Oh please. Even Windows has some OSS in it somewhere. What's important is that iOS (and WP) is closed; you can't do anything you want to it. Whereas Android, you can download the whole thing yourself, and build your own version of it to put on your device (though some devices may be locked, but that's a separate issue). Just ask the guys at CyanogenMod; you're not going to see a similar project for WP or iOS.
Compared to iOS and Windows Phone, Android IS a "model open source" project. Of course, compared to other open source projects it has some serious problems, but iOS and WP aren't open source in the slightest, so compared to those two Android looks pretty good.
It's not just that; the other reason is because you're too lazy to cooperate with the original project, such as by following their coding standards, by dividing your patches up into chunks the original project prefers so they can review them effectively, by making sure your changes don't break the build for other platforms which you don't use, etc.
I think that's some extremely optimistic thinking on your part. Why would the courts be willing to strike down something that's so beneficial to corporations? The courts are just as corrupt as the rest of the government.
What's really bad is, frogs aren't actually this stupid, despite the myth. A frog in a pot of water will jump out if it gets too hot. They may be just frogs, but they're not that dumb.
That's not a "key point", you're just splitting hairs. This isn't academia, and definitions of words are not fixed. People use the word "engineering" all the time for things which have no scientific rigor, it just means manipulating things for a desired end result. Have you never heard of "sanitation engineers" and "domestic engineers"? Just because you don't like the usage of the term doesn't mean it's incorrect. This isn't France where the language is defined and regulated by a body of academics.
You're splitting hairs over the definition of "engineering". Lots of people will claim that software engineering isn't actually engineering, even though tons of Slashdotters are in that profession.
A tax policy, on the other hand, only has to produce the money needed for essential government services
Deciding which services to provide is "social engineering" too. Having more or less services will require more or less tax money; collecting more or less taxes will have significant effects on society, even with a single tax. So that's "social engineering" too.
The bottom line is that anything the government does amounts to "social engineering", no matter how much you wish it not to be so. We're not going to have any progress until people admit this, and instead of fighting over whether government should change society (which it's going to do by virtue of its very existence), and instead argue about how government should affect society.
Except that there's no place in the world where there's a single tax. There's always multiple taxes: sales taxes, property taxes, car registration fees, tariffs, duties, VATs, etc. Even an income tax alone would be social engineering, because now you're promoting consumption by not having a sales tax, you're forcing people who work to subsidize government services for people who don't (retired or rich people whose houses are paid for, or people who get their income from outside the country), you're not protecting domestic industries by not having tariffs, etc.
Talking about a single income-based tax is like talking about communism. It sounds OK in theory at first glance, except that no place has ever tried it or ever will because it's unworkable and impractical.
I think we're probably splitting hairs here, but I hear this "taxes shouldn't be used for social engineering!!!" mantra fairly frequently, and that's exactly what it is: a dogmatic mantra. Sure, I'll agree with you that a system like that which you describe (income taxes somewhat progressive, homestead exemption, not taxing food, sales/income/property taxes balanced, etc.) sounds great, but to many people, they're going to bitch about all those too. Just look at all the Flat Tax promoters: they're going to bitch that your "somewhat progressive" income taxes are "social engineering", though to you that sounds extremist. Or the Randists are going to scream that not taxing staple foods is "social engineering". Or that even having property taxes at all is "social engineering". I can even understand some of these arguments (probably the one about property tax more than anything), even if I don't fully agree with them. But I'm just really sick of the "social engineering" mantra. It's unavoidable: anything you do with regard to taxation is going to be considered "social engineering", especially when you talk to the crowd that thinks that all taxation is theft and that there shouldn't be any taxes at all (you may disregard this crowd, but it's a pretty large and growing crowd here in the US).
It shouldn't be that hard: you'd just count up the employees working in Mass, and divide by the total number of employees worldwide. For a corporate cloud email system, that should be a good approximation. Of course, enforcing this doesn't sound very easy or practical, especially if the cloud app isn't something used by all (or most) employees, but rather a small subset of them. However, corporate taxation and accounting usually isn't like individual taxation: due to the deep pockets, governments are more likely to send auditors after companies, and look deeply into their books.
I'm not a business law expert, but it seems to me that the registration of the company is somewhat irrelevant. If your company has an office in Mass. and purchases cloud services (for that office in Mass., not for offices in other states), it'll still be subject to the tax.
