Well I am a liberal so I obviously disagree but respect your opinion as well as the grandparent.
The problem with taxing SUV's and tobacco makers is that people will buy them anyway. The poor and middle class therefore would spend less money on other items which would hurt the economy. Many families think they have no choice if they have 2 children. Kind of silly since my parents did fine with me and my brother with our maxima. Guns? Forget it. The NRA and liberatarians in western states would be drooling at the mouths if you did this.
Sales taxes are regressive as discussed in my economic classes since a larger percentage of income is demanded on the poor than the rich. Taxes suck and noone likes them. But we need taxes in order for society to exist and run.
what I see now is corruption at all levels in our governments. Taxes are too high and paying for special enron contracts in places like the Artic wildlife refuge and parking lots/malls for special lobbiests who own stock in the building companies in some popular senator's district. Meanwhile medicare, medicaid, and college aid are being cut to pay for these special programs. I would bash bush here but I wont. We need reform and we need it now. Both parties are corrupt to the core and no one seems to care.
The government could provide more services that society needs and we could all be taxed less if we focus on reform but its a fat chance.
As someone who just completed both micro and macro economics I happen to %100 agree!
Fairtax != Fair and is sponsored by wealthy corporations. Hmmm why do you think that is?
Regressive == the rich are taxed less and the poor are taxed more. For example a pack of cigarettes costs someone poor alot more hard work then someone rich. Sales taxes therefore charge the poor more than someone rich. Federal taxes work exactly opposite. The rich are taxed more but this is chaning under Bush.
However this is where I disgree with the poster.
Spending creates more growth than any tax cut. Yes its politically incorrect to say in today's conservative political environment but its true. However we are going into debt and have serious problems with the deficit.
I %100 agree with deductions create the unfair regressive tax. For example most deductions yhou wont recieve until after tax time. The poor have bills to pay and can't wait fpr their refund checks from Uncle sam. So using it as a way to say they are covered is not accurate. The rich will get it back but they are not under a financial burden as much as the poor. The rich can create more deductions.
So - Bob makes $120k/year taxes = $ 35k -$22k deductions = $12k total taxes - Joe Sixpack makes $50k/year taxes = $18k - $3k deductions = $15k total taxes.
That doesn't seem right. Keep in mind the above is very inaccurate and I just made it up off the top of my head but deductions are used for things like investments that Joe Sixpack can not really afford besides the basics like his home.
But if your a business and a fair tax comes into play the lack of profit would encourage you to lay off workers. This in turn would cause more economic problems which would then multiple as more people lay off workers until the situation improves.
This would be bad and cause the problem fair tax was supposed to solve.
Money needs to move. Not just collect somewhere and the rich would get away scott free and the poor and middle class would fork the bill and purchase less. Fair tax is sponsored by the rich and ignore the name picked by psychologists? Fairtax != fair at all and is super regressive meaning the burden is shift on those who have less.
I am liberal in thinking if the lower and middle class can create a bigger boast in the economy if they spend more. Remember they are the majority. No tax cut can create teh revenue that sales would provide to any corporation or rich investor.
Government spending creates economic growth mroe than any tax cut. Yes its blasphemous to say in today's conservative environment but its taught in any economic course.
What we are doing now is spending but cutting revenue via tax cuts. It can't go on forever.
Sales taxes are not fair and called regressive. Liek the opposite of progressive they hurt the poor more than the rich. A pack of cigarettes costs someone poor alot more money than someone rich.
Putting money in stocks doesn't work. Reaganomics tried this and failed. Money needs to move. The more money moves the more people are willing to spend which inflated the GDP balloon (economists like this analogy). Foreign investments deflate our GDP balloon and cause a leakage. This makes downturns hit alot harder and make growth come alot slower.
Also if you own a home a lack of investment in property can really hurt your investment. Something to think about?
My grandfather is very poor and goes hungry. He has no money at all and my aunt takes care of him and she does not make that much money. Luckily they pay no money at all in taxes.
Fair tax would servely hurt htem and cause a hug tax increase on the lower as well as lower middle class. The site talks about the poor getting help but does anyone know what the poverty line is?
