Auditing of personal votes was NEVER a requirement where I live. We used the mechanical lever vote machines. No audit trail - no way to be sure your vote was recorded properly... I'm not saying that we shouldn't have an auditable vote... I'm just saying that historically, we never did.
Shouldn't there be a number of existing test subjects - people who've been diagnosed with both Type II diabetes and alzheimers? If you are taking Actos and or Metformin for insulin resistance, do the alzheimers symptoms come on more slowly? It seems we should be able to have a large number of existing test subjects, if someone would just do the study...
That is one way to think about it... I largely agree. I would put it in less negative terms though... human nature teaches us to automate the mundane, tedious, and time consuming tasks, so we have time to do the more challenging, interesting, and enjoyable tasks... what is interesting about human nature is that while that is true on the macro scale, at the micro scale it is sometimes exactly counterintuitive... for instance, we automate farming, so food is cheap and plentiful. Then my neighbor goes out in his back yard with all his extra time and grows his own tomatoes... For him, it is a labor of love, something that is interesting and challenging and enjoyable - otherwise he wouldn't do it. But for me, I'm just glad he drops a fresh tomato by once in a while... I can't imagine why he thinks its fun. But then, he probably doesn't understand why I don't just hire a contractor to do the trim work on my new bedroom... (But if I did that, I'd have no excuse to go out and buy that air compressor and nail gun that I had coveted for so long)
This is more about technology than the people... over time, we've managed to create more and more efficient ways to do things with machines (technology) than with people. It is interesting to note that technology was applied to manufacturing first, then agriculture on a large scale. So mass production first displaced workers from craftsman occupations (gunsmiths, blacksmiths, fill-in-the-blanksmiths). At that time, farming was still largely a people job. What drove the rise in manufacuring jobs was the rise in demand for goods. The same could not be said of agriculture - once you have enough food, you stop buying more... with manufactured goods, you always want more... But now we are seeing industrial agriculture displacing workers... we have automated the easy stuff (grain production) and now we're automating the harder stuff (fruit picking)... over time, the number of workers required will fall and since nature abhors a vacuum, these people start working in services... you see the same trend with working mothers over the last century... in the US, taking care of a home was a full time job - washing clothes, dishes, preparing meals, etc. were all labor intensive - now they are trivial (washing machines, microwave dinners, etc). So as the 50's rolled into the 90's, you saw all this home automation drive the job of keeping a home to part time work instead of full time. So the traditional stay at home mom started working outside the home - at first in jobs like teaching where you could still be with your kids when they got home, now with a much more varied opportunity for women. We have two wage earners in a family now not because it takes more to maintain the home, but because it takes less...
2010: Space shuttle retired
2014: New Orion vehicle mission to space station
2020: Moon landing by NASA
2027: Moon landing by China
2030: Privately owned shuttle equivalent
2031: Start construction of moon base
2035: Start construction of privately owned space station
2037: Manned Mars mission
2040: Permanent moon presence
2045: Construction of high earth orbit station
2050: "Space tug" type utility vehicle in use - first reusable vehicle permanently in space
2055: Permanent Mars presence proposed and reachable
2057: Testing of new drive types (ion perhaps) well underway
A small change to your list...
2037: Manned Mars Mission
2038: Yellowstone Caldera explodes behind schedule
2039: Earth tempurature falls 10 degrees due to complete obscuring of sun... Global Warming declared non-issue
2040: Permanent moon presence rescheduled
2041: Human population reduced to 10,000 mating pairs... Overpopulation declared non-issue
2042: Construction of high earth orbit station rescheduled ...
Just like anything else, there is a time and a place for software as a service. Some things simply make more sense that way. What about UPS package tracking? Not much point in having that be a standalone application... At the end of the day, developers, even users, have to decide which services make sense to have online as a service or offline as a standalone app. I choose email as a service (gmail) instead of Outlook or Thunderbird. It works for me because I use lots of different computers, and, lets face it, email isn't very much good if you can't get online anyway. OTOH, when I'm downloading emails for Scouts at summer camp, I prefer to use a standalone email application, as I can get online, download all the mail for the day, and disconnect, thus saving the camp phone line (and minimizing my time on a dialup connection). Not only is there room for both, both models make sense depending on your application requirements...
