the times of Gil Amelio produced some pretty bad stuff
Actually, most of the closed Macs came out during the John Scully or Michael Spindler eras, not the Gil Amelio era. Amelio was basically brought in as a hatchet man to trim Apple down. The bad thing under his era was that very little of anything new came out.
We use Belkin OmniCube 2-port KVM switches here. Several people who use Microsoft Intellimice have had problems with the mouse not responding after a switch, requiring flipping back and forth before the mouse will respond again. I use a Logitech MouseMan, and I've never had such problems. I believe it is the mouse that is causing the problems, not the switchbox because I can switch the box with someone else's and it still works for me and occasionally goofs up for them.
Linux can't claim better stability either - I've been running Win2K since the early betas, and it's never crashed on me.
You must be incredibly brilliant or lucky or both. All of the people I know at work (and we are talking developers and sysadmins, not average users) who have tried Windows 2000 have run into serious stability problems with it to the point that they have had to reload machines to get them to work.
With the market share they have held, they have little place to go but down.
Maybe in the small server market, let me amend that by saying that maybe they're not gaining ground quite as fast as they'd like to.
According to IDC, they aren't gaining ground at all. Microsoft's server market share was completely flat between 1998 and 1999. IDC are normally big time Microsoft apologists, and Microsoft advertises heavily in their publications, so they would have no incentive to be biased against Microsoft.
On the desktop though they're the king for the foreseeable future. I mean be real.
Even though I wouldn't dispute that Microsoft will have the biggest market share on the desktop for at least the next several years, that doesn't mean they aren't losing ground. MacOS has made a big comeback, and according to IDC, Linux is giving MacOS a serious run for its money for the #2 position (according to IDC MacOS has risen to from something like 3% to around 5% and Linux has surged from virtually nothing to 4% of the desktop market). Additionally, other alternatives such as BeOS and the *BSDs are starting to mature and are starting to make at least small gains in desktop market share.
Another interesting market is PDAs. So far Windows CE has been pretty much a complete flop against PalmOS, and significant interest has started for Linux in this market as well.
Dedicated servers are a market that Microsoft has been trying very hard and mostly unsucessfully at breaking into. Linux, *BSD and QNX seem to have pretty much divvy'd that market up.
I mean be real.
It isn't real for anyone to think that the status quo will remain forever.
I have to admit even I'm intrigued by win2000. By all accounts I've heard it's not half bad.
I'm not at all interested in Windows 2000. Most of the people I know at work who have tried it have ended up going back to either NT 4 or Windows 98 in frustration either after having repeated system trashed problems, incompatibilities or disappointing performance. Its not like those guys are all anti-Microsoft either, those of us that are never bothered trying it at all. And its not like we are average users, I am talking about all either development or systems staff.
PC vendors have basically zero innovation technically which is why they have to resort to cosmetic features to build product differentiation. Basically they all build the same boxes usually with prefab components as opposed to workstation and server vendors who build a lot larger percentage of their hardware specificaly for certain models. Most of the new ideas in the PC world are things that were pioneered by the workstations. That isn't surprising, as workstation and servers are high end, and have much larger R&D budgets than commodity markets such as desktop PCs.
- Workstation vendors stick to what works.
I should have been more clear about that. I meant that in terms of cosmetics. In general, workstation vendors (with the notable exception of SGI, which is known for wild color schemes and box shapes -- they did that before Apple, even) seem to turn out pretty industrial looking beige boxes or rackmount servers.
I just couldn't get used to the warped keyboards having used the regular ones for so long. I also don't type in 'proper' touch type technique. I sometimes cross over the middle where I am not supposed to. That is a real problem for getting used to with the 'natural' keyboards.
If you really like that shape keyboard, there are several companies (including Kensington and Keytronic I believe) that build similar keyboards. If I liked them, I'd buy one of those.
Do you actually do any development? Sure, you can't just cut and paste stuff verbatim from completely different code, but if I've got access to code I can steal from freely, I can damned well at least crib some ideas from it as to how to do some things, if not adapt some parts of the code. Having a reference implementation in source available is sometimes invaluable even if you are writing all new code.
What you are talking about with Windows source code to Linux is a little bit different -- you are talking about code designed for radically different platforms with different APIs. Both MySQL and PostgreSQL are fairly portable and written to a UNIX-like platform and API. That makes a big difference.
