I disagree with you here. The Hitler Jugend was about indoctrination. This is not about indoctrination. Being different was not an option in the Hitler Jugend. What we see here is that you can be different, but your peers can squeal on you if they think you're dangerous. This program is not about teaching a certain set of common rules. I find the Hitler Jugend far more repulsive then this programm and this allready smells like all the sewage of New York.
First I want to protest against the comparison with the Hitler Jugend. The Hitler Jugend was a far more intensive program, of which one had to be a member, whose sole task it was to indoctrinate. Whenever we see something that we don't like it is not immediately Nazi, Hitler, WWII, etc. The use of these terms in rethoric only deflates their real meaning and therefore the memory of these acts.
I have read most articles Jon wrote on this subject and one question just comes to my mind everytime again. Why is this geek-profiling? I am not an American and I have no idea how life is at an American highschool, but if I look back at my own time in a Dutch highschool there were quite someweird people and they were of all sorts, not just Nerds, Geeks and Goths, but of all groups. So why is that everytime a similar program is started, people on Slashdot start shouting that it is geek-profiling? Do you have so little pride? Are american nerds so weird that people must judge them to be too weird? Why do you act like scared rabbits when it comes to the differences with the 'cool' kids?
I disagree with these programs for the reason that they profile kids based on very little and gives them a stigma that is hard to get rid of. They take a chance away from a kid that should have the chance to develop to his full potential. A good example I find dr. Ben Carson of John Hopskins Hospital. He once almost assaulted somebody with a knife in highschool. He got some help from people around him and he is now one of worlds best neuro-surgeons.
It is all a bit different then you think. Whenever a government organisation wants to buy something they have to check if the services or goods do not exceed 200,000 Euro. If it does, they are obliged to start a European Procurement Procedure. This Procedure is such that by formally announcing the intent to buy something in the publication paper of the EU you ask people to bid for the contract. It is an entire procedure that I could explain to you. (I wrote a 80 page report on it) The important part here is that one of the things you are not allowed to specify what product you want. Only what it is intended to do. This all became clear in the UNIX-case, where a government agency specified they wanted several UNIX-licenses. The judge ruled that they could not specify that. They should say that it had to be UNIX or similar.
In short this means that no government agency in Europe can just buy Windows 2000. The procedure has to be open to everybody supplying an Operating System, that is capable of doing the things which are specified. If Suse is going after the contract for an operating system then they have to be given an equal and fair chance against Win2000. (you ofcourse do understand that when government agencies really want a certain product they will change the specs in favor of the product they want. But this sometimes fails)
"The problem for the enemy is that computer security vulnerabilities will almost certainly prove fleeting and unpredictable," said Pike, adding that such tactics would be nearly impossible to employ beyond the random harassment level.
Most security problems that I know of are not fleeting, but are resident in the system. So you have a systematic bug in stead of a fleeting and unpredictable. This problem is real and might be a problem, but that is not what i think is meant here. So I think that we shouldn't look at the error inside the systems to look at what mister Pike meant. I think that what mister Pike was aiming at is the problem of being able to send a vehicle the wrong data. For that you don't need to access the vehicles systems. You just need to be able to send fake data in such a way that your opponent interprets it as real. Deception in the end is a large part of Warfare.
As a Canuck you of all people should know that Yanks don't like being made fun of. In no way will they laugh about them selves. It is probably some sense of superiority.:-) Remember Due South?;-)
By now I have stepped on many Yankee toes and even some Redneck toes probably. So to them I want to say that we (the rest of the world). Where else can we find a country to laugh about in such various ways. England may make the best comedy, but for real life comedy we turn to the United States. All the various talkshows, but mostly Jerry Springer, give us enough to look at and to laugh about the way of life in the US.:-)
Of course they should use open source instead of commercial software since it's saving tax payer money and is ultimately more reliable (which means more efficient employees).
