Buy World of Warcraft, raise a hunter, and either on a PvP server or in a battleground, one-shot a mage with an Aimed Shot critical hit of 2000+ damage. That will cheer you right up. I'm not only the suggestor of this idea, I'm also a client!
Revenue from CDs still outranks revenue from downloads by better than 6 to 1
How can they say that CDs are dead when they still bring in 6 times the revenue? Perhaps that number is declining, but oh, maybe that might have something to do with the fact that a damn CD that has 12 songs (maybe 2 of which you like, if you're lucky) costs not the $9.99 that it used to years ago, but $24.99? Gee, I can't imagine why they say CD sales are declining.
I think constantly about how Mexicans are treated back in the US, and I honestly have to say I can't imagine that there is anywhere in the world that welcomes immigrants as well as the Dutch welcome high-tech people with valuable skills.
The part you're leaving out is that the majority of the Mexicans that are "treated unfairly" in the U.S. are the ones who arrived here illegally. There are too many programs for the legal immigrants to count, so the ones "left out" are the ones who technically shouldn't be here. The ones who follow the procedures and attain legal status have a ton of programs and assistance to help them here. As much as I dislike our current presidential situation, nobody can argue that Bush hasn't made it easy on the immigrants, even going as far to propose legislation that will grandfather all current illegal aliens making them legal. While I don't agree with that policy personally, anyone saying that Mexicans are treated bad here is either blind or a fool.
Most of the bad rep that they get is because they "get the shit jobs" as I've heard it before. The difference there is that they 1) have jobs, and 2) are willing to work for their money doing whatever is necessary, which is more than I can say for all of those U.S. welfare cases, pumping out kids every 9 months to increase their check that us taxpayers are paying for. You want fair? Go ask a welfare mom with 8 kids why she should be allowed to buy filet mignon and lottery tickets when she can't afford to buy all her children clothes (half of them are running around with nothing more than a diaper.)
A friend of mine recently moved to Canada from the U.S., and said that quite a few steps in the procedure were cut out because he had a technical (engineering) degree and had a job offer letter for a worldwide company with a branch in Canada. Most countries seem to have some kind of policy that doesn't just open the flood gates, but rather screens people who wish to immigrate. Maybe someday the U.S. will join ranks. Maybe someday too they might start requiring the immigrants to learn our language instead of forcing us to see everything printed in both Spanish and English.
Are you outraged at paying $90/month for sattelite or digital cable TV when *GASP* it's full of ads known as "commercials" which interrupt the programs you paid for?
What you don't realize is that if you had TV with no ads or commercials, you'd be paying two or three times that of the current cable/etc. prices.
Games are supposed to be a way to virtually get out frustrations that are illegal and wrong to do in real life. If you aren't capable of making the distinction between fantasy and real life, and if your fantasies involve killing people or whatever, then violent games are NOT FOR YOU!
While this is partially/sometimes true for some people, I don't play games like GTA: San Andreas or whatever because I want to kill people but I know its illegal. I play games because they are fun, they are a bit of an escape from normal stress, etc. The fact that my "gangsta" avatar is mowing down civilians with a fully automatic weapon has nothing to do with what I want to do in the real world. I know that the actions I perform in that game have absolutely no effect on real world consequences, so it doesn't bother me at all when I play.
Comparatively, one might argue that multiplayer games are different because the "toon" that you are mowing down or cleaving with a 2-handed sword is really another person. Well, I say the same thing to that, its a game, and I know I'm not causing actual physical harm to those people directly. (I won't get into the whole stress/frustration/rage of losing thing here.) I would bet that if I had met that person in the real world, I wouldn't try to blow them up with a stick of dynamite or fire a crossbow at them.
The people who stand up and argue that games cause violence are always missing (or intentionally leaving out) the notion that people who commit these violent real-world crimes have a problem already. It would be a mental defect if someone couldn't tell fantasy from reality, and it would be a mental defect if someone thinks that its okay to go out and kill cops because GTA allowed it. These people are predisposed to commit violent crimes, and often use the video game as an excuse, or moreso a "defense" as to why its not really their fault.
In short, those people are just stupid, and should be removed from the gene pool.
Anyone want to bet that online casinos will be targeted by this law, but Wall Street will remain strangely exempt?
I don't know about all states, but in Ohio, the lottery is still legal, and thats definitely gambling. Maybe if some of the profits went to fund schools they wouldn't have outlawed it.
