Nobody's dying in the streets over MS's dominance in the OS market.
Do you think so? You think there's never been a case where a crash caused by MS's hopeless security and reliability endangered or even cost lives?
There was a recent case where a MS security flaw took out the signaling on an American railway. I would have thought that might be a safety issue.
Did the last 20 years pass you by or something? Computers are pretty common in life-critcal situations nowadays. Having the field dominated by a monopoly (ie, a company that knows that no matter what the quality of their product they're the only game in town) is an issue where people can die in the street.
There is nothing poor people *have* to buy that rich people don't.
Except that those things: food, cloths, shelter are fairly fixed in their minumum cost; you can spend as much as you like on them but the amount you have to spend on them is the same for everyone. So as you become wealthier the amount you must spend on them reduces as a percentage. Of course, most people increase their spending in line with their increasing wealth but that's their choice.
So can sales tax. Simply do it in the form of rebates.
Oh, good, more red tape!
Income tax is, effectively, a government-issued punishment for succeeding.
It can be, and has been, used that way but it can also be a way of asking those that have made their money to give something back. Since most people get rich by taking money off poor people (mathmatically speaking), then that seems fair enough to me up to a point.
It's relatively trivial for the rich to avoid income tax simply by masking their income sources in tax havens.
Certainly that loophole should be closed, which would reduce taxes all-round.
More problematically, it hits the "middle class" the most - not poor enough to qualify for government support, not rich enough to still have a reasonable amount left over after tax is taken out.
The middle classes are the classic whingers: if they were left as desolate by tax/immigrants/the weather/gypsies/everything non-middle-class as they constantly claim then they wouldn't be middle class! The reality is that the middle classes are the most afraid because they are, genuinely, the most vunerable when taxation changes. The poor don't have anything to lose and the rich normally have enough that they don't care much unless the change is huge. But, in reality, these fears are rarely confirmed by actual events.
Income tax is inherently broken because it discourages people from contributing more to society
Ah, the topsy-turvy world of "rich people just want to help". It must be hard for them, to have all that money and be prevented from helping their fellow man/woman/wombat.
In fact, this is actually what sales tax does: it encourages people to keep their money in the bank instead of putting it back into the economy. Income tax finds its way back into society in the form of payment for contracts to build roads, pay for civil servents and the armed forces and so on.
Are you trying to tell me that until 200 years ago Atoms did not exist??? I think you mean the birthday of the Discovery of Atoms.
Unless you subscribe to the strong anthropic principle which some people have taken to mean that the universe is consructed as we see it because of the way we see it. So, Dalton created atoms by constructing a coherent enough view point and convincing others of its validity, thus shaping a new reality.
Great for semi-drunken debates and science fiction stories (Charles Harness, "The Rose" for example) but otherwise very silly.
How much fairer can tax get than to hit people on what they spend, not on what they earn ?
How do you reduce the sales tax burden on the poor who have to buy things? Income tax is much fairer as it is scaled to what you can afford and can even be totally cut out for the lowest incomes.
You pay a tax on what you spend, not on what you earn.
Which makes it impossible to give relief to the poor who have very little income but still have to buy things. Income tax, on the other hand, is quite easy to manipulate to change the distribution and in fact generally is changed in each budget.
Books are one of the few items exempt from the universal 17.5% sales tax imposed by your friendly British Government,
Actually it's imposed by the friendly EU quasi-government.
VAT (which is what we're talking about) is the most grossly unfair tax ever invented yet, instead of working to abolish it, the EU is constantly pressuring Britain to extend it to the few things it doesn't cover.
85% fuel tax
Which is still too low. In terms of the money spent on roads divided by the number of cars, car drivers receive a net subsidy.
Its not a matter of WHAT SOFTWARE, is a matter of using software at all!! Open software? are you stupid?!
I agree that e-voting is pointless but if someone's going to insist then closed software is just insane. The point about the electorate being able to inspect every aspect of the process applies to paper voting too.
It doesn't matter if it's only 1% of people who are doing that - if they notice that the machine hasn't printed what they asked for, they'll kick up a stink. More than a couple of people do that and the whole system will be called into question.
Which is why you don't do it on every ballot and you allow a "re-try" option which is programmed to work correctly and various other methods of alaying suspicion.
these machines must also print a audit trail on paper, so that the votes counted eletronically can be checked against the audit trail,
So why bother with the electronic counting? If you are going to count the audit trail there's no point in the electronic count and if the audit trail isn't counted then the electronic system can happily push the vote 2 or 3 percent towards the paying candidate, while printing a fake paper trail, and no one will ever know.
How often do you think this actually happens? Generally, you're lucky if you can get people out to vote for Tweedledum or Tweedledee, asking them to do some work when they get there is going too far.
Even if they do check I can think of a couple of ways to rig it anyway if you just need or want a few percent onto your candidate/brother's vote.
Just get a piece of paper, put a mark on it, get a bunch of people to count the marks.
All that is truly needed is accountability built into the system. If a commercial product created a paper-trail that could appeald
Which means open-source of some sort. Anything else can be rigged, including the paper trail it produces. No part of the election process should be hidden from the electorate, whether comuterised or mechanical. Is that zealotry? It sounds like Common Sense to me.