I am giving you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you just forgot to put the smileys at the right places, but this undoubtedly there are some of us here that actually think this statement has any truth in it. The fact that one uses open or closed source software doesn't mean anything in itself when it comes to costs. True, with open source there is generally no fee that needs to be payed, but to see this as a major cost saver is incorrect. The costs in any IT-related project within organisations is generally not associated with software nor hardware, but with the amount of man hours needed to complete the project. Espescially when specialist knowledge needs to be hired from third parties the costs are rising like the amount of Guinness in an Irishman on Saint Patricks day. After the roll-out of a project the cost is in the ease of use for the user and in the cost of keeping everything up and running.
At the moment the cost of running open source based software on server(-like) configurations is probably tied with that of various closed source alternatives. It all depends on what you want, who you have working for you and what kind of other systems you use. The cost of open source on user-systems is probably still higher then that of various closed source alternatives. Most notably MS-Windows based products, but for some uses the Mac comes to mind. Even if one accounts for BSOD's and related stress issues, loss of working hours etc. A properly configured system is still a cheaper option then Open Source because the money for an organisation is in the applications and in the added value that a worker gets from those apps.
Yup, it all boils down to apps again. Though i must say that in certain areas this gap could be bridged quite easily. Espescially there where users are doing data entry, where all data goes to a large database(eg: call-centers), most screens are designed espescially for that database. With that in mind, new systems in this area could be as easily build to work with an open as a closed source environment.
they could have been a bit more generous. First you should be in it for the honour:-) Second, think of how much your market value will rise if your new boss sees this on your resume. (Untill he found out that you did this during worktime and that is the reason you're looking for a new job:-)
This story has been doing the rounds for a couple of months allready. Though it is a theoretical possibillity to store data on Scotch tape, it would not be of alot of practical use. There was an Ask Slashdot on Data Obsolescence and Media Decay. Well, Scotch tape would definitely run large risks of media decay. I also wonder if it would be ROM or if it would be rewritable and how often it would be rewritable.
(RANT>The problem with these stories is that many people read them and don't see that it is only a scientist goofing around. It is amazing to see here on Slashdot the reaction research results. People assume that because it has been done in a lab it is therefore possible to do it anytime, any place, anywhere. Fact is, you can't. Most inventions are only proof of concept and need alot of work before they can be used by you or me. Now next time you see a cool invention, understand that it takes at least 2 to 3 years t end up on your desktop.
A quote: The speed of light depends on the medium through which the light travels. In empty space, the speed is 186,000 (1.86 X 105) miles per second. It is almost the same in air. In water, it slows down to approximately 140,000 (1.4 X 105) miles per second. In glass, the speed of light is 124,000 (1.24 X 105) miles per second. In other words, the speed of light decreases as the density of the substance through which the light passes increases.
124/186=0.666 0.666*300.000km/s=200,000km/s So it would take 0.10 secs for light to get to any point on earth. That still leaves about 0.1 secs for processing of various sorts.
Sorry, but you're incorrect. What one can see happening in Third World countries is that their telecommunications systems are getting more modern then in Western countries. For years they hardly had a telecom structure and now when they are finally implementing it, they choose for fiber instead of copper, because it is actually alot cheaper to install. Vietnam is a good example of that. Moore's law also had its effect on telecommunications.
According to researchers, the experiment used both DWDM -- a technology that combines multiple wavelengths onto a single fiber -- and distributed Raman amplification -- a technique that allows optical fiber to amplify the signals traveling through it.
This is absolutely not my field, but isn't distributed Raman amplification a way by which the fiber has been 'doped' with some molecule in its structure by which a beam of light gets amplified, so you need less repeaters for a certain distance to carry the same amount of data.
The repeaters are quite cheap when compared to the expense of laying the fiber. Upgrading the max speed of fiber like this is quite awesome to see - if they can keep the rate of bandwidth increase up, the might never have to lay more fiber on their backbones again!
The problem is that most of the fibre that is in the ground now is not capable of amplifying the light so you need more repeaters built into the network to reach these amounts of bandwith.
It is great that they have shown the possibility to send this amount of data over a network. It would basically mean sending the entire contents of all harddisks (2000x) on my universities campusnetwork in about 1 minute. But when are we going to see this technology in service? It seems that not only do we need new repeaters, but also souped up glassfiber. Those are large investments and it may take some time too to get the prototype to become a real world model.
