Ubuntu Server is a mostly well though-out environment. I like Upstart. You get a distro with somewhat recent software (much more than RHell), more stable than Fedora, and depending on the Debian flavor, more stable or more recent or just plain "what everybody else is using". The latter means you've got a lot to google from when you hit a problem or need some help.
By the way, there's another objection to the NPVIC (National Popular Vote Interstate Compact): If, as the proponents say, that the NPVIC is Constitutional because the state legislatures can allocate electoral votes however they please, what's to stop a majority of electoral votes being allocated to the winner of the global popular vote?
See, the President of the United States has a big impact on the rest of the world (not so for the Prime Minister of Canada). So there are some people who, tongue in cheek, have suggested that everyone in the world should get a say in who the POTUS is.
If an "end run" around the normal operation of the Constitution is OK, it's hard to see how a global popular vote would not be OK (again according to the theories advanced by NPVIC proponents).
OK, we're going to agree violently (it's unconstitutional, but not for that reason).
First of all, to start out: the unequal voting mechanism for the electoral college and the Senate is the fundamental basis of the Constitution. That may seem surprising, but: 1) I call it fundamental because there would have been no Constitution without the equal representation for States (and hence unequal for persons), and 2) equal representation for States is the only part of the Constitution that can't be amended. Yeah, really.
So it's quite strange that the Supremes have the gall to require one person, one vote (effectively outlawing state senates).
But, even given that, legislatures have the absolute right to allocate their electoral votes however they choose. That's why in 2000, there was talk of the Florida legislature simply giving Florida's electoral votes to Bush, notwithstanding the results of any election.
Finally, I don't claim that a given state cannot allocate their electoral votes to (what is reported to be) the popular vote winner. I say "reported to be" because you don't really know the official results until a while afterwards. As well, I think any sort of automatic and binding mechanism (whether part of compact or not) would be problematic--who, in the end, decides who gets the votes? A state legislature can decide to allocate votes, and the individual members may vote based a candidate's popular vote total, a candidates height, a candidate's golf handicap, or whatever.
So a state can voluntarily give its votes to the popular vote winner. But a state can't be bound to give its votes via an interstate compact.
>If you have a start up company that becomes incredibly successful and rich, the excess profits are then re-distributed back into society
Why, then, would anyone ever risk anything to start up a new business? What you're proposing is stasis. No new stuff. No HP, no Google, no Dell, Thawte, Ubuntu, Yahoo, M$, Apple, Slashdot. No iPhones, none of today's web. Black wireline telephones leased from the phone company. Single car, if that, in 900 sq ft house. I'm down with that.
Your complaint makes as much sense as complaining that the US and the Maldives get equal votes in the UN General Assembly (the Maldives get much more vote per population).
Theoretically, a very small % of the world population could have undue influence at the UN.
But nobody (except George Soros?) is calling for direct proportional elections to the UN.
Yeah, except that Congress has to approve all interstate compacts:
"No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay."
>The problem with off site servers, is that the thieves will trace the wires back to your home address!!!
I can't tell if this is a troll, but even the cheapest of Chinese CCTV DVRs today have a backup to network, backup to hard drive, and backup to offsite option.
Also be sure to look for "pentaplex", meaning you can do 5 things all at once (view, record, ?, ?, and ?).
Income taxes and payroll taxes are paid to the Federal government, not the state (Texas doesn't have a state income tax).
While I like the fact that companies can shop jurisdictions to find a lower tax rate, and thereby provide a counterweight to governments that think they can raise taxes without consequence, I don't really like the idea of special tax rates for specific companies either. Every company should get the same (low) tax rate.
If people had less free money to spend on houses, houses would cost less. Consider: Why is it that houses which cost $250K in Kansas cost $2 million on the coasts?
It's all that money bidding up the price of houses.
If the mortgage interest deduction is inflating the housing market, it deserves to be deflated.
The #1 thing the government could do for poor people is to simply let the price of housing come down to Earth.
