I'm not aware of any state where winning a lottory leads to taxation of the winner.
Most of them, afaik... For the really big ticket ones where the jackpots go into the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, I think Uncle Sam gets 30% of the winner's prize.
But as far as I can tell, all that it means is that the jackpot can just be thought of as being about 30% smaller than it is advertised... at least with respect to how much money you actually get to keep if you win.
In the case of a big lottery win, why should it matter to you how little the government has worked to get some of your money when it has left you with more than enough to be set for life regardless?
Or do you have so little to worry about in your own life and welfare that you feel compelled to constantly try and second guess whether or not everyone else around you is living up to your expectations of them?
But if the money is free, what difference does it make how many times it is taxed when the amount that remains is still well in excess of what you need?
I can understand the objection to such taxation when the amount remaining does not leave one with a fair or reasonable amount based on one's needs or even their desires.... but as near as I can tell, the only reason to be upset about the amount that the government wants to take from lottery winnings when even afterwards one is still left with more than any reasonable person should ever need is purely insatiable greed.
It's like winning the lottery: you beat the stratospheric odds and you end up having to pay ridiculously high tax rates on the winnings even for a state-based game. I'm far from a libertarian, but that has always struck me as total bullshit
I apologize for moving OT here, but I am genuinely confused by this attitude. In the case of lottery winnings, it's already free money anyways.... it's not like one had to work particularly hard for it, and if the prize is running into the many tens of millions of dollars anyways, even after the government takes their share, one can still be set for life as long as one manages their money right (which can be equally true even if they didn't have to pay taxes on the winnings). I can understand the objection to giving up that much money when one has really worked darn hard to get it, and especially if what is left over after paying those taxes leaves a person measurably worse off.... but if you won a a hundred million dollar lottery for instance, after taxes you'd probably still be taking home still over 70 million dollars... and while sure that's about 30 million that you wouldn't be getting, when you are still clearing 70 mill, who the fuck cares who else might have benefited?
Obviously... but then that still leaves an avenue open for cheating then.... a medical device could at some point in the future very easily hold onto a wireless network connection. Such devices could further do their job so well and be so innocuously hidden that other parties, including their teachers, would not ever be aware of their existence. Imagine technology look Google glass embedded completely inconspicuously in otherwise normal lookuing glasses... or even contact lenses. In practice it is simply not possible to stop cheating by simply banning non-essential electronics.because the teacher will a) not be necessarily aware they even exist; and b) may not always be able to identify whether a so-called medical device that they may know about or be able to see does not have any additional functionality such as network connectivity.
Another poster had the right idea.... exams should be written to test understanding, not route memorization. Students should be graded based on whether the work that they've done shows that they have learned something, and that they are capable of inventing their own solutions to new problems. which is usually not something that they may can simply copy from somewhere (the latter of which can often be discovered anyways).
Sure... but my point is that such devices may be augmented to have additional purposes. At one time, a watch only could tell the time, and wasn't really useful for cheating. What is to prevent other devices, particularly those that might be needed by some people for legitimate medical reasons, from eventually experiencing similar updates?
Although things like Google Glass are pretty obvious to an onlooker right now, it is not a far stretch to imagine that in the not too distant future, a workalike device might be virtually indistinguishable from genuine glasses, or possibly even embedded into contact lenses.
My point is not that I believe that cheating should be tolerated... my point is that a zero-tolerance policy on electronics has a very high chance of running afoul of human rights violations, and it can often be difficult to impossible for an outsider to distinguish between a device whose sole purpose is for legitimate health reasons and one that may be superficially designed to appear as such, but has additional functionality that may enable cheating.
Reasonably, the issue needs to be addressed with considerably more finesse than just "ban all electronics".
Heck, the brain itself operates on electricity too.
Disallowing people equipped with electronics for legitimate health reasons, some of which may not even be removable without surgery, would be such a huge contravention of human rights that any institution which tried to practice it would be sued into bankruptcy if they did as you suggest.
This notion is so self-evident that I can only conclude you must be trying to troll.
What about brain implants such as what are used to control epileptic seizures?
How do you tell the difference between someone who possesses electronics solely for legitimate health reasons and someone who has something that may otherwise appear to be so, but is actually augmented to have more sophisticated functionality?
Ok. So unoriginal art. The makes sense. Odd that he wouldn't even try to make new art that was at least subtly different. Names could have easily been changed too, and I'm not sure why he didnt. There are dozens of Mario clones out there, so it's not like there isn't precedent for this.