My Sim City 4 city has been thriving with a casino for quite some time. They even erected a statue of me because they love me so!
More than anything, this is a prime example of how members of Congress manipulate the legislation system to get a bill they want pass to ride on the coattails of a 'sure-win' bill. Then after that they basically pass the buck off to the courts (if it ever makes it that far) to overturn the law or declare it unconstitutional or whatever.
I think its about time that Congress get off their lazy asses and start drafting their own bills for the particular agenda items they have. This sort of manipulative behavior itself should be outlawed, but find me a single member of Congress that would vote to outlaw it. In a system where checks and balances are supposed to exist, they certaintly don't here.
I know the reason I haven't purchased any music CDs in the last few years, its because I absolutely refuse to give them any more money. I am perfectly content listening to the music that I've had for years (its my personal preference for the most part anyway) but those RIAA folks will not get another penny of my money if I can help it.
Amsterdam is too far away. How about in-game virtual Gameholic Anonymous meetings? Maybe in Wow, look me up there, I'm always on.
LIES! I never see you online on Tuesday mornings!! WTB faster maintenance!!
I have a friend who works from home occasionally, but never on Tuesdays, because he says being at home and not being able to play WoW while he's 'Working' is hard, so he'd rather come into the office and not have the 'tease' of being at home but not playing.
Of course it looks like a waste, so do any of the other things you can contribute to... until they hit their mark. Now while I'll agree that protein folding has more immediate advantages to cures, etc. , SETI discovering a real intelligent alien signal would generate a flurry of spending that would likely yield many more inventions, something like what the first space race did for technology.
Perhaps the alien life forms we encounter with SETI will already have the cure for cancer, AIDS, and anything else we seem to have epidemically infected our society with.
What do we need? A totally un-padded, un-nerfed world, where kids and parents LEARN TO DEAL WITH IT. So long as there is a bar, that bar will be lowed until you are suck under it.
Doesn't sound like you are a parent. Parents learning to deal with it, in my opinion, is the same thing I suggested above. They need to teach their own children the difference between right and wrong, good and bad.
However, a small child doesn't necessarily have that distinction. At a very young age, the don't understand that what they see on a screen is necessarily pretend, or make-believe to use their language. Thats where a parent has to step in and put it into perspective. They don't instinctively "know" that just because something is on the TV or movie screen that it should be taken with a grain of salt. Just like I used to think that news broadcasts were completely unbiased because "hey, its the news, its supposed to be unbiased" but it wasn't until I was much older that I learned how it really is. Kids instinctively do some things: drink (suckle at a breast/bottle) breathe, blink, etc. Knowing reality from "tv" isn't on that list.
Do I Play GTA: San Andreas?
Hell yes. Would I let my child buy and play a game like GTA: San Andreas?
Hell no. Who should be responsible if my child is able to purchase and play GTA: San Andreas?
Me (the parent).
Its too easy for parents to blame others for not raising or supervising their children properly. Let the school teach them Sex Education. Let the FTC to lobby to Congress to prevent the sales of violent video games to children. Too bad they don't do the same with religion, or else we might have a few more open-minded people running this place in the next few decades.
Tangent aside, the parents should ultimately be the ones responsible for what their child does. That's the way it is in other areas now. If my child goes out and buys a video game and plays it in my house without me knowing, there is a serious issue there. Maybe they can hide it for a day, but I care about my children to get involved with what they are doing. I care enough to want to protect them from violence until they are old enough to handle it. I play violent video games, but I never do it with or in front of my children. If they want to play something with me, I break out Sim City 4 or something like that.
I'm not saying there shouldn't be a law against the sale of rated M games to minors. I think there should be restrictions on that the same way that a 15 year old cannot get into a rated R movie without a guardian, or into a NC-17 movie at all. What I am saying is that the parents need to stop relying on other people to decide what is best for their children. One day you might realize that all that stuff that they taught your child isn't the best for them, or you. Too late Mom and Dad, you already screwed it up by then.
like believe all those other countries would not consider doing it if the US hadn't done so first.
Get flipping real.
I don't dispute this, but people like you are the reason why most of the rest of the world hates Americans. There's a line between security and pissing everyone in the world off. Sometimes the latter is necessary for the former, but not as often as the U.S. does it.
Call me ignorant, call me whatever you like, I don't care one bit. Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one.
