Transactions _ARE_ seldom needed. I've developed against MySQL for years and have only once suggested a client upgrade their RDBMS due to the need for transactions and, in this particular case, triggers.
Unless you're doing multi-step commits transactions are USELESS. Absolutely USELESS. And you can call me "stupid" but your calling your "gotchas" list "data integrity problems" makes me think that term applies more aptly to YOU.
Did you even look at that list? So mysql handles NULL values different than ANSI standards? so what? that's an issue you have to understand to properly program against MySQL but it's not a "data integrity" issue. It doesn't make you "sacrifice" data and it doesn't put your data at risk.
Furthermore, the few issues that ARE data integrity issues on that page -- such as ignoring constraints -- were fixed by 4.1. In fact, 75% of the items on that page were fixed by 4.1. That version was releases nearly THREE YEARS AGO.
Like I said, it's FUD based on problems from YEARS AND YEARS AGO.
Now, I'm certain that you won't actually have the audacity to reply to this, so just consider this your bitch-slapping for the morning, alright? kthanks.
But they also fought for (and won) a royalty on blank cassettes, resulting in fair compensation for the millions upon millions of mixtapes and such that WERE recorded off the radio. I'm not positive if there's a similar royalty on blank CD media (I seem to remember hearing that there is...) but nowadays, to be analogous (pun?) to the advent of FM and royalties on cassettes, the content companies should get (small) royalty fees for each GB of hard-disk sold. After all, that is the predominant storage mechanism for digital music and internet radio streams.
If you can name for me some data integrity issues (other than ACID-compliant transaction rollback which is not a "data integrity" issue in itself) then I'll gladly shut up and sit on my hands for the remainder of this conversation.
But I doubt you'll be able to. Because the "MySQL is teh devil" FUD that people always rehash everytime we talk about RDBMSs is based on second-hand rumor-mill CW and memories of problems from YEARS and YEARS and many major versions ago.
So go create a table using the default (MyISAM) storage engine on any 4.x installation or greater and tell me what data integrity you're sacrificing.
The only issues I've ever found are, as I said, lack of transactions, and lack of row-level-locking. As for transactions, they're seldom NEEDED -- I've had no problems writing reliable MySQL-backed apps without them-- and there are some INSANELY SIMPLE work-arounds to achieve row-level-locking.
I'm so sick of hearing uninformed people complain about MySQL issues that have been non-issues for years now.
All three of the issues you mentioned are fixed. And not in MySQL 5 which came out a year ago. No, they're fixed in MySQL 4.
All these complaints about MySQL data integrity as if it's a common occurance to lose or corrupt data in MyISAM tables are just ridiculous.
Go try all three of the items you've mentioned against a MySQL 4.x table with the default ISAM storage engine. The only one that MIGHT happen is silent truncation, but that's only if you configure it to report only errors and not warnings.
Oh come on.. they're not going to cheat people out of $16 measly dollars. They've got no reason to. They've got billions and billions in the bank and the consequences of not complying is just not worth it.
Time to take a class on reading comprehension, bro... Seriously. If you're going to be a fanboy shill, at least try to make sense.
1. You put quotes around something that certainly wasn't a quote. You do realize they're called "quotation marks" for a reason, right? 2. I didn't say plugins are a bad idea 3. I didn't say that they CAN'T implement find & replace
So basically, you misunderstood, it seems, each and every sentence I wrote.
Are you always this dense or do you save it all for us on slashdot?
I don't know if you've actually USED Docs but the last time I did--about 2-3 weeks ago--it didn't even have find & replace capability. All it had was "replace all" and even that had "experimental" warnings all over it and couldn't be undone.
So saying "All they need is a good API and a mechanism for plugins" when they can't even do find & replace is just a little silly, in my opinion.
But he was a constant (and vocal) skeptic of quantum theory. I mean, not only did he devote the last 1/4 of his life on unified field theory, he publicly criticized quantum theory many times.
You can chose to look at music as something your consume versus something you collect.
