although it neglects to say how we're all expected to bend over while our fair use of stuff we paid for is taken away from us
okay, the obvious response is... don't buy it. if the market shows that it will not accept this kind of thing, they will take it off the market. if the market will buy this kind of thing, they will make more of them and work on even nastier things.
so no, we're not expected to 'bend over', we're expected to choose between mass-manufactured pop crap on a (more than likely soon to be broken) 'secure disk' and other forms of music consumption.
so don't whine about being screwed by the record company, they are doing what they do best. if you don't like what they are doing DON'T BUY THEIR STUPID CDs.
sheesh...
is NOT their database. i could care less if they make money by selling their server logs (properly anonymized, of course!). what DOES bother me is that they join a looooooooong list of companies that do this without telling their users up-front. i mean, come on. they think we won't find out? i don't care what someone does with my anonymous usage as long as they tell me first. but doing it 'secretly' is just stupid, stupid, stupid.
hell yeah. you wake up in a start to someone's snoring (your own) and your cheek is stuck to the desk in a puddle of drool. ahh... memories... of course i remember all the interesting face-imprint patterns kids with sweaters would get. "Wow, the stitching on that guy's sweater is immaculate. Look at the waffle pattern indented into his forehead!"
let's say a computer company comes out with a new operating system called 'Linux' and used the popularity of the current 'Linux' to sell a million copies, thus confusing the heck outta consumers. how mad would everybody be? sheesh grow some sense.
The question isn't about a TRUE TRADEMARK but the MOVIE TRADEMARK 'Diablo'. I do not know anything about 'movie trademark' or laws concerning thereof.
Also, your idea of TM-ing 'burger' and suing McDonald's is very different from this case. If you had a trademark on the sandwich 'Big Mac' and a competitor then LATER came out with a sandwich 'Big Mac', this is the similar case to the Blizzard vs. New Line.
Again the courts will decide whether New Line's use of 'Diablo' as their movie title is INTENDED TO CAUSE HARM TO BLIZZARD or INTENDED TO CONFUSE CONSUMERS. This is not about trademarking a word in the spanish dictionary, this is a 'movie mark' case which I seriously doubt many people have any knowledge about (and again I certainly have NONE).
it clearly states Blizzard filed for AND RECEIVED the MOVIE MARK 'Diablo'. Not sure wtf a 'Movie Mark' is but I'm guessing it means something along the lines of, 'We are allowed to make movies with the title DIABLO and you are not.' And it is not like they filed it in 1950 and are just now thinking 'oh a Diablo movie would be cool' they filed it in 1995 and have been working on effects, sound, etc for same. New Line comes along and goes, 'Gee, wouldn't it be great to lure a bunch of people into thinking this is the cool Blizzard video game which was so popular and thus drive up our own ticket sales?' This is EXACTLY the same as a new fast food store opening up down the street and Hanging a big 'golden arch' over their doors and calling their place 'McDonald's', selling burgers and wearing the hats, etc. i don't think in general the vague notion of 'IP' is cool at all, but this is a freakin' trademark. New Line didn't even name the movie 'Diabolo' or anything remotely dissimilar, they named it Diablo and the suit accuses them of doing so to use their established mark 'Diablo' to gain exposure for their unrelated work. The outcome of the suit will decide the validity of this claim.
I've got a SUN external disk enclosure made of cast-iron plates beneath the SUN plastic-looking thing. It is about as big as a shoebox and it is half-full of one 700-meg SUN scsi drive, and sounds like a damned torpedo when it turns on. It is a heavy mother, but supposedly with the cast-iron plates it can withstand EMP.
of course, if you click on the where to buy at the disk on key site, you get directed to this product at ibm.com...
so if this really does work with win/mac/linux, and this is the same product, everyone can stop whining about 'no linux support'. the website says clearly 'linux 2.4 supported'.
-sam
talk about a smart card. put your PGP sig on it and use it to sign checks, etc.
how about it IS your car key, you and your spouse have 'em and your car sets all kinds of info for you, radio stations, etc.
keep a 'theme song' in mp3 on your keychain. that's my theme music.
this on one device i'm going to have to try. the wife and i both have USB laptops now and USB is everywhere enough that such a 'key' would be cool. i'd love to see it in, say, 32 MB or so. then little USB+LCD+HeadphoneJack devices which play MP3s would be easy.
anyway...
