False advertising--and indeed most law--involves what a reasonable person would expect. A reasonable person seeing particular speeds advertised right next to an unlimited plan does not expect the unlimited plan to be throttled. A reasonable person who signed up for an unlimited plan at a certain speed isn't going to expect that speed to suddenly decrease while other people with a limited plan are seeing the original speeds.
Most of meatspace isn't highly technical or bound by discrete laws, and judges (particularly in small claims court) tend to favor the little guy who doesn't get paid to know the law inside-and-out. They rule based upon common when there's any wriggle room. Contract law also favors the weaker party any time there is lack of specificity.
This is honestly not that surprising.
That said, AT&T can almost certainly cancel this guy's service, and should do so. You don't want customers who are going to sue you.
In the US, in buildings, T-Mobile has almost always given me crappy signal. I understand that it's because they use frequencies which have worse penetration through construction materials.
Their coverage is also pretty poor, so rural areas are out. Those two use cases cover 99% of my needs.
Fastest depends upon where you are. I'm most often going to need my phone outside of big cities, where my AT&T signal shows an E, but my Verizon signal shows 3G. In those situations, Verizon is quite a bit faster.
Speed is always going to vary based upon location, due to differences in the backhaul, wireless coverage, and saturation.
Why should a browser need admin privileges? It's just code that executes.
You might find that your "locked-down corporate image" can run any number of applications that don't require admin access, including apps at http://portableapps.com/
You have to get into SRP if you want to prevent users from running executables you don't know about. If you don't want to get into SRP (I wouldn't blame you--it's messy) then if they can write to a directory and execute from that directory, they can install software.
It is not the software's responsibility to ask for permission from the corporation in order to execute. It is your responsibility to ensure that only the software you approve executes.
That's a good point. Maybe Duplicate is just the first step in that direction. With iCould document saving, they could really take the leap and get rid of the file paradigm altogether.
Eh, I use OS X and also had problems wrapping my head around Duplicate at first. I think it's like the Office Ribbon--the right choice for new users, but completely unintutive for people who are familiar with the old way of doing things.
The problem is that a common workflow was to Open a document, make changes, and then Save As the new document. That option is gone. I don't see any option which even looks like it (duplicate sounds like copy, which I would do from Finder normally (or actually the command line, but most people would do it from Finder.))
Actually, "Save A Version" sounds more like "Save As" than "Save" to me. And if I choose it, I've saved over my original. Now there's a revert that I can try.
If I do try Duplicate unintuitively, it kindly lets me know that I've made changes to the document I'm about to duplicate and offers the option of Duplicate-then-Revert. At least that part makes sense.
I think it's the perfect progression for lockdown. Start by creating your app store. You require signing and some other requirements in order to list with the store. You see that not everyone is moving to the store as fast as you'd like, so you kick it up a notch--start rejecting all unsigned apps by default (that's the stick) but let developers who sign their apps bypass this restriction (the carrot.) Eventually, most developers are signing, and from there it's a short jump to requiring them all to list with the app store. Getting people to sign is the hard part, so Mountain Lion will be a big leap in that direction as developers don't want to give long instructions and explanations to their users as to why the apps require extra effort to run.
Actually, that comes down to bad development decisions on the part of the game makers.
The UI for what iCloud backs up in Settings shows an application and a backup size. What is backed up is a particular, non-selectable subdirectory in the app's directory. It's the same directory for every app. If the app developer chose to put e.g. large graphics files under that directory, then they will get backed up to iCloud during the regular backup.
It's very easy to see such a large backup size and assume that the whole app is being backed up. Instead, unnecessary data is being backed up. I've had to disable specific apps backups to iCloud due to this. I could still download the app, but my settings/progress would be deleted since I didn't enable that app in iCloud (due to the enormous size of the backup.)
This third party self signing is a new feature. Why would they introduce it only to get rid of it again one or two versions later? That makes no sense.
It makes sense as a transition. It's hardly different from the signing required to put an application on the App store. Once most people are signing anyway, it will be easier to take the next step and list in the App Store. Once most people are listing there, there's little reason to keep the other options around (from Apple's perspective, at least.)
I have the same concern, although it'd be nice to have some way to block stuff that turns out to be bad; yeah, it closes the barn door after some horses have already escaped and shit all over some machines, but at least it might stop them from doing more damage.