"... how much better [EPUB] handles text-reflow than PDF can..."
Since when can PDF reflow text?
While I suppose that being able to do it at all is "better" than "not at all", the use of a comparative such as "better" typically implies that there was something meaningful to compare in the first place.
You cannot copyright or trademark mere ideas... and since the game was titled something different, if he were to use original art, music, and sound effects, then I'm unsure why Konami would have had any legitimate case against him, or he even would have required Konami's permission unless he was also rather flagrantly throwing around the Metal Gear Solid name everywhere in association with the project.
This is terrible news for anyone who makes unofficial replica film props.... I imagine that next year's comic-con costumes are going to be a bit plainer than they have been in a while.
The problem with jailing someone before they commit a crime is that is intrinsically unjust. No matter how certain one might be that a crime would have otherwise occurred... by jailing them before the act, the crime would not even have been attempted. It is only right to incarcerate someone for something that *THEY ACTUALLY DID*... or at very least something that they actually attempted to do.
I totally get the idea in trying prevent the damage that crime might do with the concept of precrime, but if you knew that if you did not take any action then crime X would occur at location Y and at time Z, then rather than pre-emptively arresting the person, the just thing to do would be to get additional protections at location Y and at time Z such that any attempt that is made will be thwarted, no damage will have been done, and you can then arrest the person or people who made the attempt, as appropriate. If you prevent the crime from even being attempted by using such protective measures, then that's a win too.
And if they should make what would otherwise appear to be a successful decryption attempt and they do not find anything along the lines of what they are looking for, they will forever remain uncertain whether their decryption attempt did not inadvertently erase part of the phone's contents or if this whole thing was just a wild goose chase.
No, it would not... for all practical purposes, once all domestic commercial availability is legally prohibited, the avenues that remain are sufficiently inconvenient that typically only people who are actively intent upon breaking the law will pursue them.
The importation of drugs that are prohibited by US law is also illegal... that doesn't stop some percentage of people who might get away with it, but those exceptions do not mean that the law is not enforceable.
Most people will not care enough to bother with the inconvenience of having to shop for phone from a non-domestic source that isn't even legal for them to be importing it from.
Obviously enforcement can't stop after-market modifications by the end consumer, but with solid-state electronics, such after-market mods can often be completely infeasible (wanna try soldering a different eeprom into your smartphone, for example?), but at the very least would generally be sufficiently inconvenient to discourage widespread use, and one that did so would be taking a risk that they are not actually caught.
You can probably go ahead and build stuff that is patented by other people without penalty too as long as you don't ever draw any attention to yourself.... that doesn't mean that the patent laws aren't enforced.
I am talking about the existence of free will, and the inherent problem it presents with trying to impose actions on someone in response to something they have not yet done (since I show that any sufficiently sophisticated illusion of free will can be indistinguishable from any actual free will, and thus may as well be called the latter).
My point is that if you prevent a murder that was predicted to happen, then the prediction is false, one can argue that it may have hypothetically been true if you had not prevented it, but this is irrelevant... it did not happen that way, and so you cannot know with 100% certainty that the so-called prediction would have been accurate without your intervention.
... as long as they don't actually arrest someone who hasn't actually committed a crime yet. At most, perhaps, it may invite a reason to launch an investigation, and possibly attempt to create additional safeguards for the possibility that a crime might occur at some point in the future, but the future is inherently unknowable(*), andd it would be hugely unjust to punish someone for a crime that they hadn't actually committed.
* For example, I could make a machine that outputs 1 if you input 0 and outputs 0 if you input 1. The inputs and outputs are both finite, and do not require any significant calculations to be done about the future, but if the future were actually knowable, then it would also be possible to provide whatever was predicted as the machine's output (a single bit) as its input (also a single bit). The result is, of course, a paradox of the same type as the halting problem, and since it is known to be possible to build a machine that outputs the opposite of its input (asm NOT instruction anyone?), the only possibility is that it is not generally possible to know the future of even a very simple deterministic system, let alone a hugely complicated system like the universe. (Note that this does not mean the universe is not deterministic, it may very well be... it only suggests that the future is not fully knowable... which interestingly also suggests that any so-called illusion of free will can be indistinguishable from what we might otherwise consider to be genuine free will, and so the illusion may as well be called free will anyways).