You've got to read between the lines. Forget about defense, offense, peace or war for now. When confronted with a new government program, here are the first questions to ask yourself:
How much will this project cost in tax dollars? How easily can it be transformed into a permanent source of revenue? How much will government make on administration of the program? How much more power over the people will government acquire as a result? Finally, how many problems will this program spawn for the future (to be "fixed" by further expansion of government)?
When dealing with government, the reasons they give you for expansion of power are rarely truthful. If history proves anything, it's that the real objective is expansion of power itself. There is a reason why all governments expand in power over their lifetimes: because it benefits the power elite.
Government doesn't deal in profit. They deal in spending. Thats why we have a deficit of trillions of dollars (and growing) and social programs are being cut, or threatened to be cut. If the government actually had a way to make profit (income > expenses) the deficit would stop growing (as fast at least) and taxes could be lowered, etc. That won't happen, because the government is a consumer of our tax dollars, not a producer. Name one program involving military that the U.S. actually made a profit on. War? Stealth bombers? They're consuming, not producing, money.
You ask about a permanent source of revenue. How does shooting down another country's satellites even remotely have the capacity to turn a profit? Its about spending money to "promote security" or whatever. There is no ROI (return on investment) in tangible dollars. Supposedly we're buying a service (our security), and the only power the people have if they don't like the service is to elect a new president in the next election.
Nothing says 'Peace' like the United States blasting another country's satellite out of the sky. I can't see how doing so would help prevent attacks on the U.S. Perhaps the idea is to disable communications and espionage capabilities, but there are other, more conventional means of warfare, as ineffective as they may be.
The other theory, give countries warnings about removing satellites? Countries love ultimatums too. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I'm against this (or for it, really) but I'm suggesting that perhaps the political and diplomatic repercussions might need to be investigated more thoroughly.
From a sci-fi point of view, its Spies Like Us all over again! Sounds interesting and technological to say the least.
You can be taxed for services that do not produce a product. If I am a taxi driver, I am producing a service by driving people from one location to another. But I do not produce anything. I still have to pay income taxes however.
While I agree with you, I think you slightly missed the point. The income taxes you pay have absolutely nothing to do with what you do, it is based on the money you receive for your job (income). The fact that you provide a service doesn't enter into it unless you are or are not charging your passengers taxes. Having never driven or ridden in a taxi (suburbia!) I have no idea how they work, but I would guess that, like gasoline, taxes are 'built-in' to the cost. If thats the case, then your passengers are paying taxes on a service, but you as the taxi-driver are not. There is no service provided by you, you are paying income taxes.
Again, I agree with what you're saying. I can buy a part for my car and some garage install it, and they will charge me tax on the labor. Its pure service, yet I get taxed. They're basically taxing time and physical energy spent.
It all depends on how much you make from it and whether or not the IRS will even bother taxing you. In truth, you must file every time you win $100 in a friendly poker game at your friend's house.
There is a limit. Anything under $600 ($599 and under) is not directly reported to the IRS. (I worked a lottery machine for years when I was a teenager.) However you are still supposed to claim this as income. I'm sure most people don't, but I'm also sure most people probably lost more money than they won, so they would be claiming a loss that would lower the amount of taxes they had to pay. Anything $600 or more requires a form to be filled out by the lottery agent that gets sent to the IRS, and if you don't claim that, its (visible) tax fraud. (Again, if you win $1 and don't report it, its tax fraud too, but the IRS isn't notified.) That's why you'll see a lot of people buying the same number in smaller tickets instead of one large one.
Last I checked, Google didn't develop the Firefox browser, and shouldn't be held accountable in any way for what Firefox defaults to. Microsoft, on the other hand, definitely is responsible for what their browser defaults to.
Don't use Vista. I know I won't, especially if I can't share my data between Windows and Linux. Games is the primary reason I use Windows anymore, with most of my other tasks/projects are migrating to Linux without much trouble.
These restrictions and limitations are seeming more and more likely to shoot Microsoft in the foot. The only problem is the foot is the size of Wisconsin and the bullet isn't making a big enough hole yet. We need bigger bullets.
I remember being on the boat from Menethil to Theramore, hearing from a guildmate that the Kalimdor server just went down. (You know something's wrong when half of the 30-40 guildmates suddenly disconnect at once) I was just hoping that it'd come back up before the map loading screen. Alas, I was booted. The only thing worse than getting disconnected suddenly is knowing in advance that its about to happen, and not being able to do anything about it.