I wonder how attempts to run the software post-kill will be handled. Some reports are that you can still right-click and choose "Open" to run the software. That might be a reasonable compromise, though I still have concerns.
Do they make enough money for them to bother getting rid of the "identified developers" option?
They make tons of money on the iOS store, which is the only way in Apple's world to get software onto the devices. I imagine that they make less money on the Mac app store, though I'm not sure (the prices seem higher than the iOS app store.) The real key would be to look at how much money publishers make for applications sold outside of the store. Almost everyone I know who has a Mac has bought Parallels or VMWare. I know many who get Office. That's all I can think of that I've personally seen, other than free apps or apps purchased from the App store (iWork, Lion, maybe a few games.)
OK, you're on the record; I'll go on the record as predicting that the most they'll do is default to "App Store only", and they may well not even do that. (I wish I could also predict that the OS X model will go "back to the iPhone/iPad", as that'd squelch a lot of the complaints about the "walled garden", and make the frog in the pot complain that the hot tub is getting a bit cool, but we'll see what happens in iOS 6.)
I could go as far as to say that they might go default to App Store Only and drop the unsigned option. But I think the end goal is to get all client software to go through the App Store. I imagine that difference between signed and App Store is fairly small for most developers.
The kernel hooks for virtualization would make a lot of sense.
Apple's desktop offering is now more locked down than than the other competing desktop platforms.
True.
Apple's phone and tablet offering is also more locked down than Android, which is the main competing phone and tablet platform.
True, but this is nothing new.
Comparing the level of lockdown on Apple's desktops to the level on Android smartphones is comparing apples and oranges.
I'm not sure how this last statement follows from the previous ones.
For some reason, people want to differentiate general purpose computing devices based upon whether or not they make use of telephony on the cell tower networks. This confuses me, because it seems like an odd arbitrary distinction.
Android phones are general purpose computers. So are iOS devices. So are machines running OS X. So are machines running Linux. So are machines running Windows. Why does comparing the lockdown of any of those devices to any other not make sense? What is it about comparing a phone OS to a desktop OS that's wrong?
I'll tell you what the difference is: when you want to win your argument, you say that Android's different, so the optional, default lockdown isn't the same as the Mac's optional, default lockdown.
This, pretty much. The OS is set to, by default, spread FUD about apps not coming from the App Store. Being the default, it's as good as there being no other option, because users don't know enough to tell the difference.
Meathead 2 said:
Sort of like how Android by default "spreads FUD" about apps not coming from the Android market? Since, you know, you have to check the "other sources" option in order to sideload apps? Yes, even on the vanilla versions of Android from Google it defaults to blocking sideloaded apps.
This was apparently in an attempt to point out that the popular phone OS around here does the same thing
AC, in a burst of sanity, said:
I'm confused by your response. Besides the fact that Android runs on phones and OS X runs on computers - which I do think is a salient difference - I also don't understand explaining away one company's bad behavior by pointing towards another company that's doing the same thing. I don't see what Android does as being at all relevant to people's frustration with Apple and their move towards rigid control of their platforms.
To which Meathead 2 said:
The point is that when Apple does something no different from Android (which is not called a walled garden) the only response from these whiners is to whine about "walled gardens" when that isn't the implication of this change. This has nothing to do with trying to lock down OS X. It's about giving users control of what applications can be installed.
And this is where it really gets fouled up.
Meathead 3 brings iOS into it, which no one had mentioned up until this point:
The main difference here is on Android you dont have to void the warranty to get those other apps, just uncheck the box.
Meathead 3 is thinking of iOS in a conversation about OS X and Android. Meathead 3 gets called on it and goes into defensive mode, "Well someone else brought up phone OSs!" Look, iOS locking stuff down isn't news. It's been going on for the better part of 4 years.
Meathead 3 goes into "defense mode"--probably realizing his error, but definitely being unwilling to be proven wrong, and goes off on several tangents. Then we get to your post:
By being default-enabled, requiring admin privileges to change, and no doubt coming with scary warnings about how you'll get hacked if you disable it.
Well. Duh. Android does this. OS X does this. We've come full circle.