I get some joy out of the physical heft of a CD. The liner notes. The artwork. The ritual. But not much. Not nearly as much as, say, a book. But more than a DVD which is just a plastic disc in an plastic box.
Really, the joy I get from music is all about the consumption. Not the collection. And, to continue your "20 years" example.
Over the course of 20 years, on any average year, you had 126 songs to listen to. That's it. Your COLLECTION may have value, but your ability for CONSUMPTION is woefully small. For my subscription, I instantly have access to a ludicrous amount of music.
There is no appreciable resale market for CDs. The almost spiritual connection between a record and its collector--with the stores and true artwork and the uniquely small press runs--is all but gone with compact discs. They have no soul.
1. Music subscription services are pretty popular. Perhaps you don't like it, but I've turned many people on to it and I've gotten a lot of positive feedback from friends and family. You're not paying for music thats stops playing when you stop paying. You're paying to listen to HUGE, GIGANTIC libraries of ANY SONG YOU WANT, whenever you want, wherever you want.
Your comment like saying "Nobody would PAY for Cable Television. It makes no sense. Few people are willing to shell out money for television that stops playing when they stop paying"
2. Your comment about iTMS having TV & movies is funny. Are you actually suggesting that a subscription model wouldn't work well for TV shows? I mean, what makes you think that MSFT couldn't offer TV as part of their subscription price in the future? When iTMS launched they didn't have TV in the beginning, either. You do realize that people have been buying into the subscription-model for TV for, oh, 30 years now?
3. I love my iPod and I love iTMS. But as soon as I realized that I couldn't burn my TV purchases and that there was no "PlayFair" for video DRM I refused to give them another cent. Their video DRM is hideous and unacceptable. Imagine if FairPlay refused to let you burn them to CD. Well, THATS the kind of service you're paying for. $2 for 22 minutes of video that is crippled beyond all usefulness.
You know, this guy got mod'ed troll, but at worst I think he was off-topic.
In all reality, that is a quintessential Microsoft move.
Purchase into a market, then leverage their OS monopoly to drive adoption of SUSE, or whatever they may call it then. It's already begun, but imagine a version of Linux that also supports the ACTUAL Win32 API, or true cross-compatibility between Windows and this one linux distro.
Sure, the Microsoft-Haters in the linux community would throw fits over it and boycott it entirely, but the businesses that use Linux for web servers and db servers and such don't care about that. To them it would mean the best of both worlds. And in all honesty, they'd be correct.
Of course, it would probably be bad for the Linux community, I'm not denying that. But this is a very standard modus operandi for Redmond. It's certainly more than just a troll.
Ok, so how again does being against the war in Iraq have anything to do with chastising the Army for being "cheap asses?"
You should hold people accountable. And citizens should play a part in the political process. In 2003 I quit my comfy job writing shinkwrap software, packed up the car, and volunteered for Howard Dean for America. That's what _I_ did to stop the war in Iraq. Considering you turned this into some "stick your head in the sand" pissing match, tell me, what have YOU DONE to stop the war?
More on point, how does criticizing the Army, especially under-thought B.S. criticism, have anything to do with stopping the war in Iraq?
It's like you realized you couldn't possibly defend your moronic comments, so you just segued into a "Iraq War == Bad" argument. Give me a break...
"that's a matter of the Army being too cheap-ass to properly equip troops, not a technical problem. It's the same reason the Army doesn't bother giving troops body armor, armoring vehicles, or providing adequate medical care"
You can't actually believe what you're saying, can you?
The US armed forces are the most highly equipped fighting forces in the history of the world. I mean, for chrissake, the crux of your argument is that the army is "cheap ass" because it only supplies monocular NIGHT VISION GOGGLES to its GIs. This is about as relevant as complaining that the Army is cheap because they only hand out Core-Solo notebooks to users instead of Core-Duo notebooks.
Do we have a perfect military? Of course not. But that's what you're complaining about. That they're not perfect. You're complaining because we gave troops body armor, just not enough. You're complaining that there WERE armored humvees and APCs but that not EVERY humvee was armored.