Hindsight, I guess I coulda just jumped off the boat and died in the Fatigue zone. I'll have to remember that for next time.
I would literally remove the television from my house completely than to allow that kind of rights-infringing in my house. This infuriates me to no end, I would never allow that in my house. I would switch hardware, cable service (cable vs satellite, etc) or anything else required to avoid that kind of facism in my household.
It's bad enough I can't chapter-forward past previews of some OTHER movies when watching a DVD that I purchased, but now they're telling me that I might not be able to switch channels during a commercial? What's next, a chair that keeps you chained down during the commercial? Its ridiculous. Hopefully this goes absolutely nowhere, and I'd like to see their stock drop drastically in response to this kind of idea, if only to help curb future facist ideas at a minimum.
I think cell phones give me pretty good traction, but I could always use more. That spot just behind the rear tire, you can shove your phone in there and sometimes get that burst of friction you need to get your car moving again.
Glad to see they're giving cell phones more traction!
I think that about covers the legitimacy of this study.
John Wayne Gacy and Ted Bundy were also Christians. Shouldn't that lead to the conclusion that Christians like to kill people?
I could provide a much longer list of "Christians" who have committed various violent crimes, but I don't really think that's necessary.
How many of you were in Middle/High school at the time of the Columbine shootings? How many of your schools outlawed trenchcoats after that? Because everyone knows that wearing a trenchcoat means you're a psychotic murderer, but if you don't wear it, you won't do any of those horrific things.
Radical idea. Puberty hits. Older kids get interested in girls. Making friends. Socializing.
I'd post more, but I don't want to frighten off Slashdot's majority population.
Get married early, save the dating scene, keep playing games. It's worked for me so far! (Now I've got kids interested in joining me in playing WoW. I can see it now... 'Roll a priest and follow me around and heal me or else you don't get any Christmas presents!' MUAHAHAHA!)
Slashdot Mirror
For $30 up front, and a measly $15 per month.
Buy World of Warcraft, raise a hunter, and either on a PvP server or in a battleground, one-shot a mage with an Aimed Shot critical hit of 2000+ damage. That will cheer you right up. I'm not only the suggestor of this idea, I'm also a client!
Revenue from CDs still outranks revenue from downloads by better than 6 to 1
How can they say that CDs are dead when they still bring in 6 times the revenue? Perhaps that number is declining, but oh, maybe that might have something to do with the fact that a damn CD that has 12 songs (maybe 2 of which you like, if you're lucky) costs not the $9.99 that it used to years ago, but $24.99? Gee, I can't imagine why they say CD sales are declining.
I think constantly about how Mexicans are treated back in the US, and I honestly have to say I can't imagine that there is anywhere in the world that welcomes immigrants as well as the Dutch welcome high-tech people with valuable skills.
The part you're leaving out is that the majority of the Mexicans that are "treated unfairly" in the U.S. are the ones who arrived here illegally. There are too many programs for the legal immigrants to count, so the ones "left out" are the ones who technically shouldn't be here. The ones who follow the procedures and attain legal status have a ton of programs and assistance to help them here. As much as I dislike our current presidential situation, nobody can argue that Bush hasn't made it easy on the immigrants, even going as far to propose legislation that will grandfather all current illegal aliens making them legal. While I don't agree with that policy personally, anyone saying that Mexicans are treated bad here is either blind or a fool.
Most of the bad rep that they get is because they "get the shit jobs" as I've heard it before. The difference there is that they 1) have jobs, and 2) are willing to work for their money doing whatever is necessary, which is more than I can say for all of those U.S. welfare cases, pumping out kids every 9 months to increase their check that us taxpayers are paying for. You want fair? Go ask a welfare mom with 8 kids why she should be allowed to buy filet mignon and lottery tickets when she can't afford to buy all her children clothes (half of them are running around with nothing more than a diaper.)
A friend of mine recently moved to Canada from the U.S., and said that quite a few steps in the procedure were cut out because he had a technical (engineering) degree and had a job offer letter for a worldwide company with a branch in Canada. Most countries seem to have some kind of policy that doesn't just open the flood gates, but rather screens people who wish to immigrate. Maybe someday the U.S. will join ranks. Maybe someday too they might start requiring the immigrants to learn our language instead of forcing us to see everything printed in both Spanish and English.
