No, not as such, that is, you see ...
An anonymous reader writes "According to this press release from the BBC, the 'BBC creative archive' (earlier on slashdot) will not be as full as previously assumed. As the page says, 'The BBC Creative Archive would make selected BBC material universally available for private not commercial use in the UK.' (my emphasis) Looks like we won't be able to get the Hitchhiker's Guide and complete works of Monty Python after all, folks."
Who, really, is Peter Lynds, and how old is he? evil_one666 writes "You may remember that Slashdot reported a few weeks ago on ground-breaking work in the understanding of time. Well, it appears that it was all a hoax. While the Guardian is running a story that suggests several interesting conspiracy theories (although they seem to think that Peter Lynds is in fact legitimate), Museumofhoaxes.com present some convincing evidence that he is in fact a 17-year-old student at the same radio college at which he claimed to be a 27-year old-lecturer. Astute Slashdot readers rightly pointed out some big red flags, the first time the topic was aired, and Cesar Sirvent, a researcher in the field, has a list of links related to the controversy here."
Outlook Express not yet left out to rot. dr. electron writes "As stated previously on Slashdot, Outlook was to be slaughtered. Now MS says, in a article on Internet Magazine, it won't be, but developed further. They blame communication problem inside the company about the previous press release. Maybe the ongoing development of Outlook Express isn't the biggest news here, I find the reason 'communication problem' a bit odd (It's not a small decision to kill a product)."
Speaking of Outlook and anguish: caseywest, among others, has had enough blame redirected into his email box. He writes "This is my plea, my Public Service Announcement. Please, please stop bouncing email viruses! I don't run any windows computers, and /dev/null'ing viruses are trivial. I cannot, however, say that this problem is only a Windows-only menace. My email address is plastered all over the internet. As a result, I'm receiving thousands of bounced messages claiming I sent a virus. This is costly, let alone wrong! I didn't send you that virus! If you admin an email server, please answer chromatic's one question test. If you're bouncing email viruses, please reconfigure your filters to send viruses to /dev/null, and save us all money on bandwidth, hard disk space, and general anguish. Thank you."
It's likely not going to be posted so here goes my contribution for Slashnack news...
DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), is now in full swing with a "Biodefense project" that seems to be a mixture of Star Trek meets Private Ryan. In an article featured at Guerrilla News, author Cheryl Seal criticizes the program which seems to have terms like 'Brain Interface Program' and 'Engineered Tissue', and there is an extensive write up on the ethics of this sort of testing on animals titled 'Roborat Ethics'. Browsing over DARPA's site I found BIODYNOTICS aka Biologically Inspired Multifunctional Dynamic Robots. According to DARPA the BIODYNOTICS Program represents a new thrust area for DSO that will comprise a multidisciplinary, multi-pronged approach with far reaching impact on robotic capabilities for national security applications. Borgs anyone?
MoFscker
> Please, please stop bouncing email viruses!
Hrm, could this have been one of the hidden advantages we lost when we switched from bang-path
addressing to DNS based ?
Under the old "route it took to get here" method,
were addresses forgeable? Sure, you could pretend
you were only a relay rather than the originator,
but you'd still get the bounces.
- MugginsM
The taxes on businesses just get passed to the consumers anyways.
After all it's UK citizens who pay for the BBC through our license fee. We paid for the programmes to be made initially.
Why should we foot the (substantial) bill to serve up our programming to other countries in the world?
If they want to see the programmes they should subscribe to BBC World or BBC Prime.
When sobig went off, we were getting hammered. Apparently a bunch of dumb ass spammers had harvested my slashdot spamtrap addy, and then got infected with sobig, so my spamtrap addy was getting thousands of bounces. I tried larting the various email servers (almost all of whom were in europe), but after most of them blew me off, i start agressively firewalling the offending ip ranges. I plan to leave them in the firewall for a few weeks or so until sobig is truely dead, then i'll unblock em.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
At the very worst, it will end up in the hands of an ISP that now knows that they have to deal with an open relay on their network.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Governments should tax things in proportion to their social cost. That, if done properly, this results in social engineering is a by-product.
consider the effects of:
1. inflation
Ok. Under Reagan, inflation recovered from the Jimmy Carter mess very quickly, and remained very low for the rest of the 80's bottoming out at 1.86% in 1986, so inflation didn't play a very big roll in that (source).
2. a growing worldwide economy
I contend that the Reagan supply side economics helped the economy grow.
3. emergence/growth of industries like hi-tech
Yes- that helped a lot. See #5.
4. deficit spending (it generates some tax revenue)
Actually, public debt as a % of the GDP was higher under Clinton than under Reagan (source).
5. shifts is gov't spending (i.e. major increases in defense).
The defense spending invested heavily in technology, and that helped the hi tech industries grow.
Also note from the Cato article I linked above, all income groups saw an increase in real income under Reagan, but minorities and the poorest quintile saw the biggest increase.
"The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom" - George W Bush
How is it untrue?
If I'm a business and I make something that costs me $50 in materials, and I need to make $5 in profit to stay afloat, pay wages, etc. then how much do I sell it for? $55. Now if the government comes in and says I have to pay 10% in taxes on the profit, how much do I have to charge now? $55.56. Because I still need that $5, regardless of whatever else. The only way I won't be able to raise prices is because of market competition, but if everyone is paying the tax and has similar needs then it's a wash. And the only person that pays the extra money is the buyer.
That's the basic argument behind "companies don't pay taxes", and it's true in as far as it goes in the simple model. The real world is much more complex, and so is accounting. I think the assumption that if we removed corporate taxes that prices would magically fall is a falisy, but they would eventually edge back down toward similar profit levels as competitive pressures kicked in.