The US, by contrast, allows each state to dictate which machine or method they utilize under few federal standards.
In the US, however, the Federal government has never been ceded authority to fully regulate elections in the individual States. Much of this authority has been retained by the States themselves. Too, each state is generally responsible for the costs and management of the elections it conducts, and different solutions work for different states. In the state of North Dakota, for example, the state does not register its voters, but rather relies on personal knowlege of the poll workers, or written roof of citizenship. (In some cases, even a local utility bill is proof enough.)
Because of this decentralized form of government, It appears less likely that the India model will work, at least in the same form.
As a scientist and global citizen (who also has spiritual beliefs)... As an American...
According to the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, you are also a citizen of the state in which you reside. What are your feelings as a State citizen? If some States feel a field of study is more important, can they not choose to fund them locally?
I am disturbed by this continued assault on science
How do you distinguish between a "continued assault on science" and people in a democracy deciding where they want the tax money spent? Both the scientist and the farmer from Ohio mentioned in an earlier post get equal say.
I am disturbed by the implications of this for our country and its ability to effectively compete in an economy that is increasingly globalized.
At what point, if any, does a population decide that it no longer cares to compete, and that it is content with the status it has achieved? In most United States, the citizens have all of the food, shelter, air conditioning, and entertainment they can handle. Where is the incentive to do more?
This could spawn a new industry. Our PC's are already going liquid-cooled. Now they'll burn oil too. How long will it be before Jiffy-Lube services both your car and your laptop every 2000 miles?
Well organized criminals conducting corporate espionage, complex software running international corporations, (hackers/crackers) slipping deviously bugged code into the works for their own nefarious purposes.
I don't need to RTFA, I can just wait for the movie.
What part(s) of my resume should I brush up when applying for the job of "master villian and arch-nemisis of WonderTorvalds?"
On a more serious note, there are a lot of people with large emotional investments pent up in disliking Mr. Gates. The transition is going to be tough. It's almost like Inigo Montoya at the end of The Princess Bride. Maybe they should turn to piracy?
Wow, thats a really good point. I mean, folks who don't own wires could still make some kind of distinction, like AOL or something, but you're spot-on with this.
(Appologies to slashdot for admitting someone who disagreed with the premise of my post is correct. I'll turn in my user number immediately.)
I think you're correct in making the private/public distinction. I've always understood the Internet to be a private endeavor, however. My ISP is a private company that lets me connect my computer to their computer for a fee. At a minimum, most of the wires and machines on which the Internet "exists" are also private already. At the other end of the spectrum, would an open-internet law require specific site-owners to refrain from regulating the posts of their users?
1. From a "free speech" point of view, how is this any different than than your local newspaper's editorial policy? Some newspapers just won't print some kinds of content, even if the author is willing to pay for the service.
2. Does this form of content limitation take away any of the rights you had before the dawn of email? Back in the day, we wrote pen & paper letters because it was the only option. Today, although letters are (probably) more secure, because they are not subject to the kind of keyword data mining that can be conducted on electronic communications, we seem stuck on email. Do we need to be?
But to think that he had no responsibility to the society that made his wealth possible is outrageous.
Contrary to/. tradition, I'll have to agree with you on this point.
The mere fact that capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than wages is troubling enough.
But here I cannot agree. The reason for lower rates on capital gains arises not from a desire to help the wealth, but to make the system fair. Consider this, if you make $20,000 per year in wages, you will be taxed each year at 15% At the end of five years, you will have paid $15,000 in taxes on the $100,000 you made.
If you own a parcel of land, and that land increases in value by $100,000 over five years, you still made $20,000 per year. When you sell it at the end of five years, without a capital gains rate you would be in a much higher tax bracket, probably around 30%, and pay $30,000 in taxes for the same money over the same period of time as the wager earner.
Now, can we distinguish between how much physical labor and time is required for income produced by flipping land versus income from wages? Of course we can, but then again we can also distinguish between different kinds of wages, investments, and everything else. How complicated do we want our tax code to be?
if there is a law giving favorable treatment to someone who owns a 100-unit apartment building, who can write off the value of the structure to "depreciation" despite the ever-increasing value of the property (true)
There is such a law, but while the value of land usually increases, the appartment building requires continuing maintenance to keep it operable. This is offset somewhat by depreciation, and perhaps more importantly, any depreciation taken also reduces the basis from which tax is taken when the property is sold. Normally, if you buy an appartment building for $100,000 and sell it for $100,000, you pay no income tax on the transaction. You made no money. If you buy an appartment building for $100,000, and depreciate it down to $0 over many years, and then you sell the property for $500,000, you will be taxed on that whole $500,000. The tax man will always get you in the end.