An interesting analogy... let's examine it... "The Russians are coming..." - But THEY NEVER CAME! We out spent them on defense, and bankrupted their economy. Their crumbling empire finally went toes up. Now you warn us that "The Chinese are coming..." Well, let's think about that too. I grew up at a time when Japan was the economic boogie man. Everything was made in Japan - their cars were better, all the electronics went there... And I got my MBA at the height of it all. We were preached to that if the US didn't change its ways, Japan would eat our lunch. But what happened? Japan ended up in a 20 year recession which they have not even now recovered from. They started making their "Japanese" cars here in the US! So. Korea got into the car game, and now Hyundai and Kia nip at their heels. The electronics mfg. moved to Taiwan and Singapore, and now China. So what will happen when China's people, now enjoying much more economic freedom if not "real" freedom, start to demand higher wages and better standards of living? The China "miracle" can implode in exactly the same way. India stands ready to eat China's lunch, and in many ways, are already doing that... But even there the same "miracle" threatens to implode - with the rising wages and standards of living. At the end of the day, the US worker remains, if not the most, at least one of the highest, in terms of productivity. I learned through experience not to trust these doom and gloom predictions. The US may lose leads in some areas, and gain them in others, but counting us out or predicting our demise has always been a losing proposition.
This is all well and good and I think China should be proud of their accomplishments in space. But the idea that the US is behind because we have concentrated on near earth orbit operations with the Shuttle and ISS programs is flawed at best. Remember that putting things like remote vehicles on the Moon is a far cry from what NASA and JPL have accomplished. We've landed PEOPLE on the moon, and plan to do that again before the next decade is out. We have put rovers on MARS - an order of magnitude more difficult than putting them on the moon. Our deep solar system probes have, by and large, produced spectacular results. The experience and capabilities that have been created by building the ISS have given NASA and our international partners a great foundation for further manned space exploration. Again, I'm not bashing China - I'm just trying to put what they are doing into perspective.
Actually, in Switzerland, the "red cross" you see on first aid kits and bandages are green, not red. At first I thought this was because of the Swiss flag, but co-workers there told me that the first aid kits in Britain are also green, not red.
Also, the Swiss flag is a WHITE cross on a red background, and as such is not really a red cross.
I don't want to come off as insensitive here, but that is what is going to happen anyway... in this particular case, the big loss isn't the human cost, it is the orbiter itself. It's somewhere around $2 Billion to replace, and essentially no possiblity that we'd build another replacement, so any orbiter loss at this point likely shuts the program down. Shuttle shutdown likely shuts down ISS construction. The ripple effects are such that a loss at this point is catastrophic... As such, while it will always be a tragedy when we lose astronauts in space, they are being especially careful because the whole program is on the line...
Sure... we sent them pictures of Hitler in the 1930's, as was shown in the book/movie "Contact" by Carl Sagan... Of course, today we send far more troubling images... such as American Idol...
For those that think perhaps that Google didn't warn people about disreputable SEO services...
Don't feel obligated to purchase a search engine optimization service. Some companies claim to "guarantee" high ranking for your site in Google's search results. While legitimate consulting firms can improve your site's flow and content, others employ deceptive tactics in an attempt to fool search engines. Be careful; if your domain is affiliated with one of these deceptive services, it could be banned from our index.
I am by no means an SEO expert... but I've had VERY good luck with google indexes for the small sites I build for people. I've even gotten some business from it, because people some how think I'm some sort of genius. So what's my secret?
