Of that percentage, how many will view the inability to resell a game a complete blocker?
Is that number higher then the people who'd normally wait to buy it used (cheaper), but instead buy a new copy because that's the only option?
I know when I buy a $60 game it's because I feel the experience I'm about to enjoy is worth $60. I don't think "Oh, it's only worth $20, but I'll get $40 back from selling it later so it's Ok".
Or look at it this way: A new game goes on the market for $60-80. Over time the price tends to drop. If you feel the game is only worth $20 to you, instead of buying it for $80 hoping to sell it later for $60, you now just have to wait until the price drops. Either way you're paying $20 for your experience....the only difference is choosing to pay a premium for early access.
Even if the "lower value" from not being able to resell the game hurts demand and subsequently causes the publisher to drop the price accordingly, it still means all sales income goes to the publisher and artists, rather then a hefty chunk being scrapped off the profits by the secondary market.
History has proven time and time again that the closer the system gets to a true laissez faire free market, the bigger, faster, and harder it implodes.
The libertarians will argue that free markets have never really been tried, that when you reach the nirvana of a 100.0% real laissez faire free market, it'll be utopia for all. But that anything less, even 99.9999% of a free market, doesn't count.
The libertarian 100.0% free market utopia is no less a pipe dream then the 100% communist pipe dreams, and no more valid. -Communists also argue that anything less then pure 100% Marxist communism is an invalid comparison to the worthiness of the communist model.
---
Reality has shown us that a pragmatic middle ground is both far easier to implement and far more effective. 80% of the incentives of the free market, with 80% of the guarantees/safety net of socialist ideas. The last 20% of either is both extremely difficult and costly to ever implement, and complete devoid of any practical value.
This "Most will never catch up in their lifetime." was meant to go after this, "For example, for a live theatre technician someone who's spent 4 years in college training vs someone who's spent 4 years in the real world right out of high school, effectively puts the college graduate 2-3 years behind AND in serious debt."...
Once upon a time high schools (and heck, jr high schools) most ALL offered strong shop/trade classes. Metal shop, wood shop, auto shop, etc. For some it was just "broadening their education", but for many it was/is an e-ticket to the American middle class.
A good auto mechanic or machinist will make as much as a good software engineer. And they'll start working right out of high school...without 4 years of college debt. Most will never catch up in their lifetime.
American education decided a few decades ago that it's either college or skid row, there is no in-between. And we slashed trade skill funding faster then anything else. Any class that wasn't somehow "college prep" was cut.
Never mind that there were (and in many fields still are) a TON of solid middle class careers that do not benifit from the college education model. Apprenticeships were the model for many jobs for hundreds or thousands of years. Many we've now tried to shoehorn into the college system, often with laughable results. For example, for a live theatre technician someone who's spent 4 years in college training vs someone who's spent 4 years in the real world right out of high school, effectively puts the college graduate 2-3 years behind AND in serious debt.
This insanity of forcing everyone and every career into college (or be dammed to welfare) is the #1 thing that has KILLED the middle class in America. For every 1 person that it has propelled above middle class, it has doomed 100 to below middle class servitude.
At the same time it has caused a lot of inflation across the board, as those college graduates living under massive college debt for years, must pass the cost of paying that debt onto their employers/customers. TINSTAAFL
Obama only opposed the original language of the NDAA which limited executive power wrt indefinite detention. Obama never opposed the indefinite detention provisions...he specifically asked for them!
Obama was only ever going to veto NDAA if it in any way limited the executive's already far overreaching powers, full stop.
Well, it's not helping them at all that each WoW expansion and patch is more dumbed down then the last. It's so bad at this point you can pretty much just drool on the keyboard and you'll still be just fine "raiding".
They've deliberately taken away any and all variables and variety, not just from the races and classes, but from the encounters as well. I look at other games and I'm sad when I see they only have 4 or 5 character choices...then I remember WoW only has 3...
"Like so many before you, you're making the mistake of thinking that prices are determined by the manufacturer's costs. They're not. They're determined by what consumers are willing to pay. As you decrease your asking price, you'll get more and more people who are willing to pay, but you'll lose out on money from those who would have been willing to pay even more."
And like so many before you who have not worked in the arts, you're making the mistake of thinking people think rationally about the price of art and entertainment.
The reality is that a higher price can INCREASE demand. Even your local community theater knows that if they put on a "free" play, absolutely no one will come. But if they charge $15/seat they'll fill half the house. And at $25 they'll sell out. No only that...the more they charge...for the exact same show...the more the audience will actually enjoy the show and the more they will rave about it! It sounds absurd, but it's absolutely reality. Always has been.