I respectfully suggest that you missed the point of the quotation
I didn't miss the point, I just couldn't think of anything really witty to say in response. Its a good quote.
Are you seriously suggesting that a typical working person can devote time to reading the tax code?? Rich people certainly don't - they hire people to read it for them.
I seriously AM suggesting that a typical working person read the tax code, if he wishes to take full advantage of it. Alternatively, there are a number of good books on tax and tax planning out there that can greatly aid the novice in examining federal tax law. Indeed, having mastery of the tax code will almost guarantee that a person will not remain poor. As you say, rich people hire people to do that. As in all things, the surest way to better yourself is through education.
Sure there are IRA's, Medical Savings Accounts, etc., but they are nothing compared to the tricks of people with real money.
I'd love for you to share some of these tricks. Outside of estate plans, I've never really seen any. Or perhaps are you only upset with the "rich" people who inherited that wealth? The rest of them had to earn it somehow.
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." -- Anatole France
Anatole France does a wonderful job of pointing out an unfortunate fact of life. He does not, however, propose a solution, does he? I am reminded of an observation from a tax law scholar: The tax law can be simple, or it can be fair, but it cannot be both.
I get the impression you don't like the "mega rich" and "large corporations." What'd they ever do to you?
You don't have to be "mega-rich" or a "large corporation" to reduce your tax bill. Most of the tax-reducing rules in the Code were put there by Congress to ENCOURAGE certain types of behavior, like long term investing. If you don't want to hire a lawyer, you just have to be patient enough to RTFM (or in this case, the tax code). The same rules apply to everyone.
Maybe this is a good thing. Taxation for digital sales can be easily automated. It allows my chronically underfunded state government to pick up revenue it would otherwise miss without a high enforcement expense. Right now, we have to depend on Washington D.C. to fund large portions of our roads, schools, and other infrastructure. Maybe this would help us pull our own weight.
I wonder why internet advertising does not take a page from the radio advertising playbook. Daily, on the radio, I hear ads that say "Mention this ad and save an additional 12%!" This system allows the advertising folks to learn quickly whether their ad is reaching its audience. The customers come in and tell you so.
Is there any reason why internet ads do not do this?
Say what you like about EverCrack or World of Warcrack, but MUDs have still got to be the most addictive substance on earth. The first time I logged into one, I saw "Hey guys, i've been playing 32 hours of nonstop MUME!"
A few years later, I got to read a restraining order obtained by the University Computer Science department against a former student who had been haunting the labs over the weekends, unbathed, and occasionally sleeping under the terminal.
Did I mention most MUDs are free to play?
The moral of the story, though, is that we need get back into the real world once in a while. Get away from the computer, go back to the dinner table, and roll some dice!
Clearly, Microsoft continues to feel the impact of open source software. This time it has begun to alter the way they name their products. Back in the day, Microsoft would name a piece of software based on what it did, and in a way that let any idiot understand. By contrast, the OSS community knew that names were better if they bore no linguistic connection to the actual function of the product. (grep, cat, and vi, I'm talking to you.)
Now, however, Microsoft has jumped on the obtuse name bandwagon. What the heck is the difference between "Office Plus" and "Enterprise Edition" vis-a-vis "Office"?
Didn't this all start with tabletop wargames? Perhaps someone can refresh my memory as to what TSR (as in the folks that published Dungeons & Dragons) originally stood for. Is the military increasing its reliance on games, or just increasingly using fancy FPS engines?
While my first reaction to this idea is that "hooking up" over the internet is somehow less preferred to doing it the old fashioned way, as more and more people I know use this method, I can't help but wonder if there really are any drawbacks.
At first, we all assume that an in-person meeting is better. How a person looks in real life is often very different from how they appear on screen. On the other hand, I'll have less hair on my head tomorrow than I did today... so perhaps looks are not as big an issue as we think.