With Iridum about to heat up in the worst way, and landlines jumping in capacity, maybe the future really does hold a fiber-optic link straight into every permanent structure on Earth
My personal opinion is that fiber is definitely the way we are going to go espescially for long distance data transfer. The problem with satellite technology is the lag in the signal and the problem with wireless is that it has too low a bandwith. On the other hand fiber should be able to transmit a signal in 0.2 seconds to any place in the world. So a system where the last mile is covered by wireless and a backbone of fiber seems to be the most plausible way. Interesting little tidbit is that 0.2 seconds is also the maximum lag in a telephone conversation, before people judge it as unnatural.
The article is nice, but it doesn't give any info on whether or not results from the project will be freely available, or if it is still possible to patent specific genes. The last part I find the most frightening, because it would impose a deadlock on treating genetic diseases caused by the gene. I would rather see the genes to be freely available, but the treatment to be patented. This would still give the possibility for a workaround.
The NSA seems to be a great place to help with this. Great PR-stunt for them too. And since they cost a ton of money a year it might be nice to see that they actually do have the power to solve this. In the end this doesn't come down to the money but to the honour of being the first.
Probably somebody is going to flame me for this, but it is something I have been wondering about. What is the use of mounting? Now I am just a lowly Windows 98 user, but I absolutely can't see a good reason for mounting nowadays.. a drive is there or it isn't. If it isn't I should get a message that it isn't there. (Something more intelligent then A R F.) One of the key things in designing any system, in my opinion, is that you minimize the amount of actions nescessary to complete a task. Mounting seems just like an extra action.
Well i am sorry you can't understand my logic. You might have troubles understanding his reaction that he posted on the web then too.. But maybe somebody could explain it to you and the Openssh.com team could react to that statement. If I read it I only gather from it that he is willing to cooperate witht he openssh.com-team as much as he can. Now you might see that differently, but please make it clear to us.:-)
Please do not visit the.ORG site, nor send email to anybody at the.ORG address. This is more than just a request to boycott: there could be privacy issues, possibly data mining or building a mailing list of security conscious users. We simply don't know Mr. de Joode's motives, and we recommend caution.
Those are pretty brutal accusations which you seemed not willing to react to. I would like to know why you claim this. Alex de Joode has quite a reputation, but that is because of his ftp-site at ftp.zedz.net. Still my favorite place for crypto. I have a really hard time beleiving that he would use this to start some mailinglist or do some datamining..... If he wanted to do that he would do better to just use the logs of his ftp..
Sorry, Everything on a data-carrier of any kind needs to be decrypted in one way or another. Remember that Braille is unreadable for most of us. In the end what matters is if the data can be read of the carrier in some way or another and can be made legible. Well with your dvd and the PS2 that is the case. You need one of those players. With normal encryption, like RSA, Blowfish etc. it is a key that you hold that you have to give. The thing is not the encryption. The thing is that somebody (the lawenforcer) has to be able to read it.
Now I can't begin to say that I know anything about this subject, but isn't it less efficient to tax in lots of little places? actually since all transactions through the Internet it could probably be more efficient then with real life transactions. You got to realize that everything is stored in a database (if it is done correctly) So the only thing you would have to do is change the code of your accounting system in such a way that it takes that into account. And then it is all done. Sales Tax is either two tier or flatrate in most countries. So it should not be too difficult to implement this in an accounting system.
Now with regard to your question on flat rate taxation. There is no reason not to use a flat rate taxation other then political ones. Many countries want the broadest shoulders to carry the heaviest burdens. On top of that tax is often used for policy reasons as well. The government in many countries for instance taxes cigarettes and alcohol extra, because it wants to have a negative incentive for the use of those products.
And for all the paranoid out there, there is another reason to keep the tax system difficult. There is an entire industry of lawyers and accountants that feed on the difficulties to send in a tax form.
This is a quick translation of the article. I will give you the highlights.
