hwever, there is no financial replacement for real skill. and so any such bad player behind a high level avatar will rapidly become apparent: a joke Perhaps there is a game like that, but I've yet to find it. Consider, for example, the most popular MMORPG: WoW.
PvP is better than 50% gear and less than 50% skill. Twinking ruined the lower level brackets for anyone who can't afford 700 gold or so for gear and enchants - a twink who can't play can still take out three normally-geared players at once. A very skilled player can overcome the gear gap (although some classes are just screwed because they are so gear-dependent). This gear disparity continues until you hit the top-tier of arena teams, where everyone has essentially the same gear.
While PvE isn't as much of a problem since it isn't really competitive - don't tell some people that, though - the gold (and the gear it buys) lets you progress faster than others.
In the end, it just taints the game. It is a rot that the developer/publisher should eliminate. However, I don't have a problem with the gold farmers as long as they are legitimately playing (not using botting software, for example). IT is the people buying the gold that need removed from the equation. The rest will eventually fix itself.
While I generally do not entertain such adolescent trolls, I'll bite one last time.
Because they have access to delivery of fuel directly to their farm, which they probably take advantage of as necessary.
Your ignorance of the methods involved does not mean that you have a point, it only means you're speaking from ignorance.
This is rich. You have no idea where I live or what the farmers here do, yet are willing to claim you know more about them than I. For the record, you are exactly wrong.
Nobody EVER said ANYWHERE it was "amazingly fair". You are a liar. And I didn't put quotes around amazingly fair when I said it. If you look back up the thread, you'll find the actual comment I referenced:
NO! You are assuming that fairness is that the rich pay more than the poor. That is not true! Fairness would state that the person who uses the roads the most would pay the most in taxes. No if ands or buts about it. Personally, I feel that gas taxes are one of the fairest taxes the government imposes, as it's an actual usage tax. If you use the infrastructure more, you pay more in taxes. Seems pretty reasonable to me.
Of course, from someone with a posting history that includes recent gems titled "Liar" and "No dumbfuck", I guess shouldn't have expected more.
I was merely trying to head off what I perceived to be a slippery slope toward a bunch of the rabid kind of libertarians coming in to bitch about how taxes shouldn't be collected from anyone, and people who avoid "the system" are some kind of heroes. I never defended the guy in the article. My argument was with the post to which I originally replied.
Perhaps next time you could bother to to read the sentences you quote in the future. I said I wasn't getting into an argument about the fairness of taxation in general or the inconsistencies of enforcement in tax collection. Obviously that didn't click. Since I never mentioned the fairness of taxation outside of the gas tax, I made the assumption (incorrectly, it appears) that you were talking about inconsistencies of enforcement in tax collection as it applied to the topic at hand.
Consider the weight of the vehicle? Heavier vehicles tend to use more fuel - thus pay more in road taxes. They may tend to use more fuel, but such an assumption doesn't scale appropriately enough for an actual fair system. Around here, logging trucks and coal trucks destroy our roads but absolutely do not pay their fair share in highway maintenance taxes.
As for annual miles, what about miles driven out of state, off road, or even on privately maintained roads(such as the local racetrack)? This absolutely is a concern, and one that I've raised elsewhere in this thread.
That's where the GPS proposal came from, but not only is that expensive and subversible, but it also has a very high possibility of violating privacy. With a doubt. This would never fly (and with good reason).
Is that "fair"? No. Is it cheaper? Absolutely. Thank you for making my point.
By being assessed a prorated standard tax at the end of the year, just like any other one-off system where tax is owed but not collected. Automatic charging of taxes is a convenience; people are responsible for paying taxes they owe but are not collected. This is pretty straightforward when taxes are owed on financial transactions, like income taxes, use taxes, sales taxes, etc. Road maintenance is quite a different beast. Considering that this argument is about the fairness of how the tax is implemented now, sending me a bill for a random/fixed amount each year because I drive an electric car is markedly less fair that the current system.
I'm not getting into an argument about the fairness of taxation in general or the unevenness of enforcement with you. Then I would suggest you read the thread before replying next time. This was exactly about the fairness of the gas tax.
There are plenty of options. What would be the point of going through them all? An exercise to people who didn't take the 30 seconds to think about it? Perhaps to prove you can do more than insult and bluster? It is confusing to me that you jump into an argument, fail to understand the basic issue being discussed, then seem insulted that someone asks you provide more than empty rhetoric.
Well, as previously noted, farmers don't have to pay the tax. Industrial agriculture does not. I live in an area with lots of smaller family farms and there isn't a single "farm use only" diesel pump.
Landscaping companies pass that cost on to customers And that's fair? Why should customers have to pay a road maintenance tax when their gas is cut?
just like your local flower shop delivery van does The flower shop van is actually driving on the road.