A second question is how much you can learn about a potential mate from his online conduct. Does a willingness to bend the rules or make the lives of other players miserable translate into a person who will do the same in real life? I'd guess it probably does.
One question remains, however. A lot of our entertainment and service industries thrive on the back of the mating rituals as they presently exist. If everyone who seeks a mate eventually gravitates to the more efficient internet, will there be anyone left to talk to at the local pub? Will more movie theaters go broke for want of lovebirds who don't care what's on the screen? Will my car's back seat become even smaller?...or are these just dinosaur industries waiting to be swept away by the new mp3-downloading....wait... wrong thread.
Probably the most valuable lesson to be learned from this is that the nebulous approach never really gets a person anywhere. No matter what the industry, it's all about follow-through. How many folks out there started writing/coding/desinging the perfect game? How many folks still have a stack of notes out there in a closet somewhere, under a stack of 5.25 floppies, that would have been a great novel, or the next Freecraft?
Which brings me to my next question, can schools teach follow-through, or is that something innate?
(And on a related note, if schools figure out how to teach follow-through, will we see some "entertainment" that's better than mass produced game sequels, reality television, or yet-another-AD&D knockoffs we have now?)
(Or is the internet living proof that there really is nothing new under the sun?)
Nobody ever gets fired for playing tabletop role playing games at work. At least, nobody I ever heard of. Surely this is because computer games are so much more detrimental to productivity.
On a related note, back in Law School, most folks used laptops to take notes. The Dean used to walk through the back of class from time to time. If he was in a particularly bad mood, he'd signal the professor teaching to call on whoever was playing solitare. Getting "called on" in law school is often just as unpleasant in real life as it appears in movies like "Legally Blonde." More so when you're playing solitare and not paying attention. It was evil, really.
Nobody ever got kicked out of school for it though.
11 The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.
12 I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.
Slashdot Mirror
The US, by contrast, allows each state to dictate which machine or method they utilize under few federal standards.
In the US, however, the Federal government has never been ceded authority to fully regulate elections in the individual States. Much of this authority has been retained by the States themselves. Too, each state is generally responsible for the costs and management of the elections it conducts, and different solutions work for different states. In the state of North Dakota, for example, the state does not register its voters, but rather relies on personal knowlege of the poll workers, or written roof of citizenship. (In some cases, even a local utility bill is proof enough.)
Because of this decentralized form of government, It appears less likely that the India model will work, at least in the same form.
As a scientist and global citizen (who also has spiritual beliefs) ... As an American...
According to the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, you are also a citizen of the state in which you reside. What are your feelings as a State citizen? If some States feel a field of study is more important, can they not choose to fund them locally?
I am disturbed by this continued assault on science
How do you distinguish between a "continued assault on science" and people in a democracy deciding where they want the tax money spent? Both the scientist and the farmer from Ohio mentioned in an earlier post get equal say.
I am disturbed by the implications of this for our country and its ability to effectively compete in an economy that is increasingly globalized.
At what point, if any, does a population decide that it no longer cares to compete, and that it is content with the status it has achieved? In most United States, the citizens have all of the food, shelter, air conditioning, and entertainment they can handle. Where is the incentive to do more?
OH.. OH... sorry... This is just another bizarre offspring of the We're-better-than-you kind of US-agenda right?
If the United States are not "better" shouldn't they at least try to be?
Therefore, many see birth control as the only way to minimize what they feel is an undesirably large terrestrial population.
Although the only way to make it really work would be to have forced abortions a la the Chinese authoritarian state.
There is an easier, and far more traditional solution. Have a war.
This could spawn a new industry. Our PC's are already going liquid-cooled. Now they'll burn oil too. How long will it be before Jiffy-Lube services both your car and your laptop every 2000 miles?
Well organized criminals conducting corporate espionage, complex software running international corporations, (hackers/crackers) slipping deviously bugged code into the works for their own nefarious purposes.
I don't need to RTFA, I can just wait for the movie.
Oh for the love of... NEMESIS... sorry!
What part(s) of my resume should I brush up when applying for the job of "master villian and arch-nemisis of WonderTorvalds?"
On a more serious note, there are a lot of people with large emotional investments pent up in disliking Mr. Gates. The transition is going to be tough. It's almost like Inigo Montoya at the end of The Princess Bride. Maybe they should turn to piracy?