This is a rather stupid comment: there's no way to avoid doing social engineering with taxes. Whatever you do with taxation, it's going to affect society somehow. Just making a choice between income and sales taxes affects society, and is in effect "social engineering". Sales taxes discourage purchasing. Or how about property taxes? Those discourage purchasing and owning property (and frequently drive people to move to locations with lower property taxes). Most places have all three; how you set their levels relative to each other amounts to "social engineering": should you have small sales taxes and huge property taxes? Or low property taxes and huge sales taxes? Should you tax staple foods or not? Taxing staple foods isn't exactly good for poor hungry people so if you do, you're going to get a lot of people complaining about that.
In short, there's no way to avoid "social engineering" with taxation. So even though it's frequently done badly, an attempt does need to be made to do it well and fairly.
Just because you use something within a state boundary doesn't necessarily mean a sales tax is applied if you use it out of state.
I don't think that's relevant here; I think they're talking about Mass. companies buying and/or using software (including custom-developed stuff, including custom-developed websites), not out-of-state entities buying software made in Mass.
As an example if I make a phone call to somebody else out of state are they going to charge me for that even though I'm not a resident but I pay for the phone and service elsewhere?
I don't think this is relevant to this tax initiative, but I can see this happening, if the whole internet sales tax thing is anything to go by, because it's a close parallel. Just think about it: promoters of internet sales taxes claim that tax-free internet purchases are unfair competition to local B&M retailers. However, all these tax initiatives have the e-tailer calculating the tax in the buyer's location, rather than the seller's location, and remitting that tax money to that state/municipality, even if it's across the country someplace the retailer has never been. What sense does that make? Suppose there was no shipping possible, and people could only buy stuff in person. So if you're in Maine selling stuff, and someone in Oregon looks at your website, sees something they desperately want, and wants to buy it from you. They have to get in their car or a plane and travel all the way from Oregon to Maine to buy it from you in person. What sales tax is this buyer going to pay, coming from Oregon where there's no sales tax (IIRC)? Simple: they're going to pay Maine sales tax. Sales tax applies at the location of the sale, not the home address of the buyer. It's why so many people living across the border in Washington State drive across the border to Oregon to buy stuff, and drive it back home to WA: they don't have to pay sales tax since there's no tax in OR. So, why don't these internet sales tax initiatives do the same thing: force e-tailers to apply the tax that applies in their own locality? Obviously, this would be a giant boon to Oregon and other states with no sales tax, as sellers would be flocking to those locations, but too bad.
Zip code isn't sufficient; sometimes some houses have to pay a different sales tax rate than other houses in the same zip code. On some Indian reservations, tribe members have to pay a different tax rate than non-tribe members, even if they live in the same house! Then, there's different taxes based on the products. In RI I believe certain products made of mink are untaxed while other products made of mink are. Food items are frequently nontaxed in many states, but then the definition of qualifying "food items" varies from place to place.
There's tens of thousands of different sales tax jurisdictions in the US, asking retailers to figure all that out is completely unreasonable. If they want sales taxes nationwide, they need to simplify it massively.
No he didn't. Your friend had to pay "use tax": that's equivalent to sales tax, and it's for things you purchase out-of-state. Most states with sales taxes also require their citizens to pay use taxes on out-of-state purchases (it's a separate line item on your state income tax forms). Very few people actually bother to pay it though. There's a big difference between sales tax and use tax, however: "sales tax" is a tax that retailers collect from buyers, and remit to the state on their behalf, whereas "use tax" is the same amount that buyers have to pay directly to the state government for any purchases where sales tax wasn't collected.
I think it's something in the mains power, and I'm going to reiterate my recommendation for a PSU with active PFC (or at least a PSU that doesn't have a voltage selector switch, though most of these are the active-PFC type). These PSUs aren't sensitive to incoming voltage, so you can plug in anything between 115V and 230V (or somewhat more), so obviously it isn't going to be fazed by an overvoltage condition on a 115V line. This is likely why the laptop computer never has a problem while the desktop is dying: just about all laptops have power supply bricks that can accept anything between 115 and 230; just look at the label.