I READ THE INSTRUCTIONS AT GOOGLE FOR WHAT TO DO AND WHAT NOT TO DO AND I FOLLOWED THE RULES
If you simply follow the rules that google lays out, you won't get sucked into google hell. If you try and game the system by paying for consultants to "juice" your site, you gambled and lost. Bottom line: Don't be evil, and google will not punish you
Here's a circular notion for you... For years we've been unearthing carbon based fuels to burn and power our quest for energy. In the future, maybe we'll find a non-carbon power supply (efficient solar, fusion, etc) and use some of that energy to sequester CO2 in the form of fossil fuels buried underground. Maybe we'll "make" coal and bury it, or make oil and bury it. In fact, a sufficiently advanced society might put all the carbon based fuels they have burned back into the ground... I've sometimes wondered if some really advanced civilization already went through this cycle on Earth... suppose they burned up carbon fuels, invented a non-carbon power supply, and then sequestered the CO2 in the form of coal and oil. Then, being the good citizens they are, they cleaned up the planet and left "nothing but footprints" behind... Then humans come along and start the whole cycle again... Who knows, maybe the Dinosaurs were actually scary smart, and instead of dying and becoming oil, they just made the oil, and then left.
Both China and Japan have a LOT of catching up to do. China's space program is arguably at the Mercury/Gemini stage, although they have far less hours in space than either of those programs had. How many space walks have they done? How many docking maneuvers? How about a reusable space craft? It will be hard for either one to go to the moon soon, and so long as the US continues to fund the NASA at current levels, we will continue to outpace them. Our next ship is going to be more advanced than even the shuttle was, and will be capable of a Moon mission - perhaps even a Mars mission.
What is far more interesting to think about is the parallels with early continental exploration... I mean, Columbus comes to America in 1492, and serious colonization takes much longer than that. Almost a hundred years goes by before even the start of real, multinational colonization of the New World... And the differences are interesting. One can argue that those explorers had an easier time of it because they didn't have to bring all of their food, water, and air with them. OTOH, they often met hostile natives along the way, and many colonies were wiped out before they could be self sufficient. No one seriously thinks we are going to meet hostiles along the way in space exploration, but the obstacles are formidable.
At the end of the day, real colonization won't take place until there is a more compelling reason than just science to do it. Continental colonization didn't take hold until there were private companies of people doing it for profit. The same will likely prove true for space exploration.
All of this makes a BEV difficult to deploy, and that is why PHEV will win out. A pluggable hybrid electric vehicle can use existing infrastructure, charging overnight when rates are low. Sure, they will only be able to go 40 miles or less on a charge, but this is of no consequence... If we converted our entire fleet to PHEVs we would not NEED more than that.
Most driving in the US is done on a daily commute. Trips longer than 40 miles are rare. Assume that 80% of your miles are within 40 miles of home. In that case, 80% of your miles can be done WITHOUT USING ANY CHEMICAL FUEL! Further, for the 20% where you DO have to go farther than 40 miles, a traditional ICE (internal combustion engine) can provide that capability. Further, it can be fueled with some mixture of either traditional gasoline, or even pure ethanol.
If we reduced all of our miles by 80%, then the average driver would only burn fuel for perhaps 2500 miles per year. At 25 mpg, that is 100 gallons of fuel PER YEAR! Think about that... since we produce about 25% of our own oil in the US, we would not need to import ANY oil for transport. Further, since we already do upwards of 10% ethanol today, 50 of those 100 gallons could actually be ethanol rather than gasoline (traditional 25mpg car, 12000 miles per year = 480 gallons, 10% ethanol = approx 50 gallons of ethanol) So even using today's ethanol content, we can cut the gasoline we currently produce in half and still drive our 12k per year
The naysayers will say that the electrons we are replacing the gas with are not free, that they are dirty, that they require upgrades. And some of that is true. But the real value here is decoupling the energy source from the usage. Today you can heat your house with oil, nat. gas, coal, wood, and electricity. Tommorrow, theoretically, you could drive your car on those same sources 80% of the time. The implications are staggering - no more dependence on foreign oil, no more dependence on the Persian Gulf, etc.
Now we just need GM to deliver on its VOLT promise and we can start down that road...