Slashdot Mirror
Most of them, afaik... For the really big ticket ones where the jackpots go into the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, I think Uncle Sam gets 30% of the winner's prize.
But as far as I can tell, all that it means is that the jackpot can just be thought of as being about 30% smaller than it is advertised... at least with respect to how much money you actually get to keep if you win.
In the case of a big lottery win, why should it matter to you how little the government has worked to get some of your money when it has left you with more than enough to be set for life regardless?
Or do you have so little to worry about in your own life and welfare that you feel compelled to constantly try and second guess whether or not everyone else around you is living up to your expectations of them?
But if the money is free, what difference does it make how many times it is taxed when the amount that remains is still well in excess of what you need?
I can understand the objection to such taxation when the amount remaining does not leave one with a fair or reasonable amount based on one's needs or even their desires.... but as near as I can tell, the only reason to be upset about the amount that the government wants to take from lottery winnings when even afterwards one is still left with more than any reasonable person should ever need is purely insatiable greed.
I apologize for moving OT here, but I am genuinely confused by this attitude. In the case of lottery winnings, it's already free money anyways.... it's not like one had to work particularly hard for it, and if the prize is running into the many tens of millions of dollars anyways, even after the government takes their share, one can still be set for life as long as one manages their money right (which can be equally true even if they didn't have to pay taxes on the winnings). I can understand the objection to giving up that much money when one has really worked darn hard to get it, and especially if what is left over after paying those taxes leaves a person measurably worse off.... but if you won a a hundred million dollar lottery for instance, after taxes you'd probably still be taking home still over 70 million dollars... and while sure that's about 30 million that you wouldn't be getting, when you are still clearing 70 mill, who the fuck cares who else might have benefited?
Obviously... but then that still leaves an avenue open for cheating then.... a medical device could at some point in the future very easily hold onto a wireless network connection. Such devices could further do their job so well and be so innocuously hidden that other parties, including their teachers, would not ever be aware of their existence. Imagine technology look Google glass embedded completely inconspicuously in otherwise normal lookuing glasses... or even contact lenses. In practice it is simply not possible to stop cheating by simply banning non-essential electronics.because the teacher will a) not be necessarily aware they even exist; and b) may not always be able to identify whether a so-called medical device that they may know about or be able to see does not have any additional functionality such as network connectivity.
Another poster had the right idea.... exams should be written to test understanding, not route memorization. Students should be graded based on whether the work that they've done shows that they have learned something, and that they are capable of inventing their own solutions to new problems. which is usually not something that they may can simply copy from somewhere (the latter of which can often be discovered anyways).
Sure... but my point is that such devices may be augmented to have additional purposes. At one time, a watch only could tell the time, and wasn't really useful for cheating. What is to prevent other devices, particularly those that might be needed by some people for legitimate medical reasons, from eventually experiencing similar updates?
Although things like Google Glass are pretty obvious to an onlooker right now, it is not a far stretch to imagine that in the not too distant future, a workalike device might be virtually indistinguishable from genuine glasses, or possibly even embedded into contact lenses.
Could you clarify exactly why you think that the notion is ridiculous?
My point is not that I believe that cheating should be tolerated... my point is that a zero-tolerance policy on electronics has a very high chance of running afoul of human rights violations, and it can often be difficult to impossible for an outsider to distinguish between a device whose sole purpose is for legitimate health reasons and one that may be superficially designed to appear as such, but has additional functionality that may enable cheating.
Reasonably, the issue needs to be addressed with considerably more finesse than just "ban all electronics".
Heck, the brain itself operates on electricity too.
Disallowing people equipped with electronics for legitimate health reasons, some of which may not even be removable without surgery, would be such a huge contravention of human rights that any institution which tried to practice it would be sued into bankruptcy if they did as you suggest.
This notion is so self-evident that I can only conclude you must be trying to troll.
*ALL* electronics?
What about hearing aids?
What about brain implants such as what are used to control epileptic seizures?
How do you tell the difference between someone who possesses electronics solely for legitimate health reasons and someone who has something that may otherwise appear to be so, but is actually augmented to have more sophisticated functionality?
Ok. So unoriginal art. The makes sense. Odd that he wouldn't even try to make new art that was at least subtly different. Names could have easily been changed too, and I'm not sure why he didnt. There are dozens of Mario clones out there, so it's not like there isn't precedent for this.