And really, the whole point is that when Android does a thing, no one screams about lockdown and no one calls it a walled garden. When Apple does the very same thing (newly, on OS X) lots of meatheads start crying foul. It's not saying that it's right when Apple does it--it's pointing out the double-standard that no one complains when Android does it. It demonstrates the incredible bias here, which has nothing to do with technical merits and has everything to do with the companies involved. It's like a bunch of sports fans getting into fights, and it's absurd.
1) Apple now has a kill switch. Part of the point of pushing application-signing is so that they can disable signed apps which turn out to be malicious. Only one has to wonder if that's all it will be used for. It's not that I'm particularly distrustful of Apple--I'm distrustful of companies with a lot of power. Amazon's used their kill switch to remotely delete content, promised not to do it again, then did it again. If a company is big enough to survive the publicity of using their kill-switch, then it is in their interest to use it when locking out that software benefits them.
Heck, merely having the ability to do such a thing invites having some patent lawyer ask for a court order requiring that they use it against allegedly infringing third-party works, even if Apple itself were inherently trustworthy. Kill-switches from software vendors are a horrible idea. Apple almost certainly wants the ability to disable any software running on their hardware, which partially leads into...
2) There's no doubt that Apple would love for all software to be sold through the App store. They make money that way, and they get people accustomed to relying on them for software. I don't think it's inherently bad to run an app store, however requiring people to use it would be bad. Unfortunately, I'm beginning to think that's the future for Apple.
My prediction is that 10.10 will remove the ability to run unsigned content (after all, it's free to get a signing key.) And 10.11 will probably require all precompiled applications to be acquired through the App store (except on the Server version of the OS, for which the option to run unsigned binaries will almost certainly remain.) 10.9 will keep the defaults, as it will take some time to get a critical mass of non-App store developers signing their work.
3) Virtualization. I expect it to be built into the OS at some point, based upon point 2 above. Maybe they'll acquire Parallels or Virtualbox from Oracle. Maybe they'll write their own. It will be a concession to the fact that they still live in a heavily-Windows world, and interoperability is still sometimes required.
Maybe so, but for those of us who have to work on multiple devices regularly, I think that switching to and from natural scrolling would absolutely kill my productivity. Until most PCs have this as an option, I simply can't enable it on my Mac.
I don't know. Depending upon how much difference there is between the iPad2 and iPad3, $100 might be very appropriate. There's not much difference between the 4 and the 4s, which have a $100 difference.
A computer language is vastly different from a natural language. Among other things, you can make mistakes in a natural language and still get your point across. In fact, almost no one uses "proper English" anymore. On a command line, very small mistakes are very meaningful. At best, a mistake means that your command doesn't work. At worst, you might destroy data.
Also, the more you learn English, the easier it is to learn more of it. However command-line flags aren't always sensical. For example, there was a define you could use when installing a port on FreeBSD-- -DDISABLE_VULNERABILITIES. How wonderful it would be if that flag did what it says! What it actually does is disable a vulnerability database check, so that you can install a port with known vulnerabilities. The -g flag to ssh "allows remote hosts to connect to local forwarded ports,"--the flag chosen is almost meaningless semantically.
But even when the flag makes a certain amount of sense, it can be different on different commands. For example, on BSD, cp -R copies recursively, while rm -r removes recursively. Sometimes, even commands from the same package will have dissimilar flags--for example, to specify the destination port for ssh (OpenSSH), you use -p. To specify it for scp, you use -P. While there are exceptions to English rules, they don't tend to make the language less understandable. When failing to abide by the exceptions, you are still understood.
Re:Such systems have been proposed before
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No, I was disagreeing with your implication.
Re:Such systems have been proposed before
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The Zuckerberg Tax
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I wonder how much that stock will be worth if society's infrastructure crumbles....
Re:Such systems have been proposed before
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I said directly.
Likewise, such indirect benefits could be said to come from almost any tax levied against any person, such as a wealth tax on stock.
I'm not proposing such a tax, I'm just drawing parallels.
Re:Such systems have been proposed before
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The Zuckerberg Tax
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Re:Such systems have been proposed before
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· Score: 4, Insightful
go to pay infrastructure used to make your property useful in the first place
This goes to the moral argument, and so that is the one I will address.
A huge portion of my property taxes actually go to public schools, which is not infrastructure benefit directly from. My understanding is that this is not unusual.
It isn't really a tax on wealth, exactly, more a tax on the value that the local government gives the property
It's not a tax on wealth, it's a tax on value?
