In America, exactly what "contraband" can one carry in a laptop?
That is a good question. As I said, it should be clearly defined what they're looking for. If they can't define what they're looking for, then they shouldn't be looking. Same is true for a physical search.
What information is "illegal" to import that is not also available to be "downloaded" online?
What physical item is "illegal" to import that I can't also have shipped in a container, where it will probably go unnoticed?
Technology certainly has changed the game. Not all technology is anit-privacy, though. The main difference is that while those in power have been looking at how they can play with the new rules, the average citizen has not.
For example, in the 90's, when I was first exposed to PGP, the typical reaction I heard to having a reasonable and easy-to-use encryption scheme for email was "if I have nothing to hide, why bother".
1) The base device can supposedly function "stand-alone"; however, it looks like it must be a pain to use in that way. Not sure the advantage of using it stand-alone...
2) The base device brings more of the "common" functionality with it from jacket to jacket, so there's no need to buy that piece of the system over and over again.
There's an intuitive feel that (2) creates an economic advantage, and I guess for someone who would otherwise buy multiple mobile devices there might be (depending on the actual pricing, factoring in bundling -- which seems to defeat the point, but whatever). Is it cost-advantageous if I only use it with one jacket? Two? Five? How many cell-based devices do I have to "need" before this becomes economically useful to me?
That's my question, then: how much need does any given person have for a bunch of devices to which he or she can add cell phone capabilities? The car radio looking thing and the nav device might be interesting if they integrate the cell service in an interesting way, but couldn't you do the same thing wtih an inexpensive data cable to the phone (and maybe a car mounting kit, which you can easily get today)? The only particular advantage to building the devices this way (IMO) would be to leverage an already-existing deployment of Modu base units, and clearly there's not one.
As for the hand-held sleeves, like one with a larger screen and QWERTY keyboard... maybe useful, but are there trade-offs (like is the combined device bulky or otherwise clumsy when compared to a stand-alone unit)?
Then again, the fact that they lead with the example of a "stylish" cover you'd use to go clubbing probably indicates that I'm not the target audience, since I find that indescribaly stupid.
"Regardless the idea of the government slowly "turning up the heat" on it's citizens still holds. I guess that makes a lot of us dumber than frogs right?;-)"
Only if you really believe that we're in the midst of a gradual erosion of rights that defies historical precident in American society.
If you apply a little historical perspective, you'll find that these issues move back and forth over time, and that to a large extent a seletive focus on the negative combined with recent increases in the flow of information have created an illusion of a slow, steady march toward oppression. In truth I'd say the long-term trends have been positive.
Not to say that we shouldn't question each and every increase in authority that government tries to claim for itself -- we should. But this "boil a frog" meme is nothing but tired, lame, non-productive alarmism -- on top of the fact that once you realize the underlying premise of the analogy is false, it starts sounding stupid.
Should the border officials be allowed to copy data? Actually, maybe so. Crosing national borders isn't like moving about the streets freely; the search and seizure rules have always been different at the border than during, say, a routine traffic stop (and probably should remain so, though certainly that's a different debate altogether).
If you believe that customs should be able to search for contraband and/or undeclared items upon which import taxes would be levied, then it is inconsistent to hold that they can't examine the data you're carrying. Of course, we expect them to follow certain rules -- just like we expect them not to confiscate your legally-owned-and-carried valuables.
Does "examine" require them to "copy"? Maybe -- depends what they're looking for. That's where legitimate questions can start to arise. It should be clearly defined what their authority is, and it should be clearly defined what they are (and are not) allowed to do with any data they retain, how long and for what reasons they can retain it, etc.
But that all has a lot more to do with controlling corruption amongst border officials than it has to do with unworkable cajun cooking techniques.
And what part of the old "get amongst a crowd and blow myself up" ploy requires a train to be involved? Much less a high-speed train?
Should we stop building (or using existing) large sporting venues? Office buildings? Shopping malls? These are all places where large crowds are at least as vulnerable as passengers on a train.
Well, I suppose if your example drug company wanted to let the competition eat its lunch, it would release the $100 pill. Most companies don't want to do that.