Last time I looked the poverty line was $1400/year! No one can live off that and it encourages inviduals from working harder and finding better paying jobs. Also if I read fairtax correctly is that the poor would get a big refund back every year but still would have to pay taxes! Well their landlords wont wait until after April to collect rent and neither will their autoinsurance companies.
Its not fair nor proportional at all. Ignore the name. Nothing is fair about it and its called fairtax to make it sound fair. Just like the clean air act is a way to deregulate EPA regulations on air pollution.
Under the current tax system someone rich loses a new BMW, while someone middle class loses their childs college tuition, while the poor loses on food. Doesn't sound fair to me.
And worse is the middle class becoming increasingly conservative thinking deregulation and tax cuts are for them who then vote for these clowns.
Its sad really and just angers me. The poor also in the rural south support the loopholes thinking joesix pack can save some money for beer with the latest tax cuts. Turns out they get nothing at all.
I oppose the tax because I think it will hurt business. Yes I am a democrat.
Buy a server in Canada or India and have the transactions take place there. Taxfree.
Or is the tax based on the buyer rather than seller? Phishers and spammers have really taken a bite out of ecommerce as it is. My parents no longer purchase items on the net after they have found spyware on their systems. A tax would kill the whole industry and hurt companies like Google which rely on ecommerce from their advertising network to make money.
If anything politicians should put up safeguards agaisnt anything like a tax from happening.
Wouldn't it make sense to base the powerbooks and powermacs on intel chips? They are alot faster than the 1999 era G4's? I am aware professionals use specific software still for the powerpc but Apple would lose a ton of sales.
Someone like me would laugh and get the ibook with the faster processor than purchase a powerbook. I dont care about the hideff screen and damn the pentiumM would smoke anything by Motorrola away. Not ot mention I could run windows on it and run my win32 software if needed.
I assumed python was type safe? I keep telling myself to create some free time to learn python. I wanted to hack in it for the last several years but never got around to learning it.
VB is a bad language in general. the newest version is alot better and more modern. I heard nothing but good things about python and ruby (except for whitespaces in python). To me both seem alot more powerfull than vb and you can run mod-ruby and mod-python for apache to create webservices.
The problem with java even though I praised it in my other post is that it takes awhile to do anything simple with it. Java is still great for large ecommerce websites and I recommend it but pythonand ruby are nice for small apps, scripts, and even small sites that dont expect to become huge.
I am really just rediscovering Java now and the API's are very nice.
Java is stable, mature, and scalable, right out of the package. Python is nice for small projects and scripts but Java's strength is not the language. Its the api's and framework as well as the ton of third party software for it. For large sites Java is still the best way to go. Especially for ecommerce sites for businesses. Php is not there yet and is quite inconsistant with a immaturish feeling. Results vary drastically depending on who wrote what. There are tons of third party java objects and programs that co-exist and integrate with your java based servlets.
Java seems to have found its niche since multiplatform desktop applets never took off. Not to mention java is pleasant to debug and the tools are nice.
Since when are EULA's enforcable? No notaries are present and therefore should be void.
Until recently they were not until one case came up by a guy in california. Still the judge is not a state judge nor is he a federal. EULA's should be invalidated for this reason.
Big coroproations have notaries and lawyers present for any licensing agreement. We dont and copyright laws protect the software industry.
I think this is all BS and I want to shoot whomever came up with this silly idea. Was it Bill Gates?>
I used to X with a passion when I first started using linux back in 98. Actually I still do and think its bloated and horrible but with modern hardware its doable now.
The unix haters manual has alot of nice things to say about it.:-)
But seriously people have run X on VMS systems running in as little 3-4 megs of ram. Also ol linux users ran X fine with ONLY 8 MEGS OF RAM back in the 486 days.
X is not bad but perhaps Xorg sucks? What I want to know is if they are planning on cutting down on memory and cpu usage and adding features like sound support, transparent objects, anti-aligned fonts (I think support is added now), resolution changes that dont require a reboot, ajax/caml/dashboard or some xml and javascript support , and other technologies. Its still quite behind macosx and windows and since its free I hope it catches up. Also automatic scanning of video and monitors would be nice. Come on its 2005.