Was I the only one who found it a bit weird the first time Rhodomus (sp?) transformed into his new rig and his trailer just comes outta nowhere. Heh heh heh. I remember this WERID GIJOE/TF comic book I had as a kid where they actually used Optimus' rig as a gun turret? Maybe I'm remembering wrong. Anyway that comic was actually pretty cool, other than I *think* Bumblebee was killed off.
ps - thanks for the correction. what was i thinking with the shockwave thing? at least i got some responses for a change:)... frknfrk!
The Autobot tape deck was Blaster.
The Decepticon tape deck was Shockwave. I loved his filtered-out voice! Not all the tapes were animals though, remember Rumble? He was that little Decepticon tape guy whose armed were big pistons and caused like earthquakes, etc.
I still like remembering their voices, and hearing Optimus Prime's on Movie trailers really weirds me out:) I've been trying to rent the Transformers the Movie DVD (it came out recently) but it is consistenly out of stock.
And Optimus Prime's little cousin-truck-dude, you mean Rodumus Prime? I know they were related, I can't remember how. It's really sad I can remember this much as it is...... frknfrk!
i hate for my first posting to/. in a while to be so indecisive, but man, i have no idea what to make of this. i really really really am opposed to child pornography, ficticious drawing or otherwise... and i really want speech on the web to be as free is it can be - no, infinitely free. i guess i answer for myself: as horribly as this is, etc, etc, for infinite freedom of the web you'd have to allow it. but of course this would extend to actual child pornography, and so back to the conondrum.
who decides what is moral? i really hate questions like this, darn you/. for making me think and hurting my brain, as if trying to debug these stupid Java native calls aren't painful enough.
but in all seriousness this is definately the type of issue we all have to deal with: and fight for if the price becomes too great. but remember, there are a lot of people with lots of dollars and lots of determination (read: years of christian-doctrine-induced guilt and fear of hell) to fight every step of the way...... frknfrk!
re: By the way, who defines "the wrong way" for electors to cast their ballots? I hope you weren't going to say you,
since you're only one voice among millions, with only your own beliefs backing you and not any hard data. I also
hope you weren't going to say the people who cast those 19,000 ballots, since we will never know who they were
and thus cannot fairly state who they would have picked.
I think I said in my post: would hope that the florida electoral college would like to know who they wanted to vote for before casting their electoral votes the wrong way.
by "the wrong way" i most certainly do not mean me, i am not even a citizen of florida. what i meant was the electoral votes should reflect the expressed wishes of the people of florida. personally i think that since the people are obviously divided, so should the electoral votes (13-12) but like i said, i am not a floridian and it is not up to me.
and by the way, at least a few people realised they had messed up their ballots and requested new ones, however the volunteers at the polls just took their ballots and plunked them into the box and told them to go away, they'd had their chance, even though it clearly states, in layman's terms, "if you mess up on accident, simply request a new ballot and you will be given a chance to rectify the situation." anyway, whichever way the vote goes, it will be very very close and obviously florida is not 100 percent sure who should be president, so why should 100 percent of their electoral votes go to either candidate? neither deserves them all.
-sam
abcnews (or it might have been cnn) stated that over 19,000 ballots from palm county were thrown out because more than one vote for president was punched. this is in comparison with something like 3,000 ballots which were thrown out due to senate races, etc. 19,000 votes from a heavily democratic county would be interesting to know who those people actually wanted to vote for, i would hope that the florida electoral college would like to know who they wanted to vote for before casting their electoral votes the wrong way.
also, anyone else read (also on cnn or abcnews, i cannot remember of course) about the fbi investigation into phone and election fraud by a republican phone bank in california? apparently, democrats in west virginia were being told by callers that the WV governor had not endorsed Gore, when in fact Gore was the first Democratic candidate the WV governer had endorsed since LBJ. Also another state received calls from the phone bank telling voters if they tried to go to the polls without their actual physical voter's registration card, they could be in serious legal trouble.
anyway...