A printed copy is easier to read and travels better.
This is a temporary advantage until digital paper or hi-res screens take hold.
It also looks a lot better on a book shelf.
Alright, that's true but of little interest to the majority of readers who are not collectors.
It's not a simple fact of life; it's an prediction.
Well, it's a prediction based on the whole history of mankind. I suppose human nature could change drastically in the next few years...
According to her website, she does private performances, not the sign of a rich performer.
Yes, I admit there is a potential role in getting your career started in today's system where most books are sold on paper for money. The on-line market can get you an initial step up when you can't find a publisher. But in a world where all, or the vast majority of, books are freely available on-line there is no next step: getting a name for yourself on-line does not lead to a paying career in the "real" book market for the simple reason that there is no real book market left.
The same arguments will raise their heads when we all have enough bandwidth to ditch mp3/ogg and simply download uncompressed music which can be burnt to discs. Why, if this was legal, would anyone pay for music ever again? One answer is that some people will want to pay their favorite acts out of gratitude. But what fraction of the, for example, teen market would do that? Sure, I'd be happy to pay Blue Oyster Cult directly and cut out the middle men but I'm not a typical music fan. In the same way, I'd pay the author but I'm not a typical book-reader either.
In short: instant, non-DRM, full-quality downloads with a PayPal (or whatever) option on the one hand increases the percentage of the customer's money that goes to the creators but at the same time, it reduces the paying market to the small number that we would today call "collectors". Which factor dominates? I'd bet almost anything that the second factor is the bigger in terms of revenue, by far. Which is bad news if you're the creator in question.
what happens to your income if people start paying you what they are really worth,
Ah, to be 16 again! People pay what they feel like paying. Some will pay, say $3 for a paperback, most will pay nothing.
Unlike a film or record there is no inherent advantage to the non-pirated version and unlike software there is no market in post-purchase support (Having trouble reading? Phone our helpline at $1/minute). If books are available on-line for no cost then almost no one will be able to afford the luxury of being a writer. Simple fact of life.
The people that do support the notion are generally people with nothing of their own worth paying for or those who can afford the luxury of being an un-paid writer: the Stephen Kings and such like that have already made more money than they can spend. It's no big deal for them to throw away the odd title here and there.
But surely, according to the previous description at least, the password was not sent clear-text anyway; an MD5 hash of a one-use string combined with your password was sent. Surely this is as secure as the new system for sending the password. Or am I missing something?
Just in case anyone's getting too excited about China entering the modern world, it's worth reading this BBC article about life as a conquered nation under the Chinese government.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe. On the other hand, maybe SCO are just plain stupid. It does happen, you know, and SCO do act like they're pretty damn stupid.
A lot of people suspect what you do but there's not a lot of proof about, just motive and means which isn't enough.
Personally, I wouldn't be surprised either way.
TWW
Do you think so? You think there's never been a case where a crash caused by MS's hopeless security and reliability endangered or even cost lives?
There was a recent case where a MS security flaw took out the signaling on an American railway. I would have thought that might be a safety issue.
Did the last 20 years pass you by or something? Computers are pretty common in life-critcal situations nowadays. Having the field dominated by a monopoly (ie, a company that knows that no matter what the quality of their product they're the only game in town) is an issue where people can die in the street.
TWW
Except that those things: food, cloths, shelter are fairly fixed in their minumum cost; you can spend as much as you like on them but the amount you have to spend on them is the same for everyone. So as you become wealthier the amount you must spend on them reduces as a percentage. Of course, most people increase their spending in line with their increasing wealth but that's their choice.
So can sales tax. Simply do it in the form of rebates.
Oh, good, more red tape!
Income tax is, effectively, a government-issued punishment for succeeding.
It can be, and has been, used that way but it can also be a way of asking those that have made their money to give something back. Since most people get rich by taking money off poor people (mathmatically speaking), then that seems fair enough to me up to a point.
It's relatively trivial for the rich to avoid income tax simply by masking their income sources in tax havens.
Certainly that loophole should be closed, which would reduce taxes all-round.
More problematically, it hits the "middle class" the most - not poor enough to qualify for government support, not rich enough to still have a reasonable amount left over after tax is taken out.
The middle classes are the classic whingers: if they were left as desolate by tax/immigrants/the weather/gypsies/everything non-middle-class as they constantly claim then they wouldn't be middle class! The reality is that the middle classes are the most afraid because they are, genuinely, the most vunerable when taxation changes. The poor don't have anything to lose and the rich normally have enough that they don't care much unless the change is huge. But, in reality, these fears are rarely confirmed by actual events.
Income tax is inherently broken because it discourages people from contributing more to society
Ah, the topsy-turvy world of "rich people just want to help". It must be hard for them, to have all that money and be prevented from helping their fellow man/woman/wombat.
In fact, this is actually what sales tax does: it encourages people to keep their money in the bank instead of putting it back into the economy. Income tax finds its way back into society in the form of payment for contracts to build roads, pay for civil servents and the armed forces and so on.