You might be thinking they'd use patents to prevent the competition from releasing the better cure. Problem is, that requires them to put on the public record the fact that they're holding back a better, cheaper treatment. Any company doing this would get killed on PR alone. Do you know how much money pharma companies dump into "philanthropic" programs just to deal with the PR implications of the way they do business today? Multiply that by the thousandfold hit they'd take trying what you suggest, and you have a pretty good going-out-of-business plan.
Perhaps you think all the drugmakers would collude to suppress the better solution. Of course, that kind of activity would be highly illegal. Not too easy to hide, either. It only takes one company that feels it isn't getting its share of the profits, and the gig's up. (You may not know all of their names, but there are a lot of drug companies out there.) Which means a lot of trouble to divide profits up among a lot of players; not a good idea. Hell, even if you keep everyone's shareholders happy, a single whistle-blower can ruin your whole day. Before too long, a company trying this would get killed twice -- once on PR, and once in anti-trust lawsuits.
All that, of course, assumes the particular pairing of treatments you describe would come about in a single drug-maker's pipeline in a relatively narrow time window without a bunch of intermediate steps. That's not a very likely scenario. One of the factors that makes it unlikely is the fact that no one party (or group of parties with united interests) controls the entire drug R&D pipeline -- a fact which becomes less true as the government exerts more direct control over the research. (And that's what funding really is -- control.)
In short, fears like the one you express are common because most people have a shortage of insight about the drug industry and an excess of paranoia about corporations and/or health care.
I guess the local utilities must divide things up differently where you are than where I am. I pay a separate sewer bill, and it doesn't go to the water company. BTW, if that's a residential bill, you're getting hosed (at least relative to the rates around here). I pay a quarterly water bill, and it's quite a bit less than you're representing.
Anyhow, do you imagine that you're not paying a bunch of surcharges for your broadband today?
I've refused to get Internet access on my phone prior to the iPhone because unlimited connections were $99/month and I wasn't willing to run the risk of going a little over and paying $50 in overages.
Aaaand.... How is that a per-GB scheme again?
The fact is, even among people who are not the bulk bandwidth users, tiered internet access is a horrible idea
The fact is, you didn't read my post. I'm not advocating a tiered system.
One thing the market has shown us is that Americans do not like to be nickeled and dimed, and if all else is equal, tend to choose alternatives that do not charge more money for additional bandwidth
Yes, an individual will choose a system where he appears to be getting more for free. If he's one of the top utilizers, he'll happily take the benefit of his neighbors subsidizing him; and if not, he probably won't notice that he's getting hosed, because that's just "how it's always been billed". Which is why cell phone companies get by with the very billing practices you describe, when it would be to most users' benefit if they just charged per minute. In short, what the market has shown is that people will fall for marketing and pay more than they should.
In spite of that, the market has in fact pressured Sprint into offering schemes that more closely approximate per-minute billing (but really are still tiered plans, just with steps that are less steep and more dynamic).
But none of that -- indeed nothing at all in your post -- addresses my point: you pay for each kWh, and each gallon, and nobody I've met has ever had to predict their water or power usage and pay huge overages for using too much.
What you're really arguing is that the proposed rates (and current rates) are too high; which they may well be.
That doesn't change the fact that per-GB is a perfectly reasonable model, provided that the actual price per GB is set reasonably.
When you buy electricity you pay for each kWh. When you buy water you pay for each gallon. You might use budget billing schemes to smooth out your monthly payment, but over time you pay for what you use.
For utilities that provide things people need, only through voluntary charity does one consumer provide direct subsidy to other consumers. Why, then, should the pricing scheme for a luxury item enforce a subsidy?
The funny thing is, there are two groups that benefit from a flat-fee scheme: heavy users (who obviously benefit from the subsidy), and the ISP. The ISP benefits because without the subsidy, there would be fewer heavy utilizers. The lack of heavy users may ease pressure on the network, but now that you're charging per-GB, it also cuts into your revenue. Now all that unutilized bandwidth starts to look like a liability.