-sam
okay i'll respond here so you can see from your user page that i've responded. very cool to discuss with you.
the only problem i have with your arguments (i also happen to believe in personal control, not government control) is that these diverse states are affected by 'not invented here syndrome' when not under the watch of the federal government. look at texas: nearly the bottom in education and health, yet one of the most independent and financially successful states. the 'haves' have no impetus to stop trampling the 'have-notes' within a state. this is the fundamental problem with capitalism and 'trickle-down' economics: the good of the economoy at the cost of the people. but like i've said i am not a genius and do not know how to solve these kinds of problems.
although i do agree that it is impossible to get an overwhelming majority of the people to decide on anything, and that within a discrete state a consensus actually can be reached.
but as the election and polls showed, that would leave states like ohio, kentucky, west virginia, etc, to make their own environmental law, and they choose against clean air and water because they are economically based on coal, etc. however their environmental problems are not theirs alone, if ohio has no clean air laws, and pollution blows east into pennsylvania, can PA sue OH for the smog? What about thirty years from now when the pollution begins to erode at the atmosphere?
similarly, problems occur from grand differences in drinking laws (teens from state X flow to state Y every night to drink then go to their home state). state A has a strong welfare program, but state B's poor and homeless move into state A to get these benefits, destroying the system.
and you brought up public education ran by the states. the libertarian local candidates in my state (NC) looked very promising with their talks of campaign reform, drug reform, etc, until they started with the 'privatize public education' strand. again texas is a good example, an independent state ranking near the bottom in education. i'd talk more but i have a nasty cough and it's getting late and my wife wants some laundry done:) who says we live in a democratic republic, this is a matriarchy.
sometimes i expect the 'perfect solution' to appear to all problems, and although i know no such solution exists, i know there has to be better solutions than the ones we have.
hope we can continue this... -sam
yes yes yes this is the issue at heart. but i'd add all people who by circumstance cannot provide for themslves, not just the incompetent. such as people born into poverty and locked there by 'trickle down' economics, etc. i wish we could do something about the lazy people, but hell, i guess they have a right to be lazy? dunno about that one...
peace, -sam
yes, and the sample ballots had the candidates listed in a different order. but that's not my point here. my point here is that for one, there were reports directly from exit polls that people were confused, not after the election was done. and for two, palm beach being the democratic, jewish community that it is, 3000 votes for as 'born again' of a candidate as you'll ever find seems fishy to me.
of course i'm just pissed off because my neighbor, a college student, still has his absentee ballot for florida sitting on his desk. oops.
-sam
The thing I can't figure out is that most/. readers are probably in the same boat. According the the liberals they are rich. Why do they then support this socialist crap? I don't know.
Yup, I'm in the same boat. I'm considered rich, but I can't afford to fix my dying car let alone buy a decent one. I believe in 0 government.
So why do I vote for 'socialist crap'?
Because conservatives and libertarians want to destroy the public school system which gave me my education.
Because conservatives and libertarians want to destroy social programs like food stamps which kept me and my family fed while i got that education
Because conservatives and libertarians want to get rid of or slash the budget for the fine arts
Because 0 government will never work because people are greedy and that means that many people will SUFFER
Because I actually have a conscience, and compassion for my fellow man who may have not been as fortunate as me. It could just as easily be me who was in a car accident leaving me paralyzed, but it wasn't. It could just as easily be me whose parents were rednecks and did not think school or education was worth sending their 'boy' out to get. It could just as easily be me who was born in the ghetto with nearly no possibly way out except through help.
you think a libertarian government could succeed in the current state of affairs? prisons, sewers, clean air and water, decent schools, these are things each state can consider to be somebody else's problem. that is why the federal government HAS to do these things.
sure, i'd like to keep the 35% which disappears from my paycheck, so i could afford to go to a decent doctor and buy a car or house (or both). but i'll give up what is necessary for the country to be a better country.
I don't happen to agree that 35% is necessary, I would think that with at least some brains and technology a MUCH lower tax would be necessary.
and to the parent post, which i believe mentioned a flat tax: why? 15% of minimum wage is a lot more to that person than 15% of a millionaire. i didn't say it was fair to have a graduated income tax, but it is more fair than placing the burden on people who cannot sustain themselves under it.
so if i were a libertarian, i'd perhaps think of ways to streamline government spending, not eliminate programs like public school and socialized medical insurance. these are necessary parts of a consciencious society which has left a very large number of its citizens behind in its quest for progress. when all citizens can afford to eat, educate their children, and get medical attention, not to mention walk their neighborhoods without fear, THAT is when a libertarian government could work. but not before, unless you have other ways to keep people fed, healthy, educated, and safe without government.
i have no idea where this came from or where it's going, and i am an idiot.