Computer Troubles because of leap day in Japan
The leapday has caused some surprising computer-errors in Hightech-country Japan. According to Reuters 1200 ATM's at postoffices refused services. The Japenese Weather center had problems with their forecast for local temperatures and rainfall. The 43 stations are relaying false information. Yesterday they allready had problems with the 24 hour forecasts, where in stead of 29 the first of march was given as the end date. In the North of Japan in 20 municipalities the seismic activity detectors fell out. In contrast to New Years eve no problems were reported in Japanese nuclear energy facilities.
Sorry, but first of all the market hasn't been too impressed buy the fact that these companies make huge losses.. An improvement might just be the signal they were hoping for to buy even more. Remember the markets don't react to normal valuations. Look for instance at Textron. High profits, but the stock went down. It is about what is hot and what not and what stays hot.
The diversification would be a good argument if we were talking about very different markets. A bit like GE works. Here you can see that the traditional company (thanks for the frase) is the one that is used as a parachute. I think we will see that alot more. You are right about the less risk, but it is for the reason of the traditional companies revenues and solid base. The stock will also be consolidated into one stock and not two separate ones. So it is not like holding different stocks. It will be one company. And treated as such. If one stock nosedives, it is the only stock they have
I think that we will see this alot more in the near future. Companies like Ebay, Amazon etc. need to have something to base the valuations on. An existign company with healthy revenues will be bought and the next year the.com-company will show improved results. Maybe even a profit, sending its valuation even higher. It also alows for bloodsucking the revenues of the acquired company.
Now the rest of you help me on this, cause it is too late here in the Netherlands:-)
I don't know what kind of support there is for Linux at this very moment. At least not of the downloadable stuff. I leave that for the more knowledgeable people.
Transmeta was showing of a tablet at their presentation. I think you can still find it on their website. Now Linus (I think in an interview) said that the handwriting recognition software was better this week then the week before. Meaning that they work on it. If I am not mistaken the 400Mhz Crusoe was going to run the webpads using Mobile Linux. This means that there would be pen input for Linux in the near future.
Slashdot Mirror
I disagree with you here. The Hitler Jugend was about indoctrination. This is not about indoctrination. Being different was not an option in the Hitler Jugend. What we see here is that you can be different, but your peers can squeal on you if they think you're dangerous. This program is not about teaching a certain set of common rules. I find the Hitler Jugend far more repulsive then this programm and this allready smells like all the sewage of New York.
First I want to protest against the comparison with the Hitler Jugend. The Hitler Jugend was a far more intensive program, of which one had to be a member, whose sole task it was to indoctrinate. Whenever we see something that we don't like it is not immediately Nazi, Hitler, WWII, etc. The use of these terms in rethoric only deflates their real meaning and therefore the memory of these acts.
I have read most articles Jon wrote on this subject and one question just comes to my mind everytime again. Why is this geek-profiling?
I am not an American and I have no idea how life is at an American highschool, but if I look back at my own time in a Dutch highschool there were quite someweird people and they were of all sorts, not just Nerds, Geeks and Goths, but of all groups. So why is that everytime a similar program is started, people on Slashdot start shouting that it is geek-profiling? Do you have so little pride? Are american nerds so weird that people must judge them to be too weird? Why do you act like scared rabbits when it comes to the differences with the 'cool' kids?
I disagree with these programs for the reason that they profile kids based on very little and gives them a stigma that is hard to get rid of. They take a chance away from a kid that should have the chance to develop to his full potential. A good example I find dr. Ben Carson of John Hopskins Hospital. He once almost assaulted somebody with a knife in highschool. He got some help from people around him and he is now one of worlds best neuro-surgeons.
It is all a bit different then you think. Whenever a government organisation wants to buy something they have to check if the services or goods do not exceed 200,000 Euro. If it does, they are obliged to start a European Procurement Procedure. This Procedure is such that by formally announcing the intent to buy something in the publication paper of the EU you ask people to bid for the contract. It is an entire procedure that I could explain to you. (I wrote a 80 page report on it) The important part here is that one of the things you are not allowed to specify what product you want. Only what it is intended to do. This all became clear in the UNIX-case, where a government agency specified they wanted several UNIX-licenses. The judge ruled that they could not specify that. They should say that it had to be UNIX or similar.
