Why are property taxes so fair? Sure your property is always increasing in value, but why not wait until you cash it in to tax that profit?
My problem with property taxes is that a person who owns a chunk of land (completely paid off) has to keep making an income just to live there. If you lose your job, you lose your land and become a homeless bum.
In other words, if I want to buy some land and go retire on it, I have to make sure I have enough money invested to pay the property taxes for the rest of my life. Not only that, but I have to manage those funds and do annual paperwork, or have even more money to hire someone to take care of it for me. Bullshit.
Yeah, but like the previous poster said, it has nothing to do with video games. HD-DVD/bluray gives you more storage, and that's it. You can have multiple viewing angles and High Definition regardless of your storage medium.
OK, ignoring everything else you said, how can you justify opposition to the inheritance tax? Do you think all of the wealth in the country should gradually collect in the accounts of wealthiest families? Perhaps the US needs an aristocracy?
And before you go on about some poor family losing the farm, I'd like to point out that the inheritance tax does have a threshold - I don't know what the number is exactly, but I think it's a couple million bucks. i.e. you don't pay inheritance tax unless your inheritance exceeds the threshold. Where the threshold should be is certainly debatable, but to do without inheritance taxes entirely would be a bad idea, IMO.
You want to get rid of a tax, get rid of property taxes. Now those are just not right.
Right. You'll always know who saw the movie and who read the book, because they'll be different. It's like all the people who saw LOTR but don't know why the beer was so good in 1420.
Not that differences are bad, though - movies are a different medium, and a direct 1:1 transfer is pretty much impossible.
Maybe he's replaced the hyperintelligent interdimensional mice? I hope not - I can just picture them scooting around in their little champagne glasses.
Yeah, but harder to wield from inside your car. Like a wise man once said, "pistols are only good for shooting people." I've never had any reason to own a pistol (I have rifles for hunting), but with the crazy repressive laws we're making it's starting to look necessary.
Yeah but the government/media would name it anyway. Bill #C5874 would be called the "citizens protection bill" because we're safer with RFID tags in our heads. Think "Death Tax." That's not what it's really called but the people that benefit from destroying it are the very people that repeat the name over and over. You could also call it the "Spoiled Rich Kid Who Never Worked A Day In His Life Tax," which would be equally accurate but very unpopular with the rich folks who tell us how to think.
Yeah, but it would have to track your position to know when you're driving on a CA state road. I suppose you could have a black box in your car that simply recorded miles_driven_on_ca_roads as a number, but the whole idea stinks.
Theoretically you could design the system so that it can't be abused (by the state), but you'd end up having to make it completely abusive in order to prevent loopholes. What if your black box happens to get reset on accident (regularly)? If it's checked at the gas station, what if you never fill up your car - but instead fill up gas cans and carry them over to the adjacent parking lot?
Actually, I hope there aren't any obvious workarounds, because this is something that needs to be addressed head on. This kind of bullshit should not be tolerated.
Somebody please mod the parent up. The grandparent makes an interesting note about some very real piracy that's going on, but we need to remember to distinguish piracy from casual copying.
I consider buying a DVD and making a copy for myself to be totally within my rights. I consider making an occasional copy for a friend to be akin to jaywalking - technically illegal but who cares. Making copies and selling them? Obviously illegal and wrong. These are the people that the MPAA should be worrying about, not their actual customers.
Yeah, but your example is still different from the person selling DVDs at work. I'd call making copies for yourself "casual," and even making occasional copies for friends and family. Big deal.
Making copies and selling them, OTOH, moves into the area that I (and I think most slashdotters) consider "wrong." Such a person is no longer a casual copier.
What's stupid is that DRM and related schemes tend to only affect the casual users. In the world that the MPAA is trying to create, your average 4x4 drivin' good ol' boy can't make a backup copy or skip the commercials, but a major piracy operation doesn't even notice. Anybody making money from piracy can afford the necessary equipment to make perfect copies, which are unaffected by almost all copy protection schemes (those which don't require a chip in your head).
I think you're right about people being too tolerant of advertising. I've changed theaters 3 times in the last couple of years, because they all started showing ads. I wrote to each of them, and they all responded "but we have to show ads to survive!" to which I replied, "So the fact that I'll never give you money again will help you?"
Personally, I'm willing to drive a bit farther and go to a theater with a funky interior and crappy sound. Not because watching commercials would KILL me, but because I'm not going to chip in my 9 bucks to encourage it.
I'll second that. TV may have better graphics than radio, but most of the content stinks.
I listen to a few shows on the radio every weekend (Cartalk, etc) but my big ol' Sony NTSC videogame monitor has never experienced television in the 2 years that I've had it.
Not only that, but amino acids that have similar codons tend to have similar hydrophobicity, which causes the resulting protien to fold in a similar way.
Please read the other responses to your post and give them some thought.