And your comment about medical care? Puh-leese. Our combat hospitals in Iraq have saved thousands and thousands of troops who, if this were Vietnam or even Desert Storm, would have been coming home in a bodybag. We're fighting a war where you can take shrapnel to the brain and LIVE TO TALK ABOUT IT ON NATIONAL TV. You can be in a fully equipped operating room having neurosurgery within 30 minutes of your injury. Brain Surgery. In a combat zone.
Yes, there are side effects to this. The Army has to treat FAR MORE injuries and the emotional stress associated with them. Since the civil war, these people were treated by the battlefield medic. Best case scenario the medic was able to stick them full of enough morphine to put them asleep so they could die in peace. Today, the medic has the equivalent of M*A*S*H in his back pack and within a half hour you're in a combat hospital on an operating table every bit as advanced as world class permanent facilities. Forty-eight hours later you're Stateside or in Europe beginning long term recovery.
So yes, that does mean some overcrowding issues. We're saving so many lives we don't know where to put them all. I don't mean to make light of the deplorable conditions at Walter Reed but go ads some soldiers. Say "Would you rather take shrapnel in Vietnam, stick yourself with your morphine, and if you're lucky, get a syringe of your buddies morphine so you can lay there and bleed out dreaming of the medivac, Or, would you rather take shrapnel in Iraq, be treated by a battlefield medic who will run an IV, treat your pain, and give you blood, as you wait for a medivac to take you to an operating table 20 minutes away before sewing you up and sending you off to lay in a moldy hotel room in surburban Washington DC for a day or two"
What would YOU choose? Obviously having them lay in paradise on craftmatic adjustable hammocks being fed grapes by gorgeous naked nymphomaniacs would be a great third choice, but this is reality. We have constraints to deal with.
That's just how it is. At the end of the day, there are constraints. Even for the military. Even with a half trillion dollar budget. Simply put, what you're asking for will cost more money. How do you propose we pay for it?
Why is the former better than the latter? If the right "maliciously crafted qt movie" gains elevated privileges, doesn't the severity depend on what it does with those privliges? If it uses it's newfound ability to run code, the right code will be every bit as damaging as a buffer overflow in the TCP/IP stack. It might be a little more work for the individual creating the exploit, but does the amount of work needed to create an exploit really matter to the exploited system? Easier exploits have a larger community of people who could potentially exploit them, but if you're exploited, that no longer matters. Just a thought...
Once again, another silly over-generalization and stereotype. This is just as ridiculous as the OPs comment about myspace being only for the young or immature. It just makes no sense. Tens of millions of pages and you just lump them all together. Puh-leese.
There's always some "L33T" dude on here that scoffs that ANYONE with ANY SENSE would EVER use myspace.
You're just announcing your ignorance to the world.
For better or worse, Myspace is incredibly huge. It's used by tens of millions of people every day. Teenagers? Yes. But also professionals. Adults like you and I that find a lot of value in the way it lets them keep connected with their friends and acquaintances.
Yes, there are ignorant people on MySpace. But there's ignorant people on Slashdot. And even if MySpace is only for the immature and childish, watching you spread a moronic stereotype makes me think that you would fit right in.
Seriously, a consumption task is a pretty horrible idea.
This was brought up a couple days ago, so I'll copy and paste from my previous post on this subject:
Forgoing the income tax for a sales tax is a pretty bad idea.
First, the income tax is progressive. This would be impossible to achieve with sales tax. The only people that would benefit from a "flat" tax (sales or income) are those at the highest tax brackets. In order to replace the income lost from dropping taxes on the top 5%, taxes would have to be raised on the bottom 50%.
Second, a sales tax puts a disproportionate burden on the lowest income families. Those with low incomes--even up to $50k/yr for a single man--spend a very large proportion of their income. The lower your income, the higher percentage of it is spent. People making minimum wage are spending 100% of their pay checks.
Those making $1MM a year, on the other hand, may spend only a small fraction of their income.
