While it's true that the bandwidth in a particular spot is capped by the laws of physics (to a certain extent), it's also worth remembering that this is relevent in the following ways:
It's critical to the amount of bandwidth an individual can get
It implies extra expense when improving the bandwidth a group of individuals can get
The reason for the difference is that in many cases, you can simply solve the bandwidth-per-group problem by putting up more towers. This, indeed, is exactly the principle behind 2G GSM - which arguably is the standard that did the most to increase capacity enough to allow almost everyone in a populous area to have a cellphone without paying through the nose for airtime.
It's important to mention here because LTE is significantly higher bandwidth (per user) than the wireline services the majority of people have available to them. Thus the only issue that would prevent LTE becoming an adequate replacement for a wireline service would be if the service is overshared in a particular area.
From a technical standpoint, that's solvable. LTE is about as scalable as GSM, you really can solve sharing issues by putting up more towers. It's expensive, and particularly in the US certain jurisdictions have a nasty habit of taxing infrastructure (which is a major reason why we don't have an adequate railway system in this country) but it's do-able. The laws of physics are not a barrier that would prevent LTE and its successors from replacing wireline services.
I have no idea what the situation was in the US, but I think any Brit reading this will recognize the words "Pearl and Dean" together with "Da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da, DADA-DADA-DADA-DADA-DADADA, DADA-DADA-DADAAAAA-DA!" from the 1970s.
With the exciting and utterly deceptive starry intro that was followed by a series of ads that, for example, showed the inside of an Indian Restaurant that does not exist on any planet, elegantly described by {voice1} followed by {excited and entirely different voice2} telling you the address of a local restaurant that the ad was supposedly showing.
Really? America didn't have cinema ads in the 1970s? AMERICA didn't have them when WE DID? AMERICA, who practically INVENTED CONSUMERISM?
Much as I love Google, all of the smartphones I've ever owned were open, and I've been using the things since the late nineties.
Apple and Blackberry may be popular, but Nokia, to name but one, has done some pretty nice fully open smartphones until relatively recently, and arguably would have continued doing so if Android hadn't eaten their lunch and forced them into panicking and switching to Windows.
St Steve might have thought that Apple invented the concept and that Google "stole" it from him, but he was full of shit, and geeks should remember that.
While that wouldn't have anything to do with the grandparent's assertions about Democrats, I do suggest that you make your voice heard within the Republican party, as it's the 99% of Racist, anti-science, anti-environment, anti-poor, anti-labor, and anti-free thought Republicans that give the other 1%, like you, a bad name.
The purpose of PS3 was to sell Blu-ray and kill HD DVD, which was disliked (a) because it wasn't a Sony product and (b) because it wasn't consumer hostile. That was it.
PS3 succeeded. It doesn't matter that on the surface it was loss making. Sony was able to use the PS3 to push BD and kill HD DVD, making BD the high definition optical disc standard.
Of course, Blu-ray itself is a piece of utter garbage, and as a result has no chance whatsoever of ever reaching DVD's ubiquity, something HD DVD at least had a chance of doing. Even now, sales figures look better than they are purely because it's getting difficult to buy a DVD of a new release without buying it as part of a Blu-ray/DVD bundle.
But that doesn't matter. The important thing is that Sony "won" that war. To that extent, the PS3 was a success.
Ok, just to be clear: I'm pretty sure the installed base of Windows 7, plus that sliver of Vista installs, currently forms the majority of Windows installs.
In 7 and Vista, apps do not run with admin privileges unless you explicitly consent to that. Indeed, this was one of the early complaints about Vista from users not used to the idea.
While technically, yes, you don't have to re-enter your password, the OS makes it very clear that extra privileges are being requested (including screen darkening) so there's no risk you'll confuse the dialog with, say, an "Are you sure you want to delete this file?" type thing. I'd also argue that it's actually worse to get users into the habit of entering their password every time a program apparently asks for it. Kinda easy to see how that can be abused.
I always was a tad horrified when using Mac OS X that it was apparently OK just to bounce a system update like icon in the dock a couple of times before putting up a very standard dialog box to ask for what actually is very privileged information. It's definitely inferior to the Vista/7 method of doing things. The computer shouldn't be asking YOU if you're the real deal when it's trying to validate the permissions of another application, you should be asking IT if the other application is the real deal. And even if it's asking you, it damn well shouldn't be asking you for the same password you use to log in and access all of the computer's features.