In short this means that no government agency in Europe can just buy Windows 2000. The procedure has to be open to everybody supplying an Operating System, that is capable of doing the things which are specified. If Suse is going after the contract for an operating system then they have to be given an equal and fair chance against Win2000. (you ofcourse do understand that when government agencies really want a certain product they will change the specs in favor of the product they want. But this sometimes fails)
The press release can be found here: http://george.arc.na sa.gov/dx/basket/pressrelease/00_20AR.html
A preview of the article will be posted at: http://www.pnas.org
It is research so it should be peer reviewed. But the source seems good.
"The problem for the enemy is that computer security vulnerabilities will almost certainly prove fleeting and unpredictable," said Pike, adding that such tactics would be nearly impossible to employ beyond the random harassment level.
Most security problems that I know of are not fleeting, but are resident in the system. So you have a systematic bug in stead of a fleeting and unpredictable. This problem is real and might be a problem, but that is not what i think is meant here.
So I think that we shouldn't look at the error inside the systems to look at what mister Pike meant. I think that what mister Pike was aiming at is the problem of being able to send a vehicle the wrong data. For that you don't need to access the vehicles systems. You just need to be able to send fake data in such a way that your opponent interprets it as real. Deception in the end is a large part of Warfare.
As a Canuck you of all people should know that Yanks don't like being made fun of. In no way will they laugh about them selves. It is probably some sense of superiority. :-) Remember Due South? ;-)
:-)
By now I have stepped on many Yankee toes and even some Redneck toes probably. So to them I want to say that we (the rest of the world). Where else can we find a country to laugh about in such various ways. England may make the best comedy, but for real life comedy we turn to the United States. All the various talkshows, but mostly Jerry Springer, give us enough to look at and to laugh about the way of life in the US.
Greetings from The Netherlands
Of course they should use open source instead of commercial software since it's saving tax payer money and is ultimately more reliable (which means more efficient employees).
I am giving you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you just forgot to put the smileys at the right places, but this undoubtedly there are some of us here that actually think this statement has any truth in it.
The fact that one uses open or closed source software doesn't mean anything in itself when it comes to costs. True, with open source there is generally no fee that needs to be payed, but to see this as a major cost saver is incorrect. The costs in any IT-related project within organisations is generally not associated with software nor hardware, but with the amount of man hours needed to complete the project. Espescially when specialist knowledge needs to be hired from third parties the costs are rising like the amount of Guinness in an Irishman on Saint Patricks day. After the roll-out of a project the cost is in the ease of use for the user and in the cost of keeping everything up and running.
At the moment the cost of running open source based software on server(-like) configurations is probably tied with that of various closed source alternatives. It all depends on what you want, who you have working for you and what kind of other systems you use. The cost of open source on user-systems is probably still higher then that of various closed source alternatives. Most notably MS-Windows based products, but for some uses the Mac comes to mind. Even if one accounts for BSOD's and related stress issues, loss of working hours etc. A properly configured system is still a cheaper option then Open Source because the money for an organisation is in the applications and in the added value that a worker gets from those apps.
Yup, it all boils down to apps again. Though i must say that in certain areas this gap could be bridged quite easily. Espescially there where users are doing data entry, where all data goes to a large database(eg: call-centers), most screens are designed espescially for that database. With that in mind, new systems in this area could be as easily build to work with an open as a closed source environment.
they could have been a bit more generous. :-) Second, think of how much your market value will rise if your new boss sees this on your resume. (Untill he found out that you did this during worktime and that is the reason you're looking for a new job :-)
First you should be in it for the honour
This story has been doing the rounds for a couple of months allready. Though it is a theoretical possibillity to store data on Scotch tape, it would not be of alot of practical use. There was an Ask Slashdot on Data Obsolescence and Media Decay. Well, Scotch tape would definitely run large risks of media decay. I also wonder if it would be ROM or if it would be rewritable and how often it would be rewritable.
(RANT>The problem with these stories is that many people read them and don't see that it is only a scientist goofing around. It is amazing to see here on Slashdot the reaction research results. People assume that because it has been done in a lab it is therefore possible to do it anytime, any place, anywhere. Fact is, you can't. Most inventions are only proof of concept and need alot of work before they can be used by you or me. Now next time you see a cool invention, understand that it takes at least 2 to 3 years t end up on your desktop.
