There is a finite amount of money at any given time. First, you are correct that the supply of money is finite. The amount of money in circulation is substantially less than the amount of wealth that exists. Money is simply liquid value - a method of exchanging value. And accumulated value is wealth. If I own a big building in downtown Chicago and have no money, I still have substantial wealth because the building has great value (meaning people might give me money or something else of worth for it).
This is why wealth can be created. It's possible to put $1000 into something and get $100,000 back. The mint did not print $90K and give it to me - and I'm probably not going to keep the cash as cash does not increase in value. I'll probably take the cash and buy something that will go up in value. Or hire someone to generate further value.
Most people and corporations have mostly non-monetary wealth: their real estate, cars (or capital equipment and personal property are usually worth more than the sum of their bank accounts.
If you have more than you need at any one moment, it is likely someone doesn't have enough. Again, money really has little to do with it. If I gave you all my money, I would still have most of my wealth. And after looking at my checking account this week, you would likely still be poor.
If you want to fix the problem, the key is making it possible for everyone to accumulate wealth, and accumulation requires that there be a return on investment. Right now, we are trying to fix a wealth problem using income.
I've been through asset both buying and selling. It will be hard for MySpace to pull this off as the courts may not see the sale as a pure asset sale. It's one thing when you sell buildings and plant equipment. It's quite another when you sell the essence of the business: the brand, key employees and the customers and vendor relationships (musicians). Unfortunately, because this likely will be a class action, the musicians will be screwed a second time when the lawyers swoop in and get 40-60% of the settlement.
Time to cue up "That old class action" by Dewey, Cheatham & Howe.
In most sane multitasking OSes (and even 16 bit Windows) the way it works is the application needing more memory calls malloc (or whatever your language calls "hey OS, give me some memory), and an error is thrown. The application needing more memory either handles the error or that application fails.
The kernel does not and should not go around magically killing background processes. That decision is left to the user (and it should be left to the user).
essentially guarantees non-compliance to some degree on the part on anyone trading cross-border.
Actually, it is illegal for states to force companies that do not have a business operation in their state to collect sales tax on their behalf. My Indiana company simply does not have to collect tax for Ohio unless we do something like:
* Hire people in Ohio to work in Ohio. * Buy property in Ohio. * Register as a merchant in Ohio.
Additionally, we don't have to collect sales tax for Indiana for sales made to buyers who are located outside of Indiana.
This isn't a loophole, it's part of our nation's constitution (called the Commerce Clause).
Local Retailers have suffered an unfair 5-10% theft of their profits compared to amazon.
Not true at all. Sales tax is paid on top of the price of taxable goods and services. So a local retailer that charges $10 and $.50 in tax is not losing $.50 in profit to anyone. The out of state mail order merchant who sells the same item for $10 with no tax makes no extra profit. The state simply does not collect tax at the time of the transaction (the buyer should pay use tax on his or her state tax return).
Allowing states to collect sales tax on out of state purchases violates the US Constitution's commerce clause, which reserves to the federal government the power to regulate interstate commerce. This is to prevent small issues like collecting and paying sales tax to the aver 41,000 sales tax collecting government units (yes, there are state, county, city, township and in some cases school boards that collect tax) that exist in America. Interstate sales tax effectively turns sales taxation into a tariff system that could be used to give local business an unfair advantage over out of state merchants, and would simply return our economy to the state it was prior to the American revolution.
Regulating tools doesn't work. Regulating behaviors does. When governments try to regulate technologies, they usually focus on the tool instead of behavior with asinine results. It would be much easier to simple:
Outlaw the practice of collecting marketing information without the express permission of the person being collected, at the time the data is collected. Make it clear there is no "blanket" opt-in possible under the law.
Make it a civil tort with a big statutory fine (say something around $10,000) to skirt this so lawyers would go after abuse on contingency.
It's not that hard, but we have to help lawmakers better understand the difference between tools and behaviors.
Why do government people think that passing laws like this can fix a problem that is fundamentally a technology problem? The problem is that when lawmakers focus on tech, they often focus on regulating the tool instead of regulating behavior. So you get situation like this:
Trigger: People are killed with a hammer. Response: Ban Hammers. Unintended consequence: Entire construction industry out of business, everything falls to disrepair, screw industry explodes, scarcity of hammers lead murders to switch to using rolling pins.
In this case, the issue is user privacy. Regulating cookies does little other than break the web which is in many ways cookie dependent for many different dynamic interactions between applications on servers and browsers. So, you break the internet, reduce security, and move advertisers to using something that's not a cookie to tag visitors with (lots of ways to accomplish this).
It's that old guns don't kill people, people kill people thing.