I'm guessing Microsoft is doing it right because unlike Apple, they've learned the hard way over and over again that they can't get it wrong. Apple's lack of an installed base and the implied lack of a network effect has given Apple a lot of latitude to make basic security errors without anyone caring.
I've returned one DVD in my life. It was opened. It was opened because I wouldn't have found out that the Abyss DVD that was specifically marked as "Anamorphic" and "Enhanced for widescreen TVs" contained only a letter boxed in a 4:3 frame version of the movie without opening it.
Trying to get my money back turned out to be a complete hassle with the store actually accusing me of trying to do something illegal. I'm glad my wife was there, because I don't think I'd have left the store except in handcuffs otherwise.
The Studios can and do rip people off, and do try to hide behind the "Returning an opened DVD is the same thing as returning a used DVD === PIRATE!!" excuse. It may be possible to abuse the "return opened DVDs" system, but policies that punish customers for returning opened DVDs regardless of the circumstances are inherently abusive. If the studios don't like it, they should try entering a different line of business.
Like, for instance, the government not being hellbent on forcing it's will above the states.
Given the language you're using, which sounds right out of a set of Confederate talking points, I assume you're not talking about the various Federal laws requiring free states extradite (or assist with the extradition) of escaped slaves to the Slave States.
...which if I recall correctly, the overturning of such laws was what lead the South to have a hissy fit and decide to quit the union over, something they didn't actually have any constitutional right to unilaterally do.
In their zeal to pretend that the Civil War was more than about Slavery, or else suffer the indignity of being very much on the wrong side, I find it unfortunate Southerners have built this myth about "States Rights" that the South was supposedly fighting for. It wasn't. The South was, clear as day, fighting for the right to impose its will on the North. If it couldn't get there through Democracy, than a standing army and secured borders were the next step.
He's been consistently for small Federal government for decades. And you'll find that most politicians are for what they believe are constitutional principles. There's quite a wide range of opinion over what, exactly, those are.
Given the choice between a big federal government, hampered by the difficulty of trying to impose its will on 250,000,000 people, and big state governments, which have a history of being even more corrupt and just plain evil, and which only have a few million people each to impose their wills on, I think I'll go for the Federal option.
This is why it's a good idea for people to write GNU/Linux when they mean "That open source operating system Ubuntu is based upon", even if some people seem to feel like they have to refuse doing so because RMS wants them to, and RMS is a dirty hippy or something. (WTF?)
Basically, it doesn't matter that there's an Android version. The APIs for Android and GNU/Linux are so completely unalike it's probably easier to port the Mac OS X version (if there is one, although I think it's all Silverlight based anyway?) to GNU/Linux than it is the Android version.
Which is not to suggest it's impossible to use the Android version as a base for an unofficial port, but it'd be awkward, and in reality it'd probably be easier to run the Windows client under Wine. And probably more efficient.
Yes, but the makers of the 6502 were suffering massive problems early on in the history of the CPU, in part because of the lawsuits over the 6501 (essentially a 6800 clone.) Tramiel swooped in and bought the company.
The only other cheap CPU at around that period in history was the Z80, and that took a few years to appear. I'd suggest that the Atari 2600 would have taken a little while to appear without Tramiel's involvement; the Apple series would have continued, albeit at an even more expensive price, and on that note it's interesting to speculate what the computer world would have looked like with a 6502-sized hole in it.
Personally I couldn't stand that chip, but it was cheap, and its cheapness meant it kick started the home computer revolution.
Seems to be limited to the official Bell and ITU specs though. Modems like the Trailblazer were pushing the limits with non-standard technologies (funnily enough, some are at the heart of the new 4G mobile phone standards!) years before the V.series standards caught up.
Anyone who reads the list and says "What the fuck? A list of pre-Internet services that doesn't include Fidonet or the ad-hoc UUCP network that carried USENET?"
You do know that there are very few liberals who take MSNBC seriously, right? Hell, for many of us the best show on it is Morning Joe.
MSNBC is, very obviously, catering to a market. It's not very good at it, and we'd rather just know the truth rather than what people we agree with in general want us to believe.
What scares me is that conservatives don't seem to have the same sceptical view of Fox News.
Leaving aside the rather bizarre assertion that the above is libertarian in any way (not that I care, which is why I'm leaving it aside, I just think it's bizarre you'd call it that), this is a horrible idea that reflects the worst parts of the US spectrum auctions. People who buy mobile devices do so because they move around. Limiting the coverage area of a talk plan to a specific location, with everything else being dependent upon roaming agreements or individually negotiated contracts is completely counter to that concept.