I think that's splitting hairs, don't you?
federal government similarly makes stock valuable
The federal government, with all of the protections that it gives corporations, absolutely provides company ownership value. Similarly, companies clearly and directly benefit from infrastructure.
Re:Such systems have been proposed before
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The Zuckerberg Tax
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· Score: 3, Insightful
It seems that if you were to decide to tax stocks in the same way you might tax property, you'd have fewer people willing to buy stock, and subsequently less investment in the economy.
This is the general argument used to keep capital gains taxes low, and as far as I can see, there's no real evidence to support it. Of course, most of the ways that stocks are broken can be linked back to the fact that companies rarely issue dividends anymore, and the main way that people make money from stocks is through selling them for a gain. But that's a complaint for a different time.
I guess the reducto ad absurdum is why not tax savings? If you've got $100.00 in the bank, why not tax you 15% every year on it? In ten years, you'll end up with less that $20 bucks. Or why not tax the perceived value of your antique record collection?
Well, my property taxes are much much lower than that. Less than 1%, actually (something like $0.50 for every $100 valuation.) But I do get your point.
I think that taxing savings might encourage people to spend money which is otherwise sitting there doing nothing and not helping the economy. Of course, savings is at an all-time low in this country, so really it might not do anything at all.
At least for property tax there's some sort of implied quid pro quo (you're getting roads, fire, police for your taxes). What exactly does a government give you for savings or stock that is equivalent?
Well, stock is ownership of a company. It's not like companies don't benefit from infrastructure. In fact, they probably benefit more from infrastructure than any individual person does (though they get to deduct their property rather than paying tax on it.) It seems reasonable that a company would need to pay for infrastructure.
The bottom line is that the tax code is screwed up, which is sort of what this/. article is about in the first place. When billionaires can get away without paying most taxes (surely they pay sales tax on things that they purchase?) yet working stiffs have to pay 20% of their incomes in income+medicare+ss alone, something is clearly out of whack. I don't think there's an easy fix.
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False advertising--and indeed most law--involves what a reasonable person would expect. A reasonable person seeing particular speeds advertised right next to an unlimited plan does not expect the unlimited plan to be throttled. A reasonable person who signed up for an unlimited plan at a certain speed isn't going to expect that speed to suddenly decrease while other people with a limited plan are seeing the original speeds.
Most of meatspace isn't highly technical or bound by discrete laws, and judges (particularly in small claims court) tend to favor the little guy who doesn't get paid to know the law inside-and-out. They rule based upon common when there's any wriggle room. Contract law also favors the weaker party any time there is lack of specificity.
This is honestly not that surprising.
That said, AT&T can almost certainly cancel this guy's service, and should do so. You don't want customers who are going to sue you.
In the US, in buildings, T-Mobile has almost always given me crappy signal. I understand that it's because they use frequencies which have worse penetration through construction materials.
Their coverage is also pretty poor, so rural areas are out. Those two use cases cover 99% of my needs.
Fastest depends upon where you are. I'm most often going to need my phone outside of big cities, where my AT&T signal shows an E, but my Verizon signal shows 3G. In those situations, Verizon is quite a bit faster.
Speed is always going to vary based upon location, due to differences in the backhaul, wireless coverage, and saturation.
Yeah, but it's pretty annoying having to go outside of the app just to change a simple setting.
Why should a browser need admin privileges? It's just code that executes.
You might find that your "locked-down corporate image" can run any number of applications that don't require admin access, including apps at http://portableapps.com/
You have to get into SRP if you want to prevent users from running executables you don't know about. If you don't want to get into SRP (I wouldn't blame you--it's messy) then if they can write to a directory and execute from that directory, they can install software.
It is not the software's responsibility to ask for permission from the corporation in order to execute. It is your responsibility to ensure that only the software you approve executes.
That's a good point. Maybe Duplicate is just the first step in that direction. With iCould document saving, they could really take the leap and get rid of the file paradigm altogether.
Eh, I use OS X and also had problems wrapping my head around Duplicate at first. I think it's like the Office Ribbon--the right choice for new users, but completely unintutive for people who are familiar with the old way of doing things.