Of course there's a breaking point where the thinking changes. $200/seat and no one will touch it. Finding the right price for art is a drastically more complex equation then your simplistic Econ 101 formula would suggest.
"In the case of the Ferrari, the copyright infringer isn't stealing the car, she is manufacturing an exact duplicate of the car. This is still morally "wrong" because Ferrari had to work hard to come up with the design of the car, but it isn't as wrong as stealing, because the copyright infringer didn't take the actual product."
Why is it not "as wrong"? In both cases at the end of the day Ferrari is denied the opportunity to sell a Ferrari, denied the opportunity to be justly compensated for their labor. In both cases the person is effectively stealing Ferrari's labor.
Heck, why is it not in fact "MORE wrong" to copy the designs, considering far more harm is done to Ferrari by the action:
Steal 1 Ferrari and they lose one sale. Copy the design and make copies and they lose a LOT more sales.
Additionally for high-end brands like Ferrari the exclusivity of the product is an intrinsic part of its value. Another manufacturer making Ferraris would dilute the market, lowering the value of a given Ferrari not just by the law of supply and demand by additionally by the reduction in rarity, exclusivity of the brand.
hedwards effectively wrote: Do you have any evidence that any of those people would have paid for the bread? And that's the crux of the matter. Until somebody actually shells out for loaf of bread you can't say for certain if they would.
There should be a penalty, but there's no particular reason to believe that a public shaming would be any less effective than forcing them to pay for the bread after the fact, even at a greatly increased cost.
---
The problem with your argument is not the question of what harm it may or may not do to the creator. Rather the problem is why does the receiver deserve a free copy? Why does the receiver deserve to benifit from something for which they have contributed nothing?
It's the story of The Little Red Hen; Contribute nothing and you deserve nothing. It doesn't matter if the bread would have simply gone to waste otherwise. Your corporeal existence on this planet does not entitle you to the fruits of other people's labor! That moral reality does not change on iota even when the manufacturing (copying) and/or distribution costs are zero.
---
There's a moral argument to be made that neither do the laborers deserve obscene rewards from such items, but that's an entirely different argument. Nor can you morally "balance" the two by taking a few free copies since they've over charged so many others...you're just forcing other people to effectively pay for your copy, which is just as wrong as the price gouging of content producers.
"But Python depends on the amount of whitespace. That's almost as bad as depending on distinguishing tab and space (make, I'm looking at you!)."
Actually Python also distinguishes between tab and space (since it can make no assumptions on how many spaces equal 1 tab). So "1 tab + 4 spaces", while it may look identical to "12 spaces", "8 spaces", or "6 spaces", etc, depending on your editor's view settings, Python doesn't consider them equivalent whatsoever.
This means that people using the (incredibly stupid) default settings of Emacs will produce indents with a mix of spaces and tabs (indent = 4, tab char = 8, 3 level indent = 1 tab + 4 spaces). While that's a huge pain in the ass for any language when dealing with more then one developer (Emacs was first and still still pretty unique in even allowing the completely inane setting of tab size != indent size), it's still just a formatting pita....actual code functionality isn't affected nor does the reader's logical view of the code differ from the actual execution.
Python however? No matter how the code *looks* on your screen, if there are tabs in it you're playing Russian Roulette with your execution trees.
Tab characters as valid whitespace has proven an exceptionally bad idea in any language (even make, which is stuck with it), and the first thing any source control admin should do is ban commits of any code file (that isn't a make file....) that has a literal tab character.
Honestly, the moment Python decided whitespace would affect execution logic, they should have banned all tabs as a compile time syntax error no matter where or why they're found in the file.
You are a resident of this land, a consumer of its commonwealth resources both natural and man made. One of those commonwealth resources is a healthcare system that will always treat you first and ask how/if you're able to pay second.
To borrow your words, "If you don't live in the US, you do not need health insurance".
And there would be nothing wrong with allowing them to sell across state lines...Just so long as the insurance regulations of the customer's state were required to be followed.
That's the rub; The insurance industry wants to only be subjected to the laws of the state they have their offices in, allowing them to shop around for the most favorable state regulations (meaning those that allow the insurance companies the most flexibility in how they can screw over their customers).
It would mean the only real regulation would be exclusively at the Federal level; State oversight would be toothless. So much for States Rights...
---
The fact is TODAY, any company in the country can sell insurance to anyone else anywhere in the country...so long as they abide by the laws and regulations of the consumer's state. There are plenty of insurance companies today that operate cross-state.
