Enough with Flat Tax ideas already!
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Please don't drink that Kool-Aid. Fair Tax is just a Consumption Tax (aka Flat Tax) under another name. Calling it "Fair" doesn't make it so. Why? Because it taxes poor and middle classes while allowing rich to get richer at a much faster rate. Yes, this is why this topic is so dear to Republicans.
A poor person may need to spend 100% of salary on consumption just to cover basic needs. A middle class person -- 80%. As you get richer, your propensity to save increases and consumption expenses do not grow as fast (in percentage of income terms), so you may spend 50%. After all, there is so much shit you really *need*.
Enable consumption tax of 10%. The poor pays 10% of salary on taxes. Middle class guy -- 8%. Rich -- 5%. This is worse that flat tax, this is *regressive* taxation.
Repeat after me -- keeping progressive income tax and taxing capital gains is the only way to give poor a chance, middle-class protection from getting squeezed, rich from "take over the world" schemes all while turning budget surplus. And yes, a strong middle class is the #1 reason why US enjoyed economic prosperity and democratic society in 20th century.
The models works. Please stop f*cking it up, please! Wish I could make Economics 101 a mandatory course in high school. Maybe then people would vote with their heads instead of emotions.
Maybe/. needs to implement a dupe catching feature. Whenever an article is submitted, extract URLs supplied and compare it to the list of previously submitted URLs. Then display the list to submitter and let him check the links to insure that it's not a dupe.
Potential problem is links to front pages (i.e. "Yahoo! reports...") instead of deep links. These can be skipped.
For deep URLs that change content but don't change URL run a comparison between checksum on new link and old one.
Certanly this is not bulletproof, just an additional check that can be run by submitter and/. editors.
I can't understand why nobody's bothered to create this one either -- it's kind of straightforward:
Create a open server side servlet/script/whatever which handles bookmark files in CVS fashion.
Add an option to Mozilla that would let you specify the server which handles your bookmarks.
Synchronization would be done whenever user requests and file checksums are different.
That's all there is to it. This could be packaged as web service with free and subscribtion based plans (added bells and whistles: unlimitted file size, work/home versions of bookmark files, recommended links related to your interests, etc.)
Not sure, why none of those web sites that offer bookmark services have done that.
Navigational AI is a bit harder -- a lot of common links are done as images. You'd need OCR, symbol recognition (shopping cart icon) to provide full service. But even rudimentary assistance for text links wouldn't hurt:
Compile lists of commonly used terms for each topic.
Let user add terms to lists.
Whenever user searches the page for a term and it's not encountered in the page text, jump to the database of terms, identify set of terms, search for synonims on the page.
A bit more unvolved, but not rocket science really.
So further integration into the OS won't help them, it will become outdated very quickly.
What "integration" are you talking about? Do you mean that text input field that Google hasn't changed since it first appeared on the web? That's the only user interface that has to be integrated into OS. Period. Everything else can be done on MSN's network.
MS cannot innovate as fast as Google, period.
They don't have to. MS has always survived by the following motto: "Make it good enough, undercut prices, beat competitors to the market or try to make it a default choice." Guess what, it worked.
There is no reason for MS to continue "innovation" in browser area. Server centric model is of no interest to them -- their money is on the client side. Since Netscape had a chance to convert that into server centric model, MS entered competition and tried to pull the blanket by diverting standards.
Well, Netscape is no longer with us (rip), Mozilla/Opera/etc. are not significant competitors (we are not talking features here, but market cap) -- reasons for competition don't exist anymore. It's time to play the client side. IE hasn't evelved for the last couple of years because MS has no use for it. IE is a "window" to the server, and that's enough.
With.NET IE can become an intallation utility with rudimentary features, that downloads.NET programs from the server and launches it locally. There is no reason for MS to do anything else with IE. Now,.NET is becoming part of the OS, so why should IE be different?
Anyway, just another conspiracy theory. Not even that original.;-)
Understanding how birds flap their wings didn't exactly yield a revolution in plane construction, did it? Knowing how humans operate can be helpful, but it's not a prerequisite for success. To take Perl's motto: There Is More Than Once Way To Do It.
I don't know.:-) Cyc, as somebody has said, is a large but very spotty database. There are people working for *years* on this project, filling in these gaps, and the project as a whole did not become any more intelligent.
There is more to intelligence than collection of facts. Cyc's creator promised that once a substantial database has been accumulated the project would bootstrap itself using First Order Logic and start inferring new concepts. That sounds great, until you discover that First Order Logic has limitations in itself (i.e. everyday language ambiguaties). Somehow we solve them, First Order Logic -- does not. How the system that depends on FOL is going to solve them escapes me.
The point is, Cyc is missing that elusive spark that everybody in AI is after. Not to say that it won't be usefull some day, it will. But don't expect it to become the answer to our prayers.