Are you outraged at paying $90/month for sattelite or digital cable TV when *GASP* it's full of ads known as "commercials" which interrupt the programs you paid for?
What you don't realize is that if you had TV with no ads or commercials, you'd be paying two or three times that of the current cable/etc. prices.
Games are supposed to be a way to virtually get out frustrations that are illegal and wrong to do in real life. If you aren't capable of making the distinction between fantasy and real life, and if your fantasies involve killing people or whatever, then violent games are NOT FOR YOU!
While this is partially/sometimes true for some people, I don't play games like GTA: San Andreas or whatever because I want to kill people but I know its illegal. I play games because they are fun, they are a bit of an escape from normal stress, etc. The fact that my "gangsta" avatar is mowing down civilians with a fully automatic weapon has nothing to do with what I want to do in the real world. I know that the actions I perform in that game have absolutely no effect on real world consequences, so it doesn't bother me at all when I play.
Comparatively, one might argue that multiplayer games are different because the "toon" that you are mowing down or cleaving with a 2-handed sword is really another person. Well, I say the same thing to that, its a game, and I know I'm not causing actual physical harm to those people directly. (I won't get into the whole stress/frustration/rage of losing thing here.) I would bet that if I had met that person in the real world, I wouldn't try to blow them up with a stick of dynamite or fire a crossbow at them.
The people who stand up and argue that games cause violence are always missing (or intentionally leaving out) the notion that people who commit these violent real-world crimes have a problem already. It would be a mental defect if someone couldn't tell fantasy from reality, and it would be a mental defect if someone thinks that its okay to go out and kill cops because GTA allowed it. These people are predisposed to commit violent crimes, and often use the video game as an excuse, or moreso a "defense" as to why its not really their fault.
In short, those people are just stupid, and should be removed from the gene pool.
Anyone want to bet that online casinos will be targeted by this law, but Wall Street will remain strangely exempt?
I don't know about all states, but in Ohio, the lottery is still legal, and thats definitely gambling. Maybe if some of the profits went to fund schools they wouldn't have outlawed it.
My Sim City 4 city has been thriving with a casino for quite some time. They even erected a statue of me because they love me so!
More than anything, this is a prime example of how members of Congress manipulate the legislation system to get a bill they want pass to ride on the coattails of a 'sure-win' bill. Then after that they basically pass the buck off to the courts (if it ever makes it that far) to overturn the law or declare it unconstitutional or whatever.
I think its about time that Congress get off their lazy asses and start drafting their own bills for the particular agenda items they have. This sort of manipulative behavior itself should be outlawed, but find me a single member of Congress that would vote to outlaw it. In a system where checks and balances are supposed to exist, they certaintly don't here.
I know the reason I haven't purchased any music CDs in the last few years, its because I absolutely refuse to give them any more money. I am perfectly content listening to the music that I've had for years (its my personal preference for the most part anyway) but those RIAA folks will not get another penny of my money if I can help it.
Amsterdam is too far away. How about in-game virtual Gameholic Anonymous meetings? Maybe in Wow, look me up there, I'm always on.
LIES! I never see you online on Tuesday mornings!! WTB faster maintenance!!
I have a friend who works from home occasionally, but never on Tuesdays, because he says being at home and not being able to play WoW while he's 'Working' is hard, so he'd rather come into the office and not have the 'tease' of being at home but not playing.
Of course it looks like a waste, so do any of the other things you can contribute to... until they hit their mark. Now while I'll agree that protein folding has more immediate advantages to cures, etc. , SETI discovering a real intelligent alien signal would generate a flurry of spending that would likely yield many more inventions, something like what the first space race did for technology.
Perhaps the alien life forms we encounter with SETI will already have the cure for cancer, AIDS, and anything else we seem to have epidemically infected our society with.
What do we need? A totally un-padded, un-nerfed world, where kids and parents LEARN TO DEAL WITH IT. So long as there is a bar, that bar will be lowed until you are suck under it.
Doesn't sound like you are a parent. Parents learning to deal with it, in my opinion, is the same thing I suggested above. They need to teach their own children the difference between right and wrong, good and bad.