At any rate, it isn't just cross-polination of the actual code as much as developers who have experience implementing some of the more advanced features in PostgreSQL for example might be able to make contributions for MySQL, even if it might mean they have to write all new code, the concepts and knowledge they could transfer would still be valuable.
As far as I've heard they don't even actually design or build any of their own keyboards or mice. Rumor has it that all the design work is farmed out (or perhaps, as has been alleged against them in the case of their mice, stolen from another company), and the production work is done overseas by OEM manufacturers the same as most other commodity products in that market.
All that aside, that has nothing to do with the fact that I just plain don't like the design of their mice or keyboards. I never said they were poorly constructed, just that I didn't like them and why.
One beef that I have heard others in my office have with the Intellimouse is that they seem to occasionally freak out when the person switches their Belkin OmniPort switchbox and they have to switch back and forth again to get the mouse to come back to life. I've never had any problems like that with the Logitech MouseMan I am using.
I also think Microsoft's hardware products are rather overpriced. I don't think they'd be able to get the prices they do for what they are selling if it weren't for the blind devotion of the unwashed masses to their overadvertised brand name.
Maybe it is because the PC vendors, dealing in a market with nearly zero innovation or product differentiation, think they have to resort to whizbang flashy gadgets while the workstation vendors can just stick to what works because they are dealing with a much more savvy customer.
I tried it, didn't find it terribly useful, although it was under Windows, and it made the text in the browser or other windows scroll either too slowly or with nauseating waves. In any case, I didn't like the fact that the wheel had a noisy and distinct clickiness in its action which made the scrolling jerky. Frankly, I think I would rather just use the 'Page up' and 'Page down' keys with my other hand.
Most of the scrolling gadgets in mice don't make any provision for scrolling sideways. I have seen one mouse that had a little Thinkpad-like 'Trackpoint' device on it for scrolling both up and down and left and right. That might be a little more useful than the wheel gadgets, especially since it would probably be smoother and quiet. I still want a real, reasonably sized middle button though.
Bam. Free Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer and Natural Keyboard Pro.
Yuck. They tried to give those items to me here at work, however, I rejected them in favor of a more normal (non-warped) keyboard and a true 3-button Logitech MouseMan which Iscavenged out of the parts bin.
I don't like the shape or feel of Microsoft's mice, let alone I want a true 3-button mouse not the goofy roller clicker thing in the middle. I would never be able to adapt to the warped keyboards, aside from the fact that they take up way too much desk space.
Besides that, I don't think I've ever visited Expedia...:-)
If you need transactions, check out PostgreSQL, which is also free. Not as fast as MySQL, but supports transactions and a more full featured SQL implementation. I am personally hoping now that MySQL is under a compatible license to PostgreSQL that some 'cross-pollination' between the two projects can happen. Get some more features into MySQL and some more speed into PostgreSQL.
If you spent $150,000 on luxury items, you obviously made a lot more than $150,000, so $300,000 would be a good guess. The bum in your example paid tax at 6.5% of his 'income'. By your math, and assuming that as your income, you paid 3.25% of your income in sales tax. The sales tax is regressive because the poor pay a much higher percentage of their income in sales tax than do the wealthy or even the middle class.
Or just move to a state that doesn't have smog testing to begin with. Around here if there is a place to screw a license plate onto it, it is street legal. Registration is done entirely by mail. No inspections, no smog check, no hassles.
That may be true of houses, but not cars, at least not where I live. There aren't property taxes, per-se on cars here, sales tax, yes. Registration fees, yes. However, failure to pay your registration just means that they will not send you your stickers for your license plates, and if you are caught driving the car with expired registration on the road, you will be ticketed and fined. However, the offense isn't even considered a moving violation, it is like a parking ticket. You'd have to get an awful lot of those before your car would get impounded, let alone auctioned. When you go back to register your car again, you will have to pay a late fee.
If you have a car that you don't drive on the public roads, you don't have to pay registration at all, you can just go to the DMV and have them suspend your registration (putting it in 'storage'). Of course you can't drive it when it is suspended, but all you have to do to unsuspend it is go in and pay the new registration fee -- you don't have to pay for the unused portion of time.
The deal is, the car is still yours, even if it has expired registration. They can take away the registration, but not the car. Property taxes are a little bit different than registration fees. Property taxes are due no matter what, and they can place a lien against the property and eventually foreclose against it based on that.