No, the other big reasons Paypal exist are: 1) it's a wonderful way for very small internet merchants to accept payment, because it doesn't have all the ridiculous fees that traditional credit card processors charge. 2) it's an easy way for people to send money to each other without having to go buy a money order.
There's no other good solutions for these situations, except maybe Google Payments.
Visa and MC are still living in the 1950s, technologically. Paypal was started by someone much younger who understood security and computers better than they do.
I really hate to write in support of some faceless corporation, but my experience is similar: I sell stuff online from my website, and Paypal is the only way I accept money (except for money orders from the occasional Paypal hater, and company checks for large orders; I plan to add google checkout in the future). I've never had a problem with them freezing my money (though I do keep my balance relatively low and only give them ACH access to a separate account with $100 in it in case they go nuts). Their fees are the lowest I've seen (Google Checkout appears to have identical fees), much lower than the traditional card processors. It'd be nice if the fees were lower, but they appear to be set by Visa/MC so it's probably out of their control.
That's why you don't keep much money in your Paypal account; you transfer it to a bank account periodically, and then transfer it from there to a different bank account so Paypal can't do an ACH withdrawal.
How long between these failures? Are they frequent?
That UPS in the link isn't going to do much; it doesn't say specifically, but it's most likely an offline UPS at that price, which means it's basically a relay which switches in the battery-supplied inverter when the power goes out, and the rest of the time just connects directly to the mains. Supposedly there's some surge protection in there, but it's probably the same cheap-ass MOV that every other $2 power strip has, which does little to protect your equipment: it'll protect against a few surges and then it's permanently damaged such that it's inoperative, and no longer offers any protection.
That's interesting that the PSU doesn't seem to have failed, but it's possible there was some big surge which caused a big surge on the outputs of the PSU (the +5V and +12V lines to the motherboard), without permanently damaging the PSU itself. Maybe someone who knows more about PSUs could chime in here.
Are these the same make/model of motherboard you're replacing them with? Maybe there's something wrong with that batch or that make?
I'm not sure how much help the electrician would be; if there's some kind of chronic overvoltage condition or other problem, the electrician should see that (though I'm not sure if an electrician would/could check for a very noisy line). You can see this yourself with a "Kill-A-Watt" power meter; if you have one of those handy, maybe you could loan it to him and have him check the lines with that. But if it's an infrequent problem, such as a big voltage surge once a day, the electrician isn't going to see that unless he's lucky, or puts something on the line which continuously monitors the line and logs data.
It is interesting that only the one computer is affected, but perhaps the PSU on the laptop is better. What kind of PSU did you take out of the desktop? And what type did you replace it with (and have any more MBs been fried with the new PSU)? Maybe a high-end PSU like SeaSonic is in order? A PSU with active PFC (power factor correction) can probably handle bad power lines much better than the typical cheap-ass kind that has a voltage selector switch (115/230).
Any possibility the customer is opening up the machine and fooling around inside somehow, either out of stupidity or mal-intent? Would there be a good reason for him to sabotage the equipment (like to get newer replacements for free, or some weird pleasure out of wasting your time and money)?
Are there any parts of his system which haven't gone bad? This includes parts you've replaced out of suspicion, but found they hadn't failed and work fine elsewhere. It'd probably be good to rule some parts of the system out. Basically, which parts of his system (PS, CPU, RAM, MB, etc.) have definitely failed, and which parts haven't? There has to be a pattern. Any parts which have never been replaced?
There can only be four sources for this problem: 1) the customer himself (sabotage, monkeying around, static zaps, etc.), 2) an internal problem (bad component damaging the other components), 3) an external electrical problem (bad mains power), and 4) an external non-electrical problem (a big microwave transmitter aimed at the computer?).
What kind of UPS did you try anyway? There's different kinds of UPSes out there; the crappy kind don't actually filter the power in any way, they just use relays to connect a battery-powered inverter to the load when the mains power quits. If you really want to rule out the power (or determine it is the power), you have to use the kind that's fully isolated, called a "double conversion" UPS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uninterruptible_power_supply#Online_.2F_double-conversion Of course, these UPSes are the most expensive type.
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Oh please. Even Windows has some OSS in it somewhere. What's important is that iOS (and WP) is closed; you can't do anything you want to it. Whereas Android, you can download the whole thing yourself, and build your own version of it to put on your device (though some devices may be locked, but that's a separate issue). Just ask the guys at CyanogenMod; you're not going to see a similar project for WP or iOS.