Also note that the point of this simulation is not to "prove" evolution, but to try and better understand how it works. We have plenty of examples of evolution in the real world, but since much of the information about previous states has been lost (we only have the sparse fossil record and even sparser antique DNA) it's hard to trace out exactly how the process occurred. With a simulation, you can look at a mutation by mutation record.
Oh, and the theory of evolution isn't trying to explain how we got here - it's trying to explain how evolution works. The fact that organisms do evolve over time is so patently obvious that it's a given. General relativity isn't a proof of gravity, its an attempt to describe gravity. Gravity itself is so patently obvious that it's a given. Think about it. Gravity is a measurable physical phenomenon - so is the change of biological organisms over time.
Or, a bit more completely, 1. Differentiation makes some more likely to survive than others 2. Survivors survive (and reproduce) 3. Survivors pass on their traits to offspring 4. Evolve!
My sentiments exactly, and the main reason why I'll never buy an XBox. I can't think of a market that was improved by having MS as a competitor. When I heard of the XBox my first thought was, "Oh shit. There goes the game industry."
Since then, my only hope has been that they will fail and move on to decimate something else. It didn't happen with the XBox, but with any luck XBox 2 will be a huge flop.
You made it clear what the differences are, but the real question is why should the downloader (who violated copyright) be punished more harshly than the thief?
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Most of us still have the vote, you know.
My problem with property taxes is that a person who owns a chunk of land (completely paid off) has to keep making an income just to live there. If you lose your job, you lose your land and become a homeless bum.
In other words, if I want to buy some land and go retire on it, I have to make sure I have enough money invested to pay the property taxes for the rest of my life. Not only that, but I have to manage those funds and do annual paperwork, or have even more money to hire someone to take care of it for me. Bullshit.
This Hawkins guy is obviously out to lunch.
And before you go on about some poor family losing the farm, I'd like to point out that the inheritance tax does have a threshold - I don't know what the number is exactly, but I think it's a couple million bucks. i.e. you don't pay inheritance tax unless your inheritance exceeds the threshold. Where the threshold should be is certainly debatable, but to do without inheritance taxes entirely would be a bad idea, IMO.
You want to get rid of a tax, get rid of property taxes. Now those are just not right.
Not that differences are bad, though - movies are a different medium, and a direct 1:1 transfer is pretty much impossible.
I used to be for banning assault weapons, too.
Theoretically you could design the system so that it can't be abused (by the state), but you'd end up having to make it completely abusive in order to prevent loopholes. What if your black box happens to get reset on accident (regularly)? If it's checked at the gas station, what if you never fill up your car - but instead fill up gas cans and carry them over to the adjacent parking lot?
Actually, I hope there aren't any obvious workarounds, because this is something that needs to be addressed head on. This kind of bullshit should not be tolerated.
Yeah? So I mow the lawn a lot.
That said, this is total bullshit. The day somebody wants to put a tracking device in my car is the day I buy a pistol.
I consider buying a DVD and making a copy for myself to be totally within my rights. I consider making an occasional copy for a friend to be akin to jaywalking - technically illegal but who cares. Making copies and selling them? Obviously illegal and wrong. These are the people that the MPAA should be worrying about, not their actual customers.
Making copies and selling them, OTOH, moves into the area that I (and I think most slashdotters) consider "wrong." Such a person is no longer a casual copier.
What's stupid is that DRM and related schemes tend to only affect the casual users. In the world that the MPAA is trying to create, your average 4x4 drivin' good ol' boy can't make a backup copy or skip the commercials, but a major piracy operation doesn't even notice. Anybody making money from piracy can afford the necessary equipment to make perfect copies, which are unaffected by almost all copy protection schemes (those which don't require a chip in your head).
Personally, I'm willing to drive a bit farther and go to a theater with a funky interior and crappy sound. Not because watching commercials would KILL me, but because I'm not going to chip in my 9 bucks to encourage it.
I listen to a few shows on the radio every weekend (Cartalk, etc) but my big ol' Sony NTSC videogame monitor has never experienced television in the 2 years that I've had it.
Also note that the point of this simulation is not to "prove" evolution, but to try and better understand how it works. We have plenty of examples of evolution in the real world, but since much of the information about previous states has been lost (we only have the sparse fossil record and even sparser antique DNA) it's hard to trace out exactly how the process occurred. With a simulation, you can look at a mutation by mutation record.
Oh, and the theory of evolution isn't trying to explain how we got here - it's trying to explain how evolution works. The fact that organisms do evolve over time is so patently obvious that it's a given. General relativity isn't a proof of gravity, its an attempt to describe gravity. Gravity itself is so patently obvious that it's a given. Think about it. Gravity is a measurable physical phenomenon - so is the change of biological organisms over time.
1. Differentiation makes some more likely to survive than others
2. Survivors survive (and reproduce)
3. Survivors pass on their traits to offspring
4. Evolve!
Since then, my only hope has been that they will fail and move on to decimate something else. It didn't happen with the XBox, but with any luck XBox 2 will be a huge flop.