I hope Xorg moves along and creates a better X and so far its a step in teh right direction.
Those graphics sure looked better than anything my athlonXP 24++ with my geforce6600 can produce.
So I am doubtfull if it can be matched. Maybe the pc is just not a good gaming platform as it once was. Maybe Windows just sucks the performance out of gaming
I credit slashdot for stopping the bill. Believe it or not after links to elected us officials came in posts the bill was canned. Thousands of angry emails scared the politicians.
Take a lesson.
Too bad this is a consortium and not a bill. Otherwise the slashdot effect can alter the laws for our own good.
Strange it seems to me that hard drive makers all have their lemmons mixed with great quality lines. Its hard to tell.
On my experience maxtor is the most reliable brand. I bought them before they went bad and my 199 drives are still working on the system I am typing this on.; I turn my computers off which is bad on the drives almost everday to save energy costs and they still have not failed.
My 40 gig maxtor drive is the root windows disk while the newer ones have all the media files and unix. Go maxtor and I expect more years out of my drive.
But I have read that maxtor came out with bad drivers and now they have a newer line of drivers that are reliable. Keep in mind maxtor bought quantum a few years back. It seems they want one brand crap and the other good quality. Maybe maxtor was to be turned into the low end drives at walmart while the quantum ones are supposed to be the good brand. But now they just label them as maxtor so I am confused.
Thank god I am not buying a new computer. I would have no idea where to turn.
Thank god I bought my maxtors at 2001 and earlier. Buy the way the other maxtor from 2001 is also in use with no failure and constant use.
Actually companies rarely make money from the mergers at all. The CEO who gets paid bonuses requires extra shares and personally profits at the expense of the company.
Yahoo is worse and I would classify the latest version as malware. Trillian also will make my computer unresponsive for a minute or two whenever someone gets online making a ctrl+alt+del non responsive as well.
My guess is some device driver like code could be installed to integrate it into the kernel. Nothing should prevent a ctr;+alt+del from happening and I know spyware makers use the device kit ddk for their code so they can run unmanaged in the kernel.
I am about to just switch to gaim and lose all my abilities I had with aim/yahoo/trillian.
Believe it or not aim is the nicest less malware prone Im client on windows.
Its a felony to forge addresses when mailing which is why you dont see it commonplace. But its perfectly legal to do this on the net. Why?
If it becomes illegal here in the US then the phishers will just rent a server in India or Korea where its legal and continue. There is no way to track down forgers.
My father keeps getting email responses requesting to stop spamming them. It turns out its an old handle he didn't like. Verizon got hacked and refuses to acknowledge or even block out the email address permanently. why is this legal? If it were illegal we could sue them or send a ceast and desist order to stop giving out private web addresses to spammers and hackers.
TCP/IP has loads of problems and is not multimedia friendly or secure and never was designed for neither. UDP is a hack and still doesn't work well over fiber optics. Microsoft.com had trouble with 10 megs a second max for sql queries. The tcp/ip stack was not at fault but it had to do with reduandancy checking int TCP/IP itself and QOS.
I am in favor of a newer internet. What happens when we run out of IPV4 addresses? Auditing and tracking and authentication should be done by DNS and some of the other protocols in different layers of the TCP/IP stack such as email. Wasn't Dmail supposed to take off? Also its too easy to spoof an IP address. This should not be possible.
Slashdot Mirror
Well I am a liberal so I obviously disagree but respect your opinion as well as the grandparent.
The problem with taxing SUV's and tobacco makers is that people will buy them anyway. The poor and middle class therefore would spend less money on other items which would hurt the economy. Many families think they have no choice if they have 2 children. Kind of silly since my parents did fine with me and my brother with our maxima. Guns? Forget it. The NRA and liberatarians in western states would be drooling at the mouths if you did this.