Compared to iOS and Windows Phone, Android IS a "model open source" project. Of course, compared to other open source projects it has some serious problems, but iOS and WP aren't open source in the slightest, so compared to those two Android looks pretty good.
It's not just that; the other reason is because you're too lazy to cooperate with the original project, such as by following their coding standards, by dividing your patches up into chunks the original project prefers so they can review them effectively, by making sure your changes don't break the build for other platforms which you don't use, etc.
I think that's some extremely optimistic thinking on your part. Why would the courts be willing to strike down something that's so beneficial to corporations? The courts are just as corrupt as the rest of the government.
What's really bad is, frogs aren't actually this stupid, despite the myth. A frog in a pot of water will jump out if it gets too hot. They may be just frogs, but they're not that dumb.
But apparently people are.
That's not a "key point", you're just splitting hairs. This isn't academia, and definitions of words are not fixed. People use the word "engineering" all the time for things which have no scientific rigor, it just means manipulating things for a desired end result. Have you never heard of "sanitation engineers" and "domestic engineers"? Just because you don't like the usage of the term doesn't mean it's incorrect. This isn't France where the language is defined and regulated by a body of academics.
You're splitting hairs over the definition of "engineering". Lots of people will claim that software engineering isn't actually engineering, even though tons of Slashdotters are in that profession.
A tax policy, on the other hand, only has to produce the money needed for essential government services
Deciding which services to provide is "social engineering" too. Having more or less services will require more or less tax money; collecting more or less taxes will have significant effects on society, even with a single tax. So that's "social engineering" too.
The bottom line is that anything the government does amounts to "social engineering", no matter how much you wish it not to be so. We're not going to have any progress until people admit this, and instead of fighting over whether government should change society (which it's going to do by virtue of its very existence), and instead argue about how government should affect society.
Except that there's no place in the world where there's a single tax. There's always multiple taxes: sales taxes, property taxes, car registration fees, tariffs, duties, VATs, etc. Even an income tax alone would be social engineering, because now you're promoting consumption by not having a sales tax, you're forcing people who work to subsidize government services for people who don't (retired or rich people whose houses are paid for, or people who get their income from outside the country), you're not protecting domestic industries by not having tariffs, etc.
Talking about a single income-based tax is like talking about communism. It sounds OK in theory at first glance, except that no place has ever tried it or ever will because it's unworkable and impractical.
I think we're probably splitting hairs here, but I hear this "taxes shouldn't be used for social engineering!!!" mantra fairly frequently, and that's exactly what it is: a dogmatic mantra. Sure, I'll agree with you that a system like that which you describe (income taxes somewhat progressive, homestead exemption, not taxing food, sales/income/property taxes balanced, etc.) sounds great, but to many people, they're going to bitch about all those too. Just look at all the Flat Tax promoters: they're going to bitch that your "somewhat progressive" income taxes are "social engineering", though to you that sounds extremist. Or the Randists are going to scream that not taxing staple foods is "social engineering". Or that even having property taxes at all is "social engineering". I can even understand some of these arguments (probably the one about property tax more than anything), even if I don't fully agree with them. But I'm just really sick of the "social engineering" mantra. It's unavoidable: anything you do with regard to taxation is going to be considered "social engineering", especially when you talk to the crowd that thinks that all taxation is theft and that there shouldn't be any taxes at all (you may disregard this crowd, but it's a pretty large and growing crowd here in the US).
It shouldn't be that hard: you'd just count up the employees working in Mass, and divide by the total number of employees worldwide. For a corporate cloud email system, that should be a good approximation. Of course, enforcing this doesn't sound very easy or practical, especially if the cloud app isn't something used by all (or most) employees, but rather a small subset of them. However, corporate taxation and accounting usually isn't like individual taxation: due to the deep pockets, governments are more likely to send auditors after companies, and look deeply into their books.
I'm not a business law expert, but it seems to me that the registration of the company is somewhat irrelevant. If your company has an office in Mass. and purchases cloud services (for that office in Mass., not for offices in other states), it'll still be subject to the tax.
