It still looks weird without feet. It needs feet and big toes to be more like a human.
Oh, and also it needs to lose the metal beam connecting it to the circle, that's, I think, is the main difference between that and a human. That and all the metal.
Is it wrong to think about that robot in a sexual way? The only problem is, if I was building it, I would have put a vagina somewhere there. Maybe two.
I hear about this fad, it's called the USD. The thing about it is that it's a kind of a Trojan, such that if if you get paid in it, it immediately loses value. Apparently the hacker sits in a place called 'The Federal Reserve', and everybody is even familiar with the name, it's 'Ben'. And this guy spreads the USD around but it's insidious. You see, the virus is the USD itself, it's constantly being printed (not even literally printed, just created out of thin air in bank accounts of the Fed's member banks) and then the banks spread this stuff and sometimes the Fed itself spreads it around by the ton. The problem is obvious - with more and more USD around, the larger amount of them ends up chasing the same amount of goods/services/commodities, so relative to USD the prices seem to go up all the time, especially where the USD is exported to.
But apparently the other part of the trick is quickly to export the stuff out of the country of origin via various mechanisms, which are currently mostly relying on importing the ready manufactured goods and energy carriers, such as oil and gas, and this allows the prices in the country to stay relatively stable while out of the country the USD is hoarded by governments, who print their currency to buy the USD from banks, thus transferring the effects of this inflation upon the shoulders of the producers in the world, which immediately reflects for them in higher prices.
Obviously this hack is nearing its logical conclusion, with the USD saturation around the world nearing the levels, at which the further absorption becomes impossible due to the political situation at the nations that are absorbing it.
The wonderful social hack here is how many people are on board with this manner of status quo, while the same people seem to be in favor of more government spending on the 'poor', because they are 'suffering', all this while not noticing how any amount of value in the USD in the pockets of those very 'poor' burns a serious hole in the pocket of this guy Ben.
This is the biggest hack and Trojan ever, in the history of human civilization and it's so brazen and out in the open, that it is amazing that the perpetrators are still not found guilty of all sorts of machinations and are not thrown to jail or worse!
I assume you are talking about income taxes, yes? You know, great thing about US dollar is how easy it is to counterfeit it - the Fed is doing it all the time.
But lets look at an economy, where people do work and exchange the products of their work with each other directly, without ever using the currency of the local government for that exchange. Let's say it's a barter system. How does government tax someone's income if all the parties involved in the transactions do not do transactions in the fiat currency of that government? All of those transactions then would be considered 'gray' or 'black' market, right? Something off the radar of banks.
My bias is this: I don't see bitcoins as money.
However, imagine if some people start working with each other and for each other and start paying for everything they exchange with bitcoins rather than fiat currency. How would the local government tax those exchanges?
Now, never mind about the bitcoins. Let's talk about other types of currencies, be they gold or silver o aluminum or copper backed, whatever. If I have a bank account with aluminum in it and I buy something from a business or an individual and I pay with amount of aluminum for the transaction, not with your fiat currency, how would a government tax that transaction?
If I work for a company that pays me in silver, how would a government even know that I am paid at all with anything? If I am paid with silver, which is a transaction between my bank and my employer's bank and then I am using the silver to buy goods, which is a transaction between my bank and a vendor's bank, again, no fiat has exchanged hands.
How would government tax this?
You see, USA was built on a principle, it wasn't like every other country in the world. At the time people saw gold and silver as money (*and the smart ones see those metals as money today too, which Bernanke can't destroy by printing*), so the government wasn't passing a decree on what money is, but it passed a law that coins could be minted for you from your gold (that's still your gold and silver and those are still your coins, but government could mint them). So when the Constitution said: Congress can tax, obviously they weren't talking about taxing income, because that would not be possible even, because how would government ever know that gold or silver exchanged hands?
They were talking about taxes that could be imposed where they could physically impose them - like ocean ports or stores.
What I am saying is that the fiat money made it possible for governments to tax people's work, and going off the fiat money makes it much more difficult to tax people's work, because government cannot track those transactions.
Thus the government is obviously against return to the gold standard (the income taxes are nearly impossible to implement and the Fed can't print the money for Congress to waste), and if things like electronic currencies of any kind actually become wide spread, the governments will attempt to regulate and probably destroy them as well.
8,000,000 government issued patents is 8,000,000 more ways in which innovation in the economy is stifled. That's 8,000,000 ways to prevent people from attempting at bringing products to the market. That's 8,000,000 ways multiplied by each claim in each one of those patents, multiplied by the number of patent lawyers around to start lawsuits, which do nothing to improve anything in economy.
That's 8,000,000 ways in which government prevents wealth from being generated by the public sector. That's 8,000,000 ways to protect monopoly power. That's 8,000,000 ways to prevent choices in products from entering market and competing on merit. That's 8,000,000 ways in which other competing economies will have millions of competing products and wealth generated if they don't discard the notion of US patents, and since the USD power is diminishing every day, the other economies have fewer and fewer reasons to care about US patents.
That's 8,000,000 ways in which wealth is drawn from the private sector and is directed at government. That's probably just a small portion of all the patents that were ever looked at and evaluated and assessed.
That's 8,000,000 ways to corruption, as patents are granted without looking at the rules of the patent office itself, without prior art being considered and with ideas being patented that never should be patented even by the patent office rules.
That's 8,000,000 x X ways, that money was removed from private economy, where it can invested and was put into public sector, where it's squandered (where X is the ratio of patents filed to patents granted).
That's 8,000,000 - that's a fraction of the size of the government. The people in the patent office, if instead of working for government, they were working in the private sector, they could have been productive members of society.
The browser cannot distinguish between a legitimate self-signed certificate and a MITM attack
1. Browser can't distinguish between MITM attack with or without a CA signed certificate either.
2. Where did you see me asking a browser to tell me that there is MITM attack in progress?
That's why using a self-signed certificate brings up the warning for a MITM attack.