They know that even if the the merger is blocked, T-Mobile is screwed. [...]
You're ignoring the fact that if the merger is blocked, AT&T must give T-Mobile $3 billion in cash, part of its wireless spectrum, and reduce charges for calls into AT&Tâ(TM)s network, a total package estimated at about $7 billion.
That's a huge boost for T-Mobile. I'm also not sure where you're getting the idea customers are leaving; in this down economy the idea of actually unlimited plans for almost half of what AT&T/Verizon charge is really tempting.
Capital gains exist only so those who don't work for a living can keep more of the money they did not earn themselves. It's welfare for the rich, nothing more.
0.5% transaction fee on any and all trades, payable by the seller. No "short term" vs "long term" math to game, just a flat fee on the gross amount of any transaction of any kind.
It wouldn't affect real, long-term investment negatively at all; In fact it'd encourage stability by discouraging caching out (you take a 0.5% hit the moment you sell, even if you are taking a net loss, so it's in your best interest to hold for the long term).
It would however, completely destroy the "business model" scam of high-frequency trading that only exists to leech money off of real investors by making every real seller get a bit less and every real buyer pay a bit more. The only way the scam works is if transactions are effectively free.
---
At the same time the entire elitist concept of separate "capital gains" tax rates being distinct from "earned income" must be abolished completely. What the income tax system used is (progressive, flat tax, whatever), there is no legitimate reason on the face of God's green earth that makes one man's $10 bill any more special then another man's $10 bill.... If anything the person that actually worked for their $10 is far more deserving of a break then the person who sat on their fat ass doing nothing while $10 magically appeared in their account as "capital gains".
Agreed. Heck, at my current company we ended up getting a bunch of our top executives to install Chrome because neither FF or IE were fast enough to run the internal metrics app that we built for them.
Which...oddly...is all Flash based and doesn't even care about Javascript speed. Yet still, running in Chrome is the difference between working well and barely functioning at all... Go figure.:-/
That said, I still run Firefox myself. I hate beyond hate the Chrome UI and can't stand not having my Firefox addons (especially developer addons).
It's well known that the current "check engine light" and problem code system is specifically designed to artificially lock customers into dealership service, including car makers suing 3rd party companies that dared to make problem code readers and/or publish lookup tables.
Throw that crap out and it'd be incredibly trivial to display the code to the driver with a one line summary. That gets us 99% of what this new auto Clippy could ever offer.
But Clippy will never happen for the same reason a simple 1 line text summary will never happen: It's still primarily a lock-in system to artificially prop up dealership service centers by making it often impossible for an owner or even the corner shop mechanic to read thus making it effectively impossible to fix without the car manufacturer's blessing.
It's a damn shame he never filed a patent on the NULL pointer, he could have made bank!
Of course, if the new "patent reform" law passes he'll have another chance to be "first to file" the new patent on the NULL pointer and qualify to sue nearly everyone that's touched code in the last forty years. Whoohoo!!
I'll admit possible iOS development is why I asked for a Macbook Pro this time around.
That said...I've regretted it ever since.
I'm amazed how bad Mac OS really is from a productivity stand point. A file management app (Finder) that can't manage files. A terminal app that's not even upto par with xterm. A "pure GUI" OS design that sends users Googling for arcane command line strings to do the most basic of things like turn off mouse acceleration. Forcing a shutdown (ok, "sleep", still kills all active connections) just to switch to an external monitor. Forcing sleep (with no option to disable whatsoever) when the lid is closed. The list of issues really never ends and few even have half-ass work arounds. I'm really rather amazed...I fully expected some difficulties in switching (although Windows is hardly my only skilled system), but I'm constantly astonished how I keep running into issues and even the most devout Mac users can only shrug and agree, offering whatever sad workaround they're currently using.
For all the praise the Macbook Pro hardware gets, some is deserved but most is hype. The keyboard gets lauded frequently, but personally I find it abysmal. Give me a ThinkPad keyboard anyday.
---
I strongly doubt iOS development has any real bearing on the numbers. Some sure, but the vast majority of business PC users are not developers. I'd suggest the requests for Macs are coming from normal users who barely are qualified to use any computer and spend 90% of their time in email and a web browser. The other 10% is in excel and power point. Generally speaking these are not power users and their is very little they ever demand from the OS. They don't need their OS to be productive or efficient to use.
So they don't really care...or know enough to care... So for those folks the choice is really "boring PC" or "Sexy Mac!". I would say the real "HUGE" factor is 100% about style and image, having fuck-all to do with which actually is going to help them get their job done easier. The iPhone and iPad have done a great job at making everything Apple produces seem more Sexy, even if in the end it's just an overpriced fashion statement.