TWW
Mac who? MacSweeny? Mac the knife?
The best part of your post was the sig.
TWW
Unless you subscribe to the strong anthropic principle which some people have taken to mean that the universe is consructed as we see it because of the way we see it. So, Dalton created atoms by constructing a coherent enough view point and convincing others of its validity, thus shaping a new reality.
Great for semi-drunken debates and science fiction stories (Charles Harness, "The Rose" for example) but otherwise very silly.
TWW
How do you reduce the sales tax burden on the poor who have to buy things? Income tax is much fairer as it is scaled to what you can afford and can even be totally cut out for the lowest incomes.
All sales taxes should be abolished.
TWW
Which makes it impossible to give relief to the poor who have very little income but still have to buy things. Income tax, on the other hand, is quite easy to manipulate to change the distribution and in fact generally is changed in each budget.
TWW
Actually it's imposed by the friendly EU quasi-government.
VAT (which is what we're talking about) is the most grossly unfair tax ever invented yet, instead of working to abolish it, the EU is constantly pressuring Britain to extend it to the few things it doesn't cover.
85% fuel tax
Which is still too low. In terms of the money spent on roads divided by the number of cars, car drivers receive a net subsidy.
TWW
I agree that e-voting is pointless but if someone's going to insist then closed software is just insane. The point about the electorate being able to inspect every aspect of the process applies to paper voting too.
TWW
Which is why you don't do it on every ballot and you allow a "re-try" option which is programmed to work correctly and various other methods of alaying suspicion.
TWW
Which is, of course, an argument for not having any electronic voting. Which is fine by me.
TWW
So why bother with the electronic counting? If you are going to count the audit trail there's no point in the electronic count and if the audit trail isn't counted then the electronic system can happily push the vote 2 or 3 percent towards the paying candidate, while printing a fake paper trail, and no one will ever know.
TWW
How often do you think this actually happens? Generally, you're lucky if you can get people out to vote for Tweedledum or Tweedledee, asking them to do some work when they get there is going too far.
Even if they do check I can think of a couple of ways to rig it anyway if you just need or want a few percent onto your candidate/brother's vote.
Just get a piece of paper, put a mark on it, get a bunch of people to count the marks.
TWW
Which means open-source of some sort. Anything else can be rigged, including the paper trail it produces. No part of the election process should be hidden from the electorate, whether comuterised or mechanical. Is that zealotry? It sounds like Common Sense to me.
TWW
Bill: Ohhh, the law! I'm so very, very frightened. Seriously though, officer, here's a few hundred grand for the wife and kids. Now beat it, I'm busy.
TWW
This is a temporary advantage until digital paper or hi-res screens take hold.
It also looks a lot better on a book shelf.
Alright, that's true but of little interest to the majority of readers who are not collectors.
It's not a simple fact of life; it's an prediction.
Well, it's a prediction based on the whole history of mankind. I suppose human nature could change drastically in the next few years...
According to her website, she does private performances, not the sign of a rich performer.
Yes, I admit there is a potential role in getting your career started in today's system where most books are sold on paper for money. The on-line market can get you an initial step up when you can't find a publisher. But in a world where all, or the vast majority of, books are freely available on-line there is no next step: getting a name for yourself on-line does not lead to a paying career in the "real" book market for the simple reason that there is no real book market left.
The same arguments will raise their heads when we all have enough bandwidth to ditch mp3/ogg and simply download uncompressed music which can be burnt to discs. Why, if this was legal, would anyone pay for music ever again? One answer is that some people will want to pay their favorite acts out of gratitude. But what fraction of the, for example, teen market would do that? Sure, I'd be happy to pay Blue Oyster Cult directly and cut out the middle men but I'm not a typical music fan. In the same way, I'd pay the author but I'm not a typical book-reader either.
In short: instant, non-DRM, full-quality downloads with a PayPal (or whatever) option on the one hand increases the percentage of the customer's money that goes to the creators but at the same time, it reduces the paying market to the small number that we would today call "collectors". Which factor dominates? I'd bet almost anything that the second factor is the bigger in terms of revenue, by far. Which is bad news if you're the creator in question.
TWW
Ah, to be 16 again! People pay what they feel like paying. Some will pay, say $3 for a paperback, most will pay nothing.
Unlike a film or record there is no inherent advantage to the non-pirated version and unlike software there is no market in post-purchase support (Having trouble reading? Phone our helpline at $1/minute). If books are available on-line for no cost then almost no one will be able to afford the luxury of being a writer. Simple fact of life.
The people that do support the notion are generally people with nothing of their own worth paying for or those who can afford the luxury of being an un-paid writer: the Stephen Kings and such like that have already made more money than they can spend. It's no big deal for them to throw away the odd title here and there.
TWW
World of your own, son.
TWW
TWW
Is this actually any more secure than the old system?
One guy up in a rocket? Big fucking deal.
TWW
Because if you wouldn't work for Bill Gates even if he paid you, you're unlikely to want to work for him for free.
TWW
Now it's L-box (although Tux-Box works better, I think).
Yes, I think you probably are.
TWW
Yeah, who needs registers? Z80 rules!
TWW