That is the whole point of this discussion. If the activity in a game nets you real world money in the end, and that is used as a basis for putting the "game" under tax authority control, you are already screwed from a tax perspective... each of the transactions you describe could just as easily be described as "non-cash" or "barter" transactions... IRS law already contemplates this... so if you go to the store and you say to the shop keeper, "I have these rabbits I've raised, I'll trade them to you for two sacks of potatos, and he agrees, and the transaction takes place, you BOTH have to report the trade as "income" on your tax returns... even though no US dollars were exchanged, a transaction has taken place, and you both have to include the value of that transaction... Obviously, you both can net that income against the costs you had to either raise your rabbits or grow/purchase the potatos...
Actually, if you want to take this to it's logical conclusion, it should get WAY more complicated. For instance, suppose I spend a bunch of time making widgets for sale in SL... When I cash out the Lindens I got for that work, I should be taxed on that like regular income... but what if I speculate in the "land" market? Suppose I buy a really cool "house" in SL and then sell it later for more Lindens than I bought it. Should I be taxed on that at the 15% rate for a long term gain (assuming I held it for the required minimum time), or as regular income? If I "contract" with someone to build me a cool new widget, and I'm relatively certain that they are going to cash out their Lindens on it, do I have to issue them a 1099? If I make a comfortable living making and cashing in Linden dollars, can I write off all my expenses - including my Internet access - home office, etc? And worse still, suppose I blow a whole bunch of Lindens on bad real estate - Can I write off the capital losses on my taxes, even though I never have a transaction that cashes out the lost Lindens?
Best case? The IRS leaves this whole mess alone and doesn't touch it. Worst case? They get involved in it (they may have no choice if people start doing capital losses and the like) and most normal people simply ignore it and let the IRS try and find them. It would mostly work like my State taxes where they ask me about my "Use Tax" - you know, like when I go to New Hampshire and buy liquor, I'm supposed to pay my state "use tax" on that at the same rate as the sales tax... Those boxes are miraculously always 0 on my tax return... nope, no sir, don't drink, certainly not the Crown Royal, those empties all belong to my no-good brother-in-law... but here's a cool purple velvet bag for your trouble...
I hope you find what you are looking for there. Vaya Con Dios... Or perhaps "Goodbye, eh" would be more appropriate. And FWIW, if the move is largely driven by orientation issues (supposition based on the blogs you linked to), I for one wish things were different here - and that you'd feel more welcome to stay.
Slashdot Mirror
Auditing of personal votes was NEVER a requirement where I live. We used the mechanical lever vote machines. No audit trail - no way to be sure your vote was recorded properly... I'm not saying that we shouldn't have an auditable vote... I'm just saying that historically, we never did.
Shouldn't there be a number of existing test subjects - people who've been diagnosed with both Type II diabetes and alzheimers? If you are taking Actos and or Metformin for insulin resistance, do the alzheimers symptoms come on more slowly? It seems we should be able to have a large number of existing test subjects, if someone would just do the study...
Friend, you must be new here... being able to talk coherently about something has nothing to do with slashdot
That is one way to think about it... I largely agree. I would put it in less negative terms though... human nature teaches us to automate the mundane, tedious, and time consuming tasks, so we have time to do the more challenging, interesting, and enjoyable tasks... what is interesting about human nature is that while that is true on the macro scale, at the micro scale it is sometimes exactly counterintuitive... for instance, we automate farming, so food is cheap and plentiful. Then my neighbor goes out in his back yard with all his extra time and grows his own tomatoes... For him, it is a labor of love, something that is interesting and challenging and enjoyable - otherwise he wouldn't do it. But for me, I'm just glad he drops a fresh tomato by once in a while... I can't imagine why he thinks its fun. But then, he probably doesn't understand why I don't just hire a contractor to do the trim work on my new bedroom... (But if I did that, I'd have no excuse to go out and buy that air compressor and nail gun that I had coveted for so long)
This is more about technology than the people... over time, we've managed to create more and more efficient ways to do things with machines (technology) than with people. It is interesting to note that technology was applied to manufacturing first, then agriculture on a large scale. So mass production first displaced workers from craftsman occupations (gunsmiths, blacksmiths, fill-in-the-blanksmiths). At that time, farming was still largely a people job. What drove the rise in manufacuring jobs was the rise in demand for goods. The same could not be said of agriculture - once you have enough food, you stop buying more... with manufactured goods, you always want more... But now we are seeing industrial agriculture displacing workers... we have automated the easy stuff (grain production) and now we're automating the harder stuff (fruit picking)... over time, the number of workers required will fall and since nature abhors a vacuum, these people start working in services... you see the same trend with working mothers over the last century... in the US, taking care of a home was a full time job - washing clothes, dishes, preparing meals, etc. were all labor intensive - now they are trivial (washing machines, microwave dinners, etc). So as the 50's rolled into the 90's, you saw all this home automation drive the job of keeping a home to part time work instead of full time. So the traditional stay at home mom started working outside the home - at first in jobs like teaching where you could still be with your kids when they got home, now with a much more varied opportunity for women. We have two wage earners in a family now not because it takes more to maintain the home, but because it takes less...