- but it does NOT do it for plain old HTTP!
Why not? Do you know how often MITM attacks are implemented with just DNS look ups coming from browsers? Probably half of the ISPs out there are intercepting and redirecting your DNS calls. That's a MITM attack and you don't see a browser notifying the user about that little piece of information.
Again and again and again and again and again and again, I am not talking about MITM, I am not talking about providing 'security', I am talking about encryption between 2 points, and whether there is MITM in progress should not be left up to the browser or a CA to decide, but should be delegated to the user, who needs to know what the fingerprint is.
Don't give me a little 'lock' icon for HTTPS, but don't treat self signed certs like viruses. Don't put a lock in front of HTTPS sites with self signed certs, just give an icon for fingerprint, so that it can be looked at immediately without going through any menus.
Which part of: I do not want browsers to deal with security, I just want them to encrypt traffic if HTTPS is used is not clear?
If the SOP is to put a lock icon into the address bar for CA signed certs, that's fine. I don't trust CAs either, so I verify who I am connected to.
But for the self signed certs on HTTPS to be treated as if the computer is under attack and to confuse a normal user instead of silently encrypting the traffic and providing an easy way to verify the fingerprint - this speaks volumes about the corruption and the under the table dealings between the browser developers and CAs.
who is CLAIMING that it would protect against MITM attack? WHO is claiming it?
Is plain text authentication over HTTP protecting against MITM attack? Does anybody think so? Is plain HTTP treated like a virus by the browser? Is browser throwing a fit when a plain HTTP site is requested?
Also, are you saying it's impossible to have MITM attack when a cert is not self signed, but is signed by a CA? Are you for real?
Anyway, once again: nobody is claiming that a self signed cert prevents a MITM attack. The question is: how much are the browser development teams paid by the CAs to make HTTPS with a self signed cert look, as if the sites with them are attacking the user?
--
Again, a non-corrupt way to deal with self signed certs is to show an icon that this site has a self signed certificate, so that placing a mouse over the icon would immediately display the fingerprint, which could be compared to a known fingerprint (preventing the MITM attack BTW).
Also why aren't browsers displaying fingerprints for certificates that are CA signed if one places the mouse over the 'https' portion of the address? Isn't that a silent confirmation of CAs, saying they can't participate in attacking you? Please. This entire argument has nothing to do with technology, but is a perfect illustration of corruption.
No, he won't get any love from/., the big government propaganda machine, even though the idea of creating more competition in space of governments is a good idea on this planet, which has been dominated by large, monopoly corporation friendly monstrosities, that follow the same principles of print money for their 'economies' while producing little of anything except new regulations that nibble at personal freedoms day in and day out.
No, 1.25 Million isn't enough to build little ocean countries, yes it's still an interesting idea. Why is when it's insane government spending on wars and 'stimulus', then it's all fine and good business, but when it's a person trying something new, it's because that is an insane individual?
a sane, not a bought browser WOULD do that. It would NOT pretend that a self signed certificate is more dangerous somehow than plane HTTP and would just encrypt the traffic, show an icon for a self signed certificate where the fingerprint could be looked at and wouldn't show a 'lock' or whatever.
The sane and not a corrupt thing to do would be to encrypt the traffic with the self signed certificate, allow the user to check the fingerprint and not scare the user with insane alerts.
As I said, browser can clearly identify that a certificate is self signed, not pretend that a virus is attacking the computer from a site that the user is navigating to, and provide a fingerprint to compare.
NEVER MIND 'the little padlock', don't even show it for a self signed cert! Just don't make it look like the site is an attack on the user!
Do you know what a major PITA it is to deal with the insane browser policies that treat self signed certificates as if they are a terrorist organization, while giving a complete pass to the http based authorization with clear text passwords?
Bloody hell, what is wrong with this picture, where a self signed cert is actually presented as some form of a VIRUS almost to the end user, when all that is needed is a warning that there is a self signed certificate in the address bar, with an ability to mouse over to copy the fingerprint and compare it to a fingerprint found on a site or on a business card or email, etc?
How about making it easier for the web to adopt https in the first place by showing some humility and not behaving like total assholes on the part of the browser development/management teams and realize that majority of the sites that could use encryption for data transfers, especially where it concerns privacy matters, like user names / passwords, and rework the interface notifications that warn the users about self signed certs to something that doesn't look like a bomb is about to go off?
You have to wonder how much longer the wars can go on, how much more money can be printed and how much longer will China support subsidizing USA at these levels. Vote the right way and have troops come home, stop money printing and inflation, stop the wars. Nobody, Democrat or Republican will help you. The only choice who will do the correct thing is obviously Ron Paul.
Think about the future of your country and vote the right way, even though media will have you believe Ron Paul is unelectable - it's nonsense. He is more electable than Bachmann and she and Pawlenty got all the attention.
Now, I am not saying that Ron Paul would change the laws of Massachusetts, but the federal laws on wiretapping, the entire 'Patriot Act', all of the government sponsored murder - it is at least as important and more so. No democrat and no Republican would do anything about this. It's all bought and paid for. The only person to fight this head on is Ron Paul and they are scared.
Then Google would be a late comer to an already existing market, like the Somalian market that uses phones for almost all payments.
Yes, that very Somalia that everybody wants the Libertarians to move to - they have. That's why it has the fastest government free market with the most innovation in payment technology. Of-course it's the most competitive way to do payments there outside of cash, because there aren't many bank outlets around.
Gold and silver coins are still legal tender in USA, but if you hold gold/silver the government will want you to pay capital gains tax if you sell, but the only reason why the nominal prices in USD are going higher is due to the inflation that the Fed creates.
So in reality they want this capital gains tax from you because you managed not to be affected by the government created inflation and they are pretty pissed about it.
