>If you spent all your profits on re-investments, buying better equipment, hiring staff, etc., you don't 'lose' any money to the government.
Well, not exactly. There's something called "depreciation", which is basically a big scam for the government to still get taxes, even though you didn't make any money. Here's how it works:
If you buy a big piece of capital equipment (tractor, plant, whatever) with which you're going to increase productivity or hire people, you pay 100% of the cost up front, but you can only deduct a portion of the cost. This basically means you can end up owning taxes even without any profits.
The remedy for this is leasing instead of buying capital equipment or getting a loan, in which case you can deduct all those costs as they come up. But who benefits there? Banks (Timothy Geithner and friends).
Can anybody come up with a reason to not allow full deductions of capital costs?
>But seriously, yeah, online shopping is much less efficient, if only because instead of transporting the goods crammed together with no extra packaging material, you're transporting them individually wrapped in extra protective packaging
The times I've bought books online, they've not come in 5 different boxes each with their own popcorn wrap, but rather 5 books in a single box.
Besides, what's the cost of maintaining a furnished showroom for books, with air conditioning, etc., instead of a single densely packed warehouse?
The problem is Ubuntu's not really a community-based distribution (in the sense that Mageia wants to be). Basically, Mark ("Self Appointed Benevolent Dictator") and company have their own plans, which aren't always what the community wants.
One point in Microsoft's favor is definitely the VBA macro system: Turn on Record, do some stuff, stop recording, and look at the macro code.
You can easily learn Excel programming that way.
Try that with OO Calc. You get a gobbeldygooky, non-decipherable mess.
And it's not in the recommended format for creating new macros by scratch.
If you use that API, you don't don't get a nice dropdown Intellisense letting you go from Sheet to Cell to properties. That's because Sun (or Star) overengineered the thing to be totally dynamic, and it doesn't know at the time you're writing the macro what properties and methods an object has (or even what objects are available).
So you're supposed to write macros "blind", and wait for runtime errors or trawl forums or use other workarounds.
For the moderate power user, it's a big hurdle. Say you're a hotshot Ruby or other developer, and you want to process some data with OO. You can't do it without first becoming an expert on OO.
.deb's are installable by clicking. E.g., download the.deb in Chrome or FF, click/double click on the downloaded file, and a GUI (gdebi) pops up prompting you to install the.deb .
Since my main browser has Javascript turned off, I'm a little less concerned about where it'll go. Also, Firefox and Chrome have malware protection lists these days.
One part of me says: this is great, should have happened a long time ago.
Record once, and be done with it, instead of paying over and over again.
But the other part is: After you're done recording symphonies, and no one needs (or needs to pay) orchestra players again, and they have to go into some other livelihood, where are you going to get orchestra players the next time you need them?
>There is Microsoft blood in the water and Oracle is run by a shark.
Yeah, I think that too. We'll know when it happens, though.
I continue to think Larry is partially ideologically (or personally) motivated. Look how fast he hired Mark Turd.
I'm hoping to see him continue, increase funding for, and push OpenOffice just to stick it to Microsoft. Spending merely millions of dollars can cost Microsoft billions in its Office and Windows cash cows.
>Software patents don't hurt big companies. Big companies can either cut a big check or cross license patents with each other.
Agree in general. Though, in this specific case, open source developers (or even closed source ISVs) writing Java software don't have anything to worry about.
The old version of history was a pronouncement from above about "what happened", as if it could be exactly determined, rather than being a story you tell like priests interpret scriptures.
I think it's good to have argumentation about historical facts, and what they're based on (government press releases?). Historians based history on "documents", which are all too often just complete lies typed up.
It's funny how when if someone tries to sell you the Brooklyn bridge verbally you'd never buy it, but if it's "documented", then it becomes a "fact", a data point for history.
This applies to both sides of the partisan divide from FDR's knowledge (if any) about Pearl Harbor, Eisenhower's Iran coup, Kennedy's Cuba invasion, the October Surprise (if any) of release of US hostages from Iran, Iran-Contra, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
>If you spent all your profits on re-investments, buying better equipment, hiring staff, etc., you don't 'lose' any money to the government.
Well, not exactly. There's something called "depreciation", which is basically a big scam for the government to still get taxes, even though you didn't make any money. Here's how it works:
If you buy a big piece of capital equipment (tractor, plant, whatever) with which you're going to increase productivity or hire people, you pay 100% of the cost up front, but you can only deduct a portion of the cost. This basically means you can end up owning taxes even without any profits.
The remedy for this is leasing instead of buying capital equipment or getting a loan, in which case you can deduct all those costs as they come up. But who benefits there? Banks (Timothy Geithner and friends).
Can anybody come up with a reason to not allow full deductions of capital costs?
First they messed up sound with PulseAudio, but I did not say anything because I killall'd it in cron.
Then they came for my window control menus, but I did not say anything because I gconf'd it.
Now they have come for my gnome-terminal replacing it with HAL, and there's no one left to speak for me.
