call it whatever the fuck you want, it's OPTIONAL you 'tard. if it were a mandatory tax you'd have half a leg to stand on.
I suppose income tax is optional, too, since no one makes you earn money, right? Just be poor and the tax becomes optional.
Or how about gas taxes? They're optional, too, since no one is making you buy gas.
Hell, let's just call them all "licence fees". Income tax can become the "income earner's licence fee" and gas taxes will be called "fuel consumption licence fee".
We can even call property taxes "home owners licence fees". Hey, they're optional since no one is making own a home.
News International (part of the Murdoch empire) avoids UK taxes and has done for many years. In fact, they are effectively being subsidised by the UK taxpayer.
Really? I'd like to know how it is they avoid paying UK taxes. Some proof would be nice.
And how are they being subsidised by the UK taxpayer? Do they collect tax money? Again, some proof would be nice.
And are they representative of all the newpapers in the UK? Even if they don't pay taxes, do all newspapers not pay taxes? It seems like you're providing what may be a single exception to suggest something in general. Again, how about some proof?
An elected government does not "simply take whatever money it needs" from it's taxpayers. They ask for it every term.
No they don't. What they ask for is votes and they can get them by promising money to the 51% that might vote for them while taking it from 49% the won't vote for them.
What you say might be true if taxes were apportioned equally, but they're not.
I don't understand how giving something away for free could be seen as competition.
They're not giving it away for free. The government charges taxpayers for the music and they have no choice but to pay.
So you have two groups making money from making music. You have private orchestras that must ask people to purchase their performace and you have another "government" orchestra that charges everyone for their product whether those people want it or not.
It's pretty hard to compete against a group that forces everyone to buy its performance while you have to hope someone volutarily buys yours.
Let's see, last I checked Government, at least in the US, provided a vast infrastructure of roads, waterways, airports, etc. I also know my water is clean and safe. I know what the weather will be like. All because of the evil government.
Most likely, the government gave tax money to evil (sic) corporations to build all this.
A government, despite having many power hungry individuals, do have at least a few people who genuinely want to help people.
A corporation's only interest is money. There is noone there who's looking out for your interests.
The idea is the get the business to serve your interests. For example, they'll make you a car or build you a house or cook you a meal if you give them some money. They're actually helping you. And they do it because that money you gave them will come back to you when you do something for them. It's reciprocity. It's people helping people, although they rarely realize it.
Governments don't do that. They simply make demands on you or you go to jail.
Of the two, the government is the far elsser evil.
I suppose you think it's the lesser evil as long as it's doing your bidding. Most dictators agree with you.
Personally, I'm more afraid of a government that can drop a 500 lb bomb on me from 10,000 miles away. Most businesses can't do that.
The only change you could make in our electoral system that would make a difference is to stop allowing people that receive federal money from voting for their state representatives.
Until then, people will continue to elect candidates that will give them money for their votes.
The ideal location for massive computing operations would be in space. Not the ideal location for gaming servers, but a good place for supercomputers. Build a Beowulf cluster of satellites, send up more computer satellites to upgrade the cluster.
Bad idea since the only way anything loses heat in space is through radiation.
Just think of hot soup in a thermos. It takes a LONG time to cool down. That's cooling through radiation.
Air is nice to have around here on Earth since it can carry the heat away must faster than it can be radiated away.
Slashdot Mirror
A text-only web is perfectly usable at 2400bps, but uninteresting to most of the general public.
The 14.4kbps modem and jpeg image compression made it possible for the average person to say "pretty pictures from 3000 miles away. Neat!"
In my judgement, these technologies were more more difficult to develop and more important than adding graphics to the web browser.
Completely wrong.
The BBC is funded by a liscene fee payed by people who own TVs.
It's still a tax on television ownership. Calling it a licence doesn't change that fact. It's a TV tax.
Companies don't pay anything to the running of the BBC.
But people in those competing industries do through the TV tax.
call it whatever the fuck you want, it's OPTIONAL you 'tard. if it were a mandatory tax you'd have half a leg to stand on.
I suppose income tax is optional, too, since no one makes you earn money, right? Just be poor and the tax becomes optional.
Or how about gas taxes? They're optional, too, since no one is making you buy gas.
Hell, let's just call them all "licence fees". Income tax can become the "income earner's licence fee" and gas taxes will be called "fuel consumption licence fee".
We can even call property taxes "home owners licence fees". Hey, they're optional since no one is making own a home.
shut the fuck up. you clearly haven't got a clue what you're talking about.
it is NOT taxpayer money. it is licence fee money. you don't have to pay for it. I don't.
now fuck off.
"Licence fee" is just another name for television tax.
Calling it "licence fee money" is like calling hard core porn performance art. It sounds pretty, but someone is still getting screwed.
News International (part of the Murdoch empire) avoids UK taxes and has done for many years. In fact, they are effectively being subsidised by the UK taxpayer.
Really? I'd like to know how it is they avoid paying UK taxes. Some proof would be nice.
And how are they being subsidised by the UK taxpayer? Do they collect tax money? Again, some proof would be nice.
And are they representative of all the newpapers in the UK? Even if they don't pay taxes, do all newspapers not pay taxes? It seems like you're providing what may be a single exception to suggest something in general. Again, how about some proof?