The problem is that a common workflow was to Open a document, make changes, and then Save As the new document. That option is gone. I don't see any option which even looks like it (duplicate sounds like copy, which I would do from Finder normally (or actually the command line, but most people would do it from Finder.))
Actually, "Save A Version" sounds more like "Save As" than "Save" to me. And if I choose it, I've saved over my original. Now there's a revert that I can try.
If I do try Duplicate unintuitively, it kindly lets me know that I've made changes to the document I'm about to duplicate and offers the option of Duplicate-then-Revert. At least that part makes sense.
Well that's just like, your opinion, man.
I think it's the perfect progression for lockdown. Start by creating your app store. You require signing and some other requirements in order to list with the store. You see that not everyone is moving to the store as fast as you'd like, so you kick it up a notch--start rejecting all unsigned apps by default (that's the stick) but let developers who sign their apps bypass this restriction (the carrot.) Eventually, most developers are signing, and from there it's a short jump to requiring them all to list with the app store. Getting people to sign is the hard part, so Mountain Lion will be a big leap in that direction as developers don't want to give long instructions and explanations to their users as to why the apps require extra effort to run.
Actually, that comes down to bad development decisions on the part of the game makers.
The UI for what iCloud backs up in Settings shows an application and a backup size. What is backed up is a particular, non-selectable subdirectory in the app's directory. It's the same directory for every app. If the app developer chose to put e.g. large graphics files under that directory, then they will get backed up to iCloud during the regular backup.
It's very easy to see such a large backup size and assume that the whole app is being backed up. Instead, unnecessary data is being backed up. I've had to disable specific apps backups to iCloud due to this. I could still download the app, but my settings/progress would be deleted since I didn't enable that app in iCloud (due to the enormous size of the backup.)
This third party self signing is a new feature. Why would they introduce it only to get rid of it again one or two versions later? That makes no sense.
It makes sense as a transition. It's hardly different from the signing required to put an application on the App store. Once most people are signing anyway, it will be easier to take the next step and list in the App Store. Once most people are listing there, there's little reason to keep the other options around (from Apple's perspective, at least.)
I have the same concern, although it'd be nice to have some way to block stuff that turns out to be bad; yeah, it closes the barn door after some horses have already escaped and shit all over some machines, but at least it might stop them from doing more damage.
I wonder how attempts to run the software post-kill will be handled. Some reports are that you can still right-click and choose "Open" to run the software. That might be a reasonable compromise, though I still have concerns.
Do they make enough money for them to bother getting rid of the "identified developers" option?
They make tons of money on the iOS store, which is the only way in Apple's world to get software onto the devices. I imagine that they make less money on the Mac app store, though I'm not sure (the prices seem higher than the iOS app store.) The real key would be to look at how much money publishers make for applications sold outside of the store. Almost everyone I know who has a Mac has bought Parallels or VMWare. I know many who get Office. That's all I can think of that I've personally seen, other than free apps or apps purchased from the App store (iWork, Lion, maybe a few games.)
OK, you're on the record; I'll go on the record as predicting that the most they'll do is default to "App Store only", and they may well not even do that. (I wish I could also predict that the OS X model will go "back to the iPhone/iPad", as that'd squelch a lot of the complaints about the "walled garden", and make the frog in the pot complain that the hot tub is getting a bit cool, but we'll see what happens in iOS 6.)
I could go as far as to say that they might go default to App Store Only and drop the unsigned option. But I think the end goal is to get all client software to go through the App Store. I imagine that difference between signed and App Store is fairly small for most developers.
The kernel hooks for virtualization would make a lot of sense.
Apple's desktop offering is now more locked down than than the other competing desktop platforms.
True.
Apple's phone and tablet offering is also more locked down than Android, which is the main competing phone and tablet platform.
True, but this is nothing new.
Comparing the level of lockdown on Apple's desktops to the level on Android smartphones is comparing apples and oranges.
I'm not sure how this last statement follows from the previous ones.
For some reason, people want to differentiate general purpose computing devices based upon whether or not they make use of telephony on the cell tower networks. This confuses me, because it seems like an odd arbitrary distinction.
Android phones are general purpose computers. So are iOS devices. So are machines running OS X. So are machines running Linux. So are machines running Windows. Why does comparing the lockdown of any of those devices to any other not make sense? What is it about comparing a phone OS to a desktop OS that's wrong?