If Microsoft hadn't had its hands tied behind it the last ten years, it'd be interesting to see if we'd still have Google, Apple, et al, at least, in their present forms.
Microsoft could easily have chosen to drop Apple support as soon as they started to become threatening. Google could have been bought, or if it refused, been actively discriminated against on the desktop (with IE's market share, it wouldn't have been difficult to kill Google if Microsoft wished.)
You know, I've lived in both the UK and US, and I've immersed myself in both cultures, and I still don't understand why Americans on Slashdot (only on Slashdot) appear to think it's a big deal that the EU has laws like this.
This is standard consumer protection stuff. Does the US have a directly equivalent law? No idea, but it doesn't lack laws that are in the same ballpark. Indeed, some, such as the requirement that all electronics be vetted by the FCC and contain shielding to prevent their circuits from accidentally broadcasting something that might cause a little interference on a TV or radio in the same room, seem a tad less understandable than creating a basic standard of merchantability - you have to stand behind your product for two years. Hardly unreasonable.
I think the point is that we shouldn't have to avoid giving them information, let alone be provided with a way to avoid giving them information.
Wait, what?
Google+ is strictly optional. You don't have to sign up for it to begin with. This system is a way to allow people who have not signed up to continue to interact with those who did.
Second: pretty much the vast majority of legal experts said that it seemed unlikely the bill was unconstitutional. That's was reflected in the bulk of media reporting.
Third: Chris Matthews spent the entire Clinton Presidency slamming him, and voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004. While rightists may have convinced themselves he's liberal because of his vote for Obama in 2008 - who, remember, stood as a post partisan figure, and who indeed has a bi-partisan cabinet - doesn't make him representive of any "liberal agenda".
Finally, Fox lies, almost constantly, and pushes the agenda that it alone is a speaker of truth with the rest of the media being against it and lying. That's why, for example, you saw it pushing the "Zimmerman really did kill Martin in self defense, because, uh, he says so! Yeah! And Martin was clearly suspicious what with him being black in a mixed race neighborhood and stuff!" crap last week. It wasn't that Fox is racist per-se, it's that as the rest of the media was reporting a particular story, it felt it had to posit a contrarian point of view, to advance the idea the rest of the media was always lying.
Just because Fox might tell you what you want to hear doesn't mean you should trust it. You're being lied to.
It's a radio that instead of being tunable to the bit of spectrum you want to receive (eg. "200KHz at 88.9MHz, encoded using FM" - that's what your (analog) car radio's tuner is designed to do) , instead receives and digitally encodes an extremely large, fixed, block of spectrum. You then use software to extract the signal(s) you're actually interested in.
The major advantage of the system is that it's highly configurable - in theory, the same receiver can be used to receive and decode FM radio, ATSC TV, Wi-fi, GSM, UMTS, etc, as long as the receiver covers the part of the spectrum those signals are transmitted on.
Disclaimer: I'm not an expert, but I figured what I know to be more useful than being required to plow through a Wikipedia article on the subject.
I've taken Amtrak from West Palm Beach to Penn Station NY and back four times in the last six. At no point did any Amtrak employee see the need to even look at my luggage, let alone give me a prostate exam.
It may be that the TSA is able to fuck things up on the rails, I know they're trying, but at the moment, no, it's nothing like travelling by air.
I understand your joke but in reality there are about 40-50% that pay no federal income tax at all and a decent percentage of that group get back more than they paid during the year (they MAKE money when they file).
Yes, but there are more taxes than income tax.
The reality is that virtually everyone pays taxes, usually directly, and obviously indirectly. Buy something and it's almost certainly subject to sales taxes. Own a home and it's covered by property taxes. Drive a car and... you get the idea. And if you try to avoid most of those things, you end up paying indirectly. Your landlord pays the property taxes you'd have paid on your rented home, and obviously prices your rent accordingly, they don't magically disappear.
It may be a meme on the right that the country is 50% populated by "Lucky Duckies" who use government services on your dime, but it isn't remotely true. Find a state that doesn't charge property taxes, grow your own food, and never travel beyond the borders of your property and you might avoid them, but otherwise...
It's not just a matter of work by the HR person, visas require approval. Even if you get approval, it usually takes months.
So yes, I would think it perfectly reasonable for an employer to refuse to extend a job offer to an alien is who isn't authorized to work by the INS. Employers want to fill vacancies, not sit around waiting.