Of course, that assumes the provider isn't balancing their ISP revenue against conflicting business interests, which is exactly what we've been saying is a problem. Absent an attempt to leverage a monopoly position to influence other markets, it would be in the ISP's interest to maintain a flat fee and in the consumer's (aggregate) interest to pay per GB (assuming comparably reasonable rates under both schemes). This is why it's always been a flat fee where you just pay for speed.
Now, due to the ISP's other lines of business and the ways that broadband is used today, the relative advantages seem to have shifted.
To be clear, I'm not one of these "we must not play God, we're messing around with things we don't understand" types. At the same time, I do wonder if we understand the principles with which we're working as well as the write-up suggests. On the other hand, that is why we run experiments...
The write-up seems to carry some assumptions from our current model of how DNA and genetic inheritance works. "the nuclear DNA that influences appearance and other characteristics would not come from the woman providing the donor egg"... well, ok. Do genetic researchers understand why "cloned" animals don't always look like the parent? I've never heard it explained, and to my admittedly outsider point of view, that seems to raise some questions about how well we understand what determines "appearance and other characteristics" in complex organisms...
Biologically three "parents" are involved, but I wouldn't forsee this leading to a social structure of a three-parent family. Given a case where that structure already exists (insert fundamentalist LDS joke here if you must), I could see a technique like this being adopted; but I don't see how the social structure would follow from the technique. To a certain extent, it seems like the point of many fertility-related treatments is to decouple the biology from the social family structure.
I'm not sure how you lump your three examples together.
Although I tend to think the use tax itself is sketchy, as the law stands in states that have one, dodging the use tax is easy but illegal. Taking the standard rate on a donation is somewhat more grey, as such rates exist to make things easier but are often used to excuse over-claiming, as you suggest. But both of those are wildly different from taking the standard deduction, which exists for the explicit purpose of setting a floor on deductions that will be taken by most taxpayers who have lower itemized deductions. The IRS specifically advises that you should (in most cases) take the standard deduction if your itemized deductions are lower.
If you really see those things as the same, then I can see how you don't see any merit in complaints about what MS is doing. The entire question is about where on the spectrum MS's actions fall -- are they making a legitimate business decision that saves them on their tax bill, or are they gaming the system by taking actions whose form allows them to dodge the tax bill even though the actions themselves have no substance? You seem to be saying that you don't care which because it's all the same to you; as long as we have a complex tax code, I disagree.
For all that, I don't know enough about state corporate tax laws to have a strong opinion on whether MS is right or wrong.
I can't speak for anyone else, but here's my view:
It doesn't matter much what a candidate holds as his or her own religious view. I do have some level of interest in the candidate's moral views, since those are likely to drive policy decisions (most people will not make a decision that they find morally objectionable), and it is common to conflate religion and morality since many people in this country see early exposure to religion as a driver of moral education, so that may account for some of the focus on religion.
But more important to me than the candidate's religion is the candidate's view on the role of his or her religion with respect to his or her duties in office. You can be a baptist, and govern your life and your family accordingly, and yet you might or might not impose that particular doctrine on the country through your role as president (or other office-holder).
If American politicians had a better recent-history record of keeping their religion separate from their politics (which I put in the "separation of church and state" bucket), then at least for me religion would be a non-issue. But when some candidates hold that their religious convictions should translate into law, it can't be ignored. Ideally anyone with that viewpoint would simply not reach office; in practice, given how badly the American implementation of a two-party (and some other guys who won't win) system limits choice, sometimes you just have to figure out whether a particular canddiate's viwes are acceptable to you even realizing that those views might have undue influence on policy.
If this is followed by reports of various despicable actions in Iran which cannot be verified due to the lack of communication, then it would be even more suspicious.
True, but can't we wait until that actually happens before talking about how suspicious it would be? Doesn't the government actually do enough under-handed things that we can display our cynicism talking about those realities, rather than speculating about what kind of plot we'd dream up if we were the ones being under-handed?
Now, I do think someone's up to something. For years we have undersea cables, and I can't speak to the frequency with which they get cut, but now we're to believe that a number of links have been cut in a short period of time, at least a couple of them by the same sort of accident? Anchors must have suddenly gotten a lot more dangerous...
