Although I'm only vaguely familiar with the so-called Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement, I've read enough about it to know that calling it "streamlined" is a major misnomer. The rules behind SSUTA are sufficiently complex as to require computer software to calculate taxes due on particular kinds of items purchased by residents of particular states. While I'm sure this wouldn't be a problem for major online retailers, smaller retailers would almost certainly need to outsource tax calculations to third party services. It's a ridiculous burden, especially compared to the much simpler sales tax model adopted by the European Union.
I'd rather get rid of sales tax altogether (novel idea: let's tax people in proportion to how much they make instead of how much they spend), but if we must have a Federal sales tax I'd rather it be a flat tax per state than the awful mess that is the model proposed by the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement.
That's not novel. Just ask the many people who've had their possessions seized by the police because of simple suspicion of illegal activity -- even those possessions that have absolutely no evidentiary value, such as money, cars, boats, etc. Most Americans really don't give a shit about it because the goernment wouldn't seize your shit unless you're guilty of dealing or hacking or whatever, right?
Those laws are fucked up, but it's not necessarily the same thing. The difference, I think, is that the First Amendment comes into play when websites containing constitutionally protected content are shut down due to claims of infringement.
In the United States, people accused of a crime are guaranteed a trial and presumed innocent until proved guilty. Under the E-PARASITE Act, a website is presumed to be infringing unless and until the affected party can, if allowed to do so by the government, prove to the government that the website is perfectly legal. What a shameful perversion of a justice system that prides itself in being a model of justice.
Agreed. I seriously doubt the US Federal Government would stand idly by as state after state decided to ban the use of cash as a form of legal tender. Contrary to what other posters have said, the way I interpret the statement that cash is "legal tender for all debts" is not that those who are owed money are required to accept cash, but that the government must recognize cash as an acceptable form of payment for all debts (and not just those resulting from loans, either).
Louisiana is stepping on the Federal Government's toes by banning the use of cash in this manner. If their goal is to make all transactions traceable, it seems to me they'll have to find a different way to go about it.
Based on the various office phones I've used since the 1980s, if I were to pick a color I'd have said the color red "has long been used to indicate placing a call" - if I were to associate a color with it at all (which isn't likely).
The standard color for cell phone "send" buttons is green and has been so long before Apple even entered the cell phone market. The color red, on the other hand, has long been used for cell phone "end" buttons.
The first thing I notice is they've changed the phone icon from green to blue, which I'm sure is an attempt to avoid Apple's claims of trademark infringement. The color green has long been used to indicate placing a call, which is why Samsung changing the color from green to blue is such a good example of IP law being so stifling that companies have to intentionally avoid making anything remotely similar to another company's products. The problem is there's only so often you can do this before you run out of things to avoid.
Aside from the green phone icon, another example is Apple's claim that Samsung's yellow notepad icon infringes on its own yellow notepad icon. Yellow notepads are fairly common, yet for some strange reason it is wrong for Samsung to use the color yellow for its notepad icon. If all other companies acted the same, imagine the many different colors each company would have to avoid, like mines in a minefield.
What bugs me the most about this is the fact that the government is basically throwing its weight around in order to regulate without having to legislate.
I long suspected the Obama Administration was the one behind the recent agreement between ISPs and the content industry. I'm sure ISPs would prefer to decide on their own which users it is best to keep and which it is best to drop, so the fact ISPs reached any kind of deal with the content industry was a puzzle with a missing piece. It turns out that missing piece was the US Copyright Czar.
I suspect the same thing about recent efforts to shut down domain names: You have Congress pushing for PROTECT IP, DHS shutting down allegedly infringing domains without a trial, and Verizon out of the blue and for no apparent reason deciding to incorporate policies similar to those of PROTECT IP which would better allow DHS to shut down domains it considers infringing. That is the sort of thing that suggests a coordinated effort rather than mere coincidence.
And make no mistake, most of these stoners/unemployed/cause-of-the-week types will be toting around iPhones, so this app should get a pretty nice reception.
Why would the unemployed have a bone to pick with the top 1%?
"The advantage of using speech over other interaction paradigms is that we have honed its use over thousands of years. It is entirely natural for us to talk to one another. Talking is one of the first things we learn how to do as children."
Touching and pointing, on the other hand, are two of the things we learn how to do before we learn how to talk.