Note: I am a Naturalized Citizen, and have had two completely different types of employment visa, plus a green card. I've been through this crap. I'm personally in favor of liberalizing immigration laws. That doesn't mean I think an employer should suffer because the laws and bureaucracy are what they are at the moment.
Slashdot Mirror
While it's true that the bandwidth in a particular spot is capped by the laws of physics (to a certain extent), it's also worth remembering that this is relevent in the following ways:
The reason for the difference is that in many cases, you can simply solve the bandwidth-per-group problem by putting up more towers. This, indeed, is exactly the principle behind 2G GSM - which arguably is the standard that did the most to increase capacity enough to allow almost everyone in a populous area to have a cellphone without paying through the nose for airtime.
It's important to mention here because LTE is significantly higher bandwidth (per user) than the wireline services the majority of people have available to them. Thus the only issue that would prevent LTE becoming an adequate replacement for a wireline service would be if the service is overshared in a particular area.
From a technical standpoint, that's solvable. LTE is about as scalable as GSM, you really can solve sharing issues by putting up more towers. It's expensive, and particularly in the US certain jurisdictions have a nasty habit of taxing infrastructure (which is a major reason why we don't have an adequate railway system in this country) but it's do-able. The laws of physics are not a barrier that would prevent LTE and its successors from replacing wireline services.
I have no idea what the situation was in the US, but I think any Brit reading this will recognize the words "Pearl and Dean" together with "Da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da, DADA-DADA-DADA-DADA-DADADA, DADA-DADA-DADAAAAA-DA!" from the 1970s.
With the exciting and utterly deceptive starry intro that was followed by a series of ads that, for example, showed the inside of an Indian Restaurant that does not exist on any planet, elegantly described by {voice1} followed by {excited and entirely different voice2} telling you the address of a local restaurant that the ad was supposedly showing.
Really? America didn't have cinema ads in the 1970s? AMERICA didn't have them when WE DID? AMERICA, who practically INVENTED CONSUMERISM?
I don't believe you.
Much as I love Google, all of the smartphones I've ever owned were open, and I've been using the things since the late nineties.
Apple and Blackberry may be popular, but Nokia, to name but one, has done some pretty nice fully open smartphones until relatively recently, and arguably would have continued doing so if Android hadn't eaten their lunch and forced them into panicking and switching to Windows.
St Steve might have thought that Apple invented the concept and that Google "stole" it from him, but he was full of shit, and geeks should remember that.
While that wouldn't have anything to do with the grandparent's assertions about Democrats, I do suggest that you make your voice heard within the Republican party, as it's the 99% of Racist, anti-science, anti-environment, anti-poor, anti-labor, and anti-free thought Republicans that give the other 1%, like you, a bad name.
Assuming you mean the PS3...
The purpose of PS3 was to sell Blu-ray and kill HD DVD, which was disliked (a) because it wasn't a Sony product and (b) because it wasn't consumer hostile. That was it.
PS3 succeeded. It doesn't matter that on the surface it was loss making. Sony was able to use the PS3 to push BD and kill HD DVD, making BD the high definition optical disc standard.
Of course, Blu-ray itself is a piece of utter garbage, and as a result has no chance whatsoever of ever reaching DVD's ubiquity, something HD DVD at least had a chance of doing. Even now, sales figures look better than they are purely because it's getting difficult to buy a DVD of a new release without buying it as part of a Blu-ray/DVD bundle.
But that doesn't matter. The important thing is that Sony "won" that war. To that extent, the PS3 was a success.
Ok, just to be clear: I'm pretty sure the installed base of Windows 7, plus that sliver of Vista installs, currently forms the majority of Windows installs.
In 7 and Vista, apps do not run with admin privileges unless you explicitly consent to that. Indeed, this was one of the early complaints about Vista from users not used to the idea.
While technically, yes, you don't have to re-enter your password, the OS makes it very clear that extra privileges are being requested (including screen darkening) so there's no risk you'll confuse the dialog with, say, an "Are you sure you want to delete this file?" type thing. I'd also argue that it's actually worse to get users into the habit of entering their password every time a program apparently asks for it. Kinda easy to see how that can be abused.
I always was a tad horrified when using Mac OS X that it was apparently OK just to bounce a system update like icon in the dock a couple of times before putting up a very standard dialog box to ask for what actually is very privileged information. It's definitely inferior to the Vista/7 method of doing things. The computer shouldn't be asking YOU if you're the real deal when it's trying to validate the permissions of another application, you should be asking IT if the other application is the real deal. And even if it's asking you, it damn well shouldn't be asking you for the same password you use to log in and access all of the computer's features.