The correct thing to do of-course is to move your gold/silver out of US and to put it into a bank (if any bank outside of US will want to deal with you of-course, because US government made it pretty much impossible now for the so called 'free' people of USA to have bank accounts outside of USA) and have gold/silver backed credit card, which will convert the metal into currency for you when you need it. This way you get real inflation protection and if you can manage this somehow, you won't have to pay the crazy capital gains tax on actual money!
A lack of government regulation and intervention has almost ruined this economy, just like it already has ruined others.
- not lack of regulation, the exact opposite is the case. Existence of government regulations is what is ruining the economy.
FDIC, FHA, Freddie/Fannie, Fed created inflation, 1%-0% interest rates, labor laws that end up killing off smaller competitors and promote large monopolies/oligopolies, income taxes and money printing, which destroy ability of people to save and start their own businesses.
If you require a more specific explanation than the above on how government regulations caused the 2008 crash, my sig has it.
Look at the nations that have never been able to succeed economically....the lack of government control and regulation has been the problem.
- the opposite is true, your statement is false. US economy was growing the most during industrialization and mostly free market capitalism in 19 century, not past 1913, when government growth and Fed caused inflation stifled business.
The heavier the government involvement is, the less likely the economy to increase the wealth of society.
China is going to need far more government control and regulation to continue that economic growth, it is very clear.
- this makes not just 0 sense, it makes negative amounts of it. We are all dumber for having read this.
China had to let go of so much government regulations and rules from the Communist era to get where it is, and it will have to let go of more of it, especially the currency controls if it wants to have more growth and wealth creation.
Second, businesses being untaxed is a recipe for disaster.
- wow, that must have been a real disaster in the US in 19 century, as the competition and re-investment turned USA around and made it the world's largest creditor out of world's greatest debtor.
There is no insentive to reinvest in your employees, infastructure, or business.
- more nonsense. With no regulations and taxes, what you have is exactly this - reinvestment to grow the capital.
Instead, the insentive is to hoard the cash.
- no, the government regulations are causing businesses in USA to so called 'hoard cash'. In reality of-course they are not hoarding cash, they are holding onto assets, getting rid of their USD denominated debt/credit/cash because of inflation that the Fed is causing and all of the taxes and regulations that prevent businesses from investing.
What do you think is the deal with all that money that is found in off-shore accounts for many businesses? They are not bringing it home because they made that money elsewhere and IRS will make them pay some insane taxes on the money. So the government regulations prevent money from re-entering the US economy and from being re-invested.
Who in their right mind believes that people/businesses with cash actually want to SIT on it rather than reinvest it to GROW it? This is such a nonsense idea, again, we are all dumber now for having been exposed to it.
The trend them seems to be that executives are paid millions and competition is bought out.
- the trend in USA is that government is in the middle of all industries, subsidizing the failed corporations and mis-allocating credit from private sector to all sorts of government programs, destroying incentives to invest. Largest US financial (and some other) companies are bankrupt and are being heavily subsidized not to disappear, but of-course it's 'lack of regulations' in your mind and not totalitarian government control over the economy and subsidies/bail outs that are causing this. More dumb shit.
reducing competition, efficiency, and global competitiveness.
- USA has its global competitiveness destroyed by its government, which destroy
Sure, but US Constitution is very specific about ability of government to limit individual rights when it concerns the right not to be searched, coerced into giving self-incriminating evidence, having property seized, etc.
- You think that a corporation's public benefit is the only way for it to survive other than government subsidy, but you're busy preventing corporations from exploiting and damaging people - the other way they survive, and thrive.
- nobody survives on the market who damages the public, not in the long run. The only way to survive in the market by doing this is to have government privileges and protections.
- You think that corporations don't buy assets they let their privileged elites use rather than let those elites buy them after taxes.
- I never said that corporations do not buy assets that the management/owner/worker of a company cannot use. That's stupid, that's what assets are for.
- You think those people pay the same taxes on their capital gains with which they're paid as their labor pays on their cash.
- no I do not think that because and you are making an assumption out of your ass. I disagree with income taxes completely, but I also disagree that capital gains should be taxed at different rate than other form of income.
However.
I disagree that a corporate tax should be paid and then taxes must be paid on dividends. This is where W. Buffet has you over the chair and you don't know it. He is lying to you that he is paying a lower tax rate than his 'secretary', but all of the corporate taxes that his company pays are his taxes.
- You think corporations spend their money in local or even the American economy at the rate that their labor does, rather than spending it in foreign economies or just exclusively inside the old-boy network that has little to no multiplier effect in America.
1. Quit putting words into my mouth. When I say 'economy', I do not at all say 'local economy'. 2. The reason for US companies not investing/re-investing in USA is government regulations, taxes, labor laws, subsidies and support to monopolies, inflation.
- You think that government actions that "distort the marketplace" are always bad,
- correct.
ignoring the ways in which the abuses of people an unregulated market always perpetrates are the primary government distortions.
- government's regulations only exist to provide ability for government to grow and to feed off the labor of others, nothing else. Abuses are far and between and without governments protecting industries from competition they eventually are weeded out by a wealthier society. All businesses make society wealthier by providing products/services society needs. If a business is not making society wealthier, it will eventually fail. A wealthier society is the only kind of society that can address issues of environment and other problems, poor societies cannot address such issues, as they are busy looking for food.
- You think that government subsidies that force innovations and lead private investment are damaging interference,
- yes, the only real innovation that government subsidies force, are the kind of innovations that make pumping money out of tax-payers pockets into pockets of selected individuals a more efficient procedure.
though they're time and again the necessary leadership that put and kept this country on top, even as corporations usually tried stopping, and eventually just leeched off of, the resulting American success.
- Marxist bullshit. No government intervention can produce a viable economy, that will live on its own without making the entire society poorer by taxes/reduction of choices/reduction of opportunities. Monopoly of government over so called 'innovation' is just a mis-appropriation of resources, nothing else.