"... how much better [EPUB] handles text-reflow than PDF can..."
Since when can PDF reflow text?
While I suppose that being able to do it at all is "better" than "not at all", the use of a comparative such as "better" typically implies that there was something meaningful to compare in the first place.
</pedantry>
You cannot copyright or trademark mere ideas... and since the game was titled something different, if he were to use original art, music, and sound effects, then I'm unsure why Konami would have had any legitimate case against him, or he even would have required Konami's permission unless he was also rather flagrantly throwing around the Metal Gear Solid name everywhere in association with the project.
This is terrible news for anyone who makes unofficial replica film props.... I imagine that next year's comic-con costumes are going to be a bit plainer than they have been in a while.
Of course.... and you can avoid getting cancer by killing yourself now.
There's an expression that involves a baby and bathwater that comes to mind here....
The problem with jailing someone before they commit a crime is that is intrinsically unjust. No matter how certain one might be that a crime would have otherwise occurred... by jailing them before the act, the crime would not even have been attempted. It is only right to incarcerate someone for something that *THEY ACTUALLY DID*... or at very least something that they actually attempted to do.
I totally get the idea in trying prevent the damage that crime might do with the concept of precrime, but if you knew that if you did not take any action then crime X would occur at location Y and at time Z, then rather than pre-emptively arresting the person, the just thing to do would be to get additional protections at location Y and at time Z such that any attempt that is made will be thwarted, no damage will have been done, and you can then arrest the person or people who made the attempt, as appropriate. If you prevent the crime from even being attempted by using such protective measures, then that's a win too.
If I spend as much as 15% more on buying a car, I can get loads of things I wouldn't have otherwise gotten.
Why is this particularly surprising?
As an admitted liar, how can we possibly trust him enough to believe that he lied?
And if they should make what would otherwise appear to be a successful decryption attempt and they do not find anything along the lines of what they are looking for, they will forever remain uncertain whether their decryption attempt did not inadvertently erase part of the phone's contents or if this whole thing was just a wild goose chase.
No, it would not... for all practical purposes, once all domestic commercial availability is legally prohibited, the avenues that remain are sufficiently inconvenient that typically only people who are actively intent upon breaking the law will pursue them.
The importation of drugs that are prohibited by US law is also illegal... that doesn't stop some percentage of people who might get away with it, but those exceptions do not mean that the law is not enforceable.
Most people will not care enough to bother with the inconvenience of having to shop for phone from a non-domestic source that isn't even legal for them to be importing it from.
Obviously enforcement can't stop after-market modifications by the end consumer, but with solid-state electronics, such after-market mods can often be completely infeasible (wanna try soldering a different eeprom into your smartphone, for example?), but at the very least would generally be sufficiently inconvenient to discourage widespread use, and one that did so would be taking a risk that they are not actually caught.
You can probably go ahead and build stuff that is patented by other people without penalty too as long as you don't ever draw any attention to yourself.... that doesn't mean that the patent laws aren't enforced.
I am talking about the existence of free will, and the inherent problem it presents with trying to impose actions on someone in response to something they have not yet done (since I show that any sufficiently sophisticated illusion of free will can be indistinguishable from any actual free will, and thus may as well be called the latter).
My point is that if you prevent a murder that was predicted to happen, then the prediction is false, one can argue that it may have hypothetically been true if you had not prevented it, but this is irrelevant... it did not happen that way, and so you cannot know with 100% certainty that the so-called prediction would have been accurate without your intervention.
* For example, I could make a machine that outputs 1 if you input 0 and outputs 0 if you input 1. The inputs and outputs are both finite, and do not require any significant calculations to be done about the future, but if the future were actually knowable, then it would also be possible to provide whatever was predicted as the machine's output (a single bit) as its input (also a single bit). The result is, of course, a paradox of the same type as the halting problem, and since it is known to be possible to build a machine that outputs the opposite of its input (asm NOT instruction anyone?), the only possibility is that it is not generally possible to know the future of even a very simple deterministic system, let alone a hugely complicated system like the universe. (Note that this does not mean the universe is not deterministic, it may very well be... it only suggests that the future is not fully knowable... which interestingly also suggests that any so-called illusion of free will can be indistinguishable from what we might otherwise consider to be genuine free will, and so the illusion may as well be called free will anyways).
Right.... just like emission regulations are impossible to enforce on imported vehicles. Oh, wait.