And you can say that you would simply not charge sales tax on the things that poor people are spending their money on -- food, shelter and utilities -- but doing so would drastically reduce tax receipts. It would be impossible to exempt those things and the suggestion that it is possible is just used by proponents to try to sell their plan.
Furthermore, this is about Google. Corporations pay a pitifully small percentage of taxes in America. The percentage of taxes paid by corporations has dropped dramatically since the 1950's. Your notion that double taxation is a serious problem is just plain wrong. The tax code currently incentivizes businesses to invest in capital expenditures, R&D, etc.
In summary, the only people that want a sales tax are those that don't understand it's implications and those that could pay less taxes by shifting the tax burden more on the lower & middle classes.
The notion that there is tax injustice because the top minority of Americans pays the majority of taxes is absurd. The people at the top of the food chain reap the highest rewards of our society. Without our national infrastructure, they wouldn't be able to make and horde millions or billions of dollars. They SHOULD pay a tax burden that more closely resembles their share of the US pie, not necessarily their share of the US Population.
You know... I heard that Al Qaeda has a plot to take over an abandonded church 100 yards away from Dulles International Airport. The rumor is that they'll run some fiber optics from the air ports systems into the church where they setup a mobile air traffic control station.
The word on the street is that they'll set their systems up to trick the AutoLand function into thinking that the ground level is 10 feet lower than it actually is, which will make the planes crash when they try to land.
It could be that the only thing that will save us is a defunct Detroit cop on holiday to visit his estranged wife.
This is serious business, man. If McClane can't stop them, we'll be screwed.
Slashdot Mirror
Transactions _ARE_ seldom needed. I've developed against MySQL for years and have only once suggested a client upgrade their RDBMS due to the need for transactions and, in this particular case, triggers.
Unless you're doing multi-step commits transactions are USELESS. Absolutely USELESS. And you can call me "stupid" but your calling your "gotchas" list "data integrity problems" makes me think that term applies more aptly to YOU.
Did you even look at that list? So mysql handles NULL values different than ANSI standards? so what? that's an issue you have to understand to properly program against MySQL but it's not a "data integrity" issue. It doesn't make you "sacrifice" data and it doesn't put your data at risk.
Furthermore, the few issues that ARE data integrity issues on that page -- such as ignoring constraints -- were fixed by 4.1. In fact, 75% of the items on that page were fixed by 4.1. That version was releases nearly THREE YEARS AGO.
Like I said, it's FUD based on problems from YEARS AND YEARS AGO.
Now, I'm certain that you won't actually have the audacity to reply to this, so just consider this your bitch-slapping for the morning, alright? kthanks.
But they also fought for (and won) a royalty on blank cassettes, resulting in fair compensation for the millions upon millions of mixtapes and such that WERE recorded off the radio. I'm not positive if there's a similar royalty on blank CD media (I seem to remember hearing that there is...) but nowadays, to be analogous (pun?) to the advent of FM and royalties on cassettes, the content companies should get (small) royalty fees for each GB of hard-disk sold. After all, that is the predominant storage mechanism for digital music and internet radio streams.
..You can mod me troll, but can you actually dispute what I'm saying? ..I didn't think so.
If you can name for me some data integrity issues (other than ACID-compliant transaction rollback which is not a "data integrity" issue in itself) then I'll gladly shut up and sit on my hands for the remainder of this conversation.
But I doubt you'll be able to. Because the "MySQL is teh devil" FUD that people always rehash everytime we talk about RDBMSs is based on second-hand rumor-mill CW and memories of problems from YEARS and YEARS and many major versions ago.
So go create a table using the default (MyISAM) storage engine on any 4.x installation or greater and tell me what data integrity you're sacrificing.
The only issues I've ever found are, as I said, lack of transactions, and lack of row-level-locking. As for transactions, they're seldom NEEDED -- I've had no problems writing reliable MySQL-backed apps without them-- and there are some INSANELY SIMPLE work-arounds to achieve row-level-locking.