It is the government that leeches of all the wealth that businesses create, not
No, they don't have First Amendment rights. They do have such protections assigned them by the courts, but they don't have rights.
again
The Court has recognized that First Amendment protection extends to corporations.... This protection has been extended by explicit holdings to the context of political speech.... Under the rationale of these precedents, political speech does not lose First Amendment protection Ãoesimply because its source is a corporation.Ã The Court has thus rejected the argument that political speech of corporations or other associations should be treated differently under the First Amendment simply because such associations are not natural persons.
So the courts found that the same rights are extended to the 'not natural persons', so you are arguing semantics.
You'll probably say they have the right to vote and run for president when the courts say they do.
- actually they must have the right to vote for president since they are regulated by the government while they shouldn't be. The excellent thing is that corporations did find a way to 'vote' with money. This is the unintended consequence of regulating business and it is right in your face, as another reason why government must not attempt to regulate business, because then business becomes government.
You're completely nuts, in a libertarian way.
- more worthless ad-hominem.
Your future is corporate anarchy.
- well, I am counting on it, I am working towards that goal and I moved to where this goal is closer to reality (away from the socialist united states of America).
Nobody will care that you're nuts then.
- more worthless ad-hominem.
You'll probably be happy, because you'll think you're right
- I know I am right.
Just like a completely nuts libertarian.
- more worthless ad-hominem.
A libertarian who's found some excuse to ignore being called what you are, based on something some other autistic libertarian told you.
-
1. More worthless ad-hominem. 2. I am a libertarian, when was I disagreeing on that point?
Corporations are indeed government creations of limited liability by the people who control the corporation. But that doesn't make it a "person". What made a corporation a person was a fraud perpetrated by Southern Pacific Railroad corporation after it sued Santa Clara County to evade taxes.
- I am acutely aware of specifics of this case.
No, you've got it all mixed together like a standard-issue "libertarian".
The Court has recognized that First Amendment protection extends to corporations.... This protection has been extended by explicit holdings to the context of political speech.... Under the rationale of these precedents, political speech does not lose First Amendment protection âoesimply because its source is a corporation.â The Court has thus rejected the argument that political speech of corporations or other associations should be treated differently under the First Amendment simply because such associations are not âoenatural persons.â
So with all this ad-hominem that you are throwing around, you getting such an important detail wrong, it's not good for you, because it's easy to reference this for future/. commentary.
Somehow when getting government benefits corporations are people, but when facing liabilities like convictions and taxes corporations are not people.
- you have your government to thank for it, because corporation as a legal entity only exists due to special government protections from liability.
Of-course at that point the corporations must have their 1st amendment rights, because otherwise they could be destroyed by government force by denying the corporation freedom of speech, which is needed for example for commercials.
Obviously all of this is wrong, the correct solution is to prevent government from meddling in businesses altogether, deny the government ability to create such entities, which limit liability from the management/owners.
This would be the correct solution, it would put the pressure on the management/owners to behave in a more responsible manner, while all of the first amendment rights would be also provided not to a 'faceless corporation', but specifically by the virtue of a person/persons who are pushing the message.
Corporations cost the public a lot of money. They should pay taxes.
- corporations are businesses that find a way to serve the public and if they did not find a way to do so for public benefit, then their existence can only continue if a government gets involved and subsidizes the company, like it's obviously happening with various "alternative energy" companies.
Corporate taxes make 0 sense, because the money that company makes either ends up reinvested, in which case the company is serving the market's needs or the money is taken out and the salaries/bonuses/dividends are paid, in which case the people who get this money are paying income taxes.
Thus all corporate profits either end up growing the economy or end up as income to individuals, and then income taxes are applied.
All of this means that government cutting into profits of a corporation distorts the market place and hurts the economy. The customers are better served when companies re-invest the money.
Government business subsidies sometimes have necessary strategic benefits, though usually the subsidies are just corruption.
- replace 'usually' with 'always', and we'll find something to agree upon.
The government regulating businesses is one of the most important jobs of government.
- in USA it is unconstitutional for government to meddle with people's private affairs without a court order, so all of this is complete nonsense. The only role that government ends up playing while regulating businesses is to ensure that the there is less competition than otherwise would have been, and this distorts the market and mis-allocates resources.
Unregulated business has a perfectly unbroken record of destroying economies and people.
- nonsense. There is no business that destroys economies or people unless government is involved in it.
You "libertarians" are really totally out of your minds.
- worthless ad-hominem.
Now income tax is a somewhat nonsensical basis for taxation... The sensible tax is a consumption tax
- I only agree in terms that income tax must not be and consumption tax is the only correct way for gov't to raise revenues, but I only agree nominally, because the reason for my disagreement comes from a different place - Constitution of USA. Forcing people to testify against themselves to report their business income and doing unreasonable search and confiscation of private property, all without a court order. Income tax disregards human rights.
People should pay proportional to the material benefit they get from the government that protects and enables that benefit
- nonsense.
Any tax is an exercise in forceful coercion and confiscation of private property, but at least with consumption taxes nobody is violating a person's right not to be searched/violated/confiscated and have to testify against self.
As to the rest of your calculations - none of it means anything. What can be done is this: if a person is making little money, he can then FREELY provide his income information to the tax office and have a refund/credit for the amount of consumption tax he paid based on some minimum amount of income that he is earning.
So if a person provides his/her information to the government on voluntary basis in exchange for a tax refund, than he should be refunded if he makes below certain amount. Any other scheme that has people taxed more for consumption based on their income bracket is unconstitutional and it is discriminatory.
If you "Libertarians" would get a grip on reality, your vocal energy would be well used getting us off income and property taxes and onto a pure sales tax. But when you say government has no business regulating business, you just discredit any good ideas you touched in your random walk outside the mainstream.
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I don't know how to explain this any better - I want GNU/Linux with Windows XP interface and behavior in terms of GUI.
Can I have it? Obviously not unless I completely write it myself. Would anybody want it except me?
It still looks weird without feet. It needs feet and big toes to be more like a human.
Oh, and also it needs to lose the metal beam connecting it to the circle, that's, I think, is the main difference between that and a human. That and all the metal.