As for electric cars, yes, they absolutely should be taxed for their use of the roadways. But how does one do that with a tax based upon a fixed cost per gallon of a particular type of fuel?
This is because by that time, the number of fuel vehicles paying gas taxes will no longer be a sufficient tax base to pay for road maintenance. It all works out if you stop to think about it for a moment. Really? I missed the part where you explained how the government would fill the gap left during the transition as people moved away from buying gasoline, and the part where you explained how the tax would be collected in the future.
Note that I'm not saying the current system of gasoline taxes isn't practical or even reasonable, only arguing with an earlier poster who claimed it was amazingly fair.
Uh, farmers do have the ability to buy untaxed fuel. The fuel is dyed so that it can be checked if used on public roads. Sure, large farms have this luxury but try finding it in a rural area that isn't a huge agricultural region. I live in an area with lots of small-scale agriculture (family farms, hay fields, etc) and every gas station has a single diesel pump with standard (taxed) fuel.
Thing is, the cost to make it fair would end up costing more than under the current unfair system. That probably is true. In fact, a more fair system probably should consider the weight of the vehicle and the annual mileage, but I can't see this being implemented. I wasn't arguing the relative efficiency of the gasoline tax, only the assertion that it is unbelievably fair.
And you don't think this is offset by the number of well-off people driving SUV's while the less well-off drive old econoboxes? I do. I'll wager it's more than offset, and if you were honest, you'd admit I'm right. Sure, there are plenty of wealthy folks who drive urban assault vehicles and less affluent who still drive Geo sardine cans. Just because these numbers balance out in the final total doesn't make it fair. This is especially true in rural areas, where those with less money often must have a 4WD and can't afford anything made in the last 10 years. And, they drive a good portion of their miles off the highway system.
This is a pittance, don't try to pretend otherwise. It's nothing compared to what cars use, and I can't see the validity of considering it when talking about gas taxes. Tell that to the farmers who buy fuel for their tractors or the landscaping companies who pay gas taxes for the fuel in their lawnmowers, chainsaws, and weed eaters. Again, the numbers may be a small piece of the big picture, but the OP was talking about FAIRNESS. Remember, he said: Personally, I feel that gas taxes are one of the fairest taxes the government imposes, as it's an actual usage tax. If you use the infrastructure more, you pay more in taxes.
I also note that you completely ignored the parent's question about electric cars.
At least get it right. It was 2 UNCLEAN animals and 7 CLEAN beasts and birds. Actually, it was two of each in all but one reference, with a single verse changing the story to seven of the clean animals. God doesn't explain how you bring "the male and his female" but in an odd number of animals, unless he meant seven pairs. And, don't forget that God didn't tell us what animals were unclean until Leviticus. Unless Moses and and Aaron traveled backward in time, this would be quite confusing.
Picking out the rational parts of this: Rational, eh? Care to explain what makes the rest of my post irrational, other than your disagreement with my words?
Nope. Not in developed countries. When you buy organic food in the supermarket, or vegetables at a farmers' market, that's raised from big bags of seeds they bought from professional seed growers. There certainly are those who rely on seeds from the larger nurseries and seed distributors, and some do use hybrids (especially for corn, the example we've used). Yet, federal guidelines for organic labeling prohibits the use of GMO crops, so you can be sure they aren't using what nearly all of industrial agriculture uses now.
Yes, there are "small but forceful" groups of hobbyists and enthusiasts who save seeds, but they're essentially irrelevant in the context of the agricultural industry. Unfortunately, you are correct in regard to total commercial output or acres farmed. However, the number of individual farmers on each side are likely much closer to equal. Also, the last 10 to 15 years have seen exponential growth in the more organic (using the generic use, not the federal definition) farming for commercial operations.
Look at my original comment. Do you really think I need to have that explained? I would have hoped not, but your subsequent replies made me quite unsure. Spending much time on a place like Slashdot teaches you that there is a big difference between regurgitating something from Wikipedia and being able to actually understand the material. I also note your choice of condescending language throughout your posts and your posting history indicating about equal number of troll/flamebait mods as positives ones. With nothing more to go on, it seemed like a reasonable assumption.