Wow, thats a really good point. I mean, folks who don't own wires could still make some kind of distinction, like AOL or something, but you're spot-on with this.
(Appologies to slashdot for admitting someone who disagreed with the premise of my post is correct. I'll turn in my user number immediately.)
I think you're correct in making the private/public distinction. I've always understood the Internet to be a private endeavor, however. My ISP is a private company that lets me connect my computer to their computer for a fee. At a minimum, most of the wires and machines on which the Internet "exists" are also private already. At the other end of the spectrum, would an open-internet law require specific site-owners to refrain from regulating the posts of their users?
1. From a "free speech" point of view, how is this any different than than your local newspaper's editorial policy? Some newspapers just won't print some kinds of content, even if the author is willing to pay for the service.
2. Does this form of content limitation take away any of the rights you had before the dawn of email? Back in the day, we wrote pen & paper letters because it was the only option. Today, although letters are (probably) more secure, because they are not subject to the kind of keyword data mining that can be conducted on electronic communications, we seem stuck on email. Do we need to be?
No, but they may come after my old Caddy'. Unlike a Rambler, a Cadillac is not a car to scorn.
But to think that he had no responsibility to the society that made his wealth possible is outrageous.
/. tradition, I'll have to agree with you on this point.
Contrary to
The mere fact that capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than wages is troubling enough.
But here I cannot agree. The reason for lower rates on capital gains arises not from a desire to help the wealth, but to make the system fair. Consider this, if you make $20,000 per year in wages, you will be taxed each year at 15% At the end of five years, you will have paid $15,000 in taxes on the $100,000 you made.
If you own a parcel of land, and that land increases in value by $100,000 over five years, you still made $20,000 per year. When you sell it at the end of five years, without a capital gains rate you would be in a much higher tax bracket, probably around 30%, and pay $30,000 in taxes for the same money over the same period of time as the wager earner.
Now, can we distinguish between how much physical labor and time is required for income produced by flipping land versus income from wages? Of course we can, but then again we can also distinguish between different kinds of wages, investments, and everything else. How complicated do we want our tax code to be?
if there is a law giving favorable treatment to someone who owns a 100-unit apartment building, who can write off the value of the structure to "depreciation" despite the ever-increasing value of the property (true)
There is such a law, but while the value of land usually increases, the appartment building requires continuing maintenance to keep it operable. This is offset somewhat by depreciation, and perhaps more importantly, any depreciation taken also reduces the basis from which tax is taken when the property is sold. Normally, if you buy an appartment building for $100,000 and sell it for $100,000, you pay no income tax on the transaction. You made no money. If you buy an appartment building for $100,000, and depreciate it down to $0 over many years, and then you sell the property for $500,000, you will be taxed on that whole $500,000. The tax man will always get you in the end.
I respectfully suggest that you missed the point of the quotation
I didn't miss the point, I just couldn't think of anything really witty to say in response. Its a good quote.
Are you seriously suggesting that a typical working person can devote time to reading the tax code?? Rich people certainly don't - they hire people to read it for them.
I seriously AM suggesting that a typical working person read the tax code, if he wishes to take full advantage of it. Alternatively, there are a number of good books on tax and tax planning out there that can greatly aid the novice in examining federal tax law. Indeed, having mastery of the tax code will almost guarantee that a person will not remain poor. As you say, rich people hire people to do that. As in all things, the surest way to better yourself is through education.
Sure there are IRA's, Medical Savings Accounts, etc., but they are nothing compared to the tricks of people with real money.
I'd love for you to share some of these tricks. Outside of estate plans, I've never really seen any. Or perhaps are you only upset with the "rich" people who inherited that wealth? The rest of them had to earn it somehow.
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." -- Anatole France
Anatole France does a wonderful job of pointing out an unfortunate fact of life. He does not, however, propose a solution, does he? I am reminded of an observation from a tax law scholar: The tax law can be simple, or it can be fair, but it cannot be both.
I get the impression you don't like the "mega rich" and "large corporations." What'd they ever do to you?
You don't have to be "mega-rich" or a "large corporation" to reduce your tax bill. Most of the tax-reducing rules in the Code were put there by Congress to ENCOURAGE certain types of behavior, like long term investing. If you don't want to hire a lawyer, you just have to be patient enough to RTFM (or in this case, the tax code). The same rules apply to everyone.