Perhaps my state is more reasonable than average on this as far as cars are concerned... But I don't understand why NSI thinks that they can get away with considering domain name registrations to be more like a property tax than a registration fee like a car...
I would tend to agree to a certain extent, tobacco taxes are a tax on behavior, not on income. While it is true that a disproportionate number of smokers are poor, for example, putting a percentage tax on tobacco products based on price instead of a flat per-pack tax on cigarettes would allow higher taxation on 'luxury' tobacco products such as expensive imported cigars which might help to balance things out a little.
My biggest problem with tobacco taxes is how little sense it makes that we subsidize the hell out of tobacco growers, then turn around and tax the product to supposedly discourage consumption. If we just quit subsidizing the production (maybe pay farmers NOT to grow tobacco if we are worried about starving farmers), it would raise the price up on tobacco. What subsidies really do is act as price supports to the big tobacco companies so they can continue to make big bucks. Then the government sues the tobacco companies...
What a tangled, damned mess.
Relating this all back to internet taxes, there has been a big stink lately due to out-of-state companies selling tobacco online (out of states like Virginia with very low state tobacco taxes).
The state I live in considers any tobacco bought by mail/phone/internet that is shipped in from out of state that doesn't have the local state's tax stamp on it to be contraband and anyone receiving such shipments is guilty of smuggling.
One of the reasons why interstate sales taxes in general have been frowned upon by the Federal Trade Commission is that states will tend to dispute who should collect the tax. The states where the item is sold from will insist that they should collect their sales tax. The states where the item is sold to will insist that they should collect their sales/use tax. In the end, if there are no restrictions on what the states can do, we could all be stuck paying double sales tax on all mail order, phone order or internet order sales. Don't forget too, that some people want to start collecting a Federal sales tax as well. That means that if we aren't careful we could end up paying rediculously high sales taxes like they do in Europe (12 to 17%). People should keep in mind that sales taxes place the most disproportionate burden on the poorest segment of society, so they are the most regressive form of taxation.
I would agree on the first come, first served for the most part, except that PETA has taken action not consistant with that, so for them to engage in that sort of behavior seems highly hypocritical.
What am I supposedly making up? In case you didn't know, PETA really has registered "petasucks.org".
The argument was simply because Peta.org is where someone would go to look for PETAs website.
Either someone else got PETA.org first, or PETA incorrectly registered PETA.com instead of PETA.org. Either way, other posters have already commented that the page itself clearly stated it was a parody site, and had a prominantly displayed link to the actual PETA site. Hardly sounds like someone who was just trying to get accidental people visiting.
Some clown hijacked that to put up a parody there. That's all this issue is about.
Clown? I'd have considered it hijacking if the domain was grabbed by someone who just wanted to try to hold PETA up for money. I don't consider a legitimate parody site to be a hijacking. If that was the case, what was PETA doing when they registered "ringlingbros.com"?
Don't bring whatever prejudices you might have about PETA to pretend they are working against all prejudices or discouraging discourse or whatever you pretend they are doing.
Look carefully at my wording. I said it appears that they are actively working against freedom of speech and the open discourse of ideas. Tell me how their pre-emptive registration of "petasucks.com" is not consistant with that appearance?
My 'predjudices', about PETA being what they are don't change things. Everyone brings their own predjudices to things. What are your predjudices about PETA? That they would never do anything illegal or unethical in furtherance of their political goals?
I'm willing to at least put my handle and email on my postings. You, sir, (assuming, if not then substitute ma'am there), are an 'anonymous coward'. What does that mean? You can look at the posting history to determine what my biases might be and use that to do your own judgement of value of what I say. I'm not against anonymous posting, but forgive me if I am more skeptical about anonymous posts than normal.
It might be squatting if the person had obtained the trademark in order to try to extort money from PETA. On the other hand, PETA now owns the domain name "petasucks.org" which is depriving someone from a domain name that would clearly be more appropriate for a parody or opposition group to own.
And if PETA thinks they should be protected from this kind of imposition on their supposed trademark, they shouldn't have registered 'ringlingbros.com' as an anti-circus page. PETA's hands are dirty, and they really don't deserve protection on this one.
The problem is that there is no biblical reference to show that Jesus (assuming you believe he was a real person) was a vegetarian or espoused vegetarianism to others. In fact, one of the miracles that is credited to Jesus was feeding of fish to the multitudes...