Let's say farmer A is growing his precious heirloom strain. To the north, farmer B is growing a different heirloom or commercial strain; to the south, farmer C is growing a terminator strain. There's some cross-pollination and A winds up with 0.001% hybridization with both B and C's crop. If anything, the problem for him is B! A tiny rate of sterile seeds are a non-issue. (Assuming the sterility is dominant, which presumably it is, otherwise this is even more of a non-issue.) In reality, so is the contamination from B, but you can't simultaneously claim that cross-pollination is rampant and that it's only a concern with strains you really don't like. Actually, I can. It is an aggressive and intentional act on the part of Monsanto to produce open-pollinated GMOs that produce sterile offspring. For an example of what can happen with such GMOs we can look at Percy Schmeiser's saga. He planted no GMO canola, instead using seeds that he saved each year just as he has for over 40 years (this, on a scale of hundreds of hectares, not a hippie with a row of corn). He was sued by Monsanto because their seeds were growing in his field, although he never bought or intentionally sowed any. Monsanto claimed that 90% of his fields were their GMO seeds; while independent testing showed that the numbers were smaller, they were still large enough to show that after 40 years this GMO had significantly contaminated his crops in two to three years. Now, imagine this was a different GMO, one that produced sterile seeds instead of plants resistant to the chemicals in their brand of weedkiller.
The real problem (and as I said, it's a problem, so you don't need to give me another condescending lecture on why it's a problem) is that the 0.001% contamination is enough to show up in screens for GMOs. I'm glad that we can agree on this particular problem. While this is an economic problem for farmers intentionally avoiding GMOs, the really scary issues are what these GMOs are doing to our food supply and the future of agriculture for the world.
First, my point was to clarify the genetics and normal agricultural practice, not to claim that this stuff couldn't ever cause a problem for anyone. People seem to be under the impression that farmers routinely plant seed from last year's crop and that this is a greedy attempt to force them to buy seed every year. That simply isn't the case anymore except in the most remote, poorest corners of the world. Your comments are true for large industrial farms but reveal your ignorance regarding farming in general. Between the small but forceful homesteader movement, the rural farmers that still grow a lot of their own food, and the rapidly expanding organic food markets, a large number of farmers routinely plant seed from previous years' crops. There are even more who don't save their own seeds but rely buying seed saved by others. There are numerous catalogs, web sites, and magazines dedicated the low-cost exchange of heirloom seeds and a concerted effort to preserve our rapidly dwindling diversity.
Second, that said, I don't understand your scenario anyway. If corn readily pollinates between farms and some hippie has a magical pure strain of corn that musn't be contaminated, surely a strain that can't reproduce is the *least* of his concerns! I love your use of loaded language. Anyone not buying GMO seeds from Monsanto is a hippie and heirloom varieties must be magical to be preferred over something created in a laboratory. As for the actual point, it appears that you don't grasp pollination and reproduction. Just like you share genetic material from your mother and father, your imaginary hippie's magical corn now produces a crossbreed of what planted and the GMO stuff his neighbor planted. There is a very real possibility that the corn he picks inherited the "terminator gene" and his strain of corn is now gone. His concern isn't the corn growing next door, per se, but the offspring of that corn and his corn, which he will pick from his field.
There *is* a legitimate concern about contamination, which is that if a tiny amount of GMO pollen gets into non-GMO field, it can prevent the whole crop from being sold to Europe or sold for higher prices in North America. (Or, in a handful of cases, get the farmer into some licensing trouble.) And, several courts have agreed with Monsanto that the innocent farmer is on the hook for the contamination. It isn't the fault of Monsanto and it isn't the fault of the neighbor who planted the corn. Thanks to laws outlawing the growth of GMO agricultural products in a few small towns in California, the agribusiness lobby is pushing state legislatures to pass laws prohibiting local control of their food supply or agriculture. I believe three states have already passed these bills and at least five or six others have given them serious consideration. Others have the right to contaminate my crops, causing me financial harm and perhaps biological harm, and the local governments aren't allowed to prevent it.
If anything, you could say that terminator strains are less of a threat than other GMO strains, but that's not really true because the Earth-loving organic guys buy hybrid seed every year just like the horrible conventional farmers do. This statement makes zero sense.
But as with all this GMO stuff, every possible bogeyman is always invoked for every possible concern, even when it makes no sense. As in this case, where people are worrying about the spread of sterility!?! If you can't see why it could be bad to have the world's food supply in the hands of a few huge international agribusinesses, I'll leave this to you to figure out. I'll trust thousands of years of nature and gentle nurture for my food and let you rely on the company that assured us Agent Orange was safe.
The image of good ol' Farmer Bob pickin' through his corn to collect seeds for next year, and being thwarted by a greedy corporation, has absolutely nothing to do with the reality of who this seed is being sold to. If Farmer Bob wants to grow his own seed he doesn't use these to begin with. And, as has been pointed out multiple times in this thread, ol' Farmer Bob may not plant these seeds yet end up with them when his neighbor plants them. The courts say that Farmer Bob was in the wrong no matter how the seed got there (corn, for example, is quite promiscuous and readily crosses with other nearby strains). And, Farmer Bob no longer has the strain of corn that he's been planting for 40 years.