Being able to talk to a phone like it's a personal assistant is something that people are going to get very used to, very quickly.
Is that a fact, or is it merely the way it looks through the Apple Reality Distortion Field?
How arrogant! Do you really think Slashdot had anything to do with the withdrawal ?
While public opposition likely played a significant role in this, I am, if anything, saddened by how little attention this received even on Slashdot. There was a time when such a proposal would have met with significant resistance, as opponents of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 might remember. Those days are apparently long gone, with most people either unaware of or unmoved by attempts to regulate the Internet.
No, he means staged the same way you do - just different connotations.
No he doesn't. I define "staging" as manipulating the scene itself while he defines "staging" as part of the intentional act of taking a picture (any picture).
The act of putting your eye into a camera's viewfinder 'stages' the scene.
Again not what most people mean when they speak of staged photographs. Putting your eye into a camera's viewfinder is a means of framing the scene, but it certainly doesn't stage it.
All photography is staged unless the image has been captured unintentionally or accidentally.
Whether or not that's true depends very much on your definition of "staged". I doubt your definition agrees with what most people mean when they speak of staged photographs. "Staging" to most people means manipulating that which is in front of the camera rather than the shot itself, in which case things like framing and focusing would not be considered "staging". Shots manipulated after the fact would be "doctored" rather than "staged", while shots that misrepresent the facts through omission would be called "deceptive" or something along those lines.
Re:What he took away is more precious than given
on
Steve Jobs Dead At 56
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· Score: 1
I don't think people like the walled garden so much as they like the consistency and convenience of purchasing apps through Apple's App Store. Installing products from outside the App Store may not be as convenient, but giving users that option does not make for an inferior product.
As for security, I'd rather have a platform secure enough to run unapproved software than a platform whose security depends on the judgment of those whose job it is to make sure malicious apps are excluded from the App Store. Apple's walled garden may provide some security, but nowhere near as much security as a properly secured platform.
Keeping the money that you earned and worked for is cheating, as opposed to having it taken from you by force and redistributing the money to what other people lobbied for?
Rich people make most of their money from the labor of others, so speaking of rich people "keeping the money [they] earned and worked for" is very misleading. Having a certain portion of that money end up in the public coffers is better than hoping that money will somehow "trickle down" into the US economy.
The DMCA gives copyright holders the power to take down content based on little more than their say so. It is therefore very important that making bogus DMCA claims carry penalties commensurate with the damage (both moral and monetary) suffered by those whose content is taken down by means of fraudulent or negligent copyright claims.
Slashdot Mirror
Although I'm only vaguely familiar with the so-called Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement, I've read enough about it to know that calling it "streamlined" is a major misnomer. The rules behind SSUTA are sufficiently complex as to require computer software to calculate taxes due on particular kinds of items purchased by residents of particular states. While I'm sure this wouldn't be a problem for major online retailers, smaller retailers would almost certainly need to outsource tax calculations to third party services. It's a ridiculous burden, especially compared to the much simpler sales tax model adopted by the European Union.
I'd rather get rid of sales tax altogether (novel idea: let's tax people in proportion to how much they make instead of how much they spend), but if we must have a Federal sales tax I'd rather it be a flat tax per state than the awful mess that is the model proposed by the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement.
Intelligence follows a normal distribution, doesn't it? In that case, the average and the median are pretty much the same.
No, but the people behind those websites have a right to free speech.
Those laws are fucked up, but it's not necessarily the same thing. The difference, I think, is that the First Amendment comes into play when websites containing constitutionally protected content are shut down due to claims of infringement.
In the United States, people accused of a crime are guaranteed a trial and presumed innocent until proved guilty. Under the E-PARASITE Act, a website is presumed to be infringing unless and until the affected party can, if allowed to do so by the government, prove to the government that the website is perfectly legal. What a shameful perversion of a justice system that prides itself in being a model of justice.
Agreed. I seriously doubt the US Federal Government would stand idly by as state after state decided to ban the use of cash as a form of legal tender. Contrary to what other posters have said, the way I interpret the statement that cash is "legal tender for all debts" is not that those who are owed money are required to accept cash, but that the government must recognize cash as an acceptable form of payment for all debts (and not just those resulting from loans, either).
Louisiana is stepping on the Federal Government's toes by banning the use of cash in this manner. If their goal is to make all transactions traceable, it seems to me they'll have to find a different way to go about it.