>But seriously, yeah, online shopping is much less efficient, if only because instead of transporting the goods crammed together with no extra packaging material, you're transporting them individually wrapped in extra protective packaging
The times I've bought books online, they've not come in 5 different boxes each with their own popcorn wrap, but rather 5 books in a single box.
Besides, what's the cost of maintaining a furnished showroom for books, with air conditioning, etc., instead of a single densely packed warehouse?
Real men run Lynx^H^H^H^H wget!
That's it, forget Linux, I'm moving to GNU HURD.
2012: The Year of the HURD Desktop.
10 FOR X = 0 TO 65535
20 POKE X, 0
30 NEXT X
iKiribati ?
Doesn't Apple have a trademark on that?
Hunt a whale, lower the sea!
The problem is Ubuntu's not really a community-based distribution (in the sense that Mageia wants to be). Basically, Mark ("Self Appointed Benevolent Dictator") and company have their own plans, which aren't always what the community wants.
One point in Microsoft's favor is definitely the VBA macro system: Turn on Record, do some stuff, stop recording, and look at the macro code.
You can easily learn Excel programming that way.
Try that with OO Calc. You get a gobbeldygooky, non-decipherable mess.
And it's not in the recommended format for creating new macros by scratch.
If you use that API, you don't don't get a nice dropdown Intellisense letting you go from Sheet to Cell to properties. That's because Sun (or Star) overengineered the thing to be totally dynamic, and it doesn't know at the time you're writing the macro what properties and methods an object has (or even what objects are available).
So you're supposed to write macros "blind", and wait for runtime errors or trawl forums or use other workarounds.
For the moderate power user, it's a big hurdle. Say you're a hotshot Ruby or other developer, and you want to process some data with OO. You can't do it without first becoming an expert on OO.
Bravo.
5 year olds can use Linux/GNOME/OpenOffice. So what's the problem with adults?
Isn't it great when Windows fans are reducing to saying "Buy compatible hardware"? Which is what Linux fans used to have to say.
Increasingly, Ubuntu means "It Just Works."
.deb's are installable by clicking. E.g., download the .deb in Chrome or FF, click/double click on the downloaded file, and a GUI (gdebi) pops up prompting you to install the .deb .
Secret Maryo Chronicles
http://www.secretmaryo.org/
Click here to install in Debian/Ubuntu
Since my main browser has Javascript turned off, I'm a little less concerned about where it'll go. Also, Firefox and Chrome have malware protection lists these days.
This is probably a good time to mention the Linuxy, freeish, openish alternative to Twitter:
http://identi.ca/
And if you don't like Identi.ca, create your own microblogging system with StatusNet:
http://status.net/
One part of me says: this is great, should have happened a long time ago.
Record once, and be done with it, instead of paying over and over again.
But the other part is: After you're done recording symphonies, and no one needs (or needs to pay) orchestra players again, and they have to go into some other livelihood, where are you going to get orchestra players the next time you need them?
Don't you need to separate out white cottons, colors, and gentles (sweaters)?
of GoDaddy's deep dark secrets?
Like the way they (supposedly) steal customer domain ideas after you whois a domain?
Somebody on the inside? How about it?
Also, does anybody have the link for that story from Slashdot a couple years ago, I can't find it.
So what's the answer? Buy farmland, right?
>There is Microsoft blood in the water and Oracle is run by a shark.
Yeah, I think that too. We'll know when it happens, though.
I continue to think Larry is partially ideologically (or personally) motivated. Look how fast he hired Mark Turd.
I'm hoping to see him continue, increase funding for, and push OpenOffice just to stick it to Microsoft. Spending merely millions of dollars can cost Microsoft billions in its Office and Windows cash cows.
>Software patents don't hurt big companies. Big companies can either cut a big check or cross license patents with each other.
Agree in general. Though, in this specific case, open source developers (or even closed source ISVs) writing Java software don't have anything to worry about.
Are there any chipsets other than Atheros or Broadcom? (I don't know.)
I guess I had assumed that this meant that you could basically buy laptops blind now (Atheros, Broadcom, Intel all being covered).
that NetApps (and everybody else) are a little more scared of their new Oracle overlords than of geeky, hunky-dory Sun?
Prediction: Google and Oracle are going to patch things up like nothing ever happened. You heard it here.
I think this is a good thing.
The old version of history was a pronouncement from above about "what happened", as if it could be exactly determined, rather than being a story you tell like priests interpret scriptures.
I think it's good to have argumentation about historical facts, and what they're based on (government press releases?). Historians based history on "documents", which are all too often just complete lies typed up.
It's funny how when if someone tries to sell you the Brooklyn bridge verbally you'd never buy it, but if it's "documented", then it becomes a "fact", a data point for history.
This applies to both sides of the partisan divide from FDR's knowledge (if any) about Pearl Harbor, Eisenhower's Iran coup, Kennedy's Cuba invasion, the October Surprise (if any) of release of US hostages from Iran, Iran-Contra, etc.