I'm so sick of hearing uninformed people complain about MySQL issues that have been non-issues for years now.
All three of the issues you mentioned are fixed. And not in MySQL 5 which came out a year ago. No, they're fixed in MySQL 4.
All these complaints about MySQL data integrity as if it's a common occurance to lose or corrupt data in MyISAM tables are just ridiculous.
Go try all three of the items you've mentioned against a MySQL 4.x table with the default ISAM storage engine. The only one that MIGHT happen is silent truncation, but that's only if you configure it to report only errors and not warnings.
Ok... have you ever actually ran into a browser that you DON'T know how to use? Aren't they basically all the same?
Oh come on.. they're not going to cheat people out of $16 measly dollars. They've got no reason to. They've got billions and billions in the bank and the consequences of not complying is just not worth it.
Time to take a class on reading comprehension, bro... Seriously. If you're going to be a fanboy shill, at least try to make sense.
1. You put quotes around something that certainly wasn't a quote. You do realize they're called "quotation marks" for a reason, right?
2. I didn't say plugins are a bad idea
3. I didn't say that they CAN'T implement find & replace
So basically, you misunderstood, it seems, each and every sentence I wrote.
Are you always this dense or do you save it all for us on slashdot?
That's a lot easier said than done.
I don't know if you've actually USED Docs but the last time I did--about 2-3 weeks ago--it didn't even have find & replace capability. All it had was "replace all" and even that had "experimental" warnings all over it and couldn't be undone.
So saying "All they need is a good API and a mechanism for plugins" when they can't even do find & replace is just a little silly, in my opinion.
Maybe. In about 2 years. At the earliest.
But he was a constant (and vocal) skeptic of quantum theory. I mean, not only did he devote the last 1/4 of his life on unified field theory, he publicly criticized quantum theory many times.
You know... before I expanded your comment, all I saw was "It's already fallen."
I was pretty certain this would be just another "LOLZ LINUX RAWKS" post.
But seriously, I never say this, but MOD THIS UP!! Well said.
I suppose it comes down to how you look at music.
You can chose to look at music as something your consume versus something you collect.
I get some joy out of the physical heft of a CD. The liner notes. The artwork. The ritual. But not much. Not nearly as much as, say, a book. But more than a DVD which is just a plastic disc in an plastic box.
Really, the joy I get from music is all about the consumption. Not the collection. And, to continue your "20 years" example.
Over the course of 20 years, on any average year, you had 126 songs to listen to. That's it. Your COLLECTION may have value, but your ability for CONSUMPTION is woefully small. For my subscription, I instantly have access to a ludicrous amount of music.
There is no appreciable resale market for CDs. The almost spiritual connection between a record and its collector--with the stores and true artwork and the uniquely small press runs--is all but gone with compact discs. They have no soul.
The collection is worthless.
Consumption is everything.
1. Music subscription services are pretty popular. Perhaps you don't like it, but I've turned many people on to it and I've gotten a lot of positive feedback from friends and family. You're not paying for music thats stops playing when you stop paying. You're paying to listen to HUGE, GIGANTIC libraries of ANY SONG YOU WANT, whenever you want, wherever you want.
Your comment like saying "Nobody would PAY for Cable Television. It makes no sense. Few people are willing to shell out money for television that stops playing when they stop paying"
2. Your comment about iTMS having TV & movies is funny. Are you actually suggesting that a subscription model wouldn't work well for TV shows? I mean, what makes you think that MSFT couldn't offer TV as part of their subscription price in the future? When iTMS launched they didn't have TV in the beginning, either. You do realize that people have been buying into the subscription-model for TV for, oh, 30 years now?
3. I love my iPod and I love iTMS. But as soon as I realized that I couldn't burn my TV purchases and that there was no "PlayFair" for video DRM I refused to give them another cent. Their video DRM is hideous and unacceptable. Imagine if FairPlay refused to let you burn them to CD. Well, THATS the kind of service you're paying for. $2 for 22 minutes of video that is crippled beyond all usefulness.