I'm guessing Microsoft is doing it right because unlike Apple, they've learned the hard way over and over again that they can't get it wrong. Apple's lack of an installed base and the implied lack of a network effect has given Apple a lot of latitude to make basic security errors without anyone caring.
I've returned one DVD in my life. It was opened. It was opened because I wouldn't have found out that the Abyss DVD that was specifically marked as "Anamorphic" and "Enhanced for widescreen TVs" contained only a letter boxed in a 4:3 frame version of the movie without opening it.
Trying to get my money back turned out to be a complete hassle with the store actually accusing me of trying to do something illegal. I'm glad my wife was there, because I don't think I'd have left the store except in handcuffs otherwise.
The Studios can and do rip people off, and do try to hide behind the "Returning an opened DVD is the same thing as returning a used DVD === PIRATE!!" excuse. It may be possible to abuse the "return opened DVDs" system, but policies that punish customers for returning opened DVDs regardless of the circumstances are inherently abusive. If the studios don't like it, they should try entering a different line of business.
Because Republicans hate Unions, and hate workers in general. What's your point?
Given the language you're using, which sounds right out of a set of Confederate talking points, I assume you're not talking about the various Federal laws requiring free states extradite (or assist with the extradition) of escaped slaves to the Slave States.
In their zeal to pretend that the Civil War was more than about Slavery, or else suffer the indignity of being very much on the wrong side, I find it unfortunate Southerners have built this myth about "States Rights" that the South was supposedly fighting for. It wasn't. The South was, clear as day, fighting for the right to impose its will on the North. If it couldn't get there through Democracy, than a standing army and secured borders were the next step.
He's been consistently for small Federal government for decades. And you'll find that most politicians are for what they believe are constitutional principles. There's quite a wide range of opinion over what, exactly, those are.
Given the choice between a big federal government, hampered by the difficulty of trying to impose its will on 250,000,000 people, and big state governments, which have a history of being even more corrupt and just plain evil, and which only have a few million people each to impose their wills on, I think I'll go for the Federal option.
This is why it's a good idea for people to write GNU/Linux when they mean "That open source operating system Ubuntu is based upon", even if some people seem to feel like they have to refuse doing so because RMS wants them to, and RMS is a dirty hippy or something. (WTF?)
Basically, it doesn't matter that there's an Android version. The APIs for Android and GNU/Linux are so completely unalike it's probably easier to port the Mac OS X version (if there is one, although I think it's all Silverlight based anyway?) to GNU/Linux than it is the Android version.
Which is not to suggest it's impossible to use the Android version as a base for an unofficial port, but it'd be awkward, and in reality it'd probably be easier to run the Windows client under Wine. And probably more efficient.
Yes, but the makers of the 6502 were suffering massive problems early on in the history of the CPU, in part because of the lawsuits over the 6501 (essentially a 6800 clone.) Tramiel swooped in and bought the company.
The only other cheap CPU at around that period in history was the Z80, and that took a few years to appear. I'd suggest that the Atari 2600 would have taken a little while to appear without Tramiel's involvement; the Apple series would have continued, albeit at an even more expensive price, and on that note it's interesting to speculate what the computer world would have looked like with a 6502-sized hole in it.
Personally I couldn't stand that chip, but it was cheap, and its cheapness meant it kick started the home computer revolution.
Seems to be limited to the official Bell and ITU specs though. Modems like the Trailblazer were pushing the limits with non-standard technologies (funnily enough, some are at the heart of the new 4G mobile phone standards!) years before the V.series standards caught up.
Anyone who reads the list and says "What the fuck? A list of pre-Internet services that doesn't include Fidonet or the ad-hoc UUCP network that carried USENET?"
What an awful article!
You do know that there are very few liberals who take MSNBC seriously, right? Hell, for many of us the best show on it is Morning Joe.
MSNBC is, very obviously, catering to a market. It's not very good at it, and we'd rather just know the truth rather than what people we agree with in general want us to believe.
What scares me is that conservatives don't seem to have the same sceptical view of Fox News.
Leaving aside the rather bizarre assertion that the above is libertarian in any way (not that I care, which is why I'm leaving it aside, I just think it's bizarre you'd call it that), this is a horrible idea that reflects the worst parts of the US spectrum auctions. People who buy mobile devices do so because they move around. Limiting the coverage area of a talk plan to a specific location, with everything else being dependent upon roaming agreements or individually negotiated contracts is completely counter to that concept.