Is it wrong to think about that robot in a sexual way? The only problem is, if I was building it, I would have put a vagina somewhere there. Maybe two.
I hear about this fad, it's called the USD. The thing about it is that it's a kind of a Trojan, such that if if you get paid in it, it immediately loses value. Apparently the hacker sits in a place called 'The Federal Reserve', and everybody is even familiar with the name, it's 'Ben'. And this guy spreads the USD around but it's insidious. You see, the virus is the USD itself, it's constantly being printed (not even literally printed, just created out of thin air in bank accounts of the Fed's member banks) and then the banks spread this stuff and sometimes the Fed itself spreads it around by the ton. The problem is obvious - with more and more USD around, the larger amount of them ends up chasing the same amount of goods/services/commodities, so relative to USD the prices seem to go up all the time, especially where the USD is exported to.
But apparently the other part of the trick is quickly to export the stuff out of the country of origin via various mechanisms, which are currently mostly relying on importing the ready manufactured goods and energy carriers, such as oil and gas, and this allows the prices in the country to stay relatively stable while out of the country the USD is hoarded by governments, who print their currency to buy the USD from banks, thus transferring the effects of this inflation upon the shoulders of the producers in the world, which immediately reflects for them in higher prices.
Obviously this hack is nearing its logical conclusion, with the USD saturation around the world nearing the levels, at which the further absorption becomes impossible due to the political situation at the nations that are absorbing it.
The wonderful social hack here is how many people are on board with this manner of status quo, while the same people seem to be in favor of more government spending on the 'poor', because they are 'suffering', all this while not noticing how any amount of value in the USD in the pockets of those very 'poor' burns a serious hole in the pocket of this guy Ben.
This is the biggest hack and Trojan ever, in the history of human civilization and it's so brazen and out in the open, that it is amazing that the perpetrators are still not found guilty of all sorts of machinations and are not thrown to jail or worse!
I assume you are talking about income taxes, yes? You know, great thing about US dollar is how easy it is to counterfeit it - the Fed is doing it all the time.
But lets look at an economy, where people do work and exchange the products of their work with each other directly, without ever using the currency of the local government for that exchange. Let's say it's a barter system. How does government tax someone's income if all the parties involved in the transactions do not do transactions in the fiat currency of that government? All of those transactions then would be considered 'gray' or 'black' market, right? Something off the radar of banks.
My bias is this: I don't see bitcoins as money.
However, imagine if some people start working with each other and for each other and start paying for everything they exchange with bitcoins rather than fiat currency. How would the local government tax those exchanges?
Now, never mind about the bitcoins. Let's talk about other types of currencies, be they gold or silver o aluminum or copper backed, whatever. If I have a bank account with aluminum in it and I buy something from a business or an individual and I pay with amount of aluminum for the transaction, not with your fiat currency, how would a government tax that transaction?
If I work for a company that pays me in silver, how would a government even know that I am paid at all with anything? If I am paid with silver, which is a transaction between my bank and my employer's bank and then I am using the silver to buy goods, which is a transaction between my bank and a vendor's bank, again, no fiat has exchanged hands.
How would government tax this?
You see, USA was built on a principle, it wasn't like every other country in the world. At the time people saw gold and silver as money (*and the smart ones see those metals as money today too, which Bernanke can't destroy by printing*), so the government wasn't passing a decree on what money is, but it passed a law that coins could be minted for you from your gold (that's still your gold and silver and those are still your coins, but government could mint them). So when the Constitution said: Congress can tax, obviously they weren't talking about taxing income, because that would not be possible even, because how would government ever know that gold or silver exchanged hands?
They were talking about taxes that could be imposed where they could physically impose them - like ocean ports or stores.
What I am saying is that the fiat money made it possible for governments to tax people's work, and going off the fiat money makes it much more difficult to tax people's work, because government cannot track those transactions.
Thus the government is obviously against return to the gold standard (the income taxes are nearly impossible to implement and the Fed can't print the money for Congress to waste), and if things like electronic currencies of any kind actually become wide spread, the governments will attempt to regulate and probably destroy them as well.
8,000,000 government issued patents is 8,000,000 more ways in which innovation in the economy is stifled. That's 8,000,000 ways to prevent people from attempting at bringing products to the market. That's 8,000,000 ways multiplied by each claim in each one of those patents, multiplied by the number of patent lawyers around to start lawsuits, which do nothing to improve anything in economy.
That's 8,000,000 ways in which government prevents wealth from being generated by the public sector. That's 8,000,000 ways to protect monopoly power. That's 8,000,000 ways to prevent choices in products from entering market and competing on merit. That's 8,000,000 ways in which other competing economies will have millions of competing products and wealth generated if they don't discard the notion of US patents, and since the USD power is diminishing every day, the other economies have fewer and fewer reasons to care about US patents.
That's 8,000,000 ways in which wealth is drawn from the private sector and is directed at government. That's probably just a small portion of all the patents that were ever looked at and evaluated and assessed.
That's 8,000,000 ways to corruption, as patents are granted without looking at the rules of the patent office itself, without prior art being considered and with ideas being patented that never should be patented even by the patent office rules.
That's 8,000,000 x X ways, that money was removed from private economy, where it can invested and was put into public sector, where it's squandered (where X is the ratio of patents filed to patents granted).
That's 8,000,000 - that's a fraction of the size of the government. The people in the patent office, if instead of working for government, they were working in the private sector, they could have been productive members of society.
8,000,000 ways to mod this comment we know how.
The browser cannot distinguish between a legitimate self-signed certificate and a MITM attack
1. Browser can't distinguish between MITM attack with or without a CA signed certificate either.
2. Where did you see me asking a browser to tell me that there is MITM attack in progress?
That's why using a self-signed certificate brings up the warning for a MITM attack.
- but it does NOT do it for plain old HTTP!