Sales taxes are regressive as discussed in my economic classes since a larger percentage of income is demanded on the poor than the rich. Taxes suck and noone likes them. But we need taxes in order for society to exist and run.
what I see now is corruption at all levels in our governments. Taxes are too high and paying for special enron contracts in places like the Artic wildlife refuge and parking lots/malls for special lobbiests who own stock in the building companies in some popular senator's district. Meanwhile medicare, medicaid, and college aid are being cut to pay for these special programs. I would bash bush here but I wont. We need reform and we need it now. Both parties are corrupt to the core and no one seems to care.
The government could provide more services that society needs and we could all be taxed less if we focus on reform but its a fat chance.
Yep.
Hitler came into power as a result. Of course if we forgave Germany's debt for WW1 they would not have to create so much money.
As someone who just completed both micro and macro economics I happen to %100 agree!
Fairtax != Fair and is sponsored by wealthy corporations. Hmmm why do you think that is?
Regressive == the rich are taxed less and the poor are taxed more. For example a pack of cigarettes costs someone poor alot more hard work then someone rich. Sales taxes therefore charge the poor more than someone rich. Federal taxes work exactly opposite. The rich are taxed more but this is chaning under Bush.
However this is where I disgree with the poster.
Spending creates more growth than any tax cut. Yes its politically incorrect to say in today's conservative political environment but its true. However we are going into debt and have serious problems with the deficit.
I %100 agree with deductions create the unfair regressive tax. For example most deductions yhou wont recieve until after tax time. The poor have bills to pay and can't wait fpr their refund checks from Uncle sam. So using it as a way to say they are covered is not accurate. The rich will get it back but they are not under a financial burden as much as the poor. The rich can create more deductions.
So
- Bob makes $120k/year taxes = $ 35k -$22k deductions = $12k total taxes
- Joe Sixpack makes $50k/year taxes = $18k - $3k deductions = $15k total taxes.
That doesn't seem right. Keep in mind the above is very inaccurate and I just made it up off the top of my head but deductions are used for things like investments that Joe Sixpack can not really afford besides the basics like his home.
But if your a business and a fair tax comes into play the lack of profit would encourage you to lay off workers. This in turn would cause more economic problems which would then multiple as more people lay off workers until the situation improves.
This would be bad and cause the problem fair tax was supposed to solve.
Money needs to move. Not just collect somewhere and the rich would get away scott free and the poor and middle class would fork the bill and purchase less. Fair tax is sponsored by the rich and ignore the name picked by psychologists? Fairtax != fair at all and is super regressive meaning the burden is shift on those who have less.
I am liberal in thinking if the lower and middle class can create a bigger boast in the economy if they spend more. Remember they are the majority. No tax cut can create teh revenue that sales would provide to any corporation or rich investor.
Government spending creates economic growth mroe than any tax cut. Yes its blasphemous to say in today's conservative environment but its taught in any economic course.
What we are doing now is spending but cutting revenue via tax cuts. It can't go on forever.
Sales taxes are not fair and called regressive. Liek the opposite of progressive they hurt the poor more than the rich. A pack of cigarettes costs someone poor alot more money than someone rich.
Putting money in stocks doesn't work. Reaganomics tried this and failed. Money needs to move. The more money moves the more people are willing to spend which inflated the GDP balloon (economists like this analogy). Foreign investments deflate our GDP balloon and cause a leakage. This makes downturns hit alot harder and make growth come alot slower.
Also if you own a home a lack of investment in property can really hurt your investment. Something to think about?
My grandfather is very poor and goes hungry. He has no money at all and my aunt takes care of him and she does not make that much money. Luckily they pay no money at all in taxes.
Fair tax would servely hurt htem and cause a hug tax increase on the lower as well as lower middle class. The site talks about the poor getting help but does anyone know what the poverty line is?
Last time I looked the poverty line was $1400/year! No one can live off that and it encourages inviduals from working harder and finding better paying jobs. Also if I read fairtax correctly is that the poor would get a big refund back every year but still would have to pay taxes! Well their landlords wont wait until after April to collect rent and neither will their autoinsurance companies.