This is a rather stupid comment: there's no way to avoid doing social engineering with taxes. Whatever you do with taxation, it's going to affect society somehow. Just making a choice between income and sales taxes affects society, and is in effect "social engineering". Sales taxes discourage purchasing. Or how about property taxes? Those discourage purchasing and owning property (and frequently drive people to move to locations with lower property taxes). Most places have all three; how you set their levels relative to each other amounts to "social engineering": should you have small sales taxes and huge property taxes? Or low property taxes and huge sales taxes? Should you tax staple foods or not? Taxing staple foods isn't exactly good for poor hungry people so if you do, you're going to get a lot of people complaining about that.
In short, there's no way to avoid "social engineering" with taxation. So even though it's frequently done badly, an attempt does need to be made to do it well and fairly.
Just because you use something within a state boundary doesn't necessarily mean a sales tax is applied if you use it out of state.
I don't think that's relevant here; I think they're talking about Mass. companies buying and/or using software (including custom-developed stuff, including custom-developed websites), not out-of-state entities buying software made in Mass.
As an example if I make a phone call to somebody else out of state are they going to charge me for that even though I'm not a resident but I pay for the phone and service elsewhere?
I don't think this is relevant to this tax initiative, but I can see this happening, if the whole internet sales tax thing is anything to go by, because it's a close parallel. Just think about it: promoters of internet sales taxes claim that tax-free internet purchases are unfair competition to local B&M retailers. However, all these tax initiatives have the e-tailer calculating the tax in the buyer's location, rather than the seller's location, and remitting that tax money to that state/municipality, even if it's across the country someplace the retailer has never been. What sense does that make? Suppose there was no shipping possible, and people could only buy stuff in person. So if you're in Maine selling stuff, and someone in Oregon looks at your website, sees something they desperately want, and wants to buy it from you. They have to get in their car or a plane and travel all the way from Oregon to Maine to buy it from you in person. What sales tax is this buyer going to pay, coming from Oregon where there's no sales tax (IIRC)? Simple: they're going to pay Maine sales tax. Sales tax applies at the location of the sale, not the home address of the buyer. It's why so many people living across the border in Washington State drive across the border to Oregon to buy stuff, and drive it back home to WA: they don't have to pay sales tax since there's no tax in OR. So, why don't these internet sales tax initiatives do the same thing: force e-tailers to apply the tax that applies in their own locality? Obviously, this would be a giant boon to Oregon and other states with no sales tax, as sellers would be flocking to those locations, but too bad.
Oh bullshit. There's no drawers with parts left at any Radio Shacks.
Zip code isn't sufficient; sometimes some houses have to pay a different sales tax rate than other houses in the same zip code. On some Indian reservations, tribe members have to pay a different tax rate than non-tribe members, even if they live in the same house! Then, there's different taxes based on the products. In RI I believe certain products made of mink are untaxed while other products made of mink are. Food items are frequently nontaxed in many states, but then the definition of qualifying "food items" varies from place to place.
There's tens of thousands of different sales tax jurisdictions in the US, asking retailers to figure all that out is completely unreasonable. If they want sales taxes nationwide, they need to simplify it massively.
Do you sell at least $1 million in products per year? If not, it looks like it won't apply to you.
It will be a fucking nightmare, but it looks like it's only going to apply to the larger online retailers, not the really small guys (thankfully).
No he didn't. Your friend had to pay "use tax": that's equivalent to sales tax, and it's for things you purchase out-of-state. Most states with sales taxes also require their citizens to pay use taxes on out-of-state purchases (it's a separate line item on your state income tax forms). Very few people actually bother to pay it though. There's a big difference between sales tax and use tax, however: "sales tax" is a tax that retailers collect from buyers, and remit to the state on their behalf, whereas "use tax" is the same amount that buyers have to pay directly to the state government for any purchases where sales tax wasn't collected.
I think it's something in the mains power, and I'm going to reiterate my recommendation for a PSU with active PFC (or at least a PSU that doesn't have a voltage selector switch, though most of these are the active-PFC type). These PSUs aren't sensitive to incoming voltage, so you can plug in anything between 115V and 230V (or somewhat more), so obviously it isn't going to be fazed by an overvoltage condition on a 115V line. This is likely why the laptop computer never has a problem while the desktop is dying: just about all laptops have power supply bricks that can accept anything between 115 and 230; just look at the label.