Dropping the deduction is one thing, the other would have been to let foreclosures happen, and let the excess inventory bring down home prices.
Your comment didn't make sense in light of the current tax structure. Currently, assets are not taxed in the US, so it makes no sense to talk about assets.
What is taxed is income. Let's say someone gets $100 million per year income. If you're Larry Ellison, you'll be buying a lot of stuff to go along with your megalomaniac lifestyle. So you get taxed (20%, 30%, whatever) at the time of sale, and you won't be able to not do so by claiming the money was long-term capital gains or whatever. The genius of this is that even people in the cash economy (drug dealers, illegals) will have to pay.
On the other hand, if you're a rich monk, you'll put $99.99 million in the bank, where it can be loaned out to productive uses (creating and expanding companies).
Generally, it's considered good for an economy for people to save money.
Although not allowing personal deductions seems like a good idea, I'm sure you realize that the same thing can't apply to businesses.
Even though it's called an "income" tax, it's a profit tax when applied to businesses. After all, if, over 5 years, you bought $100k of equipment, bought $50k in merchandise, got $150K in revenues, you've just broken even. Taxing you on $150K in "income" without taking into account expenses means it becomes a tax on revenue.
As a sidebar, I'd say there shouldn't be a tax on wages. Business profit and sales taxes would be OK.
A sales tax does not deserve to be dismissed out of hand.
Here are some counterpoints:
-Somehow or another, people earned benefit from living the US prior to 1913, and the armies of the US protecting it managed to get paid and infrastructure was built without an income tax. -Infrastructure such as the roads is meant to be paid for by gas tax/car taxes. -Infrastructure such as schools are paid with property tax. -State universities are (or should be) paid by state subsidies + tuition. -If you buy something from abroad (import), that gets taxed at the same sales tax rate. That happens now when you import stuff. -If you don't buy as much stuff, that's great. It's generally considered good to invest, and not consume. Investing means you've put money in the bank (or other funds), and that money is available for entrepreneurs to borrow and create companies and jobs. -Generally, rich people buy a lot of stuff (Benz, Bentley, gold, etc.) If you've got an eccentric who doesn't (unlikely), that just means he's making millions (or billions) available for job creation. The government gets its cut when a rich guy does something unproductive, like buying a painting.
I think the fact that so many office jobs are so easy to do is part of the impetus for quotas and such. I mean, how hard is it really to order office supplies?
On the other hand, there are jobs where (like above), you really need people who know what they are doing. Quotas don't work for jobs like that.
I've been skating by with non-"smart" phones so far, but, going forward, it seems like even cheap phones are going to be Android phones.
So: to what extent is it possible to run an Android phone without a Google account tying everything you do, every email you send, your name/cc/home address, and where you go and who you call into one big database?
It's disturbing the way you used to be able to download apps anonymously off of getjar.com for Java phones but you can't do that on Google Play. It'd be nice to download an app, and then transfer it to your phone separately (meaning you wouldn't have to have Internet on your phone or use up your quota).
This is exactly the reason I'm skeptical of "keyless" systems which seem to be all the rage these days.
Yeah, they have a button you can press to turn things off, but that button was programmed (or managed) by the same group of idiots that programmed the rest of the drive-by-wire system.
Slashdot Mirror
BTW, he's not running Ubuntu on his servers, he's running Ubuntu Server, a different beast.
You seem Ubuntu Server not fit for servers, but it's beating out Redhat, so there's obviously a lot of people that disagree with you. http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1072
Ubuntu Server is a mostly well though-out environment. I like
Upstart. You get a distro with somewhat recent software (much more than RHell), more stable than Fedora, and depending on the Debian flavor, more stable or more recent or just plain "what everybody else is using". The latter means you've got a lot to google from when you hit a problem or need some help.
Also, there's a lot of cloud support. Check out https://juju.ubuntu.com/
What tasks do you want it to do?