Like just about anything, if you want to twist hard enough you can bend bible passages to fit just about anything.
Accidental stepping on ants can hardly be compared to the intentional "farming" of animal drones in 2" x 2" cages and their subsequent mechanised slaughter.
Damn, 2 inch square cages? What you gonna farm in that? For that matter, what domestic animals will fit in a 2 foot square cage.
Is it any different if I hunt down and kill animals for food with my bare hands than if I 'farm' them?
So would you think it would be wrong if I intentionally eat ants? Other primates do it. People in some parts of the world eat insects.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not one of those types who think killing is always wrong.
So when do you think is killing O.K.?
I'm also quite aware of the nature's seemingly cruel ways. The Nature, however, is fundamentally non-moral whereas we are either moral or immoral.
Nature is amoral, that is the word you are looking at. We don't necessarily have to be moral or immoral in everything we do. Some things are based simply on what is imposed on us by nature, and some things are based on simple, rational decisions of fact which don't involve a moral decision. Humans were made by nature to be omnivores, we don't control that. If we were intended to be herbivores, we would probably have two stomachs, cloven hooves and walk on four legs. We wouldn't have canine teeth, and we wouldn't be able to properly digest meat.
Thusly, we cannot refer to Nature's example when it comes to deciding what is moral and what is not.
To my mind killing animals for food just isn't necessary and as such is evil.
What is the difference between killing of plants for food and killing of animals? Plankton and algae are animals, but you can't tell me they are much more sentient than a tomato.
So is it wrong for other animals which you have previously written you consider sentient to kill other animals for food? It is necessary to kill other animals for carnivores to survive. Other omnivores (For example pigs, bears, raccoons, etc. Those are just a few examples I can think of off the top of my head that live near me), don't _need_ to kill other animals for food by your standards, so are they evil?
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the times of Gil Amelio produced some pretty bad stuff
Actually, most of the closed Macs came out during the John Scully or Michael Spindler eras, not the Gil Amelio era. Amelio was basically brought in as a hatchet man to trim Apple down. The bad thing under his era was that very little of anything new came out.
We use Belkin OmniCube 2-port KVM switches here. Several people who use Microsoft Intellimice have had problems with the mouse not responding after a switch, requiring flipping back and forth before the mouse will respond again. I use a Logitech MouseMan, and I've never had such problems. I believe it is the mouse that is causing the problems, not the switchbox because I can switch the box with someone else's and it still works for me and occasionally goofs up for them.
Why waste good hardware running Windows? Sure, CmdrTaco, or even me, for instance could afford a 'decent computer' for Windows. But why?
Linux can't claim better stability either - I've been running Win2K since the early betas, and it's never crashed on me.
You must be incredibly brilliant or lucky or both. All of the people I know at work (and we are talking developers and sysadmins, not average users) who have tried Windows 2000 have run into serious stability problems with it to the point that they have had to reload machines to get them to work.
The price of fame. Unfortunately, one of those things you have to deal with is jealousy. Sad, really.
Ah, exactly where is Microsoft losing any ground?
With the market share they have held, they have little place to go but down.
Maybe in the small server market, let me amend that by saying that maybe they're not gaining ground quite as fast as they'd like to.
According to IDC, they aren't gaining ground at all. Microsoft's server market share was completely flat between 1998 and 1999. IDC are normally big time Microsoft apologists, and Microsoft advertises heavily in their publications, so they would have no incentive to be biased against Microsoft.
On the desktop though they're the king for the foreseeable future. I mean be real.
Even though I wouldn't dispute that Microsoft will have the biggest market share on the desktop for at least the next several years, that doesn't mean they aren't losing ground. MacOS has made a big comeback, and according to IDC, Linux is giving MacOS a serious run for its money for the #2 position (according to IDC MacOS has risen to from something like 3% to around 5% and Linux has surged from virtually nothing to 4% of the desktop market). Additionally, other alternatives such as BeOS and the *BSDs are starting to mature and are starting to make at least small gains in desktop market share.
Another interesting market is PDAs. So far Windows CE has been pretty much a complete flop against PalmOS, and significant interest has started for Linux in this market as well.
Dedicated servers are a market that Microsoft has been trying very hard and mostly unsucessfully at breaking into. Linux, *BSD and QNX seem to have pretty much divvy'd that market up.