I hope not; AMEX is a bigger scam than any of the others (Visa,MC, Paypal)
No, the other big reasons Paypal exist are:
1) it's a wonderful way for very small internet merchants to accept payment, because it doesn't have all the ridiculous fees that traditional credit card processors charge.
2) it's an easy way for people to send money to each other without having to go buy a money order.
There's no other good solutions for these situations, except maybe Google Payments.
Visa and MC are still living in the 1950s, technologically. Paypal was started by someone much younger who understood security and computers better than they do.
I really hate to write in support of some faceless corporation, but my experience is similar: I sell stuff online from my website, and Paypal is the only way I accept money (except for money orders from the occasional Paypal hater, and company checks for large orders; I plan to add google checkout in the future). I've never had a problem with them freezing my money (though I do keep my balance relatively low and only give them ACH access to a separate account with $100 in it in case they go nuts). Their fees are the lowest I've seen (Google Checkout appears to have identical fees), much lower than the traditional card processors. It'd be nice if the fees were lower, but they appear to be set by Visa/MC so it's probably out of their control.
That's why you don't keep much money in your Paypal account; you transfer it to a bank account periodically, and then transfer it from there to a different bank account so Paypal can't do an ACH withdrawal.
How long between these failures? Are they frequent?
That UPS in the link isn't going to do much; it doesn't say specifically, but it's most likely an offline UPS at that price, which means it's basically a relay which switches in the battery-supplied inverter when the power goes out, and the rest of the time just connects directly to the mains. Supposedly there's some surge protection in there, but it's probably the same cheap-ass MOV that every other $2 power strip has, which does little to protect your equipment: it'll protect against a few surges and then it's permanently damaged such that it's inoperative, and no longer offers any protection.
That's interesting that the PSU doesn't seem to have failed, but it's possible there was some big surge which caused a big surge on the outputs of the PSU (the +5V and +12V lines to the motherboard), without permanently damaging the PSU itself. Maybe someone who knows more about PSUs could chime in here.
Are these the same make/model of motherboard you're replacing them with? Maybe there's something wrong with that batch or that make?
I'm not sure how much help the electrician would be; if there's some kind of chronic overvoltage condition or other problem, the electrician should see that (though I'm not sure if an electrician would/could check for a very noisy line). You can see this yourself with a "Kill-A-Watt" power meter; if you have one of those handy, maybe you could loan it to him and have him check the lines with that. But if it's an infrequent problem, such as a big voltage surge once a day, the electrician isn't going to see that unless he's lucky, or puts something on the line which continuously monitors the line and logs data.
It is interesting that only the one computer is affected, but perhaps the PSU on the laptop is better. What kind of PSU did you take out of the desktop? And what type did you replace it with (and have any more MBs been fried with the new PSU)? Maybe a high-end PSU like SeaSonic is in order? A PSU with active PFC (power factor correction) can probably handle bad power lines much better than the typical cheap-ass kind that has a voltage selector switch (115/230).
Any possibility the customer is opening up the machine and fooling around inside somehow, either out of stupidity or mal-intent? Would there be a good reason for him to sabotage the equipment (like to get newer replacements for free, or some weird pleasure out of wasting your time and money)?
Are there any parts of his system which haven't gone bad? This includes parts you've replaced out of suspicion, but found they hadn't failed and work fine elsewhere. It'd probably be good to rule some parts of the system out. Basically, which parts of his system (PS, CPU, RAM, MB, etc.) have definitely failed, and which parts haven't? There has to be a pattern. Any parts which have never been replaced?
There can only be four sources for this problem: 1) the customer himself (sabotage, monkeying around, static zaps, etc.), 2) an internal problem (bad component damaging the other components), 3) an external electrical problem (bad mains power), and 4) an external non-electrical problem (a big microwave transmitter aimed at the computer?).
What kind of UPS did you try anyway? There's different kinds of UPSes out there; the crappy kind don't actually filter the power in any way, they just use relays to connect a battery-powered inverter to the load when the mains power quits. If you really want to rule out the power (or determine it is the power), you have to use the kind that's fully isolated, called a "double conversion" UPS:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uninterruptible_power_supply#Online_.2F_double-conversion
Of course, these UPSes are the most expensive type.