You do realize that if a company doesn't get to deduct its expenses, you're taxing revenues, not profits, right?
By the way, there's another objection to the NPVIC (National Popular Vote Interstate Compact): If, as the proponents say, that the NPVIC is Constitutional because the state legislatures can allocate electoral votes however they please, what's to stop a majority of electoral votes being allocated to the winner of the global popular vote?
See, the President of the United States has a big impact on the rest of the world (not so for the Prime Minister of Canada). So there are some people who, tongue in cheek, have suggested that everyone in the world should get a say in who the POTUS is.
If an "end run" around the normal operation of the Constitution is OK, it's hard to see how a global popular vote would not be OK (again according to the theories advanced by NPVIC proponents).
OK, we're going to agree violently (it's unconstitutional, but not for that reason).
First of all, to start out: the unequal voting mechanism for the electoral college and the Senate is the fundamental basis of the Constitution. That may seem surprising, but: 1) I call it fundamental because there would have been no Constitution without the equal representation for States (and hence unequal for persons), and 2) equal representation for States is the only part of the Constitution that can't be amended. Yeah, really.
So it's quite strange that the Supremes have the gall to require one person, one vote (effectively outlawing state senates).
But, even given that, legislatures have the absolute right to allocate their electoral votes however they choose. That's why in 2000, there was talk of the Florida legislature simply giving Florida's electoral votes to Bush, notwithstanding the results of any election.
Finally, I don't claim that a given state cannot allocate their electoral votes to (what is reported to be) the popular vote winner. I say "reported to be" because you don't really know the official results until a while afterwards. As well, I think any sort of automatic and binding mechanism (whether part of compact or not) would be problematic--who, in the end, decides who gets the votes? A state legislature can decide to allocate votes, and the individual members may vote based a candidate's popular vote total, a candidates height, a candidate's golf handicap, or whatever.
So a state can voluntarily give its votes to the popular vote winner. But a state can't be bound to give its votes via an interstate compact.
>If you have a start up company that becomes incredibly successful and rich, the excess profits are then re-distributed back into society
Why, then, would anyone ever risk anything to start up a new business? What you're proposing is stasis. No new stuff. No HP, no Google, no Dell, Thawte, Ubuntu, Yahoo, M$, Apple, Slashdot. No iPhones, none of today's web. Black wireline telephones leased from the phone company. Single car, if that, in 900 sq ft house. I'm down with that.
Are you?
Want to share?
Your complaint makes as much sense as complaining that the US and the Maldives get equal votes in the UN General Assembly (the Maldives get much more vote per population).
Theoretically, a very small % of the world population could have undue influence at the UN.
But nobody (except George Soros?) is calling for direct proportional elections to the UN.
Yeah, except that Congress has to approve all interstate compacts:
"No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Clause#Clause_3:_Compact_Clause
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_compact
http://constitution.org/
>The problem with off site servers, is that the thieves will trace the wires back to your home address!!!
I can't tell if this is a troll, but even the cheapest of Chinese CCTV DVRs today have a backup to network, backup to hard drive, and backup to offsite option.
Also be sure to look for "pentaplex", meaning you can do 5 things all at once (view, record, ?, ?, and ?).
Yeah. Next time, tell the guy to *bold* his words.
And those businesses with "high enough" revenues will just cut special deals, leaving small on and offline businesses to pay sales taxes.
Income taxes and payroll taxes are paid to the Federal government, not the state (Texas doesn't have a state income tax).
While I like the fact that companies can shop jurisdictions to find a lower tax rate, and thereby provide a counterweight to governments that think they can raise taxes without consequence, I don't really like the idea of special tax rates for specific companies either. Every company should get the same (low) tax rate.
If people had less free money to spend on houses, houses would cost less. Consider: Why is it that houses which cost $250K in Kansas cost $2 million on the coasts?
It's all that money bidding up the price of houses.
If the mortgage interest deduction is inflating the housing market, it deserves to be deflated.