A quote:
The speed of light depends on the medium through which the light travels. In empty space, the speed is 186,000 (1.86 X 105) miles per second. It is almost the same in air. In water, it slows down to approximately 140,000 (1.4 X 105) miles per second. In glass, the speed of light is 124,000 (1.24 X 105) miles per second. In other words, the speed of light decreases as the density of the substance through which the light passes increases.
124/186=0.666 0.666*300.000km/s=200,000km/s So it would take 0.10 secs for light to get to any point on earth. That still leaves about 0.1 secs for processing of various sorts.
Sorry, but you're incorrect. What one can see happening in Third World countries is that their telecommunications systems are getting more modern then in Western countries. For years they hardly had a telecom structure and now when they are finally implementing it, they choose for fiber instead of copper, because it is actually alot cheaper to install. Vietnam is a good example of that. Moore's law also had its effect on telecommunications.
According to researchers, the experiment used both DWDM -- a technology that combines multiple wavelengths onto a single fiber -- and distributed Raman amplification -- a technique that allows optical fiber to amplify the signals traveling through it.
This is absolutely not my field, but isn't distributed Raman amplification a way by which the fiber has been 'doped' with some molecule in its structure by which a beam of light gets amplified, so you need less repeaters for a certain distance to carry the same amount of data.
The repeaters are quite cheap when compared to the expense of laying the fiber. Upgrading the max speed of fiber like this is quite awesome to see - if they can keep the rate of bandwidth increase up, the might never have to lay more fiber on their backbones again!
The problem is that most of the fibre that is in the ground now is not capable of amplifying the light so you need more repeaters built into the network to reach these amounts of bandwith.
It is great that they have shown the possibility to send this amount of data over a network. It would basically mean sending the entire contents of all harddisks (2000x) on my universities campusnetwork in about 1 minute. But when are we going to see this technology in service? It seems that not only do we need new repeaters, but also souped up glassfiber. Those are large investments and it may take some time too to get the prototype to become a real world model.
With Iridum about to heat up in the worst way, and landlines jumping in capacity, maybe the future really does hold a fiber-optic link straight into every permanent structure on Earth
My personal opinion is that fiber is definitely the way we are going to go espescially for long distance data transfer. The problem with satellite technology is the lag in the signal and the problem with wireless is that it has too low a bandwith. On the other hand fiber should be able to transmit a signal in 0.2 seconds to any place in the world. So a system where the last mile is covered by wireless and a backbone of fiber seems to be the most plausible way. Interesting little tidbit is that 0.2 seconds is also the maximum lag in a telephone conversation, before people judge it as unnatural.
The article is nice, but it doesn't give any info on whether or not results from the project will be freely available, or if it is still possible to patent specific genes.
The last part I find the most frightening, because it would impose a deadlock on treating genetic diseases caused by the gene. I would rather see the genes to be freely available, but the treatment to be patented. This would still give the possibility for a workaround.
The NSA seems to be a great place to help with this. Great PR-stunt for them too. And since they cost a ton of money a year it might be nice to see that they actually do have the power to solve this. In the end this doesn't come down to the money but to the honour of being the first.
Probably somebody is going to flame me for this, but it is something I have been wondering about. What is the use of mounting? Now I am just a lowly Windows 98 user, but I absolutely can't see a good reason for mounting nowadays.. a drive is there or it isn't. If it isn't I should get a message that it isn't there. (Something more intelligent then A R F.) One of the key things in designing any system, in my opinion, is that you minimize the amount of actions nescessary to complete a task. Mounting seems just like an extra action.
Well i am sorry you can't understand my logic. You might have troubles understanding his reaction that he posted on the web then too.. But maybe somebody could explain it to you and the Openssh.com team could react to that statement. If I read it I only gather from it that he is willing to cooperate witht he openssh.com-team as much as he can. Now you might see that differently, but please make it clear to us. :-)
In the open letter it sais the following:
.ORG site, nor send email to anybody at the .ORG address. This is more than just a request to boycott: there could be privacy issues, possibly data mining or building a mailing list of security conscious users. We simply don't know Mr. de Joode's motives, and we recommend caution.