My websites and our client's websites have been showing Firefox passing up IE6, IE7, and IE8 combined. IE typically shows around 38%, Firefox shows around 39% and all others (mix of Chrome, Safari, Opera and mobile browsers) make up the difference. It's like it 1997 all over again. I'm kind of excited about the whole thing because now the new crop of standards can come to the front faster (SVG, HTML 5, etc...).
A patent does nothing to amortize anything. It grants a monopoly on the invention. The patent holder may do whatever they want with it after that, so price gouging is the natural thing to do.
To someone holding the copyright, piracy causes a loss of income from royalties. But it is not theft as the buyer has not absconded with the copyright holder's money.
In a restaurant, if the food is crap, I can ask for and will be given an immediate refund.
With software, if it is downloaded or purchased in the store, I cannot return it and say I did not like this package. Some stores will give a credit, but none will give money back. The try before you buy makes sense for the buyer when sellers will not back what they are selling (read your EULA, section 1 or 2 waives your right to a warranty).
No, just saying if Apple didn't believe DRM was necessary they would replace cusomter's DRMed music with non-DRMed music. Asking the customer permission to do so would be the right thing to do, too.
AJAX exists because when Microsoft put it into hotmail it was so vastly successful that it actually got implemented as a standard.
AJAX has always been a hack - powerful, useful, but at the end of the day, it's taken the web a long way from being just a nice and simple way to browse hypertext. What drove AJAX was *not* developer tools or websites, but rather the rapid replacement of dial up with broadband connections. Ajax works great on broadband. It sucks on dial up. There's a reason why AJAX interfaces still have a "classic interface so users with slow connections can use them. Mobile broadband just doesn't work like a cable modem or T-1 - it's laggy, speeds change wildly and disconnects and reconnects are constant at irregular intervals.
This was not a problem for personal computers, and will not be for phones. iPhone was a game changer, just like the Apple II, Mac and Newton were in their respective times. Apple has always been the best at making a vision for the future real - but they rarely translate that into a dominant market share (iPod is the exception, but one has to wonder if technology based vendor lock in for music will remain a valid strategy forever).
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There is a finite amount of money at any given time.
First, you are correct that the supply of money is finite. The amount of money in circulation is substantially less than the amount of wealth that exists. Money is simply liquid value - a method of exchanging value. And accumulated value is wealth. If I own a big building in downtown Chicago and have no money, I still have substantial wealth because the building has great value (meaning people might give me money or something else of worth for it).
This is why wealth can be created. It's possible to put $1000 into something and get $100,000 back. The mint did not print $90K and give it to me - and I'm probably not going to keep the cash as cash does not increase in value. I'll probably take the cash and buy something that will go up in value. Or hire someone to generate further value.
Most people and corporations have mostly non-monetary wealth: their real estate, cars (or capital equipment and personal property are usually worth more than the sum of their bank accounts.
If you have more than you need at any one moment, it is likely someone doesn't have enough.
Again, money really has little to do with it. If I gave you all my money, I would still have most of my wealth. And after looking at my checking account this week, you would likely still be poor.
If you want to fix the problem, the key is making it possible for everyone to accumulate wealth, and accumulation requires that there be a return on investment. Right now, we are trying to fix a wealth problem using income.
I've been through asset both buying and selling. It will be hard for MySpace to pull this off as the courts may not see the sale as a pure asset sale. It's one thing when you sell buildings and plant equipment. It's quite another when you sell the essence of the business: the brand, key employees and the customers and vendor relationships (musicians). Unfortunately, because this likely will be a class action, the musicians will be screwed a second time when the lawyers swoop in and get 40-60% of the settlement.
Time to cue up "That old class action" by Dewey, Cheatham & Howe.
Except Google Voice isn't VOIP. It's unified messaging and call forwarding. No VOIP to see here.
Correction: greed can.
more evil from less evil things
I'm pretty sure that most fissile metals just want to sit there and decay. There is nothing inherently evil about Uranium and Plutonium.
In most sane multitasking OSes (and even 16 bit Windows) the way it works is the application needing more memory calls malloc (or whatever your language calls "hey OS, give me some memory), and an error is thrown. The application needing more memory either handles the error or that application fails.
The kernel does not and should not go around magically killing background processes. That decision is left to the user (and it should be left to the user).
essentially guarantees non-compliance to some degree on the part on anyone trading cross-border.
Actually, it is illegal for states to force companies that do not have a business operation in their state to collect sales tax on their behalf. My Indiana company simply does not have to collect tax for Ohio unless we do something like:
* Hire people in Ohio to work in Ohio.
* Buy property in Ohio.
* Register as a merchant in Ohio.
Additionally, we don't have to collect sales tax for Indiana for sales made to buyers who are located outside of Indiana.
This isn't a loophole, it's part of our nation's constitution (called the Commerce Clause).
Local Retailers have suffered an unfair 5-10% theft of their profits compared to amazon.