Why not? Do you know how often MITM attacks are implemented with just DNS look ups coming from browsers? Probably half of the ISPs out there are intercepting and redirecting your DNS calls. That's a MITM attack and you don't see a browser notifying the user about that little piece of information.
Again and again and again and again and again and again, I am not talking about MITM, I am not talking about providing 'security', I am talking about encryption between 2 points, and whether there is MITM in progress should not be left up to the browser or a CA to decide, but should be delegated to the user, who needs to know what the fingerprint is.
Don't give me a little 'lock' icon for HTTPS, but don't treat self signed certs like viruses. Don't put a lock in front of HTTPS sites with self signed certs, just give an icon for fingerprint, so that it can be looked at immediately without going through any menus.
Which part of: I do not want browsers to deal with security, I just want them to encrypt traffic if HTTPS is used is not clear?
If the SOP is to put a lock icon into the address bar for CA signed certs, that's fine. I don't trust CAs either, so I verify who I am connected to.
But for the self signed certs on HTTPS to be treated as if the computer is under attack and to confuse a normal user instead of silently encrypting the traffic and providing an easy way to verify the fingerprint - this speaks volumes about the corruption and the under the table dealings between the browser developers and CAs.
who is CLAIMING that it would protect against MITM attack? WHO is claiming it?
Is plain text authentication over HTTP protecting against MITM attack? Does anybody think so? Is plain HTTP treated like a virus by the browser? Is browser throwing a fit when a plain HTTP site is requested?
Also, are you saying it's impossible to have MITM attack when a cert is not self signed, but is signed by a CA? Are you for real?
Anyway, once again: nobody is claiming that a self signed cert prevents a MITM attack. The question is: how much are the browser development teams paid by the CAs to make HTTPS with a self signed cert look, as if the sites with them are attacking the user?
--
Again, a non-corrupt way to deal with self signed certs is to show an icon that this site has a self signed certificate, so that placing a mouse over the icon would immediately display the fingerprint, which could be compared to a known fingerprint (preventing the MITM attack BTW).
Also why aren't browsers displaying fingerprints for certificates that are CA signed if one places the mouse over the 'https' portion of the address? Isn't that a silent confirmation of CAs, saying they can't participate in attacking you? Please. This entire argument has nothing to do with technology, but is a perfect illustration of corruption.
No, he won't get any love from /., the big government propaganda machine, even though the idea of creating more competition in space of governments is a good idea on this planet, which has been dominated by large, monopoly corporation friendly monstrosities, that follow the same principles of print money for their 'economies' while producing little of anything except new regulations that nibble at personal freedoms day in and day out.
No, 1.25 Million isn't enough to build little ocean countries, yes it's still an interesting idea. Why is when it's insane government spending on wars and 'stimulus', then it's all fine and good business, but when it's a person trying something new, it's because that is an insane individual?
a sane, not a bought browser WOULD do that. It would NOT pretend that a self signed certificate is more dangerous somehow than plane HTTP and would just encrypt the traffic, show an icon for a self signed certificate where the fingerprint could be looked at and wouldn't show a 'lock' or whatever.
The sane and not a corrupt thing to do would be to encrypt the traffic with the self signed certificate, allow the user to check the fingerprint and not scare the user with insane alerts.
As I said, browser can clearly identify that a certificate is self signed, not pretend that a virus is attacking the computer from a site that the user is navigating to, and provide a fingerprint to compare.
NEVER MIND 'the little padlock', don't even show it for a self signed cert! Just don't make it look like the site is an attack on the user!
Do you know what a major PITA it is to deal with the insane browser policies that treat self signed certificates as if they are a terrorist organization, while giving a complete pass to the http based authorization with clear text passwords?
Bloody hell, what is wrong with this picture, where a self signed cert is actually presented as some form of a VIRUS almost to the end user, when all that is needed is a warning that there is a self signed certificate in the address bar, with an ability to mouse over to copy the fingerprint and compare it to a fingerprint found on a site or on a business card or email, etc?
How about making it easier for the web to adopt https in the first place by showing some humility and not behaving like total assholes on the part of the browser development/management teams and realize that majority of the sites that could use encryption for data transfers, especially where it concerns privacy matters, like user names / passwords, and rework the interface notifications that warn the users about self signed certs to something that doesn't look like a bomb is about to go off?
You have to wonder how much longer the wars can go on, how much more money can be printed and how much longer will China support subsidizing USA at these levels. Vote the right way and have troops come home, stop money printing and inflation, stop the wars. Nobody, Democrat or Republican will help you. The only choice who will do the correct thing is obviously Ron Paul.
That's why they are scared.
Think about the future of your country and vote the right way, even though media will have you believe Ron Paul is unelectable - it's nonsense. He is more electable than Bachmann and she and Pawlenty got all the attention.
Now, I am not saying that Ron Paul would change the laws of Massachusetts, but the federal laws on wiretapping, the entire 'Patriot Act', all of the government sponsored murder - it is at least as important and more so. No democrat and no Republican would do anything about this. It's all bought and paid for. The only person to fight this head on is Ron Paul and they are scared.
Then Google would be a late comer to an already existing market, like the Somalian market that uses phones for almost all payments.
Yes, that very Somalia that everybody wants the Libertarians to move to - they have. That's why it has the fastest government free market with the most innovation in payment technology. Of-course it's the most competitive way to do payments there outside of cash, because there aren't many bank outlets around.
Great racket by the government, isn't it?
Gold and silver coins are still legal tender in USA, but if you hold gold/silver the government will want you to pay capital gains tax if you sell, but the only reason why the nominal prices in USD are going higher is due to the inflation that the Fed creates.
So in reality they want this capital gains tax from you because you managed not to be affected by the government created inflation and they are pretty pissed about it.
The correct thing to do of-course is to move your gold/silver out of US and to put it into a bank (if any bank outside of US will want to deal with you of-course, because US government made it pretty much impossible now for the so called 'free' people of USA to have bank accounts outside of USA) and have gold/silver backed credit card, which will convert the metal into currency for you when you need it. This way you get real inflation protection and if you can manage this somehow, you won't have to pay the crazy capital gains tax on actual money!