If you zoom in on the window sign, you can see that half of it is blacked out (presumably to hide the boobies). Obviously, Google has been removing "adult content" from their pictures, so they can remove private content if they want to. Google also removed a shot of police arresting someone. However, I'm sure they don't want to start removing every picture of a person's house who doesn't want it on Google.
I'm sure the guy there might have appreciated another black rectangle in that picture, over his eyes, for example. No doubt. Notice that he's feeding the meter, apparently preparing to go back for more.
The SEC has dropping charges against HP Perhaps the submitter meant depth charges, which were also known as dropping mines. Was this a Freudian Slip, linking HP, their stock, and a submarine?:)
At any rate, you were crucifying (ahem) Christianity for a story that isn't part of its canon. I'm not sure what type of church you've attended, but the Old Testament is very much is a part of the Christian canon. Some sects have slightly different canons, but I'm not aware of any mainline ones that do not include Genesis.
...but Lot was a character in the Old Testament. All of my Bibles include both a New and Old Testament. Are you suggesting that I should toss out the Old one?
I guess that depends on your definition of Christian. Polls show that the population overwhelmingly identifies itself as Christian. The government overwhelming wants to be Christian, from the laws proposed and passed to the creed claimed by the individual politicians.
Unfortunately, Christianity has been plagued for almost 2,000 years by many of the same problems that Jesus had with Judaism. The downward spiral started once the personal creed of the man known as Jesus was developed in dozens of competing cults after his death. Your quote is but one of many that can be used to demonstrate the fallacy of so much of mainline Christianity. Don't forget that, like any righteous man should, Lot attempted to protect his guests by offering his two virgin daughters to the people of Sodom for their sexual gratification. And, after they escaped the city the daughters conceived by getting their father drunk and having sex with him.
Wow, so you'd rather do with more luxury goods then see your fellow man have better health. I surely hope your ethic isn't what's meant by the phrase "the American way." All part of being a Christian nation...
Slashdot Mirror
PvP is better than 50% gear and less than 50% skill. Twinking ruined the lower level brackets for anyone who can't afford 700 gold or so for gear and enchants - a twink who can't play can still take out three normally-geared players at once. A very skilled player can overcome the gear gap (although some classes are just screwed because they are so gear-dependent). This gear disparity continues until you hit the top-tier of arena teams, where everyone has essentially the same gear.
While PvE isn't as much of a problem since it isn't really competitive - don't tell some people that, though - the gold (and the gear it buys) lets you progress faster than others.
In the end, it just taints the game. It is a rot that the developer/publisher should eliminate. However, I don't have a problem with the gold farmers as long as they are legitimately playing (not using botting software, for example). IT is the people buying the gold that need removed from the equation. The rest will eventually fix itself.
Cheddar cheese is good on tacos, but cream cheese is better on pies. Don't you agree?
Actually, tacos are quite good as well.
I like pie.
And each year I'm reminded why I hate summer vacation. It is amazing to see how juvenile and petty comments get as you kids get out of school.
Your ignorance of the methods involved does not mean that you have a point, it only means you're speaking from ignorance.
This is rich. You have no idea where I live or what the farmers here do, yet are willing to claim you know more about them than I. For the record, you are exactly wrong. Nobody EVER said ANYWHERE it was "amazingly fair". You are a liar. And I didn't put quotes around amazingly fair when I said it. If you look back up the thread, you'll find the actual comment I referenced: NO! You are assuming that fairness is that the rich pay more than the poor. That is not true! Fairness would state that the person who uses the roads the most would pay the most in taxes. No if ands or buts about it. Personally, I feel that gas taxes are one of the fairest taxes the government imposes, as it's an actual usage tax. If you use the infrastructure more, you pay more in taxes. Seems pretty reasonable to me.Of course, from someone with a posting history that includes recent gems titled "Liar" and "No dumbfuck", I guess shouldn't have expected more.
Note that I'm not saying the current system of gasoline taxes isn't practical or even reasonable, only arguing with an earlier poster who claimed it was amazingly fair.
I also note that you completely ignored the parent's question about electric cars.
I hope his wife isn't checking out this Google Street View.
...but Lot was a character in the Old Testament. All of my Bibles include both a New and Old Testament. Are you suggesting that I should toss out the Old one?Unfortunately, Christianity has been plagued for almost 2,000 years by many of the same problems that Jesus had with Judaism. The downward spiral started once the personal creed of the man known as Jesus was developed in dozens of competing cults after his death. Your quote is but one of many that can be used to demonstrate the fallacy of so much of mainline Christianity. Don't forget that, like any righteous man should, Lot attempted to protect his guests by offering his two virgin daughters to the people of Sodom for their sexual gratification. And, after they escaped the city the daughters conceived by getting their father drunk and having sex with him.