Not true at all. Sales tax is paid on top of the price of taxable goods and services. So a local retailer that charges $10 and $.50 in tax is not losing $.50 in profit to anyone. The out of state mail order merchant who sells the same item for $10 with no tax makes no extra profit. The state simply does not collect tax at the time of the transaction (the buyer should pay use tax on his or her state tax return).
Allowing states to collect sales tax on out of state purchases violates the US Constitution's commerce clause, which reserves to the federal government the power to regulate interstate commerce. This is to prevent small issues like collecting and paying sales tax to the aver 41,000 sales tax collecting government units (yes, there are state, county, city, township and in some cases school boards that collect tax) that exist in America. Interstate sales tax effectively turns sales taxation into a tariff system that could be used to give local business an unfair advantage over out of state merchants, and would simply return our economy to the state it was prior to the American revolution.
You cannot buy security and you cannot buy love.
Regulating tools doesn't work. Regulating behaviors does. When governments try to regulate technologies, they usually focus on the tool instead of behavior with asinine results. It would be much easier to simple:
Outlaw the practice of collecting marketing information without the express permission of the person being collected, at the time the data is collected. Make it clear there is no "blanket" opt-in possible under the law.
Make it a civil tort with a big statutory fine (say something around $10,000) to skirt this so lawyers would go after abuse on contingency.
It's not that hard, but we have to help lawmakers better understand the difference between tools and behaviors.
Why do government people think that passing laws like this can fix a problem that is fundamentally a technology problem? The problem is that when lawmakers focus on tech, they often focus on regulating the tool instead of regulating behavior. So you get situation like this:
Trigger: People are killed with a hammer.
Response: Ban Hammers.
Unintended consequence: Entire construction industry out of business, everything falls to disrepair, screw industry explodes, scarcity of hammers lead murders to switch to using rolling pins.
In this case, the issue is user privacy. Regulating cookies does little other than break the web which is in many ways cookie dependent for many different dynamic interactions between applications on servers and browsers. So, you break the internet, reduce security, and move advertisers to using something that's not a cookie to tag visitors with (lots of ways to accomplish this).
It's that old guns don't kill people, people kill people thing.
You were doing ok until this:
(And maybe Office 2007.)
#fail
My websites and our client's websites have been showing Firefox passing up IE6, IE7, and IE8 combined. IE typically shows around 38%, Firefox shows around 39% and all others (mix of Chrome, Safari, Opera and mobile browsers) make up the difference. It's like it 1997 all over again. I'm kind of excited about the whole thing because now the new crop of standards can come to the front faster (SVG, HTML 5, etc...).
It's about time.
A patent does nothing to amortize anything. It grants a monopoly on the invention. The patent holder may do whatever they want with it after that, so price gouging is the natural thing to do.
But I have the patent on that. Oh wait, it expired the day I got it.
You are right, and have just stumbled into the scam that measuring environmental impact using carbon is for carbon based life.
I think the author of the study didn't get the real message: people didn't like his product enough to pay for it.
To someone holding the copyright, piracy causes a loss of income from royalties.
But it is not theft as the buyer has not absconded with the copyright holder's money.
There simply is no royalty.
In a restaurant, if the food is crap, I can ask for and will be given an immediate refund.
With software, if it is downloaded or purchased in the store, I cannot return it and say I did not like this package. Some stores will give a credit, but none will give money back. The try before you buy makes sense for the buyer when sellers will not back what they are selling (read your EULA, section 1 or 2 waives your right to a warranty).
It's ok. I'm sure there was a thread where someone wanted to rack iPhones and make a beowulf cluster out of them.
No, just saying if Apple didn't believe DRM was necessary they would replace cusomter's DRMed music with non-DRMed music. Asking the customer permission to do so would be the right thing to do, too.
You missed the memo. This bill is perfectly transparent. It's so clear no one can see it. Just like a living room window that birds fly into.
AJAX exists because when Microsoft put it into hotmail it was so vastly successful that it actually got implemented as a standard.
AJAX has always been a hack - powerful, useful, but at the end of the day, it's taken the web a long way from being just a nice and simple way to browse hypertext. What drove AJAX was *not* developer tools or websites, but rather the rapid replacement of dial up with broadband connections. Ajax works great on broadband. It sucks on dial up. There's a reason why AJAX interfaces still have a "classic interface so users with slow connections can use them. Mobile broadband just doesn't work like a cable modem or T-1 - it's laggy, speeds change wildly and disconnects and reconnects are constant at irregular intervals.
If they truly believed that, then they would allow music owners to replace FairPlay DRM tracks.
This was not a problem for personal computers, and will not be for phones. iPhone was a game changer, just like the Apple II, Mac and Newton were in their respective times. Apple has always been the best at making a vision for the future real - but they rarely translate that into a dominant market share (iPod is the exception, but one has to wonder if technology based vendor lock in for music will remain a valid strategy forever).