---
If I ever end up doing iOS development, I'll be running my "build machine" in a VM hosted by a real OS. Worst case I'll use a Hackintosh and SSH into it.
The problem is, if $ONLINE_SELLER doesn't have a physical location in your state, then they are NOT your "neighbor". They have zero responsibility to pay taxes in your state, because they are not receiving any services from that state.
The retailer isn't the one paying the sales/use tax, so who cares what services they do or don't receive?
It's the customer who pays sales/use tax, to their local government, for services they directly receive. Currently the customer is legally obligated to pay local sales tax (aka use tax) on any and all purchases made from "sales tax free" vendors like Amazon, etc. That has never changed.
That almost no one actually pays their use taxes doesn't mean they do not already exist. What we have here is a collection issue, not a tax issue. Traditionally retailers collected the sales taxes owed by the customer from the customer. That worked mostly ok until online sales skyrocketed... States and local governments are only trying to plug the new collection hole for existing taxes that are already owed, by demanding retailers step up to their traditional duty of collector for sales/use tax from customers.
Reducing collateral damage isn't actually a good thing, holistically speaking.
For true peace, war needs to be hell, it needs to be bloody, it needs to as brutal and insane as it can be.
When war is clean, cheap, and easy, it's employed much more indiscriminately, more frequently, and allowed to continue for much longer. War needs to be expensive, yes monetarily but also morally expensive. The images of thousands of innocent people dead and dieing is one of the last true deterrents of war. A deterrent that is already being chipped away quickly by the greatly expanded use of drones over the last couple decades.
Slashdot Mirror
What % of gamers resell their games?
Of that percentage, how many will view the inability to resell a game a complete blocker?
Is that number higher then the people who'd normally wait to buy it used (cheaper), but instead buy a new copy because that's the only option?
I know when I buy a $60 game it's because I feel the experience I'm about to enjoy is worth $60. I don't think "Oh, it's only worth $20, but I'll get $40 back from selling it later so it's Ok".
Or look at it this way:
A new game goes on the market for $60-80. Over time the price tends to drop. If you feel the game is only worth $20 to you, instead of buying it for $80 hoping to sell it later for $60, you now just have to wait until the price drops. Either way you're paying $20 for your experience....the only difference is choosing to pay a premium for early access.
Even if the "lower value" from not being able to resell the game hurts demand and subsequently causes the publisher to drop the price accordingly, it still means all sales income goes to the publisher and artists, rather then a hefty chunk being scrapped off the profits by the secondary market.
"I do not recall" that password. Hey, it worked for Reagan!
Much agreed.
History has proven time and time again that the closer the system gets to a true laissez faire free market, the bigger, faster, and harder it implodes.
The libertarians will argue that free markets have never really been tried, that when you reach the nirvana of a 100.0% real laissez faire free market, it'll be utopia for all. But that anything less, even 99.9999% of a free market, doesn't count.
The libertarian 100.0% free market utopia is no less a pipe dream then the 100% communist pipe dreams, and no more valid. -Communists also argue that anything less then pure 100% Marxist communism is an invalid comparison to the worthiness of the communist model.
---
Reality has shown us that a pragmatic middle ground is both far easier to implement and far more effective. 80% of the incentives of the free market, with 80% of the guarantees/safety net of socialist ideas. The last 20% of either is both extremely difficult and costly to ever implement, and complete devoid of any practical value.
...woops
This "Most will never catch up in their lifetime." was meant to go after this, "For example, for a live theatre technician someone who's spent 4 years in college training vs someone who's spent 4 years in the real world right out of high school, effectively puts the college graduate 2-3 years behind AND in serious debt."...
Once upon a time high schools (and heck, jr high schools) most ALL offered strong shop/trade classes. Metal shop, wood shop, auto shop, etc. For some it was just "broadening their education", but for many it was/is an e-ticket to the American middle class.
A good auto mechanic or machinist will make as much as a good software engineer. And they'll start working right out of high school...without 4 years of college debt. Most will never catch up in their lifetime.
American education decided a few decades ago that it's either college or skid row, there is no in-between. And we slashed trade skill funding faster then anything else. Any class that wasn't somehow "college prep" was cut.
Never mind that there were (and in many fields still are) a TON of solid middle class careers that do not benifit from the college education model. Apprenticeships were the model for many jobs for hundreds or thousands of years. Many we've now tried to shoehorn into the college system, often with laughable results. For example, for a live theatre technician someone who's spent 4 years in college training vs someone who's spent 4 years in the real world right out of high school, effectively puts the college graduate 2-3 years behind AND in serious debt.