Its not fair nor proportional at all. Ignore the name. Nothing is fair about it and its called fairtax to make it sound fair. Just like the clean air act is a way to deregulate EPA regulations on air pollution.
Under the current tax system someone rich loses a new BMW, while someone middle class loses their childs college tuition, while the poor loses on food. Doesn't sound fair to me.
And worse is the middle class becoming increasingly conservative thinking deregulation and tax cuts are for them who then vote for these clowns.
Its sad really and just angers me. The poor also in the rural south support the loopholes thinking joesix pack can save some money for beer with the latest tax cuts. Turns out they get nothing at all.
I oppose the tax because I think it will hurt business. Yes I am a democrat.
Easier idea.
Buy a server in Canada or India and have the transactions take place there. Taxfree.
Or is the tax based on the buyer rather than seller? Phishers and spammers have really taken a bite out of ecommerce as it is. My parents no longer purchase items on the net after they have found spyware on their systems. A tax would kill the whole industry and hurt companies like Google which rely on ecommerce from their advertising network to make money.
If anything politicians should put up safeguards agaisnt anything like a tax from happening.
PS
This is comming from a democrat.
I'm bad. I was thinking of the current powerbooks actually since I would be buying a laptop.
:-)
but hell if Apple is dumb enough to price the low end macs with the hot fast chip then I will buy one dammit!
I don't need dual core but it would be nice. My guess is apple would disable one of the cores for their I-lines.
Wouldn't it make sense to base the powerbooks and powermacs on intel chips? They are alot faster than the 1999 era G4's? I am aware professionals use specific software still for the powerpc but Apple would lose a ton of sales.
Someone like me would laugh and get the ibook with the faster processor than purchase a powerbook. I dont care about the hideff screen and damn the pentiumM would smoke anything by Motorrola away. Not ot mention I could run windows on it and run my win32 software if needed.
I assumed python was type safe? I keep telling myself to create some free time to learn python. I wanted to hack in it for the last several years but never got around to learning it.
VB is a bad language in general. the newest version is alot better and more modern. I heard nothing but good things about python and ruby (except for whitespaces in python). To me both seem alot more powerfull than vb and you can run mod-ruby and mod-python for apache to create webservices.
The problem with java even though I praised it in my other post is that it takes awhile to do anything simple with it. Java is still great for large ecommerce websites and I recommend it but pythonand ruby are nice for small apps, scripts, and even small sites that dont expect to become huge.
I am really just rediscovering Java now and the API's are very nice.
Java is stable, mature, and scalable, right out of the package. Python is nice for small projects and scripts but Java's strength is not the language. Its the api's and framework as well as the ton of third party software for it. For large sites Java is still the best way to go. Especially for ecommerce sites for businesses. Php is not there yet and is quite inconsistant with a immaturish feeling. Results vary drastically depending on who wrote what. There are tons of third party java objects and programs that co-exist and integrate with your java based servlets.
Java seems to have found its niche since multiplatform desktop applets never took off. Not to mention java is pleasant to debug and the tools are nice.
Since when are EULA's enforcable? No notaries are present and therefore should be void.
Until recently they were not until one case came up by a guy in california. Still the judge is not a state judge nor is he a federal. EULA's should be invalidated for this reason.
Big coroproations have notaries and lawyers present for any licensing agreement. We dont and copyright laws protect the software industry.
I think this is all BS and I want to shoot whomever came up with this silly idea. Was it Bill Gates?>
I used to X with a passion when I first started using linux back in 98. Actually I still do and think its bloated and horrible but with modern hardware its doable now.
:-)
The unix haters manual has alot of nice things to say about it.
But seriously people have run X on VMS systems running in as little 3-4 megs of ram. Also ol linux users ran X fine with ONLY 8 MEGS OF RAM back in the 486 days.
X is not bad but perhaps Xorg sucks? What I want to know is if they are planning on cutting down on memory and cpu usage and adding features like sound support, transparent objects, anti-aligned fonts (I think support is added now), resolution changes that dont require a reboot, ajax/caml/dashboard or some xml and javascript support , and other technologies. Its still quite behind macosx and windows and since its free I hope it catches up. Also automatic scanning of video and monitors would be nice. Come on its 2005.