A small change to your list...
2037: Manned Mars Mission2038: Yellowstone Caldera explodes behind schedule
2039: Earth tempurature falls 10 degrees due to complete obscuring of sun... Global Warming declared non-issue
2040: Permanent moon presence rescheduled
2041: Human population reduced to 10,000 mating pairs... Overpopulation declared non-issue
2042: Construction of high earth orbit station rescheduled
Just like anything else, there is a time and a place for software as a service. Some things simply make more sense that way. What about UPS package tracking? Not much point in having that be a standalone application... At the end of the day, developers, even users, have to decide which services make sense to have online as a service or offline as a standalone app. I choose email as a service (gmail) instead of Outlook or Thunderbird. It works for me because I use lots of different computers, and, lets face it, email isn't very much good if you can't get online anyway. OTOH, when I'm downloading emails for Scouts at summer camp, I prefer to use a standalone email application, as I can get online, download all the mail for the day, and disconnect, thus saving the camp phone line (and minimizing my time on a dialup connection). Not only is there room for both, both models make sense depending on your application requirements...
And I suppose the Apollo astronauts shouldn't have brought a golf club and a ball either? Jeez... Lighten up pal.
An interesting analogy... let's examine it... "The Russians are coming..." - But THEY NEVER CAME! We out spent them on defense, and bankrupted their economy. Their crumbling empire finally went toes up. Now you warn us that "The Chinese are coming..." Well, let's think about that too. I grew up at a time when Japan was the economic boogie man. Everything was made in Japan - their cars were better, all the electronics went there... And I got my MBA at the height of it all. We were preached to that if the US didn't change its ways, Japan would eat our lunch. But what happened? Japan ended up in a 20 year recession which they have not even now recovered from. They started making their "Japanese" cars here in the US! So. Korea got into the car game, and now Hyundai and Kia nip at their heels. The electronics mfg. moved to Taiwan and Singapore, and now China. So what will happen when China's people, now enjoying much more economic freedom if not "real" freedom, start to demand higher wages and better standards of living? The China "miracle" can implode in exactly the same way. India stands ready to eat China's lunch, and in many ways, are already doing that... But even there the same "miracle" threatens to implode - with the rising wages and standards of living. At the end of the day, the US worker remains, if not the most, at least one of the highest, in terms of productivity. I learned through experience not to trust these doom and gloom predictions. The US may lose leads in some areas, and gain them in others, but counting us out or predicting our demise has always been a losing proposition.
This is all well and good and I think China should be proud of their accomplishments in space. But the idea that the US is behind because we have concentrated on near earth orbit operations with the Shuttle and ISS programs is flawed at best. Remember that putting things like remote vehicles on the Moon is a far cry from what NASA and JPL have accomplished. We've landed PEOPLE on the moon, and plan to do that again before the next decade is out. We have put rovers on MARS - an order of magnitude more difficult than putting them on the moon. Our deep solar system probes have, by and large, produced spectacular results. The experience and capabilities that have been created by building the ISS have given NASA and our international partners a great foundation for further manned space exploration. Again, I'm not bashing China - I'm just trying to put what they are doing into perspective.
Actually, in Switzerland, the "red cross" you see on first aid kits and bandages are green, not red. At first I thought this was because of the Swiss flag, but co-workers there told me that the first aid kits in Britain are also green, not red. Also, the Swiss flag is a WHITE cross on a red background, and as such is not really a red cross.