I mean be real.
It isn't real for anyone to think that the status quo will remain forever.
I have to admit even I'm intrigued by win2000. By all accounts I've heard it's not half bad.
I'm not at all interested in Windows 2000. Most of the people I know at work who have tried it have ended up going back to either NT 4 or Windows 98 in frustration either after having repeated system trashed problems, incompatibilities or disappointing performance. Its not like those guys are all anti-Microsoft either, those of us that are never bothered trying it at all. And its not like we are average users, I am talking about all either development or systems staff.
- PC vendors have zero innovation.
:)
PC vendors have basically zero innovation technically which is why they have to resort to cosmetic features to build product differentiation. Basically they all build the same boxes usually with prefab components as opposed to workstation and server vendors who build a lot larger percentage of their hardware specificaly for certain models. Most of the new ideas in the PC world are things that were pioneered by the workstations. That isn't surprising, as workstation and servers are high end, and have much larger R&D budgets than commodity markets such as desktop PCs.
- Workstation vendors stick to what works.
I should have been more clear about that. I meant that in terms of cosmetics. In general, workstation vendors (with the notable exception of SGI, which is known for wild color schemes and box shapes -- they did that before Apple, even) seem to turn out pretty industrial looking beige boxes or rackmount servers.
You should be in marketing.
Yikes. That is quite an uncalled for insult.
I just couldn't get used to the warped keyboards having used the regular ones for so long. I also don't type in 'proper' touch type technique. I sometimes cross over the middle where I am not supposed to. That is a real problem for getting used to with the 'natural' keyboards.
If you really like that shape keyboard, there are several companies (including Kensington and Keytronic I believe) that build similar keyboards. If I liked them, I'd buy one of those.
Do you actually do any development? Sure, you can't just cut and paste stuff verbatim from completely different code, but if I've got access to code I can steal from freely, I can damned well at least crib some ideas from it as to how to do some things, if not adapt some parts of the code. Having a reference implementation in source available is sometimes invaluable even if you are writing all new code.
What you are talking about with Windows source code to Linux is a little bit different -- you are talking about code designed for radically different platforms with different APIs. Both MySQL and PostgreSQL are fairly portable and written to a UNIX-like platform and API. That makes a big difference.
At any rate, it isn't just cross-polination of the actual code as much as developers who have experience implementing some of the more advanced features in PostgreSQL for example might be able to make contributions for MySQL, even if it might mean they have to write all new code, the concepts and knowledge they could transfer would still be valuable.
Sun customers aren't put off by the mere cosmetics of the outside, despite the fact that the grey-purple color you mention is kinda ugly.
As far as I've heard they don't even actually design or build any of their own keyboards or mice. Rumor has it that all the design work is farmed out (or perhaps, as has been alleged against them in the case of their mice, stolen from another company), and the production work is done overseas by OEM manufacturers the same as most other commodity products in that market.
All that aside, that has nothing to do with the fact that I just plain don't like the design of their mice or keyboards. I never said they were poorly constructed, just that I didn't like them and why.
One beef that I have heard others in my office have with the Intellimouse is that they seem to occasionally freak out when the person switches their Belkin OmniPort switchbox and they have to switch back and forth again to get the mouse to come back to life. I've never had any problems like that with the Logitech MouseMan I am using.
I also think Microsoft's hardware products are rather overpriced. I don't think they'd be able to get the prices they do for what they are selling if it weren't for the blind devotion of the unwashed masses to their overadvertised brand name.
Maybe it is because the PC vendors, dealing in a market with nearly zero innovation or product differentiation, think they have to resort to whizbang flashy gadgets while the workstation vendors can just stick to what works because they are dealing with a much more savvy customer.
I tried it, didn't find it terribly useful, although it was under Windows, and it made the text in the browser or other windows scroll either too slowly or with nauseating waves. In any case, I didn't like the fact that the wheel had a noisy and distinct clickiness in its action which made the scrolling jerky. Frankly, I think I would rather just use the 'Page up' and 'Page down' keys with my other hand.
Most of the scrolling gadgets in mice don't make any provision for scrolling sideways. I have seen one mouse that had a little Thinkpad-like 'Trackpoint' device on it for scrolling both up and down and left and right. That might be a little more useful than the wheel gadgets, especially since it would probably be smoother and quiet. I still want a real, reasonably sized middle button though.