-sam
Slashdot Mirror
although it neglects to say how we're all expected to bend over while our fair use of stuff we paid for is taken away from us okay, the obvious response is... don't buy it. if the market shows that it will not accept this kind of thing, they will take it off the market. if the market will buy this kind of thing, they will make more of them and work on even nastier things. so no, we're not expected to 'bend over', we're expected to choose between mass-manufactured pop crap on a (more than likely soon to be broken) 'secure disk' and other forms of music consumption. so don't whine about being screwed by the record company, they are doing what they do best. if you don't like what they are doing DON'T BUY THEIR STUPID CDs. sheesh...
unfortunately the slashdot article presents a much different picture. thank you for the correction.
is NOT their database. i could care less if they make money by selling their server logs (properly anonymized, of course!). what DOES bother me is that they join a looooooooong list of companies that do this without telling their users up-front. i mean, come on. they think we won't find out? i don't care what someone does with my anonymous usage as long as they tell me first. but doing it 'secretly' is just stupid, stupid, stupid.
hell yeah. you wake up in a start to someone's snoring (your own) and your cheek is stuck to the desk in a puddle of drool. ahh... memories... of course i remember all the interesting face-imprint patterns kids with sweaters would get. "Wow, the stitching on that guy's sweater is immaculate. Look at the waffle pattern indented into his forehead!"
let's say a computer company comes out with a new operating system called 'Linux' and used the popularity of the current 'Linux' to sell a million copies, thus confusing the heck outta consumers. how mad would everybody be? sheesh grow some sense.
The question isn't about a TRUE TRADEMARK but the MOVIE TRADEMARK 'Diablo'. I do not know anything about 'movie trademark' or laws concerning thereof. Also, your idea of TM-ing 'burger' and suing McDonald's is very different from this case. If you had a trademark on the sandwich 'Big Mac' and a competitor then LATER came out with a sandwich 'Big Mac', this is the similar case to the Blizzard vs. New Line. Again the courts will decide whether New Line's use of 'Diablo' as their movie title is INTENDED TO CAUSE HARM TO BLIZZARD or INTENDED TO CONFUSE CONSUMERS. This is not about trademarking a word in the spanish dictionary, this is a 'movie mark' case which I seriously doubt many people have any knowledge about (and again I certainly have NONE).
it clearly states Blizzard filed for AND RECEIVED the MOVIE MARK 'Diablo'. Not sure wtf a 'Movie Mark' is but I'm guessing it means something along the lines of, 'We are allowed to make movies with the title DIABLO and you are not.' And it is not like they filed it in 1950 and are just now thinking 'oh a Diablo movie would be cool' they filed it in 1995 and have been working on effects, sound, etc for same. New Line comes along and goes, 'Gee, wouldn't it be great to lure a bunch of people into thinking this is the cool Blizzard video game which was so popular and thus drive up our own ticket sales?' This is EXACTLY the same as a new fast food store opening up down the street and Hanging a big 'golden arch' over their doors and calling their place 'McDonald's', selling burgers and wearing the hats, etc. i don't think in general the vague notion of 'IP' is cool at all, but this is a freakin' trademark. New Line didn't even name the movie 'Diabolo' or anything remotely dissimilar, they named it Diablo and the suit accuses them of doing so to use their established mark 'Diablo' to gain exposure for their unrelated work. The outcome of the suit will decide the validity of this claim.
if( Education_of_policy_makers == Outlaw_open_source ) {
jim_allchin_of_microsoft_said = Microsoft_feels_open_source_is_a_threat;
}
I've got a SUN external disk enclosure made of cast-iron plates beneath the SUN plastic-looking thing. It is about as big as a shoebox and it is half-full of one 700-meg SUN scsi drive, and sounds like a damned torpedo when it turns on. It is a heavy mother, but supposedly with the cast-iron plates it can withstand EMP.
of course, if you click on the where to buy at the disk on key site, you get directed to this product at ibm.com... so if this really does work with win/mac/linux, and this is the same product, everyone can stop whining about 'no linux support'. the website says clearly 'linux 2.4 supported'. -sam
i couldn't see a way to order the trek from that site. where to get this?
talk about a smart card. put your PGP sig on it and use it to sign checks, etc.
how about it IS your car key, you and your spouse have 'em and your car sets all kinds of info for you, radio stations, etc.
keep a 'theme song' in mp3 on your keychain. that's my theme music.
this on one device i'm going to have to try. the wife and i both have USB laptops now and USB is everywhere enough that such a 'key' would be cool. i'd love to see it in, say, 32 MB or so. then little USB+LCD+HeadphoneJack devices which play MP3s would be easy.
anyway...