1929 saw DEFLATION, not INFLATION... the author confuses America with Germany... but then, this is the LEAST of the inaccuracies of this post.
I don't want to come off as insensitive here, but that is what is going to happen anyway... in this particular case, the big loss isn't the human cost, it is the orbiter itself. It's somewhere around $2 Billion to replace, and essentially no possiblity that we'd build another replacement, so any orbiter loss at this point likely shuts the program down. Shuttle shutdown likely shuts down ISS construction. The ripple effects are such that a loss at this point is catastrophic... As such, while it will always be a tragedy when we lose astronauts in space, they are being especially careful because the whole program is on the line...
Sure... we sent them pictures of Hitler in the 1930's, as was shown in the book/movie "Contact" by Carl Sagan... Of course, today we send far more troubling images... such as American Idol...
I am by no means an SEO expert... but I've had VERY good luck with google indexes for the small sites I build for people. I've even gotten some business from it, because people some how think I'm some sort of genius. So what's my secret?
I READ THE INSTRUCTIONS AT GOOGLE FOR WHAT TO DO AND WHAT NOT TO DO AND I FOLLOWED THE RULES
If you simply follow the rules that google lays out, you won't get sucked into google hell. If you try and game the system by paying for consultants to "juice" your site, you gambled and lost. Bottom line: Don't be evil, and google will not punish you
Here's a circular notion for you... For years we've been unearthing carbon based fuels to burn and power our quest for energy. In the future, maybe we'll find a non-carbon power supply (efficient solar, fusion, etc) and use some of that energy to sequester CO2 in the form of fossil fuels buried underground. Maybe we'll "make" coal and bury it, or make oil and bury it. In fact, a sufficiently advanced society might put all the carbon based fuels they have burned back into the ground... I've sometimes wondered if some really advanced civilization already went through this cycle on Earth... suppose they burned up carbon fuels, invented a non-carbon power supply, and then sequestered the CO2 in the form of coal and oil. Then, being the good citizens they are, they cleaned up the planet and left "nothing but footprints" behind... Then humans come along and start the whole cycle again... Who knows, maybe the Dinosaurs were actually scary smart, and instead of dying and becoming oil, they just made the oil, and then left.
Both China and Japan have a LOT of catching up to do. China's space program is arguably at the Mercury/Gemini stage, although they have far less hours in space than either of those programs had. How many space walks have they done? How many docking maneuvers? How about a reusable space craft? It will be hard for either one to go to the moon soon, and so long as the US continues to fund the NASA at current levels, we will continue to outpace them. Our next ship is going to be more advanced than even the shuttle was, and will be capable of a Moon mission - perhaps even a Mars mission.
What is far more interesting to think about is the parallels with early continental exploration... I mean, Columbus comes to America in 1492, and serious colonization takes much longer than that. Almost a hundred years goes by before even the start of real, multinational colonization of the New World... And the differences are interesting. One can argue that those explorers had an easier time of it because they didn't have to bring all of their food, water, and air with them. OTOH, they often met hostile natives along the way, and many colonies were wiped out before they could be self sufficient. No one seriously thinks we are going to meet hostiles along the way in space exploration, but the obstacles are formidable.
At the end of the day, real colonization won't take place until there is a more compelling reason than just science to do it. Continental colonization didn't take hold until there were private companies of people doing it for profit. The same will likely prove true for space exploration.
All of this makes a BEV difficult to deploy, and that is why PHEV will win out. A pluggable hybrid electric vehicle can use existing infrastructure, charging overnight when rates are low. Sure, they will only be able to go 40 miles or less on a charge, but this is of no consequence... If we converted our entire fleet to PHEVs we would not NEED more than that.
Most driving in the US is done on a daily commute. Trips longer than 40 miles are rare. Assume that 80% of your miles are within 40 miles of home. In that case, 80% of your miles can be done WITHOUT USING ANY CHEMICAL FUEL! Further, for the 20% where you DO have to go farther than 40 miles, a traditional ICE (internal combustion engine) can provide that capability. Further, it can be fueled with some mixture of either traditional gasoline, or even pure ethanol.