Please do not visit the
Those are pretty brutal accusations which you seemed not willing to react to. I would like to know why you claim this. Alex de Joode has quite a reputation, but that is because of his ftp-site at ftp.zedz.net. Still my favorite place for crypto. I have a really hard time beleiving that he would use this to start some mailinglist or do some datamining..... If he wanted to do that he would do better to just use the logs of his ftp..
Sorry, Everything on a data-carrier of any kind needs to be decrypted in one way or another. Remember that Braille is unreadable for most of us. In the end what matters is if the data can be read of the carrier in some way or another and can be made legible. Well with your dvd and the PS2 that is the case. You need one of those players. With normal encryption, like RSA, Blowfish etc. it is a key that you hold that you have to give. The thing is not the encryption. The thing is that somebody (the lawenforcer) has to be able to read it.
Now I can't begin to say that I know anything about this subject, but isn't it less efficient to tax in lots of little places?
actually since all transactions through the Internet it could probably be more efficient then with real life transactions. You got to realize that everything is stored in a database (if it is done correctly) So the only thing you would have to do is change the code of your accounting system in such a way that it takes that into account. And then it is all done. Sales Tax is either two tier or flatrate in most countries. So it should not be too difficult to implement this in an accounting system.
Now with regard to your question on flat rate taxation. There is no reason not to use a flat rate taxation other then political ones. Many countries want the broadest shoulders to carry the heaviest burdens. On top of that tax is often used for policy reasons as well. The government in many countries for instance taxes cigarettes and alcohol extra, because it wants to have a negative incentive for the use of those products.
And for all the paranoid out there, there is another reason to keep the tax system difficult. There is an entire industry of lawyers and accountants that feed on the difficulties to send in a tax form.
This is a quick translation of the article. I will give you the highlights.
Computer Troubles because of leap day in Japan
The leapday has caused some surprising computer-errors in Hightech-country Japan. According to Reuters 1200 ATM's at postoffices refused services. The Japenese Weather center had problems with their forecast for local temperatures and rainfall. The 43 stations are relaying false information. Yesterday they allready had problems with the 24 hour forecasts, where in stead of 29 the first of march was given as the end date. In the North of Japan in 20 municipalities the seismic activity detectors fell out. In contrast to New Years eve no problems were reported in Japanese nuclear energy facilities.
The Dutch company No Wires Needed has some excellent hardware. I belief Compaq is buying their stuff now. At the following site you can find a Linux driver for their Swallow 550. http://www.xs4all.nl/~bvermeul/swallow/
Sorry, but first of all the market hasn't been too impressed buy the fact that these companies make huge losses.. An improvement might just be the signal they were hoping for to buy even more. Remember the markets don't react to normal valuations. Look for instance at Textron. High profits, but the stock went down. It is about what is hot and what not and what stays hot.
The diversification would be a good argument if we were talking about very different markets. A bit like GE works. Here you can see that the traditional company (thanks for the frase) is the one that is used as a parachute. I think we will see that alot more. You are right about the less risk, but it is for the reason of the traditional companies revenues and solid base. The stock will also be consolidated into one stock and not two separate ones. So it is not like holding different stocks. It will be one company. And treated as such. If one stock nosedives, it is the only stock they have
I think that we will see this alot more in the near future. Companies like Ebay, Amazon etc. need to have something to base the valuations on. An existign company with healthy revenues will be bought and the next year the .com-company will show improved results. Maybe even a profit, sending its valuation even higher. It also alows for bloodsucking the revenues of the acquired company.
:-)
Now the rest of you help me on this, cause it is too late here in the Netherlands
I don't know what kind of support there is for Linux at this very moment. At least not of the downloadable stuff. I leave that for the more knowledgeable people.
Transmeta was showing of a tablet at their presentation. I think you can still find it on their website. Now Linus (I think in an interview) said that the handwriting recognition software was better this week then the week before. Meaning that they work on it. If I am not mistaken the 400Mhz Crusoe was going to run the webpads using Mobile Linux. This means that there would be pen input for Linux in the near future.