A lack of government regulation and intervention has almost ruined this economy, just like it already has ruined others.
- not lack of regulation, the exact opposite is the case. Existence of government regulations is what is ruining the economy.
FDIC, FHA, Freddie/Fannie, Fed created inflation, 1%-0% interest rates, labor laws that end up killing off smaller competitors and promote large monopolies/oligopolies, income taxes and money printing, which destroy ability of people to save and start their own businesses.
If you require a more specific explanation than the above on how government regulations caused the 2008 crash, my sig has it.
Look at the nations that have never been able to succeed economically....the lack of government control and regulation has been the problem.
- the opposite is true, your statement is false. US economy was growing the most during industrialization and mostly free market capitalism in 19 century, not past 1913, when government growth and Fed caused inflation stifled business.
The heavier the government involvement is, the less likely the economy to increase the wealth of society.
China is going to need far more government control and regulation to continue that economic growth, it is very clear.
- this makes not just 0 sense, it makes negative amounts of it. We are all dumber for having read this.
China had to let go of so much government regulations and rules from the Communist era to get where it is, and it will have to let go of more of it, especially the currency controls if it wants to have more growth and wealth creation.
Second, businesses being untaxed is a recipe for disaster.
- wow, that must have been a real disaster in the US in 19 century, as the competition and re-investment turned USA around and made it the world's largest creditor out of world's greatest debtor.
There is no insentive to reinvest in your employees, infastructure, or business.
- more nonsense. With no regulations and taxes, what you have is exactly this - reinvestment to grow the capital.
Instead, the insentive is to hoard the cash.
- no, the government regulations are causing businesses in USA to so called 'hoard cash'. In reality of-course they are not hoarding cash, they are holding onto assets, getting rid of their USD denominated debt/credit/cash because of inflation that the Fed is causing and all of the taxes and regulations that prevent businesses from investing.
What do you think is the deal with all that money that is found in off-shore accounts for many businesses? They are not bringing it home because they made that money elsewhere and IRS will make them pay some insane taxes on the money. So the government regulations prevent money from re-entering the US economy and from being re-invested.
Who in their right mind believes that people/businesses with cash actually want to SIT on it rather than reinvest it to GROW it? This is such a nonsense idea, again, we are all dumber now for having been exposed to it.
The trend them seems to be that executives are paid millions and competition is bought out.
- the trend in USA is that government is in the middle of all industries, subsidizing the failed corporations and mis-allocating credit from private sector to all sorts of government programs, destroying incentives to invest. Largest US financial (and some other) companies are bankrupt and are being heavily subsidized not to disappear, but of-course it's 'lack of regulations' in your mind and not totalitarian government control over the economy and subsidies/bail outs that are causing this. More dumb shit.
reducing competition, efficiency, and global competitiveness.
- USA has its global competitiveness destroyed by its government, which destroy
Sure, but US Constitution is very specific about ability of government to limit individual rights when it concerns the right not to be searched, coerced into giving self-incriminating evidence, having property seized, etc.
You Ron Paul libertarians are completely nuts:
- worthless ad-hominem.
- You think that a corporation's public benefit is the only way for it to survive other than government subsidy, but you're busy preventing corporations from exploiting and damaging people - the other way they survive, and thrive.
- nobody survives on the market who damages the public, not in the long run. The only way to survive in the market by doing this is to have government privileges and protections.
- You think that corporations don't buy assets they let their privileged elites use rather than let those elites buy them after taxes.
- I never said that corporations do not buy assets that the management/owner/worker of a company cannot use. That's stupid, that's what assets are for.
- You think those people pay the same taxes on their capital gains with which they're paid as their labor pays on their cash.
- no I do not think that because and you are making an assumption out of your ass. I disagree with income taxes completely, but I also disagree that capital gains should be taxed at different rate than other form of income.
However.
I disagree that a corporate tax should be paid and then taxes must be paid on dividends. This is where W. Buffet has you over the chair and you don't know it. He is lying to you that he is paying a lower tax rate than his 'secretary', but all of the corporate taxes that his company pays are his taxes.
- You think corporations spend their money in local or even the American economy at the rate that their labor does, rather than spending it in foreign economies or just exclusively inside the old-boy network that has little to no multiplier effect in America.
1. Quit putting words into my mouth. When I say 'economy', I do not at all say 'local economy'.
2. The reason for US companies not investing/re-investing in USA is government regulations, taxes, labor laws, subsidies and support to monopolies, inflation.
- You think that government actions that "distort the marketplace" are always bad,
- correct.
ignoring the ways in which the abuses of people an unregulated market always perpetrates are the primary government distortions.
- government's regulations only exist to provide ability for government to grow and to feed off the labor of others, nothing else. Abuses are far and between and without governments protecting industries from competition they eventually are weeded out by a wealthier society. All businesses make society wealthier by providing products/services society needs. If a business is not making society wealthier, it will eventually fail. A wealthier society is the only kind of society that can address issues of environment and other problems, poor societies cannot address such issues, as they are busy looking for food.
- You think that government subsidies that force innovations and lead private investment are damaging interference,
- yes, the only real innovation that government subsidies force, are the kind of innovations that make pumping money out of tax-payers pockets into pockets of selected individuals a more efficient procedure.
though they're time and again the necessary leadership that put and kept this country on top, even as corporations usually tried stopping, and eventually just leeched off of, the resulting American success.
- Marxist bullshit. No government intervention can produce a viable economy, that will live on its own without making the entire society poorer by taxes/reduction of choices/reduction of opportunities. Monopoly of government over so called 'innovation' is just a mis-appropriation of resources, nothing else.