I'll tell you what the difference is: when you want to win your argument, you say that Android's different, so the optional, default lockdown isn't the same as the Mac's optional, default lockdown.
You're causing this to go in circles.
Meathead 1 said:
This, pretty much. The OS is set to, by default, spread FUD about apps not coming from the App Store. Being the default, it's as good as there being no other option, because users don't know enough to tell the difference.
Meathead 2 said:
Sort of like how Android by default "spreads FUD" about apps not coming from the Android market? Since, you know, you have to check the "other sources" option in order to sideload apps? Yes, even on the vanilla versions of Android from Google it defaults to blocking sideloaded apps.
This was apparently in an attempt to point out that the popular phone OS around here does the same thing
AC, in a burst of sanity, said:
I'm confused by your response. Besides the fact that Android runs on phones and OS X runs on computers - which I do think is a salient difference - I also don't understand explaining away one company's bad behavior by pointing towards another company that's doing the same thing. I don't see what Android does as being at all relevant to people's frustration with Apple and their move towards rigid control of their platforms.
To which Meathead 2 said:
The point is that when Apple does something no different from Android (which is not called a walled garden) the only response from these whiners is to whine about "walled gardens" when that isn't the implication of this change. This has nothing to do with trying to lock down OS X. It's about giving users control of what applications can be installed.
And this is where it really gets fouled up.
Meathead 3 brings iOS into it, which no one had mentioned up until this point:
The main difference here is on Android you dont have to void the warranty to get those other apps, just uncheck the box.
Meathead 3 is thinking of iOS in a conversation about OS X and Android. Meathead 3 gets called on it and goes into defensive mode, "Well someone else brought up phone OSs!" Look, iOS locking stuff down isn't news. It's been going on for the better part of 4 years.
Meathead 3 goes into "defense mode"--probably realizing his error, but definitely being unwilling to be proven wrong, and goes off on several tangents. Then we get to your post:
By being default-enabled, requiring admin privileges to change, and no doubt coming with scary warnings about how you'll get hacked if you disable it.
Well. Duh. Android does this. OS X does this. We've come full circle.
And really, the whole point is that when Android does a thing, no one screams about lockdown and no one calls it a walled garden. When Apple does the very same thing (newly, on OS X) lots of meatheads start crying foul. It's not saying that it's right when Apple does it--it's pointing out the double-standard that no one complains when Android does it. It demonstrates the incredible bias here, which has nothing to do with technical merits and has everything to do with the companies involved. It's like a bunch of sports fans getting into fights, and it's absurd.
A few points to consider.
1) Apple now has a kill switch. Part of the point of pushing application-signing is so that they can disable signed apps which turn out to be malicious. Only one has to wonder if that's all it will be used for. It's not that I'm particularly distrustful of Apple--I'm distrustful of companies with a lot of power. Amazon's used their kill switch to remotely delete content, promised not to do it again, then did it again. If a company is big enough to survive the publicity of using their kill-switch, then it is in their interest to use it when locking out that software benefits them.
Heck, merely having the ability to do such a thing invites having some patent lawyer ask for a court order requiring that they use it against allegedly infringing third-party works, even if Apple itself were inherently trustworthy. Kill-switches from software vendors are a horrible idea. Apple almost certainly wants the ability to disable any software running on their hardware, which partially leads into...
2) There's no doubt that Apple would love for all software to be sold through the App store. They make money that way, and they get people accustomed to relying on them for software. I don't think it's inherently bad to run an app store, however requiring people to use it would be bad. Unfortunately, I'm beginning to think that's the future for Apple.
My prediction is that 10.10 will remove the ability to run unsigned content (after all, it's free to get a signing key.) And 10.11 will probably require all precompiled applications to be acquired through the App store (except on the Server version of the OS, for which the option to run unsigned binaries will almost certainly remain.) 10.9 will keep the defaults, as it will take some time to get a critical mass of non-App store developers signing their work.
3) Virtualization. I expect it to be built into the OS at some point, based upon point 2 above. Maybe they'll acquire Parallels or Virtualbox from Oracle. Maybe they'll write their own. It will be a concession to the fact that they still live in a heavily-Windows world, and interoperability is still sometimes required.
Maybe so, but for those of us who have to work on multiple devices regularly, I think that switching to and from natural scrolling would absolutely kill my productivity. Until most PCs have this as an option, I simply can't enable it on my Mac.