The standard color for cell phone "send" buttons is green and has been so long before Apple even entered the cell phone market. The color red, on the other hand, has long been used for cell phone "end" buttons.
Exactly. I hope it works out for Samsung, but I think it's unfortunate they had to resort to this at all.
The first thing I notice is they've changed the phone icon from green to blue, which I'm sure is an attempt to avoid Apple's claims of trademark infringement. The color green has long been used to indicate placing a call, which is why Samsung changing the color from green to blue is such a good example of IP law being so stifling that companies have to intentionally avoid making anything remotely similar to another company's products. The problem is there's only so often you can do this before you run out of things to avoid.
Aside from the green phone icon, another example is Apple's claim that Samsung's yellow notepad icon infringes on its own yellow notepad icon. Yellow notepads are fairly common, yet for some strange reason it is wrong for Samsung to use the color yellow for its notepad icon. If all other companies acted the same, imagine the many different colors each company would have to avoid, like mines in a minefield.
GUI elements such as overlapping windows. Such thieves, those Microsoft people.
God forbid any company besides Apple be allowed to make a desktop-style OS.
What bugs me the most about this is the fact that the government is basically throwing its weight around in order to regulate without having to legislate.
s/Verizon/VeriSign
I long suspected the Obama Administration was the one behind the recent agreement between ISPs and the content industry. I'm sure ISPs would prefer to decide on their own which users it is best to keep and which it is best to drop, so the fact ISPs reached any kind of deal with the content industry was a puzzle with a missing piece. It turns out that missing piece was the US Copyright Czar.
I suspect the same thing about recent efforts to shut down domain names: You have Congress pushing for PROTECT IP, DHS shutting down allegedly infringing domains without a trial, and Verizon out of the blue and for no apparent reason deciding to incorporate policies similar to those of PROTECT IP which would better allow DHS to shut down domains it considers infringing. That is the sort of thing that suggests a coordinated effort rather than mere coincidence.
Why would the unemployed have a bone to pick with the top 1%?
Touching and pointing, on the other hand, are two of the things we learn how to do before we learn how to talk.
Is that a fact, or is it merely the way it looks through the Apple Reality Distortion Field?
While public opposition likely played a significant role in this, I am, if anything, saddened by how little attention this received even on Slashdot. There was a time when such a proposal would have met with significant resistance, as opponents of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 might remember. Those days are apparently long gone, with most people either unaware of or unmoved by attempts to regulate the Internet.
I'm seriously considering the purchase of a Samsung Galaxy Player to replace my aging iPod 3G. I certainly won't be replacing it with another iPod.
No he doesn't. I define "staging" as manipulating the scene itself while he defines "staging" as part of the intentional act of taking a picture (any picture).
Again not what most people mean when they speak of staged photographs. Putting your eye into a camera's viewfinder is a means of framing the scene, but it certainly doesn't stage it.
Whether or not that's true depends very much on your definition of "staged". I doubt your definition agrees with what most people mean when they speak of staged photographs. "Staging" to most people means manipulating that which is in front of the camera rather than the shot itself, in which case things like framing and focusing would not be considered "staging". Shots manipulated after the fact would be "doctored" rather than "staged", while shots that misrepresent the facts through omission would be called "deceptive" or something along those lines.
I don't think people like the walled garden so much as they like the consistency and convenience of purchasing apps through Apple's App Store. Installing products from outside the App Store may not be as convenient, but giving users that option does not make for an inferior product.
As for security, I'd rather have a platform secure enough to run unapproved software than a platform whose security depends on the judgment of those whose job it is to make sure malicious apps are excluded from the App Store. Apple's walled garden may provide some security, but nowhere near as much security as a properly secured platform.
Rich people make most of their money from the labor of others, so speaking of rich people "keeping the money [they] earned and worked for" is very misleading. Having a certain portion of that money end up in the public coffers is better than hoping that money will somehow "trickle down" into the US economy.
Tell that to the music labels.
Too bad software made for Windows 8's default "Metro" interface will only be available through Microsoft's App Store. Win32 programs will still be available from other sources, but Metro apps will not.
The DMCA gives copyright holders the power to take down content based on little more than their say so. It is therefore very important that making bogus DMCA claims carry penalties commensurate with the damage (both moral and monetary) suffered by those whose content is taken down by means of fraudulent or negligent copyright claims.