It is the government that leeches of all the wealth that businesses create, not
No, they don't have First Amendment rights. They do have such protections assigned them by the courts, but they don't have rights.
again
The Court has recognized that First Amendment protection extends to corporations. ... This protection has been extended by explicit holdings to the context of political speech. ... Under the rationale of these precedents, political speech does not lose First Amendment protection Ãoesimply because its source is a corporation.Ã The Court has thus rejected the argument that political speech of corporations or other associations should be treated differently under the First Amendment simply because such associations are not natural persons.
So the courts found that the same rights are extended to the 'not natural persons', so you are arguing semantics.
You'll probably say they have the right to vote and run for president when the courts say they do.
- actually they must have the right to vote for president since they are regulated by the government while they shouldn't be. The excellent thing is that corporations did find a way to 'vote' with money. This is the unintended consequence of regulating business and it is right in your face, as another reason why government must not attempt to regulate business, because then business becomes government.
You're completely nuts, in a libertarian way.
- more worthless ad-hominem.
Your future is corporate anarchy.
- well, I am counting on it, I am working towards that goal and I moved to where this goal is closer to reality (away from the socialist united states of America).
Nobody will care that you're nuts then.
- more worthless ad-hominem.
You'll probably be happy, because you'll think you're right
- I know I am right.
Just like a completely nuts libertarian.
- more worthless ad-hominem.
A libertarian who's found some excuse to ignore being called what you are, based on something some other autistic libertarian told you.
-
1. More worthless ad-hominem.
2. I am a libertarian, when was I disagreeing on that point?
Goodbye.
sure.
Corporations are indeed government creations of limited liability by the people who control the corporation. But that doesn't make it a "person". What made a corporation a person was a fraud perpetrated by Southern Pacific Railroad corporation after it sued Santa Clara County to evade taxes.
- I am acutely aware of specifics of this case.
No, you've got it all mixed together like a standard-issue "libertarian".
- more worthless ad-hominem drivel.
Corporations don't have 1st Amendment rights
Except they do
The Court has recognized that First Amendment protection extends to corporations. ... This protection has been extended by explicit holdings to the context of political speech. ... Under the rationale of these precedents, political speech does not lose First Amendment protection âoesimply because its source is a corporation.â The Court has thus rejected the argument that political speech of corporations or other associations should be treated differently under the First Amendment simply because such associations are not âoenatural persons.â
So with all this ad-hominem that you are throwing around, you getting such an important detail wrong, it's not good for you, because it's easy to reference this for future /. commentary.
Somehow when getting government benefits corporations are people, but when facing liabilities like convictions and taxes corporations are not people.
- you have your government to thank for it, because corporation as a legal entity only exists due to special government protections from liability.
Of-course at that point the corporations must have their 1st amendment rights, because otherwise they could be destroyed by government force by denying the corporation freedom of speech, which is needed for example for commercials.
Obviously all of this is wrong, the correct solution is to prevent government from meddling in businesses altogether, deny the government ability to create such entities, which limit liability from the management/owners.
This would be the correct solution, it would put the pressure on the management/owners to behave in a more responsible manner, while all of the first amendment rights would be also provided not to a 'faceless corporation', but specifically by the virtue of a person/persons who are pushing the message.
Corporations cost the public a lot of money. They should pay taxes.
- corporations are businesses that find a way to serve the public and if they did not find a way to do so for public benefit, then their existence can only continue if a government gets involved and subsidizes the company, like it's obviously happening with various "alternative energy" companies.
Corporate taxes make 0 sense, because the money that company makes either ends up reinvested, in which case the company is serving the market's needs or the money is taken out and the salaries/bonuses/dividends are paid, in which case the people who get this money are paying income taxes.
Thus all corporate profits either end up growing the economy or end up as income to individuals, and then income taxes are applied.
All of this means that government cutting into profits of a corporation distorts the market place and hurts the economy. The customers are better served when companies re-invest the money.
Government business subsidies sometimes have necessary strategic benefits, though usually the subsidies are just corruption.
- replace 'usually' with 'always', and we'll find something to agree upon.
The government regulating businesses is one of the most important jobs of government.
- in USA it is unconstitutional for government to meddle with people's private affairs without a court order, so all of this is complete nonsense. The only role that government ends up playing while regulating businesses is to ensure that the there is less competition than otherwise would have been, and this distorts the market and mis-allocates resources.
Unregulated business has a perfectly unbroken record of destroying economies and people.
- nonsense. There is no business that destroys economies or people unless government is involved in it.
You "libertarians" are really totally out of your minds.
- worthless ad-hominem.
Now income tax is a somewhat nonsensical basis for taxation ... The sensible tax is a consumption tax
- I only agree in terms that income tax must not be and consumption tax is the only correct way for gov't to raise revenues, but I only agree nominally, because the reason for my disagreement comes from a different place - Constitution of USA. Forcing people to testify against themselves to report their business income and doing unreasonable search and confiscation of private property, all without a court order. Income tax disregards human rights.
People should pay proportional to the material benefit they get from the government that protects and enables that benefit
- nonsense.
Any tax is an exercise in forceful coercion and confiscation of private property, but at least with consumption taxes nobody is violating a person's right not to be searched/violated/confiscated and have to testify against self.
As to the rest of your calculations - none of it means anything. What can be done is this: if a person is making little money, he can then FREELY provide his income information to the tax office and have a refund/credit for the amount of consumption tax he paid based on some minimum amount of income that he is earning.
So if a person provides his/her information to the government on voluntary basis in exchange for a tax refund, than he should be refunded if he makes below certain amount. Any other scheme that has people taxed more for consumption based on their income bracket is unconstitutional and it is discriminatory.
If you "Libertarians" would get a grip on reality, your vocal energy would be well used getting us off income and property taxes and onto a pure sales tax. But when you say government has no business regulating business, you just discredit any good ideas you touched in your random walk outside the mainstream.
- Ron Paul 2012.
you are replying in the wrong thread.
I'm really quite surprised that by now we're not seeing manufacturers trying to license physical goods
- AT&T had government monopoly and was doing exactly that for a very long time - leasing you the phone.