Who's up to what, that's the question. I don't buy that it's a campaign to blind us to what's really happening inside Iran, because most people here would bite the line fed them by the mainstream media whether the links were there or not. (Believe the American media is completely free, unbiased, and all-knowing if you want, but don't expect me to play along...)
The most obvious assumption is that someone is trying to cut the flow of information into Iran, though the motives for that are cloudy to me as well.
A couple wild-ass theories... Because I can:)
Perhaps it's a coutner-attack in cyber warfare. Disrupt an enemy in Iran who is attacking Internet-based assets elsewhere in the world, something to that effect. It's an optimistic take, but possible.
Perhaps the cables aren't the target at all. How much do we know about the locations where the cables were cut? Is the sudden swarm of anchors the result of ships stopping where usually they do not? If so, who owns the ships, and why are they suddenly parking there?
2) Yes, I do pay taxes that support libraries; and yes, some of the money in the library's budget is used to buy books. Moreover, I support this use of tax money because there is a fundamental social interest in having repositories of knowledge and literature. Comparing music-sharing networks to libraries, however, is inane sophistry.
Your complaint could be applied to most things we fund by taxation. For example: "why should I pay for public health care when I don't get sick?"or "Why should I have to pay tax to fund schools when I don't have any children or I want to home school mine?"
Utter nonsense.
I probably do disagree with you as to the extent that taxes should fund healthcare. However, "get sick" isn't something you choose to do or not do, so the analogy is completely flawed anyway.
Moreover, in both the healthcare and education examples, the extent to which it is appropriate to use tax dollars is exactly the extent to which there is a public interest in those services being funded. It doesn't matter if I am putting a kid through school or not; society recognizes that I benefit from a certain level of education being freely available.
There is no public interest in free music-sharing, regardless of the fact that a minority of people would be better off if they could get the majority to subsidize their music purchases.
What you are assuming here is that only those who use the service should pay for it,
What a novel concept!
Where you go wrong is that schemes like these are instituted because markets fail to produce efficient outcomes
Wrong. That alone is not a justification for tax subsidy. You don't have the right to use of my resources just because it makes your transaction more efficient. Where you go wrong is in thinking that free music is as fundamental a need as healthcare or education.
Moreover, the market is perfectly capable of solving the problem of "distribution of digital music". It's getting there in spite of RIAA interference, and it's leading to solutions that are better for both artist and consumer than this subsidy crap.
this is Economics 101: anyone who denies it is an idiot like those free market fundamentalists
Oh, I didn't realize you were trolling. I'm done; carry on.
A tax sould not serve to drive consumerism. I shouldn't be deciding to buy something just because "the government says I have to pay for it anyway". If the music industry wants people to buy more music, then the music industry (not the government) should promote the product. (And no, trying to force the consumer to buy the product isn't promotion; it's coersion.)
You seem to ridicule the idea that anyone doesn't share music. A lot of people don't, though. Not everyone wants to collect music, and certainly not everyone wants $5/month worth.
So bottom line -- why should every prospective purchaser of internet service be automatically required to purchase a "legal file sharing" license as well?
If you can work out the logistics of making it an optional line item (and if you don't opt-in, the legal status of any sharing activity on your connection would be the same as it is today), then go for it. That way, those doing the sharing pay for the sharing.
Well, I'm not sure why you'd latch onto the crazy Bad Hollywood Plot theory as the point to debate. For the sake of argument, though, there's a difference of scale that makes a huge difference to the plot in question. Think it through in these terms: How many cars could your villain rig quickly enough to go undetected? Answer: a lot more if he controls a refueling point that swaps batteries than merely a repair shop.
Legally that could happen. Do you know how many times it has happened? Care to explain why, if this is were a feasible way to steal an election, it wouldn't be happening regularly?
Slashdot Mirror
In America, exactly what "contraband" can one carry in a laptop?
That is a good question. As I said, it should be clearly defined what they're looking for. If they can't define what they're looking for, then they shouldn't be looking. Same is true for a physical search.
What information is "illegal" to import that is not also available to be "downloaded" online?
What physical item is "illegal" to import that I can't also have shipped in a container, where it will probably go unnoticed?