Is anybody else irked by generics? One of the arguments in C++/Java discussion that I've read was: "Java removes complexity of C++, while remaining OOP". Well, generics remind me of C++ templates, which where a bit hard for me to swallow. Not to mention that attached to variable name doesn't make code any more attractive to look at.
It appears that Java's way to solve run time errors is to screw the bolts as tight a possible during compile time. Will generics become THE way, or just remain one of the options?
"A commercial, and in some respects a social, doubt has been started within the
last year or two, whether or not it is right to discuss so openly the security
or insecurity of locks. Many well-meaning persons suppose that the discus-
sion respecting the means for baffling the supposed safety of locks offers a
premium for dishonesty, by showing others how to be dishonest. This is a fal-
lacy. Rogues are very keen in their profession, and already know much more
than we can teach them respecting their several kinds of roguery. Rogues knew
a good deal about lockpicking long before locksmiths discussed it among them-
selves, as they have lately done. If a lock -- let it have been made in what-
ever country, or by whatever maker -- is not so inviolable as it has hitherto
been deemed to be, surely it is in the interest of *honest* persons to know
this fact, because the *dishonest* are tolerably certain to be the first to
apply the knowledge practically; and the spread of knowledge is necessary to
give fair play to those who might suffer by ignorance. It cannot be too ear-
nestly urged, that an acquaintance with real facts will, in the end, be better
for all parties."
-- Charles Tomlinson's Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks,
published around 1850
Warning: mysql_pconnect() [function.mysql-pconnect]: Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' (111) in/home/fastsili/public_html/config/phplib/db_mysql. inc on line 78 Database error: pconnect(localhost, fastsili, $Password) failed. MySQL Error: () Session halted.
All you need is it to understand english, and imagine in a 3d space. Type a sentence like Zork, and it makes the scene for you.
The mapping is probably not direct. It's likely, that there is no straight conversion of words-to-pictures even in our heads. We like to visualize, as it simplifies understanding and memorization. However, there are a lot of words (mostly concepts) that don't evoke any pictures when pronounces. We never encountered them in physical worlds to give us visual representation. Yet, we manage to juggle them somehow.
It's more likely that we have an internal language , that we express our thoughts in, which gets converted into English. In the same way, we may have internal structures that represent objects which are associated with visuals.
- resume inflation has always been a problem. With this slump it'll only become worth, since people feel the need to pad resumes more.
- despite your argument that web developers weren't invloved in product cycle "From beginning to end" a lot of usefull web sites have survived. That's a good indication that the job was done properly in those cases (from creation to maintenance).
- Any engineering work or design work that may have been done by people employed by these dotcoms was irrelevant. What's up? So the person who created a product management system for e-commerce web site is less qualified that a person who wrote a similar system for brick-and-mortar shop? APIs may be different, problem to solve was the same.
- Not everybody jumped into "computers" with no clue just for money. There were a lot of folks who always wanted to work with technology, went to get CS education, followed web development because it was and WILL be a great technology, and in the end got screwed by the market.
IE is not dying -- it's getting killed by Microsoft. Microsoft never wanted the web to succeed. It doesn't pay their bills to have open standards. Primary reason why they undertook browser war was to shift the focus back on it's own networking model -- client is primary. Future plans for IE seem to become an install program for.NET apps. Maintaining IE in semi-complient with current standards manner is secondary.
You are talking about eldery males developing prostate cancer, and I'm talking about young women with breast cancer that have undergone: - surgery - radioactive theraphy - chemotherapy - more chemotherapy - more chemotheraphy - and more, and more...
And after 10 years die from metastasis in lungs. And they don't just die in a minute. It takes a week to slowly pass away. And all you can do is sit day and night near the bed, wonder when it will end and hope that morphine does the job.
The wonderful advances that you mention work with a lot of ifs (early detection, prevention, particular form of cancer). And yes, it's good that doctors have learnt about diffirent forms of cancer. But the fact remains -- most cancers in their advanced form are uncurable.
That's the difference between reading something in the paper and seeing it with your own eyes.
Not sure whether you intended this to be a sarcastic remark or were just marked as "funny". In either case, the statement is not far off. Doctors still don't have a cure and the only thing they offer is to postpone the inevitable. So much for all the money, time and efforts spent. People with AIDS live longer than cancer patients.
My phone # has been on DNC list for at least a year. Everything was quiet for a while. Last month started receiving calls from Disney cruise. Last week got a call from Earthlink. Both new about DNC lists. Go figure.
Slashdot Mirror
Sunscreen is only one factor out of several, but you have to start somewhere.
Amen brother.
Please don't drink that Kool-Aid. Fair Tax is just a Consumption Tax (aka Flat Tax) under another name. Calling it "Fair" doesn't make it so. Why? Because it taxes poor and middle classes while allowing rich to get richer at a much faster rate. Yes, this is why this topic is so dear to Republicans.