Bam. Free Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer and Natural Keyboard Pro.
:-)
Yuck. They tried to give those items to me here at work, however, I rejected them in favor of a more normal (non-warped) keyboard and a true 3-button Logitech MouseMan which Iscavenged out of the parts bin.
I don't like the shape or feel of Microsoft's mice, let alone I want a true 3-button mouse not the goofy roller clicker thing in the middle. I would never be able to adapt to the warped keyboards, aside from the fact that they take up way too much desk space.
Besides that, I don't think I've ever visited Expedia...
If you need transactions, check out PostgreSQL, which is also free. Not as fast as MySQL, but supports transactions and a more full featured SQL implementation. I am personally hoping now that MySQL is under a compatible license to PostgreSQL that some 'cross-pollination' between the two projects can happen. Get some more features into MySQL and some more speed into PostgreSQL.
If you spent $150,000 on luxury items, you obviously made a lot more than $150,000, so $300,000 would be a good guess. The bum in your example paid tax at 6.5% of his 'income'. By your math, and assuming that as your income, you paid 3.25% of your income in sales tax. The sales tax is regressive because the poor pay a much higher percentage of their income in sales tax than do the wealthy or even the middle class.
Or just move to a state that doesn't have smog testing to begin with. Around here if there is a place to screw a license plate onto it, it is street legal. Registration is done entirely by mail. No inspections, no smog check, no hassles.
That may be true of houses, but not cars, at least not where I live. There aren't property taxes, per-se on cars here, sales tax, yes. Registration fees, yes. However, failure to pay your registration just means that they will not send you your stickers for your license plates, and if you are caught driving the car with expired registration on the road, you will be ticketed and fined. However, the offense isn't even considered a moving violation, it is like a parking ticket. You'd have to get an awful lot of those before your car would get impounded, let alone auctioned. When you go back to register your car again, you will have to pay a late fee.
If you have a car that you don't drive on the public roads, you don't have to pay registration at all, you can just go to the DMV and have them suspend your registration (putting it in 'storage'). Of course you can't drive it when it is suspended, but all you have to do to unsuspend it is go in and pay the new registration fee -- you don't have to pay for the unused portion of time.
The deal is, the car is still yours, even if it has expired registration. They can take away the registration, but not the car. Property taxes are a little bit different than registration fees. Property taxes are due no matter what, and they can place a lien against the property and eventually foreclose against it based on that.
Perhaps my state is more reasonable than average on this as far as cars are concerned... But I don't understand why NSI thinks that they can get away with considering domain name registrations to be more like a property tax than a registration fee like a car...
I would tend to agree to a certain extent, tobacco taxes are a tax on behavior, not on income. While it is true that a disproportionate number of smokers are poor, for example, putting a percentage tax on tobacco products based on price instead of a flat per-pack tax on cigarettes would allow higher taxation on 'luxury' tobacco products such as expensive imported cigars which might help to balance things out a little.
My biggest problem with tobacco taxes is how little sense it makes that we subsidize the hell out of tobacco growers, then turn around and tax the product to supposedly discourage consumption. If we just quit subsidizing the production (maybe pay farmers NOT to grow tobacco if we are worried about starving farmers), it would raise the price up on tobacco. What subsidies really do is act as price supports to the big tobacco companies so they can continue to make big bucks. Then the government sues the tobacco companies...
What a tangled, damned mess.
Relating this all back to internet taxes, there has been a big stink lately due to out-of-state companies selling tobacco online (out of states like Virginia with very low state tobacco taxes).
The state I live in considers any tobacco bought by mail/phone/internet that is shipped in from out of state that doesn't have the local state's tax stamp on it to be contraband and anyone receiving such shipments is guilty of smuggling.
Same thing is true of beer/wine/spirits.
One of the reasons why interstate sales taxes in general have been frowned upon by the Federal Trade Commission is that states will tend to dispute who should collect the tax. The states where the item is sold from will insist that they should collect their sales tax. The states where the item is sold to will insist that they should collect their sales/use tax. In the end, if there are no restrictions on what the states can do, we could all be stuck paying double sales tax on all mail order, phone order or internet order sales. Don't forget too, that some people want to start collecting a Federal sales tax as well. That means that if we aren't careful we could end up paying rediculously high sales taxes like they do in Europe (12 to 17%). People should keep in mind that sales taxes place the most disproportionate burden on the poorest segment of society, so they are the most regressive form of taxation.