However, a small child doesn't necessarily have that distinction. At a very young age, the don't understand that what they see on a screen is necessarily pretend, or make-believe to use their language. Thats where a parent has to step in and put it into perspective. They don't instinctively "know" that just because something is on the TV or movie screen that it should be taken with a grain of salt. Just like I used to think that news broadcasts were completely unbiased because "hey, its the news, its supposed to be unbiased" but it wasn't until I was much older that I learned how it really is. Kids instinctively do some things: drink (suckle at a breast/bottle) breathe, blink, etc. Knowing reality from "tv" isn't on that list.
Do I Play GTA: San Andreas?
Hell yes.
Would I let my child buy and play a game like GTA: San Andreas?
Hell no.
Who should be responsible if my child is able to purchase and play GTA: San Andreas?
Me (the parent).
Its too easy for parents to blame others for not raising or supervising their children properly. Let the school teach them Sex Education. Let the FTC to lobby to Congress to prevent the sales of violent video games to children. Too bad they don't do the same with religion, or else we might have a few more open-minded people running this place in the next few decades.
Tangent aside, the parents should ultimately be the ones responsible for what their child does. That's the way it is in other areas now. If my child goes out and buys a video game and plays it in my house without me knowing, there is a serious issue there. Maybe they can hide it for a day, but I care about my children to get involved with what they are doing. I care enough to want to protect them from violence until they are old enough to handle it. I play violent video games, but I never do it with or in front of my children. If they want to play something with me, I break out Sim City 4 or something like that.
I'm not saying there shouldn't be a law against the sale of rated M games to minors. I think there should be restrictions on that the same way that a 15 year old cannot get into a rated R movie without a guardian, or into a NC-17 movie at all. What I am saying is that the parents need to stop relying on other people to decide what is best for their children. One day you might realize that all that stuff that they taught your child isn't the best for them, or you. Too late Mom and Dad, you already screwed it up by then.
like believe all those other countries would not consider doing it if the US hadn't done so first.
Get flipping real.
I don't dispute this, but people like you are the reason why most of the rest of the world hates Americans. There's a line between security and pissing everyone in the world off. Sometimes the latter is necessary for the former, but not as often as the U.S. does it.
Call me ignorant, call me whatever you like, I don't care one bit. Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one.
You've got to read between the lines. Forget about defense, offense, peace or war for now. When confronted with a new government program, here are the first questions to ask yourself:
How much will this project cost in tax dollars? How easily can it be transformed into a permanent source of revenue? How much will government make on administration of the program? How much more power over the people will government acquire as a result? Finally, how many problems will this program spawn for the future (to be "fixed" by further expansion of government)?
When dealing with government, the reasons they give you for expansion of power are rarely truthful. If history proves anything, it's that the real objective is expansion of power itself. There is a reason why all governments expand in power over their lifetimes: because it benefits the power elite.
Government doesn't deal in profit. They deal in spending. Thats why we have a deficit of trillions of dollars (and growing) and social programs are being cut, or threatened to be cut. If the government actually had a way to make profit (income > expenses) the deficit would stop growing (as fast at least) and taxes could be lowered, etc. That won't happen, because the government is a consumer of our tax dollars, not a producer. Name one program involving military that the U.S. actually made a profit on. War? Stealth bombers? They're consuming, not producing, money.
You ask about a permanent source of revenue. How does shooting down another country's satellites even remotely have the capacity to turn a profit? Its about spending money to "promote security" or whatever. There is no ROI (return on investment) in tangible dollars. Supposedly we're buying a service (our security), and the only power the people have if they don't like the service is to elect a new president in the next election.
WTF? What happened - the Iranians are now developing satellites? al-Qaeda? What a waste of money.
I've never tried, but I'd assume its relatively difficult to make satellites out of sticks and dirt.
Nothing says 'Peace' like the United States blasting another country's satellite out of the sky. I can't see how doing so would help prevent attacks on the U.S. Perhaps the idea is to disable communications and espionage capabilities, but there are other, more conventional means of warfare, as ineffective as they may be.
The other theory, give countries warnings about removing satellites? Countries love ultimatums too. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I'm against this (or for it, really) but I'm suggesting that perhaps the political and diplomatic repercussions might need to be investigated more thoroughly.
From a sci-fi point of view, its Spies Like Us all over again! Sounds interesting and technological to say the least.
You can be taxed for services that do not produce a product. If I am a taxi driver, I am producing a service by driving people from one location to another. But I do not produce anything. I still have to pay income taxes however.