A poor person may need to spend 100% of salary on consumption just to cover basic needs. A middle class person -- 80%. As you get richer, your propensity to save increases and consumption expenses do not grow as fast (in percentage of income terms), so you may spend 50%. After all, there is so much shit you really *need*.
Enable consumption tax of 10%. The poor pays 10% of salary on taxes. Middle class guy -- 8%. Rich -- 5%. This is worse that flat tax, this is *regressive* taxation.
Repeat after me -- keeping progressive income tax and taxing capital gains is the only way to give poor a chance, middle-class protection from getting squeezed, rich from "take over the world" schemes all while turning budget surplus. And yes, a strong middle class is the #1 reason why US enjoyed economic prosperity and democratic society in 20th century.
The models works. Please stop f*cking it up, please! Wish I could make Economics 101 a mandatory course in high school. Maybe then people would vote with their heads instead of emotions.
A haiku contest
Pretentious assholes/experts
Perl crowd rejoices
Oh, yeah, almost forgot -- it's f*cking freezing.
Yup, AI 2 course in my school had two projects:
- line following
- soccer game
Both done with Lego Mindstorms:
http://oblom.net/robocup
Maybe /. needs to implement a dupe catching feature. Whenever an article is submitted, extract URLs supplied and compare it to the list of previously submitted URLs. Then display the list to submitter and let him check the links to insure that it's not a dupe.
...") instead of deep links. These can be skipped.
/. editors.
Potential problem is links to front pages (i.e. "Yahoo! reports
For deep URLs that change content but don't change URL run a comparison between checksum on new link and old one.
Certanly this is not bulletproof, just an additional check that can be run by submitter and
I can't understand why nobody's bothered to create this one either -- it's kind of straightforward:
That's all there is to it. This could be packaged as web service with free and subscribtion based plans (added bells and whistles: unlimitted file size, work/home versions of bookmark files, recommended links related to your interests, etc.)
Not sure, why none of those web sites that offer bookmark services have done that.
Navigational AI is a bit harder -- a lot of common links are done as images. You'd need OCR, symbol recognition (shopping cart icon) to provide full service. But even rudimentary assistance for text links wouldn't hurt:
A bit more unvolved, but not rocket science really.
What "integration" are you talking about? Do you mean that text input field that Google hasn't changed since it first appeared on the web? That's the only user interface that has to be integrated into OS. Period. Everything else can be done on MSN's network.
MS cannot innovate as fast as Google, period.
They don't have to. MS has always survived by the following motto: "Make it good enough, undercut prices, beat competitors to the market or try to make it a default choice." Guess what, it worked.
After 15 minutes of bootup/installation process with 100% CPU and 150 MB memory usage it just disapeared from process list.
Not good enough for usability experts.
There is no reason for MS to continue "innovation" in browser area. Server centric model is of no interest to them -- their money is on the client side. Since Netscape had a chance to convert that into server centric model, MS entered competition and tried to pull the blanket by diverting standards.
.NET IE can become an intallation utility with rudimentary features, that downloads .NET programs from the server and launches it locally. There is no reason for MS to do anything else with IE. Now, .NET is becoming part of the OS, so why should IE be different?
;-)
Well, Netscape is no longer with us (rip), Mozilla/Opera/etc. are not significant competitors (we are not talking features here, but market cap) -- reasons for competition don't exist anymore. It's time to play the client side. IE hasn't evelved for the last couple of years because MS has no use for it. IE is a "window" to the server, and that's enough.
With
Anyway, just another conspiracy theory. Not even that original.
The system can run completely off the CD, without needing to be installed on the harddrive."
At least that's what the server seems to be running from.
Understanding how birds flap their wings didn't exactly yield a revolution in plane construction, did it? Knowing how humans operate can be helpful, but it's not a prerequisite for success. To take Perl's motto: There Is More Than Once Way To Do It.
I don't know. :-) Cyc, as somebody has said, is a large but very spotty database. There are people working for *years* on this project, filling in these gaps, and the project as a whole did not become any more intelligent.
There is more to intelligence than collection of facts. Cyc's creator promised that once a substantial database has been accumulated the project would bootstrap itself using First Order Logic and start inferring new concepts. That sounds great, until you discover that First Order Logic has limitations in itself (i.e. everyday language ambiguaties). Somehow we solve them, First Order Logic -- does not. How the system that depends on FOL is going to solve them escapes me.
The point is, Cyc is missing that elusive spark that everybody in AI is after. Not to say that it won't be usefull some day, it will. But don't expect it to become the answer to our prayers.
Yes, it would. Natural Language Processor will be released with JDK 1.6 ;-)
Of course /. ate the "<String>":
Not to mention that <String> attached...