Maybe this is a good thing. Taxation for digital sales can be easily automated. It allows my chronically underfunded state government to pick up revenue it would otherwise miss without a high enforcement expense. Right now, we have to depend on Washington D.C. to fund large portions of our roads, schools, and other infrastructure. Maybe this would help us pull our own weight.
I wonder why internet advertising does not take a page from the radio advertising playbook. Daily, on the radio, I hear ads that say "Mention this ad and save an additional 12%!" This system allows the advertising folks to learn quickly whether their ad is reaching its audience. The customers come in and tell you so.
Is there any reason why internet ads do not do this?
Say what you like about EverCrack or World of Warcrack, but MUDs have still got to be the most addictive substance on earth. The first time I logged into one, I saw "Hey guys, i've been playing 32 hours of nonstop MUME!"
A few years later, I got to read a restraining order obtained by the University Computer Science department against a former student who had been haunting the labs over the weekends, unbathed, and occasionally sleeping under the terminal.
Did I mention most MUDs are free to play?
The moral of the story, though, is that we need get back into the real world once in a while. Get away from the computer, go back to the dinner table, and roll some dice!
Clearly, Microsoft continues to feel the impact of open source software. This time it has begun to alter the way they name their products. Back in the day, Microsoft would name a piece of software based on what it did, and in a way that let any idiot understand. By contrast, the OSS community knew that names were better if they bore no linguistic connection to the actual function of the product. (grep, cat, and vi, I'm talking to you.)
Now, however, Microsoft has jumped on the obtuse name bandwagon. What the heck is the difference between "Office Plus" and "Enterprise Edition" vis-a-vis "Office"?
Didn't this all start with tabletop wargames? Perhaps someone can refresh my memory as to what TSR (as in the folks that published Dungeons & Dragons) originally stood for. Is the military increasing its reliance on games, or just increasingly using fancy FPS engines?
While my first reaction to this idea is that "hooking up" over the internet is somehow less preferred to doing it the old fashioned way, as more and more people I know use this method, I can't help but wonder if there really are any drawbacks.
...or are these just dinosaur industries waiting to be swept away by the new mp3-downloading....wait... wrong thread.
At first, we all assume that an in-person meeting is better. How a person looks in real life is often very different from how they appear on screen. On the other hand, I'll have less hair on my head tomorrow than I did today... so perhaps looks are not as big an issue as we think.
A second question is how much you can learn about a potential mate from his online conduct. Does a willingness to bend the rules or make the lives of other players miserable translate into a person who will do the same in real life? I'd guess it probably does.
One question remains, however. A lot of our entertainment and service industries thrive on the back of the mating rituals as they presently exist. If everyone who seeks a mate eventually gravitates to the more efficient internet, will there be anyone left to talk to at the local pub? Will more movie theaters go broke for want of lovebirds who don't care what's on the screen? Will my car's back seat become even smaller?
Probably the most valuable lesson to be learned from this is that the nebulous approach never really gets a person anywhere. No matter what the industry, it's all about follow-through. How many folks out there started writing/coding/desinging the perfect game? How many folks still have a stack of notes out there in a closet somewhere, under a stack of 5.25 floppies, that would have been a great novel, or the next Freecraft?
Which brings me to my next question, can schools teach follow-through, or is that something innate?
(And on a related note, if schools figure out how to teach follow-through, will we see some "entertainment" that's better than mass produced game sequels, reality television, or yet-another-AD&D knockoffs we have now?)
(Or is the internet living proof that there really is nothing new under the sun?)
Nobody ever gets fired for playing tabletop role playing games at work. At least, nobody I ever heard of. Surely this is because computer games are so much more detrimental to productivity.
On a related note, back in Law School, most folks used laptops to take notes. The Dean used to walk through the back of class from time to time. If he was in a particularly bad mood, he'd signal the professor teaching to call on whoever was playing solitare. Getting "called on" in law school is often just as unpleasant in real life as it appears in movies like "Legally Blonde." More so when you're playing solitare and not paying attention. It was evil, really.
Nobody ever got kicked out of school for it though.
Oh yeah, I remember... Luke Chapter 18:
/. for quotin' scripture)
11 The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.
12 I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.
(With appologies to
Loss of scientific and technical reasoning eh... so folks are saying "I don't care, I just want it to WORK!"
Man, where have I heard that before?