So what?
the government cannot possibly know about or read everything that goes across this network
For someone arguing the anti-authority case, you're being hopelessly naive.
Technology certainly has changed the game. Not all technology is anit-privacy, though. The main difference is that while those in power have been looking at how they can play with the new rules, the average citizen has not.
For example, in the 90's, when I was first exposed to PGP, the typical reaction I heard to having a reasonable and easy-to-use encryption scheme for email was "if I have nothing to hide, why bother".
The two differences seem to be
1) The base device can supposedly function "stand-alone"; however, it looks like it must be a pain to use in that way. Not sure the advantage of using it stand-alone...
2) The base device brings more of the "common" functionality with it from jacket to jacket, so there's no need to buy that piece of the system over and over again.
There's an intuitive feel that (2) creates an economic advantage, and I guess for someone who would otherwise buy multiple mobile devices there might be (depending on the actual pricing, factoring in bundling -- which seems to defeat the point, but whatever). Is it cost-advantageous if I only use it with one jacket? Two? Five? How many cell-based devices do I have to "need" before this becomes economically useful to me?
That's my question, then: how much need does any given person have for a bunch of devices to which he or she can add cell phone capabilities? The car radio looking thing and the nav device might be interesting if they integrate the cell service in an interesting way, but couldn't you do the same thing wtih an inexpensive data cable to the phone (and maybe a car mounting kit, which you can easily get today)? The only particular advantage to building the devices this way (IMO) would be to leverage an already-existing deployment of Modu base units, and clearly there's not one.
As for the hand-held sleeves, like one with a larger screen and QWERTY keyboard... maybe useful, but are there trade-offs (like is the combined device bulky or otherwise clumsy when compared to a stand-alone unit)?
Then again, the fact that they lead with the example of a "stylish" cover you'd use to go clubbing probably indicates that I'm not the target audience, since I find that indescribaly stupid.
"Regardless the idea of the government slowly "turning up the heat" on it's citizens still holds. I guess that makes a lot of us dumber than frogs right? ;-)"
Only if you really believe that we're in the midst of a gradual erosion of rights that defies historical precident in American society.
If you apply a little historical perspective, you'll find that these issues move back and forth over time, and that to a large extent a seletive focus on the negative combined with recent increases in the flow of information have created an illusion of a slow, steady march toward oppression. In truth I'd say the long-term trends have been positive.
Not to say that we shouldn't question each and every increase in authority that government tries to claim for itself -- we should. But this "boil a frog" meme is nothing but tired, lame, non-productive alarmism -- on top of the fact that once you realize the underlying premise of the analogy is false, it starts sounding stupid.
Should the border officials be allowed to copy data? Actually, maybe so. Crosing national borders isn't like moving about the streets freely; the search and seizure rules have always been different at the border than during, say, a routine traffic stop (and probably should remain so, though certainly that's a different debate altogether).
If you believe that customs should be able to search for contraband and/or undeclared items upon which import taxes would be levied, then it is inconsistent to hold that they can't examine the data you're carrying. Of course, we expect them to follow certain rules -- just like we expect them not to confiscate your legally-owned-and-carried valuables.
Does "examine" require them to "copy"? Maybe -- depends what they're looking for. That's where legitimate questions can start to arise. It should be clearly defined what their authority is, and it should be clearly defined what they are (and are not) allowed to do with any data they retain, how long and for what reasons they can retain it, etc.
But that all has a lot more to do with controlling corruption amongst border officials than it has to do with unworkable cajun cooking techniques.
And what part of the old "get amongst a crowd and blow myself up" ploy requires a train to be involved? Much less a high-speed train?
Should we stop building (or using existing) large sporting venues? Office buildings? Shopping malls? These are all places where large crowds are at least as vulnerable as passengers on a train.
Aye, and now they're rebelling as well.
CmdrTaco got a haircut today.... and IRAN IS NOW OFF LINE!!!!1!!eleven!
Well, I suppose if your example drug company wanted to let the competition eat its lunch, it would release the $100 pill. Most companies don't want to do that.