An elected government does not "simply take whatever money it needs" from it's taxpayers. They ask for it every term.
No they don't. What they ask for is votes and they can get them by promising money to the 51% that might vote for them while taking it from 49% the won't vote for them.
What you say might be true if taxes were apportioned equally, but they're not.
I don't understand how giving something away for free could be seen as competition.
They're not giving it away for free. The government charges taxpayers for the music and they have no choice but to pay.
So you have two groups making money from making music. You have private orchestras that must ask people to purchase their performace and you have another "government" orchestra that charges everyone for their product whether those people want it or not.
It's pretty hard to compete against a group that forces everyone to buy its performance while you have to hope someone volutarily buys yours.
Not only the music industry, even the UK newspaper's are facing tough competition from the BBC's news website.
The interesting thing about this is that the UK newspapers are being forced to support their competition through taxes.
They're forced to pay the government to dig their own economic graves.
The people of the UK have already paid for it! Thus it isn't "unfair competition" either
Of course it's unfair. One group gets to force the citizens to pay for what it has produced while another group must rely on their voluntary purchase.
I doubt you would like to compete against a government that can simply take whatever money it needs from it's "customers".
Of course he's right... that's a silly question. We shouldn't even have those boundaries and rivalries in our atmosphere.
I suppose you'll be taking down that fence around your back yard and removing the locks from you doors.
Too bad though-- less competition is never good for the market.
Depends.
What happens if competition means that prices drop to the point where research and development take a hit?
You end up sacrificing the future to survive the competition now.
Let's see, last I checked Government, at least in the US, provided a vast infrastructure of roads, waterways, airports, etc. I also know my water is clean and safe. I know what the weather will be like. All because of the evil government.
Most likely, the government gave tax money to evil (sic) corporations to build all this.
A government, despite having many power hungry individuals, do have at least a few people who genuinely want to help people.
A corporation's only interest is money. There is noone there who's looking out for your interests.
The idea is the get the business to serve your interests. For example, they'll make you a car or build you a house or cook you a meal if you give them some money. They're actually helping you. And they do it because that money you gave them will come back to you when you do something for them. It's reciprocity. It's people helping people, although they rarely realize it.
Governments don't do that. They simply make demands on you or you go to jail.
Of the two, the government is the far elsser evil.
I suppose you think it's the lesser evil as long as it's doing your bidding. Most dictators agree with you.
Personally, I'm more afraid of a government that can drop a 500 lb bomb on me from 10,000 miles away. Most businesses can't do that.
No one ever got elected by saving money. This saved money will only be spent elsewhere.
That said, the best reason for using open source has nothing to do with saving money.
It's the opportunity to get a look inside at how the machine works.
Anyone that's taken apart a toaster or washing machine timer, etc, understands how valuable a thing it is to be able to see how it works.
That's why open source belongs in schools.
[sarcasm]Why not let the employer and police monitor everything you do? You only have something to hide if you are a criminal.[/sarcasm]
[sarcasm]And why not simply let the government control the conduct of every business and every economic relationship?
They know what's best for all of us, afterall.[/sarcasm]
It's entirely possible that humans did come to the Americas 40,000 years ago.
But for how long did they survive and Are there any of their decendants left?
It's not luck, it's persistance.
:)
Well, that's like buying more tickets. Your odds go up.
The lottery analogy can be taken further. How many more people play the lottery when the winnings go up?
Now consider what happens if taxation makes it impossible to "win big".
You have fewer players (entrepeneurs).
But even those that win the lottery "deserve it" in the sense they at least paid for a lottery ticket.
That's how I think of entrepreneurship.
People shouldn't complain about how little they have or how much someone else has if they're not even willing to buy a ticket to play the game.
How much energy does it take to harvest the energy?
How many cycles does it take to harvest the idle cycles?
Is the balance positive or negative?
The only change you could make in our electoral system that would make a difference is to stop allowing people that receive federal money from voting for their state representatives.
Until then, people will continue to elect candidates that will give them money for their votes.
BTW, don't you mean breeder reactors produce Pu-239 instead of Pu-238? I've never heard of Pu-238 being used for fission before.
Ooops. You're right, of course. Pu-239 is correct.
Nuclear power really won't take you very far unless you use breeder reactors. About 40 years by some estimates.
By using breeder reactors, we can have up to 40,000 years of energy.
Breeder reactors let you take U238, which is mostly useless for reactors, and turn it into Pu238, which is a great source of energy.
Maybe this is also practice for a larger project down the road.
The ideal location for massive computing operations would be in space. Not the ideal location for gaming servers, but a good place for supercomputers. Build a Beowulf cluster of satellites, send up more computer satellites to upgrade the cluster.
Bad idea since the only way anything loses heat in space is through radiation.
Just think of hot soup in a thermos. It takes a LONG time to cool down. That's cooling through radiation.
Air is nice to have around here on Earth since it can carry the heat away must faster than it can be radiated away.
They kept you fed while doing this and now you're surprised they don't want something back?
This sort of behavior is encouraged by the Bush Administration if results are fudged to favor its position on the environment.
Don't pretend this only happens on the political right.