Is anybody else irked by generics? One of the arguments in C++/Java discussion that I've read was: "Java removes complexity of C++, while remaining OOP". Well, generics remind me of C++ templates, which where a bit hard for me to swallow. Not to mention that attached to variable name doesn't make code any more attractive to look at.
It appears that Java's way to solve run time errors is to screw the bolts as tight a possible during compile time. Will generics become THE way, or just remain one of the options?
"A commercial, and in some respects a social, doubt has been started within the
last year or two, whether or not it is right to discuss so openly the security
or insecurity of locks. Many well-meaning persons suppose that the discus-
sion respecting the means for baffling the supposed safety of locks offers a
premium for dishonesty, by showing others how to be dishonest. This is a fal-
lacy. Rogues are very keen in their profession, and already know much more
than we can teach them respecting their several kinds of roguery. Rogues knew
a good deal about lockpicking long before locksmiths discussed it among them-
selves, as they have lately done. If a lock -- let it have been made in what-
ever country, or by whatever maker -- is not so inviolable as it has hitherto
been deemed to be, surely it is in the interest of *honest* persons to know
this fact, because the *dishonest* are tolerably certain to be the first to
apply the knowledge practically; and the spread of knowledge is necessary to
give fair play to those who might suffer by ignorance. It cannot be too ear-
nestly urged, that an acquaintance with real facts will, in the end, be better
for all parties."
-- Charles Tomlinson's Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks,
published around 1850
%50/month for a stable connection with static IP and I have to depend on somebody else to handle my mail? I don't think so.
No to mention, that many ISPs don't allow FROM field to contain domain names different from their own.
AOL's "solution" is an ugly patch that does't resolve the problem, neither does sending mail through ISP.
Fast Silicon is not fast enough ;-)
/home/fastsili/public_html/config/phplib/db_mysql. inc on line 78
Warning: mysql_pconnect() [function.mysql-pconnect]: Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' (111) in
Database error: pconnect(localhost, fastsili, $Password) failed.
MySQL Error: ()
Session halted.
The mapping is probably not direct. It's likely, that there is no straight conversion of words-to-pictures even in our heads. We like to visualize, as it simplifies understanding and memorization. However, there are a lot of words (mostly concepts) that don't evoke any pictures when pronounces. We never encountered them in physical worlds to give us visual representation. Yet, we manage to juggle them somehow.
It's more likely that we have an internal language , that we express our thoughts in, which gets converted into English. In the same way, we may have internal structures that represent objects which are associated with visuals.
and so is your web site:
- resume inflation has always been a problem. With this slump it'll only become worth, since people feel the need to pad resumes more.
- despite your argument that web developers weren't invloved in product cycle "From beginning to end" a lot of usefull web sites have survived. That's a good indication that the job was done properly in those cases (from creation to maintenance).
- Any engineering work or design work that may have been done by people employed by these dotcoms was irrelevant. What's up? So the person who created a product management system for e-commerce web site is less qualified that a person who wrote a similar system for brick-and-mortar shop? APIs may be different, problem to solve was the same.
- Not everybody jumped into "computers" with no clue just for money. There were a lot of folks who always wanted to work with technology, went to get CS education, followed web development because it was and WILL be a great technology, and in the end got screwed by the market.
IE is not dying -- it's getting killed by Microsoft. Microsoft never wanted the web to succeed. It doesn't pay their bills to have open standards. Primary reason why they undertook browser war was to shift the focus back on it's own networking model -- client is primary. Future plans for IE seem to become an install program for .NET apps. Maintaining IE in semi-complient with current standards manner is secondary.
You are talking about eldery males developing prostate cancer, and I'm talking about young women with breast cancer that have undergone: ...
- surgery
- radioactive theraphy
- chemotherapy
- more chemotherapy
- more chemotheraphy
- and more, and more
And after 10 years die from metastasis in lungs. And they don't just die in a minute. It takes a week to slowly pass away. And all you can do is sit day and night near the bed, wonder when it will end and hope that morphine does the job.
The wonderful advances that you mention work with a lot of ifs (early detection, prevention, particular form of cancer). And yes, it's good that doctors have learnt about diffirent forms of cancer. But the fact remains -- most cancers in their advanced form are uncurable.
That's the difference between reading something in the paper and seeing it with your own eyes.
Not sure whether you intended this to be a sarcastic remark or were just marked as "funny". In either case, the statement is not far off. Doctors still don't have a cure and the only thing they offer is to postpone the inevitable. So much for all the money, time and efforts spent. People with AIDS live longer than cancer patients.
My phone # has been on DNC list for at least a year. Everything was quiet for a while. Last month started receiving calls from Disney cruise. Last week got a call from Earthlink. Both new about DNC lists. Go figure.
Forgetting to prepare server for /. effect