You might be thinking they'd use patents to prevent the competition from releasing the better cure. Problem is, that requires them to put on the public record the fact that they're holding back a better, cheaper treatment. Any company doing this would get killed on PR alone. Do you know how much money pharma companies dump into "philanthropic" programs just to deal with the PR implications of the way they do business today? Multiply that by the thousandfold hit they'd take trying what you suggest, and you have a pretty good going-out-of-business plan.
Perhaps you think all the drugmakers would collude to suppress the better solution. Of course, that kind of activity would be highly illegal. Not too easy to hide, either. It only takes one company that feels it isn't getting its share of the profits, and the gig's up. (You may not know all of their names, but there are a lot of drug companies out there.) Which means a lot of trouble to divide profits up among a lot of players; not a good idea. Hell, even if you keep everyone's shareholders happy, a single whistle-blower can ruin your whole day. Before too long, a company trying this would get killed twice -- once on PR, and once in anti-trust lawsuits.
All that, of course, assumes the particular pairing of treatments you describe would come about in a single drug-maker's pipeline in a relatively narrow time window without a bunch of intermediate steps. That's not a very likely scenario. One of the factors that makes it unlikely is the fact that no one party (or group of parties with united interests) controls the entire drug R&D pipeline -- a fact which becomes less true as the government exerts more direct control over the research. (And that's what funding really is -- control.)
In short, fears like the one you express are common because most people have a shortage of insight about the drug industry and an excess of paranoia about corporations and/or health care.
I guess the local utilities must divide things up differently where you are than where I am. I pay a separate sewer bill, and it doesn't go to the water company. BTW, if that's a residential bill, you're getting hosed (at least relative to the rates around here). I pay a quarterly water bill, and it's quite a bit less than you're representing.
Anyhow, do you imagine that you're not paying a bunch of surcharges for your broadband today?
Other than that, though, nice misdirection.
I've refused to get Internet access on my phone prior to the iPhone because unlimited connections were $99/month and I wasn't willing to run the risk of going a little over and paying $50 in overages.
Aaaand.... How is that a per-GB scheme again?
The fact is, even among people who are not the bulk bandwidth users, tiered internet access is a horrible idea
The fact is, you didn't read my post. I'm not advocating a tiered system.
One thing the market has shown us is that Americans do not like to be nickeled and dimed, and if all else is equal, tend to choose alternatives that do not charge more money for additional bandwidth
Yes, an individual will choose a system where he appears to be getting more for free. If he's one of the top utilizers, he'll happily take the benefit of his neighbors subsidizing him; and if not, he probably won't notice that he's getting hosed, because that's just "how it's always been billed". Which is why cell phone companies get by with the very billing practices you describe, when it would be to most users' benefit if they just charged per minute. In short, what the market has shown is that people will fall for marketing and pay more than they should.
In spite of that, the market has in fact pressured Sprint into offering schemes that more closely approximate per-minute billing (but really are still tiered plans, just with steps that are less steep and more dynamic).
But none of that -- indeed nothing at all in your post -- addresses my point: you pay for each kWh, and each gallon, and nobody I've met has ever had to predict their water or power usage and pay huge overages for using too much.
What you're really arguing is that the proposed rates (and current rates) are too high; which they may well be.
That doesn't change the fact that per-GB is a perfectly reasonable model, provided that the actual price per GB is set reasonably.
When you buy electricity you pay for each kWh. When you buy water you pay for each gallon. You might use budget billing schemes to smooth out your monthly payment, but over time you pay for what you use.
For utilities that provide things people need, only through voluntary charity does one consumer provide direct subsidy to other consumers. Why, then, should the pricing scheme for a luxury item enforce a subsidy?
The funny thing is, there are two groups that benefit from a flat-fee scheme: heavy users (who obviously benefit from the subsidy), and the ISP. The ISP benefits because without the subsidy, there would be fewer heavy utilizers. The lack of heavy users may ease pressure on the network, but now that you're charging per-GB, it also cuts into your revenue. Now all that unutilized bandwidth starts to look like a liability.