If we reduced all of our miles by 80%, then the average driver would only burn fuel for perhaps 2500 miles per year. At 25 mpg, that is 100 gallons of fuel PER YEAR! Think about that... since we produce about 25% of our own oil in the US, we would not need to import ANY oil for transport. Further, since we already do upwards of 10% ethanol today, 50 of those 100 gallons could actually be ethanol rather than gasoline (traditional 25mpg car, 12000 miles per year = 480 gallons, 10% ethanol = approx 50 gallons of ethanol) So even using today's ethanol content, we can cut the gasoline we currently produce in half and still drive our 12k per year
The naysayers will say that the electrons we are replacing the gas with are not free, that they are dirty, that they require upgrades. And some of that is true. But the real value here is decoupling the energy source from the usage. Today you can heat your house with oil, nat. gas, coal, wood, and electricity. Tommorrow, theoretically, you could drive your car on those same sources 80% of the time. The implications are staggering - no more dependence on foreign oil, no more dependence on the Persian Gulf, etc.
Now we just need GM to deliver on its VOLT promise and we can start down that road...
Just write your desktop app and then deploy on Citrix...
/donning flame retardant underwear and ducking for cover.../P.
That is the whole point of this discussion. If the activity in a game nets you real world money in the end, and that is used as a basis for putting the "game" under tax authority control, you are already screwed from a tax perspective... each of the transactions you describe could just as easily be described as "non-cash" or "barter" transactions... IRS law already contemplates this... so if you go to the store and you say to the shop keeper, "I have these rabbits I've raised, I'll trade them to you for two sacks of potatos, and he agrees, and the transaction takes place, you BOTH have to report the trade as "income" on your tax returns... even though no US dollars were exchanged, a transaction has taken place, and you both have to include the value of that transaction... Obviously, you both can net that income against the costs you had to either raise your rabbits or grow/purchase the potatos...
Actually, if you want to take this to it's logical conclusion, it should get WAY more complicated. For instance, suppose I spend a bunch of time making widgets for sale in SL... When I cash out the Lindens I got for that work, I should be taxed on that like regular income... but what if I speculate in the "land" market? Suppose I buy a really cool "house" in SL and then sell it later for more Lindens than I bought it. Should I be taxed on that at the 15% rate for a long term gain (assuming I held it for the required minimum time), or as regular income? If I "contract" with someone to build me a cool new widget, and I'm relatively certain that they are going to cash out their Lindens on it, do I have to issue them a 1099? If I make a comfortable living making and cashing in Linden dollars, can I write off all my expenses - including my Internet access - home office, etc? And worse still, suppose I blow a whole bunch of Lindens on bad real estate - Can I write off the capital losses on my taxes, even though I never have a transaction that cashes out the lost Lindens?
Best case? The IRS leaves this whole mess alone and doesn't touch it. Worst case? They get involved in it (they may have no choice if people start doing capital losses and the like) and most normal people simply ignore it and let the IRS try and find them. It would mostly work like my State taxes where they ask me about my "Use Tax" - you know, like when I go to New Hampshire and buy liquor, I'm supposed to pay my state "use tax" on that at the same rate as the sales tax... Those boxes are miraculously always 0 on my tax return... nope, no sir, don't drink, certainly not the Crown Royal, those empties all belong to my no-good brother-in-law... but here's a cool purple velvet bag for your trouble...
I hope you find what you are looking for there. Vaya Con Dios... Or perhaps "Goodbye, eh" would be more appropriate. And FWIW, if the move is largely driven by orientation issues (supposition based on the blogs you linked to), I for one wish things were different here - and that you'd feel more welcome to stay.
And just for the record, where do you live?
Bonus Question: If the answer to the above is "US", why have you not emmigrated to another first-world country?
Actually no... CT has adopted the CA LEVII standard and as a resident, I can ONLY buy a new car with this... I have no choice in the matter. http://www.ctclimatechange.com/documents/pressrele ase010605FINAL.pdf