You know, this guy got mod'ed troll, but at worst I think he was off-topic.
In all reality, that is a quintessential Microsoft move.
Purchase into a market, then leverage their OS monopoly to drive adoption of SUSE, or whatever they may call it then. It's already begun, but imagine a version of Linux that also supports the ACTUAL Win32 API, or true cross-compatibility between Windows and this one linux distro.
Sure, the Microsoft-Haters in the linux community would throw fits over it and boycott it entirely, but the businesses that use Linux for web servers and db servers and such don't care about that. To them it would mean the best of both worlds. And in all honesty, they'd be correct.
Of course, it would probably be bad for the Linux community, I'm not denying that. But this is a very standard modus operandi for Redmond. It's certainly more than just a troll.
...I love my grammar...
Ok, so how again does being against the war in Iraq have anything to do with chastising the Army for being "cheap asses?"
You should hold people accountable. And citizens should play a part in the political process. In 2003 I quit my comfy job writing shinkwrap software, packed up the car, and volunteered for Howard Dean for America. That's what _I_ did to stop the war in Iraq. Considering you turned this into some "stick your head in the sand" pissing match, tell me, what have YOU DONE to stop the war?
More on point, how does criticizing the Army, especially under-thought B.S. criticism, have anything to do with stopping the war in Iraq?
It's like you realized you couldn't possibly defend your moronic comments, so you just segued into a "Iraq War == Bad" argument. Give me a break...
This isn't Candy Land, bro. We don't live in a world of peppermint and licorice and gumdrops.
I don't think that the war in Iraq was entirely necessary. But there are times when you DO need to go to war.
And when those times come, just like as it is now, things won't be perfect. Deal w/ it.
You can't actually believe what you're saying, can you?
The US armed forces are the most highly equipped fighting forces in the history of the world. I mean, for chrissake, the crux of your argument is that the army is "cheap ass" because it only supplies monocular NIGHT VISION GOGGLES to its GIs. This is about as relevant as complaining that the Army is cheap because they only hand out Core-Solo notebooks to users instead of Core-Duo notebooks.
Do we have a perfect military? Of course not. But that's what you're complaining about. That they're not perfect. You're complaining because we gave troops body armor, just not enough. You're complaining that there WERE armored humvees and APCs but that not EVERY humvee was armored.
And your comment about medical care? Puh-leese. Our combat hospitals in Iraq have saved thousands and thousands of troops who, if this were Vietnam or even Desert Storm, would have been coming home in a bodybag. We're fighting a war where you can take shrapnel to the brain and LIVE TO TALK ABOUT IT ON NATIONAL TV. You can be in a fully equipped operating room having neurosurgery within 30 minutes of your injury. Brain Surgery. In a combat zone.
Yes, there are side effects to this. The Army has to treat FAR MORE injuries and the emotional stress associated with them. Since the civil war, these people were treated by the battlefield medic. Best case scenario the medic was able to stick them full of enough morphine to put them asleep so they could die in peace. Today, the medic has the equivalent of M*A*S*H in his back pack and within a half hour you're in a combat hospital on an operating table every bit as advanced as world class permanent facilities. Forty-eight hours later you're Stateside or in Europe beginning long term recovery.
So yes, that does mean some overcrowding issues. We're saving so many lives we don't know where to put them all. I don't mean to make light of the deplorable conditions at Walter Reed but go ads some soldiers. Say "Would you rather take shrapnel in Vietnam, stick yourself with your morphine, and if you're lucky, get a syringe of your buddies morphine so you can lay there and bleed out dreaming of the medivac, Or, would you rather take shrapnel in Iraq, be treated by a battlefield medic who will run an IV, treat your pain, and give you blood, as you wait for a medivac to take you to an operating table 20 minutes away before sewing you up and sending you off to lay in a moldy hotel room in surburban Washington DC for a day or two"
What would YOU choose? Obviously having them lay in paradise on craftmatic adjustable hammocks being fed grapes by gorgeous naked nymphomaniacs would be a great third choice, but this is reality. We have constraints to deal with.