Of course, that assumes the provider isn't balancing their ISP revenue against conflicting business interests, which is exactly what we've been saying is a problem. Absent an attempt to leverage a monopoly position to influence other markets, it would be in the ISP's interest to maintain a flat fee and in the consumer's (aggregate) interest to pay per GB (assuming comparably reasonable rates under both schemes). This is why it's always been a flat fee where you just pay for speed.
Now, due to the ISP's other lines of business and the ways that broadband is used today, the relative advantages seem to have shifted.
To be clear, I'm not one of these "we must not play God, we're messing around with things we don't understand" types. At the same time, I do wonder if we understand the principles with which we're working as well as the write-up suggests. On the other hand, that is why we run experiments...
The write-up seems to carry some assumptions from our current model of how DNA and genetic inheritance works. "the nuclear DNA that influences appearance and other characteristics would not come from the woman providing the donor egg"... well, ok. Do genetic researchers understand why "cloned" animals don't always look like the parent? I've never heard it explained, and to my admittedly outsider point of view, that seems to raise some questions about how well we understand what determines "appearance and other characteristics" in complex organisms...
Biologically three "parents" are involved, but I wouldn't forsee this leading to a social structure of a three-parent family. Given a case where that structure already exists (insert fundamentalist LDS joke here if you must), I could see a technique like this being adopted; but I don't see how the social structure would follow from the technique. To a certain extent, it seems like the point of many fertility-related treatments is to decouple the biology from the social family structure.
I'm not sure how you lump your three examples together.
Although I tend to think the use tax itself is sketchy, as the law stands in states that have one, dodging the use tax is easy but illegal. Taking the standard rate on a donation is somewhat more grey, as such rates exist to make things easier but are often used to excuse over-claiming, as you suggest. But both of those are wildly different from taking the standard deduction, which exists for the explicit purpose of setting a floor on deductions that will be taken by most taxpayers who have lower itemized deductions. The IRS specifically advises that you should (in most cases) take the standard deduction if your itemized deductions are lower.
If you really see those things as the same, then I can see how you don't see any merit in complaints about what MS is doing. The entire question is about where on the spectrum MS's actions fall -- are they making a legitimate business decision that saves them on their tax bill, or are they gaming the system by taking actions whose form allows them to dodge the tax bill even though the actions themselves have no substance? You seem to be saying that you don't care which because it's all the same to you; as long as we have a complex tax code, I disagree.
For all that, I don't know enough about state corporate tax laws to have a strong opinion on whether MS is right or wrong.
I can't speak for anyone else, but here's my view:
It doesn't matter much what a candidate holds as his or her own religious view. I do have some level of interest in the candidate's moral views, since those are likely to drive policy decisions (most people will not make a decision that they find morally objectionable), and it is common to conflate religion and morality since many people in this country see early exposure to religion as a driver of moral education, so that may account for some of the focus on religion.
But more important to me than the candidate's religion is the candidate's view on the role of his or her religion with respect to his or her duties in office. You can be a baptist, and govern your life and your family accordingly, and yet you might or might not impose that particular doctrine on the country through your role as president (or other office-holder).
If American politicians had a better recent-history record of keeping their religion separate from their politics (which I put in the "separation of church and state" bucket), then at least for me religion would be a non-issue. But when some candidates hold that their religious convictions should translate into law, it can't be ignored. Ideally anyone with that viewpoint would simply not reach office; in practice, given how badly the American implementation of a two-party (and some other guys who won't win) system limits choice, sometimes you just have to figure out whether a particular canddiate's viwes are acceptable to you even realizing that those views might have undue influence on policy.
Yes and no.
Yes, you're right that cellphones use the same long-range infrastructure as everything else.
But is it really true that all of the communication infrastructure for Iran feeds through undersea cables? All of it?
They don't use satelites? They don't run any communications to/from bordering countries by land?
If this is followed by reports of various despicable actions in Iran which cannot be verified due to the lack of communication, then it would be even more suspicious.
:)
True, but can't we wait until that actually happens before talking about how suspicious it would be? Doesn't the government actually do enough under-handed things that we can display our cynicism talking about those realities, rather than speculating about what kind of plot we'd dream up if we were the ones being under-handed?