My friend has a ThinkPad, and IBM provides all kinds of utilities for it under Linux: APM controls, ports, etc. His laptop looks nice (gnome/etc).
Was I the only one who found it a bit weird the first time Rhodomus (sp?) transformed into his new rig and his trailer just comes outta nowhere. Heh heh heh. I remember this WERID GIJOE/TF comic book I had as a kid where they actually used Optimus' rig as a gun turret? Maybe I'm remembering wrong. Anyway that comic was actually pretty cool, other than I *think* Bumblebee was killed off. ps - thanks for the correction. what was i thinking with the shockwave thing? at least i got some responses for a change :) ... frknfrk!
The Autobot tape deck was Blaster. The Decepticon tape deck was Shockwave. I loved his filtered-out voice! Not all the tapes were animals though, remember Rumble? He was that little Decepticon tape guy whose armed were big pistons and caused like earthquakes, etc. I still like remembering their voices, and hearing Optimus Prime's on Movie trailers really weirds me out :) I've been trying to rent the Transformers the Movie DVD (it came out recently) but it is consistenly out of stock.
And Optimus Prime's little cousin-truck-dude, you mean Rodumus Prime? I know they were related, I can't remember how. It's really sad I can remember this much as it is... ... frknfrk!
i hate for my first posting to /. in a while to be so indecisive, but man, i have no idea what to make of this. i really really really am opposed to child pornography, ficticious drawing or otherwise... and i really want speech on the web to be as free is it can be - no, infinitely free. i guess i answer for myself: as horribly as this is, etc, etc, for infinite freedom of the web you'd have to allow it. but of course this would extend to actual child pornography, and so back to the conondrum.
who decides what is moral? i really hate questions like this, darn you /. for making me think and hurting my brain, as if trying to debug these stupid Java native calls aren't painful enough.
but in all seriousness this is definately the type of issue we all have to deal with: and fight for if the price becomes too great. but remember, there are a lot of people with lots of dollars and lots of determination (read: years of christian-doctrine-induced guilt and fear of hell) to fight every step of the way... ... frknfrk!
re: By the way, who defines "the wrong way" for electors to cast their ballots? I hope you weren't going to say you, since you're only one voice among millions, with only your own beliefs backing you and not any hard data. I also hope you weren't going to say the people who cast those 19,000 ballots, since we will never know who they were and thus cannot fairly state who they would have picked. I think I said in my post: would hope that the florida electoral college would like to know who they wanted to vote for before casting their electoral votes the wrong way. by "the wrong way" i most certainly do not mean me, i am not even a citizen of florida. what i meant was the electoral votes should reflect the expressed wishes of the people of florida. personally i think that since the people are obviously divided, so should the electoral votes (13-12) but like i said, i am not a floridian and it is not up to me. and by the way, at least a few people realised they had messed up their ballots and requested new ones, however the volunteers at the polls just took their ballots and plunked them into the box and told them to go away, they'd had their chance, even though it clearly states, in layman's terms, "if you mess up on accident, simply request a new ballot and you will be given a chance to rectify the situation." anyway, whichever way the vote goes, it will be very very close and obviously florida is not 100 percent sure who should be president, so why should 100 percent of their electoral votes go to either candidate? neither deserves them all. -sam
The CNN page on the palm beach ballot shows that the sample ballot had reversed positions of gore and bush, fyi.