If Microsoft hadn't had its hands tied behind it the last ten years, it'd be interesting to see if we'd still have Google, Apple, et al, at least, in their present forms.
Microsoft could easily have chosen to drop Apple support as soon as they started to become threatening. Google could have been bought, or if it refused, been actively discriminated against on the desktop (with IE's market share, it wouldn't have been difficult to kill Google if Microsoft wished.)
That's not so bad considering you may be able to avoid taking detours if you're flying.
You know, I've lived in both the UK and US, and I've immersed myself in both cultures, and I still don't understand why Americans on Slashdot (only on Slashdot) appear to think it's a big deal that the EU has laws like this.
This is standard consumer protection stuff. Does the US have a directly equivalent law? No idea, but it doesn't lack laws that are in the same ballpark. Indeed, some, such as the requirement that all electronics be vetted by the FCC and contain shielding to prevent their circuits from accidentally broadcasting something that might cause a little interference on a TV or radio in the same room, seem a tad less understandable than creating a basic standard of merchantability - you have to stand behind your product for two years. Hardly unreasonable.
What gives?
Wait, what?
Google+ is strictly optional. You don't have to sign up for it to begin with. This system is a way to allow people who have not signed up to continue to interact with those who did.
You're asking for opt-in. It already is opt-in!
First of all, it's not over.
Second: pretty much the vast majority of legal experts said that it seemed unlikely the bill was unconstitutional. That's was reflected in the bulk of media reporting.
Third: Chris Matthews spent the entire Clinton Presidency slamming him, and voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004. While rightists may have convinced themselves he's liberal because of his vote for Obama in 2008 - who, remember, stood as a post partisan figure, and who indeed has a bi-partisan cabinet - doesn't make him representive of any "liberal agenda".
Finally, Fox lies, almost constantly, and pushes the agenda that it alone is a speaker of truth with the rest of the media being against it and lying. That's why, for example, you saw it pushing the "Zimmerman really did kill Martin in self defense, because, uh, he says so! Yeah! And Martin was clearly suspicious what with him being black in a mixed race neighborhood and stuff!" crap last week. It wasn't that Fox is racist per-se, it's that as the rest of the media was reporting a particular story, it felt it had to posit a contrarian point of view, to advance the idea the rest of the media was always lying.
Just because Fox might tell you what you want to hear doesn't mean you should trust it. You're being lied to.
It's a radio that instead of being tunable to the bit of spectrum you want to receive (eg. "200KHz at 88.9MHz, encoded using FM" - that's what your (analog) car radio's tuner is designed to do) , instead receives and digitally encodes an extremely large, fixed, block of spectrum. You then use software to extract the signal(s) you're actually interested in.
The major advantage of the system is that it's highly configurable - in theory, the same receiver can be used to receive and decode FM radio, ATSC TV, Wi-fi, GSM, UMTS, etc, as long as the receiver covers the part of the spectrum those signals are transmitted on.
Disclaimer: I'm not an expert, but I figured what I know to be more useful than being required to plow through a Wikipedia article on the subject.
I've taken Amtrak from West Palm Beach to Penn Station NY and back four times in the last six. At no point did any Amtrak employee see the need to even look at my luggage, let alone give me a prostate exam.
It may be that the TSA is able to fuck things up on the rails, I know they're trying, but at the moment, no, it's nothing like travelling by air.
Yes, but there are more taxes than income tax.
The reality is that virtually everyone pays taxes, usually directly, and obviously indirectly. Buy something and it's almost certainly subject to sales taxes. Own a home and it's covered by property taxes. Drive a car and... you get the idea. And if you try to avoid most of those things, you end up paying indirectly. Your landlord pays the property taxes you'd have paid on your rented home, and obviously prices your rent accordingly, they don't magically disappear.
It may be a meme on the right that the country is 50% populated by "Lucky Duckies" who use government services on your dime, but it isn't remotely true. Find a state that doesn't charge property taxes, grow your own food, and never travel beyond the borders of your property and you might avoid them, but otherwise...
It's not just a matter of work by the HR person, visas require approval. Even if you get approval, it usually takes months.
So yes, I would think it perfectly reasonable for an employer to refuse to extend a job offer to an alien is who isn't authorized to work by the INS. Employers want to fill vacancies, not sit around waiting.
Note: I am a Naturalized Citizen, and have had two completely different types of employment visa, plus a green card. I've been through this crap. I'm personally in favor of liberalizing immigration laws. That doesn't mean I think an employer should suffer because the laws and bureaucracy are what they are at the moment.