The #1 thing the government could do for poor people is to simply let the price of housing come down to Earth.
Dropping the deduction is one thing, the other would have been to let foreclosures happen, and let the excess inventory bring down home prices.
Your comment didn't make sense in light of the current tax structure. Currently, assets are not taxed in the US, so it makes no sense to talk about assets.
What is taxed is income. Let's say someone gets $100 million per year income. If you're Larry Ellison, you'll be buying a lot of stuff to go along with your megalomaniac lifestyle. So you get taxed (20%, 30%, whatever) at the time of sale, and you won't be able to not do so by claiming the money was long-term capital gains or whatever. The genius of this is that even people in the cash economy (drug dealers, illegals) will have to pay.
On the other hand, if you're a rich monk, you'll put $99.99 million in the bank, where it can be loaned out to productive uses (creating and expanding companies).
Generally, it's considered good for an economy for people to save money.
Although not allowing personal deductions seems like a good idea, I'm sure you realize that the same thing can't apply to businesses.
Even though it's called an "income" tax, it's a profit tax when applied to businesses. After all, if, over 5 years, you bought $100k of equipment, bought $50k in merchandise, got $150K in revenues, you've just broken even. Taxing you on $150K in "income" without taking into account expenses means it becomes a tax on revenue.
As a sidebar, I'd say there shouldn't be a tax on wages. Business profit and sales taxes would be OK.
A sales tax does not deserve to be dismissed out of hand.
Here are some counterpoints:
-Somehow or another, people earned benefit from living the US prior to 1913, and the armies of the US protecting it managed to get paid and infrastructure was built without an income tax.
-Infrastructure such as the roads is meant to be paid for by gas tax/car taxes.
-Infrastructure such as schools are paid with property tax.
-State universities are (or should be) paid by state subsidies + tuition.
-If you buy something from abroad (import), that gets taxed at the same sales tax rate. That happens now when you import stuff.
-If you don't buy as much stuff, that's great. It's generally considered good to invest, and not consume. Investing means you've put money in the bank (or other funds), and that money is available for entrepreneurs to borrow and create companies and jobs.
-Generally, rich people buy a lot of stuff (Benz, Bentley, gold, etc.) If you've got an eccentric who doesn't (unlikely), that just means he's making millions (or billions) available for job creation. The government gets its cut when a rich guy does something unproductive, like buying a painting.
I think the fact that so many office jobs are so easy to do is part of the impetus for quotas and such. I mean, how hard is it really to order office supplies?
On the other hand, there are jobs where (like above), you really need people who know what they are doing. Quotas don't work for jobs like that.
>Warm 'em up, and you are back to where you were.
OK, if this is so, then this is why Broder set off for 61 miles with only a 32mi range: the idea that once things warm up, the range will increase.
I've been skating by with non-"smart" phones so far, but, going forward, it seems like even cheap phones are going to be Android phones.
So: to what extent is it possible to run an Android phone without a Google account tying everything you do, every email you send, your name/cc/home address, and where you go and who you call into one big database?
It's disturbing the way you used to be able to download apps anonymously off of getjar.com for Java phones but you can't do that on Google Play. It'd be nice to download an app, and then transfer it to your phone separately (meaning you wouldn't have to have Internet on your phone or use up your quota).
Unless you're Oracle.
Well, I guess trying to smear a car company to get a story of the year award would count as an intensive purpose.
Which sounds difficult, but describing a bicycle gear shift in text would probably make it sound difficult, too.
Granted, for a handicapped user, automatic probably makes sense.
This is exactly the reason I'm skeptical of "keyless" systems which seem to be all the rage these days.
Yeah, they have a button you can press to turn things off, but that button was programmed (or managed) by the same group of idiots that programmed the rest of the drive-by-wire system.
What? Why not?
The board controls the company.
Shareholders elect the board.
51% gets you a majority of the board, which appoints the Chief Executive, who then "controls" the company.
What am I missing?