abcnews watchdog scroll over halfway down and read 'Possibly More False Information'. -sam
link to story about disqualified ballots and i can't currently find the phone fraud link atm, i'll post it when i do. -sam
abcnews (or it might have been cnn) stated that over 19,000 ballots from palm county were thrown out because more than one vote for president was punched. this is in comparison with something like 3,000 ballots which were thrown out due to senate races, etc. 19,000 votes from a heavily democratic county would be interesting to know who those people actually wanted to vote for, i would hope that the florida electoral college would like to know who they wanted to vote for before casting their electoral votes the wrong way. also, anyone else read (also on cnn or abcnews, i cannot remember of course) about the fbi investigation into phone and election fraud by a republican phone bank in california? apparently, democrats in west virginia were being told by callers that the WV governor had not endorsed Gore, when in fact Gore was the first Democratic candidate the WV governer had endorsed since LBJ. Also another state received calls from the phone bank telling voters if they tried to go to the polls without their actual physical voter's registration card, they could be in serious legal trouble. anyway... -sam
okay i'll respond here so you can see from your user page that i've responded. very cool to discuss with you. the only problem i have with your arguments (i also happen to believe in personal control, not government control) is that these diverse states are affected by 'not invented here syndrome' when not under the watch of the federal government. look at texas: nearly the bottom in education and health, yet one of the most independent and financially successful states. the 'haves' have no impetus to stop trampling the 'have-notes' within a state. this is the fundamental problem with capitalism and 'trickle-down' economics: the good of the economoy at the cost of the people. but like i've said i am not a genius and do not know how to solve these kinds of problems. although i do agree that it is impossible to get an overwhelming majority of the people to decide on anything, and that within a discrete state a consensus actually can be reached. but as the election and polls showed, that would leave states like ohio, kentucky, west virginia, etc, to make their own environmental law, and they choose against clean air and water because they are economically based on coal, etc. however their environmental problems are not theirs alone, if ohio has no clean air laws, and pollution blows east into pennsylvania, can PA sue OH for the smog? What about thirty years from now when the pollution begins to erode at the atmosphere? similarly, problems occur from grand differences in drinking laws (teens from state X flow to state Y every night to drink then go to their home state). state A has a strong welfare program, but state B's poor and homeless move into state A to get these benefits, destroying the system. and you brought up public education ran by the states. the libertarian local candidates in my state (NC) looked very promising with their talks of campaign reform, drug reform, etc, until they started with the 'privatize public education' strand. again texas is a good example, an independent state ranking near the bottom in education. i'd talk more but i have a nasty cough and it's getting late and my wife wants some laundry done :) who says we live in a democratic republic, this is a matriarchy.
sometimes i expect the 'perfect solution' to appear to all problems, and although i know no such solution exists, i know there has to be better solutions than the ones we have.
hope we can continue this... -sam
yes yes yes this is the issue at heart. but i'd add all people who by circumstance cannot provide for themslves, not just the incompetent. such as people born into poverty and locked there by 'trickle down' economics, etc. i wish we could do something about the lazy people, but hell, i guess they have a right to be lazy? dunno about that one... peace, -sam
yes, and the sample ballots had the candidates listed in a different order. but that's not my point here. my point here is that for one, there were reports directly from exit polls that people were confused, not after the election was done. and for two, palm beach being the democratic, jewish community that it is, 3000 votes for as 'born again' of a candidate as you'll ever find seems fishy to me. of course i'm just pissed off because my neighbor, a college student, still has his absentee ballot for florida sitting on his desk. oops. -sam
- Because conservatives and libertarians want to destroy the public school system which gave me my education.
- Because conservatives and libertarians want to destroy social programs like food stamps which kept me and my family fed while i got that education
- Because conservatives and libertarians want to get rid of or slash the budget for the fine arts
- Because 0 government will never work because people are greedy and that means that many people will SUFFER
- Because I actually have a conscience, and compassion for my fellow man who may have not been as fortunate as me. It could just as easily be me who was in a car accident leaving me paralyzed, but it wasn't. It could just as easily be me whose parents were rednecks and did not think school or education was worth sending their 'boy' out to get. It could just as easily be me who was born in the ghetto with nearly no possibly way out except through help.
you think a libertarian government could succeed in the current state of affairs? prisons, sewers, clean air and water, decent schools, these are things each state can consider to be somebody else's problem. that is why the federal government HAS to do these things. sure, i'd like to keep the 35% which disappears from my paycheck, so i could afford to go to a decent doctor and buy a car or house (or both). but i'll give up what is necessary for the country to be a better country. I don't happen to agree that 35% is necessary, I would think that with at least some brains and technology a MUCH lower tax would be necessary. and to the parent post, which i believe mentioned a flat tax: why? 15% of minimum wage is a lot more to that person than 15% of a millionaire. i didn't say it was fair to have a graduated income tax, but it is more fair than placing the burden on people who cannot sustain themselves under it. so if i were a libertarian, i'd perhaps think of ways to streamline government spending, not eliminate programs like public school and socialized medical insurance. these are necessary parts of a consciencious society which has left a very large number of its citizens behind in its quest for progress. when all citizens can afford to eat, educate their children, and get medical attention, not to mention walk their neighborhoods without fear, THAT is when a libertarian government could work. but not before, unless you have other ways to keep people fed, healthy, educated, and safe without government. i have no idea where this came from or where it's going, and i am an idiot. -sam