That's just how it is. At the end of the day, there are constraints. Even for the military. Even with a half trillion dollar budget. Simply put, what you're asking for will cost more money. How do you propose we pay for it?
Why is the former better than the latter? If the right "maliciously crafted qt movie" gains elevated privileges, doesn't the severity depend on what it does with those privliges? If it uses it's newfound ability to run code, the right code will be every bit as damaging as a buffer overflow in the TCP/IP stack. It might be a little more work for the individual creating the exploit, but does the amount of work needed to create an exploit really matter to the exploited system? Easier exploits have a larger community of people who could potentially exploit them, but if you're exploited, that no longer matters. Just a thought...
Once again, another silly over-generalization and stereotype. This is just as ridiculous as the OPs comment about myspace being only for the young or immature. It just makes no sense. Tens of millions of pages and you just lump them all together. Puh-leese.
There's always some "L33T" dude on here that scoffs that ANYONE with ANY SENSE would EVER use myspace.
You're just announcing your ignorance to the world.
For better or worse, Myspace is incredibly huge. It's used by tens of millions of people every day. Teenagers? Yes. But also professionals. Adults like you and I that find a lot of value in the way it lets them keep connected with their friends and acquaintances.
Yes, there are ignorant people on MySpace. But there's ignorant people on Slashdot. And even if MySpace is only for the immature and childish, watching you spread a moronic stereotype makes me think that you would fit right in.
FDR
The man who single handedly built the middle class in this country in 100 days was one of the wealthiest presidents we've ever had.
Suggesting that anyone independently wealthy that reached the white house would use it to feather his own nest is just a gross oversimplification.
Seriously, a consumption task is a pretty horrible idea.
This was brought up a couple days ago, so I'll copy and paste from my previous post on this subject:
Forgoing the income tax for a sales tax is a pretty bad idea.
First, the income tax is progressive. This would be impossible to achieve with sales tax. The only people that would benefit from a "flat" tax (sales or income) are those at the highest tax brackets. In order to replace the income lost from dropping taxes on the top 5%, taxes would have to be raised on the bottom 50%.
Second, a sales tax puts a disproportionate burden on the lowest income families. Those with low incomes--even up to $50k/yr for a single man--spend a very large proportion of their income. The lower your income, the higher percentage of it is spent. People making minimum wage are spending 100% of their pay checks.
Those making $1MM a year, on the other hand, may spend only a small fraction of their income.
And you can say that you would simply not charge sales tax on the things that poor people are spending their money on -- food, shelter and utilities -- but doing so would drastically reduce tax receipts. It would be impossible to exempt those things and the suggestion that it is possible is just used by proponents to try to sell their plan.
Furthermore, this is about Google. Corporations pay a pitifully small percentage of taxes in America. The percentage of taxes paid by corporations has dropped dramatically since the 1950's. Your notion that double taxation is a serious problem is just plain wrong. The tax code currently incentivizes businesses to invest in capital expenditures, R&D, etc.
In summary, the only people that want a sales tax are those that don't understand it's implications and those that could pay less taxes by shifting the tax burden more on the lower & middle classes.
The notion that there is tax injustice because the top minority of Americans pays the majority of taxes is absurd. The people at the top of the food chain reap the highest rewards of our society. Without our national infrastructure, they wouldn't be able to make and horde millions or billions of dollars. They SHOULD pay a tax burden that more closely resembles their share of the US pie, not necessarily their share of the US Population.
You know... I heard that Al Qaeda has a plot to take over an abandonded church 100 yards away from Dulles International Airport. The rumor is that they'll run some fiber optics from the air ports systems into the church where they setup a mobile air traffic control station.
The word on the street is that they'll set their systems up to trick the AutoLand function into thinking that the ground level is 10 feet lower than it actually is, which will make the planes crash when they try to land.
It could be that the only thing that will save us is a defunct Detroit cop on holiday to visit his estranged wife.
This is serious business, man. If McClane can't stop them, we'll be screwed.