Now, I do think someone's up to something. For years we have undersea cables, and I can't speak to the frequency with which they get cut, but now we're to believe that a number of links have been cut in a short period of time, at least a couple of them by the same sort of accident? Anchors must have suddenly gotten a lot more dangerous...
Who's up to what, that's the question. I don't buy that it's a campaign to blind us to what's really happening inside Iran, because most people here would bite the line fed them by the mainstream media whether the links were there or not. (Believe the American media is completely free, unbiased, and all-knowing if you want, but don't expect me to play along...)
The most obvious assumption is that someone is trying to cut the flow of information into Iran, though the motives for that are cloudy to me as well.
A couple wild-ass theories... Because I can
Perhaps it's a coutner-attack in cyber warfare. Disrupt an enemy in Iran who is attacking Internet-based assets elsewhere in the world, something to that effect. It's an optimistic take, but possible.
Perhaps the cables aren't the target at all. How much do we know about the locations where the cables were cut? Is the sudden swarm of anchors the result of ships stopping where usually they do not? If so, who owns the ships, and why are they suddenly parking there?
Careful saying things like that around the professor, or he will indeed colour you cynical. Using a laser.
1) I am not a Canadian.
2) Yes, I do pay taxes that support libraries; and yes, some of the money in the library's budget is used to buy books. Moreover, I support this use of tax money because there is a fundamental social interest in having repositories of knowledge and literature. Comparing music-sharing networks to libraries, however, is inane sophistry.
Sorry, but posts like this drive me mad.
You should've sobered up before responding.
Your complaint could be applied to most things we fund by taxation. For example: "why should I pay for public health care when I don't get sick?"or "Why should I have to pay tax to fund schools when I don't have any children or I want to home school mine?"
Utter nonsense.
I probably do disagree with you as to the extent that taxes should fund healthcare. However, "get sick" isn't something you choose to do or not do, so the analogy is completely flawed anyway.
Moreover, in both the healthcare and education examples, the extent to which it is appropriate to use tax dollars is exactly the extent to which there is a public interest in those services being funded. It doesn't matter if I am putting a kid through school or not; society recognizes that I benefit from a certain level of education being freely available.
There is no public interest in free music-sharing, regardless of the fact that a minority of people would be better off if they could get the majority to subsidize their music purchases.
What you are assuming here is that only those who use the service should pay for it,
What a novel concept!
Where you go wrong is that schemes like these are instituted because markets fail to produce efficient outcomes
Wrong. That alone is not a justification for tax subsidy. You don't have the right to use of my resources just because it makes your transaction more efficient. Where you go wrong is in thinking that free music is as fundamental a need as healthcare or education.
Moreover, the market is perfectly capable of solving the problem of "distribution of digital music". It's getting there in spite of RIAA interference, and it's leading to solutions that are better for both artist and consumer than this subsidy crap.
this is Economics 101: anyone who denies it is an idiot like those free market fundamentalists
Oh, I didn't realize you were trolling. I'm done; carry on.
A tax sould not serve to drive consumerism. I shouldn't be deciding to buy something just because "the government says I have to pay for it anyway". If the music industry wants people to buy more music, then the music industry (not the government) should promote the product. (And no, trying to force the consumer to buy the product isn't promotion; it's coersion.)
You seem to ridicule the idea that anyone doesn't share music. A lot of people don't, though. Not everyone wants to collect music, and certainly not everyone wants $5/month worth.
So bottom line -- why should every prospective purchaser of internet service be automatically required to purchase a "legal file sharing" license as well?
If you can work out the logistics of making it an optional line item (and if you don't opt-in, the legal status of any sharing activity on your connection would be the same as it is today), then go for it. That way, those doing the sharing pay for the sharing.
Well, I'm not sure why you'd latch onto the crazy Bad Hollywood Plot theory as the point to debate. For the sake of argument, though, there's a difference of scale that makes a huge difference to the plot in question. Think it through in these terms: How many cars could your villain rig quickly enough to go undetected? Answer: a lot more if he controls a refueling point that swaps batteries than merely a repair shop.
Legally that could happen. Do you know how many times it has happened? Care to explain why, if this is were a feasible way to steal an election, it wouldn't be happening regularly?