I hope Xorg moves along and creates a better X and so far its a step in teh right direction.
Emacs popped in my mind immediately but I assumed you were refering to grandma using ms works and aol.
Well when is X going to be ported to emacs then?
Nah Emacs is so old and overated.
Those graphics sure looked better than anything my athlonXP 24++ with my geforce6600 can produce.
So I am doubtfull if it can be matched. Maybe the pc is just not a good gaming platform as it once was. Maybe Windows just sucks the performance out of gaming
But I feel since the MPAA/RIAA claim to only fight for their artists that they should regulate the net with all their trust.
Go google the "Fritz chip"?
I credit slashdot for stopping the bill. Believe it or not after links to elected us officials came in posts the bill was canned. Thousands of angry emails scared the politicians.
Take a lesson.
Too bad this is a consortium and not a bill. Otherwise the slashdot effect can alter the laws for our own good.
Western digital used to make the least reliable drivers on teh market and maxtor was tops. My have times changed.
I would be so confused if i were in the market for a new computer and had to find parts for me to build on.
I am listening to loud music and Iming. I meant "drives" not "drivers".
I do not own 199 drives but I meant my drive from 1999.
Well that was an embarrasing post.
Strange it seems to me that hard drive makers all have their lemmons mixed with great quality lines. Its hard to tell.
On my experience maxtor is the most reliable brand. I bought them before they went bad and my 199 drives are still working on the system I am typing this on.; I turn my computers off which is bad on the drives almost everday to save energy costs and they still have not failed.
My 40 gig maxtor drive is the root windows disk while the newer ones have all the media files and unix. Go maxtor and I expect more years out of my drive.
But I have read that maxtor came out with bad drivers and now they have a newer line of drivers that are reliable. Keep in mind maxtor bought quantum a few years back. It seems they want one brand crap and the other good quality. Maybe maxtor was to be turned into the low end drives at walmart while the quantum ones are supposed to be the good brand. But now they just label them as maxtor so I am confused.
Thank god I am not buying a new computer. I would have no idea where to turn.
Thank god I bought my maxtors at 2001 and earlier. Buy the way the other maxtor from 2001 is also in use with no failure and constant use.
Actually companies rarely make money from the mergers at all. The CEO who gets paid bonuses requires extra shares and personally profits at the expense of the company.
I do not know why shareholders allow it.
Yahoo is worse and I would classify the latest version as malware. Trillian also will make my computer unresponsive for a minute or two whenever someone gets online making a ctrl+alt+del non responsive as well.
My guess is some device driver like code could be installed to integrate it into the kernel. Nothing should prevent a ctr;+alt+del from happening and I know spyware makers use the device kit ddk for their code so they can run unmanaged in the kernel.
I am about to just switch to gaim and lose all my abilities I had with aim/yahoo/trillian.
Believe it or not aim is the nicest less malware prone Im client on windows.
How do you know who is who?
Its a felony to forge addresses when mailing which is why you dont see it commonplace. But its perfectly legal to do this on the net. Why?
If it becomes illegal here in the US then the phishers will just rent a server in India or Korea where its legal and continue. There is no way to track down forgers.
My father keeps getting email responses requesting to stop spamming them. It turns out its an old handle he didn't like. Verizon got hacked and refuses to acknowledge or even block out the email address permanently. why is this legal? If it were illegal we could sue them or send a ceast and desist order to stop giving out private web addresses to spammers and hackers.
TCP/IP has loads of problems and is not multimedia friendly or secure and never was designed for neither. UDP is a hack and still doesn't work well over fiber optics. Microsoft.com had trouble with 10 megs a second max for sql queries. The tcp/ip stack was not at fault but it had to do with reduandancy checking int TCP/IP itself and QOS.
I am in favor of a newer internet. What happens when we run out of IPV4 addresses? Auditing and tracking and authentication should be done by DNS and some of the other protocols in different layers of the TCP/IP stack such as email. Wasn't Dmail supposed to take off? Also its too easy to spoof an IP address. This should not be possible.