You act like this has only happened once.
Antivirus has detected system files as viruses since the DOS days.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/09/apples-app-store-review-guidelines-we-dont-need-any-more-far/
This more or less confirms the GP.
I don't know. Depending upon how much difference there is between the iPad2 and iPad3, $100 might be very appropriate. There's not much difference between the 4 and the 4s, which have a $100 difference.
A computer language is vastly different from a natural language. Among other things, you can make mistakes in a natural language and still get your point across. In fact, almost no one uses "proper English" anymore. On a command line, very small mistakes are very meaningful. At best, a mistake means that your command doesn't work. At worst, you might destroy data.
Also, the more you learn English, the easier it is to learn more of it. However command-line flags aren't always sensical. For example, there was a define you could use when installing a port on FreeBSD-- -DDISABLE_VULNERABILITIES. How wonderful it would be if that flag did what it says! What it actually does is disable a vulnerability database check, so that you can install a port with known vulnerabilities. The -g flag to ssh "allows remote hosts to connect to local forwarded ports,"--the flag chosen is almost meaningless semantically.
But even when the flag makes a certain amount of sense, it can be different on different commands. For example, on BSD, cp -R copies recursively, while rm -r removes recursively. Sometimes, even commands from the same package will have dissimilar flags--for example, to specify the destination port for ssh (OpenSSH), you use -p. To specify it for scp, you use -P. While there are exceptions to English rules, they don't tend to make the language less understandable. When failing to abide by the exceptions, you are still understood.
No, I was disagreeing with your implication.
I wonder how much that stock will be worth if society's infrastructure crumbles....
I said directly.
Likewise, such indirect benefits could be said to come from almost any tax levied against any person, such as a wealth tax on stock.
I'm not proposing such a tax, I'm just drawing parallels.
Are they?
go to pay infrastructure used to make your property useful in the first place
This goes to the moral argument, and so that is the one I will address.
A huge portion of my property taxes actually go to public schools, which is not infrastructure benefit directly from. My understanding is that this is not unusual.
It isn't really a tax on wealth, exactly, more a tax on the value that the local government gives the property
It's not a tax on wealth, it's a tax on value?
I think that's splitting hairs, don't you?
federal government similarly makes stock valuable
The federal government, with all of the protections that it gives corporations, absolutely provides company ownership value. Similarly, companies clearly and directly benefit from infrastructure.
It seems that if you were to decide to tax stocks in the same way you might tax property, you'd have fewer people willing to buy stock, and subsequently less investment in the economy.
This is the general argument used to keep capital gains taxes low, and as far as I can see, there's no real evidence to support it. Of course, most of the ways that stocks are broken can be linked back to the fact that companies rarely issue dividends anymore, and the main way that people make money from stocks is through selling them for a gain. But that's a complaint for a different time.
I guess the reducto ad absurdum is why not tax savings? If you've got $100.00 in the bank, why not tax you 15% every year on it? In ten years, you'll end up with less that $20 bucks. Or why not tax the perceived value of your antique record collection?
Well, my property taxes are much much lower than that. Less than 1%, actually (something like $0.50 for every $100 valuation.) But I do get your point.
I think that taxing savings might encourage people to spend money which is otherwise sitting there doing nothing and not helping the economy. Of course, savings is at an all-time low in this country, so really it might not do anything at all.
At least for property tax there's some sort of implied quid pro quo (you're getting roads, fire, police for your taxes). What exactly does a government give you for savings or stock that is equivalent?
Well, stock is ownership of a company. It's not like companies don't benefit from infrastructure. In fact, they probably benefit more from infrastructure than any individual person does (though they get to deduct their property rather than paying tax on it.) It seems reasonable that a company would need to pay for infrastructure.
If you believe articles like http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/03/major-corporations-tax-subsidies_n_1073548.html then it turns out that many of the most profitable companies don't end up paying income tax (though they may pay into medicare and social security). I'm not sure why that's fair.
The bottom line is that the tax code is screwed up, which is sort of what this /. article is about in the first place. When billionaires can get away without paying most taxes (surely they pay sales tax on things that they purchase?) yet working stiffs have to pay 20% of their incomes in income+medicare+ss alone, something is clearly out of whack. I don't think there's an easy fix.