I would agree on the first come, first served for the most part, except that PETA has taken action not consistant with that, so for them to engage in that sort of behavior seems highly hypocritical.
Why are you making up stuff?
What am I supposedly making up? In case you didn't know, PETA really has registered "petasucks.org".
The argument was simply because Peta.org is where someone would go to look for PETAs website.
Either someone else got PETA.org first, or PETA incorrectly registered PETA.com instead of PETA.org. Either way, other posters have already commented that the page itself clearly stated it was a parody site, and had a prominantly displayed link to the actual PETA site. Hardly sounds like someone who was just trying to get accidental people visiting.
Some clown hijacked that to put up a parody there. That's all this issue is about.
Clown? I'd have considered it hijacking if the domain was grabbed by someone who just wanted to try to hold PETA up for money. I don't consider a legitimate parody site to be a hijacking. If that was the case, what was PETA doing when they registered "ringlingbros.com"?
Don't bring whatever prejudices you might have about PETA to pretend they are working against all prejudices or discouraging discourse or whatever you pretend they are doing.
Look carefully at my wording. I said it appears that they are actively working against freedom of speech and the open discourse of ideas. Tell me how their pre-emptive registration of "petasucks.com" is not consistant with that appearance?
My 'predjudices', about PETA being what they are don't change things. Everyone brings their own predjudices to things. What are your predjudices about PETA? That they would never do anything illegal or unethical in furtherance of their political goals?
I'm willing to at least put my handle and email on my postings. You, sir, (assuming, if not then substitute ma'am there), are an 'anonymous coward'. What does that mean? You can look at the posting history to determine what my biases might be and use that to do your own judgement of value of what I say. I'm not against anonymous posting, but forgive me if I am more skeptical about anonymous posts than normal.
It might be squatting if the person had obtained the trademark in order to try to extort money from PETA. On the other hand, PETA now owns the domain name "petasucks.org" which is depriving someone from a domain name that would clearly be more appropriate for a parody or opposition group to own.
And if PETA thinks they should be protected from this kind of imposition on their supposed trademark, they shouldn't have registered 'ringlingbros.com' as an anti-circus page. PETA's hands are dirty, and they really don't deserve protection on this one.
The problem is that there is no biblical reference to show that Jesus (assuming you believe he was a real person) was a vegetarian or espoused vegetarianism to others. In fact, one of the miracles that is credited to Jesus was feeding of fish to the multitudes...
Like just about anything, if you want to twist hard enough you can bend bible passages to fit just about anything.
Accidental stepping on ants can hardly be compared to the intentional "farming" of animal drones in 2" x 2" cages and their subsequent mechanised slaughter.
Damn, 2 inch square cages? What you gonna farm in that? For that matter, what domestic animals will fit in a 2 foot square cage.
Is it any different if I hunt down and kill animals for food with my bare hands than if I 'farm' them?
So would you think it would be wrong if I intentionally eat ants? Other primates do it. People in some parts of the world eat insects.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not one of those types who think killing is always wrong.
So when do you think is killing O.K.?
I'm also quite aware of the nature's seemingly cruel ways. The Nature, however, is fundamentally non-moral whereas we are either moral or immoral.
Nature is amoral, that is the word you are looking at. We don't necessarily have to be moral or immoral in everything we do. Some things are based simply on what is imposed on us by nature, and some things are based on simple, rational decisions of fact which don't involve a moral decision. Humans were made by nature to be omnivores, we don't control that. If we were intended to be herbivores, we would probably have two stomachs, cloven hooves and walk on four legs. We wouldn't have canine teeth, and we wouldn't be able to properly digest meat.
Thusly, we cannot refer to Nature's example when it comes to deciding what is moral and what is not.
To my mind killing animals for food just isn't necessary and as such is evil.
What is the difference between killing of plants for food and killing of animals? Plankton and algae are animals, but you can't tell me they are much more sentient than a tomato.
So is it wrong for other animals which you have previously written you consider sentient to kill other animals for food? It is necessary to kill other animals for carnivores to survive. Other omnivores (For example pigs, bears, raccoons, etc. Those are just a few examples I can think of off the top of my head that live near me), don't _need_ to kill other animals for food by your standards, so are they evil?
I think your arguments are full of holes.