While I agree with you, I think you slightly missed the point. The income taxes you pay have absolutely nothing to do with what you do, it is based on the money you receive for your job (income). The fact that you provide a service doesn't enter into it unless you are or are not charging your passengers taxes. Having never driven or ridden in a taxi (suburbia!) I have no idea how they work, but I would guess that, like gasoline, taxes are 'built-in' to the cost. If thats the case, then your passengers are paying taxes on a service, but you as the taxi-driver are not. There is no service provided by you, you are paying income taxes.
Again, I agree with what you're saying. I can buy a part for my car and some garage install it, and they will charge me tax on the labor. Its pure service, yet I get taxed. They're basically taxing time and physical energy spent.
It all depends on how much you make from it and whether or not the IRS will even bother taxing you. In truth, you must file every time you win $100 in a friendly poker game at your friend's house.
There is a limit. Anything under $600 ($599 and under) is not directly reported to the IRS. (I worked a lottery machine for years when I was a teenager.) However you are still supposed to claim this as income. I'm sure most people don't, but I'm also sure most people probably lost more money than they won, so they would be claiming a loss that would lower the amount of taxes they had to pay. Anything $600 or more requires a form to be filled out by the lottery agent that gets sent to the IRS, and if you don't claim that, its (visible) tax fraud. (Again, if you win $1 and don't report it, its tax fraud too, but the IRS isn't notified.) That's why you'll see a lot of people buying the same number in smaller tickets instead of one large one.
Wouldn't it be cool if the US Government bought up a huge chunk of land in WoW and declare it a national park?
As long as they set it up as a Wildlife Orc Preserve with hunting rights to all Alliance, that'd be fine with me!
Don't forget the sign: 'No totems allowed on premises!'
Last I checked, Google didn't develop the Firefox browser, and shouldn't be held accountable in any way for what Firefox defaults to. Microsoft, on the other hand, definitely is responsible for what their browser defaults to.
Don't use Vista. I know I won't, especially if I can't share my data between Windows and Linux. Games is the primary reason I use Windows anymore, with most of my other tasks/projects are migrating to Linux without much trouble.
These restrictions and limitations are seeming more and more likely to shoot Microsoft in the foot. The only problem is the foot is the size of Wisconsin and the bullet isn't making a big enough hole yet. We need bigger bullets.
I remember being on the boat from Menethil to Theramore, hearing from a guildmate that the Kalimdor server just went down. (You know something's wrong when half of the 30-40 guildmates suddenly disconnect at once) I was just hoping that it'd come back up before the map loading screen. Alas, I was booted. The only thing worse than getting disconnected suddenly is knowing in advance that its about to happen, and not being able to do anything about it.
Hindsight, I guess I coulda just jumped off the boat and died in the Fatigue zone. I'll have to remember that for next time.
I would literally remove the television from my house completely than to allow that kind of rights-infringing in my house. This infuriates me to no end, I would never allow that in my house. I would switch hardware, cable service (cable vs satellite, etc) or anything else required to avoid that kind of facism in my household.
It's bad enough I can't chapter-forward past previews of some OTHER movies when watching a DVD that I purchased, but now they're telling me that I might not be able to switch channels during a commercial? What's next, a chair that keeps you chained down during the commercial? Its ridiculous. Hopefully this goes absolutely nowhere, and I'd like to see their stock drop drastically in response to this kind of idea, if only to help curb future facist ideas at a minimum.
I think cell phones give me pretty good traction, but I could always use more. That spot just behind the rear tire, you can shove your phone in there and sometimes get that burst of friction you need to get your car moving again.
Glad to see they're giving cell phones more traction!
I think that about covers the legitimacy of this study.
John Wayne Gacy and Ted Bundy were also Christians. Shouldn't that lead to the conclusion that Christians like to kill people?
I could provide a much longer list of "Christians" who have committed various violent crimes, but I don't really think that's necessary.
How many of you were in Middle/High school at the time of the Columbine shootings? How many of your schools outlawed trenchcoats after that? Because everyone knows that wearing a trenchcoat means you're a psychotic murderer, but if you don't wear it, you won't do any of those horrific things.
Radical idea. Puberty hits. Older kids get interested in girls. Making friends. Socializing.
I'd post more, but I don't want to frighten off Slashdot's majority population.
Get married early, save the dating scene, keep playing games. It's worked for me so far! (Now I've got kids interested in joining me in playing WoW. I can see it now... 'Roll a priest and follow me around and heal me or else you don't get any Christmas presents!' MUAHAHAHA!)