This insanity of forcing everyone and every career into college (or be dammed to welfare) is the #1 thing that has KILLED the middle class in America. For every 1 person that it has propelled above middle class, it has doomed 100 to below middle class servitude.
At the same time it has caused a lot of inflation across the board, as those college graduates living under massive college debt for years, must pass the cost of paying that debt onto their employers/customers. TINSTAAFL
Obama only opposed the original language of the NDAA which limited executive power wrt indefinite detention. Obama never opposed the indefinite detention provisions...he specifically asked for them!
Obama was only ever going to veto NDAA if it in any way limited the executive's already far overreaching powers, full stop.
Well, it's not helping them at all that each WoW expansion and patch is more dumbed down then the last. It's so bad at this point you can pretty much just drool on the keyboard and you'll still be just fine "raiding".
They've deliberately taken away any and all variables and variety, not just from the races and classes, but from the encounters as well. I look at other games and I'm sad when I see they only have 4 or 5 character choices...then I remember WoW only has 3...
Thanks Blizzard, this news saves me wasting $60 on yet another crippled game.
"Like so many before you, you're making the mistake of thinking that prices are determined by the manufacturer's costs. They're not. They're determined by what consumers are willing to pay. As you decrease your asking price, you'll get more and more people who are willing to pay, but you'll lose out on money from those who would have been willing to pay even more."
And like so many before you who have not worked in the arts, you're making the mistake of thinking people think rationally about the price of art and entertainment.
The reality is that a higher price can INCREASE demand. Even your local community theater knows that if they put on a "free" play, absolutely no one will come. But if they charge $15/seat they'll fill half the house. And at $25 they'll sell out. No only that...the more they charge...for the exact same show...the more the audience will actually enjoy the show and the more they will rave about it! It sounds absurd, but it's absolutely reality. Always has been.
Of course there's a breaking point where the thinking changes. $200/seat and no one will touch it. Finding the right price for art is a drastically more complex equation then your simplistic Econ 101 formula would suggest.
"In the case of the Ferrari, the copyright infringer isn't stealing the car, she is manufacturing an exact duplicate of the car. This is still morally "wrong" because Ferrari had to work hard to come up with the design of the car, but it isn't as wrong as stealing, because the copyright infringer didn't take the actual product."
Why is it not "as wrong"? In both cases at the end of the day Ferrari is denied the opportunity to sell a Ferrari, denied the opportunity to be justly compensated for their labor. In both cases the person is effectively stealing Ferrari's labor.
Heck, why is it not in fact "MORE wrong" to copy the designs, considering far more harm is done to Ferrari by the action:
Steal 1 Ferrari and they lose one sale. Copy the design and make copies and they lose a LOT more sales.
Additionally for high-end brands like Ferrari the exclusivity of the product is an intrinsic part of its value. Another manufacturer making Ferraris would dilute the market, lowering the value of a given Ferrari not just by the law of supply and demand by additionally by the reduction in rarity, exclusivity of the brand.
hedwards effectively wrote: Do you have any evidence that any of those people would have paid for the bread? And that's the crux of the matter. Until somebody actually shells out for loaf of bread you can't say for certain if they would.
There should be a penalty, but there's no particular reason to believe that a public shaming would be any less effective than forcing them to pay for the bread after the fact, even at a greatly increased cost.
---
The problem with your argument is not the question of what harm it may or may not do to the creator. Rather the problem is why does the receiver deserve a free copy? Why does the receiver deserve to benifit from something for which they have contributed nothing?
It's the story of The Little Red Hen; Contribute nothing and you deserve nothing. It doesn't matter if the bread would have simply gone to waste otherwise. Your corporeal existence on this planet does not entitle you to the fruits of other people's labor! That moral reality does not change on iota even when the manufacturing (copying) and/or distribution costs are zero.
---
There's a moral argument to be made that neither do the laborers deserve obscene rewards from such items, but that's an entirely different argument. Nor can you morally "balance" the two by taking a few free copies since they've over charged so many others...you're just forcing other people to effectively pay for your copy, which is just as wrong as the price gouging of content producers.
http://bpg-motors.com/
The Uno evolved into a transforming design, but the initial versions were almost identical to this newest effort.
At least the Uno solved the face-plant issue; At high speeds it transforms into a traditional 2 wheeled motorcycle form.
"But Python depends on the amount of whitespace. That's almost as bad as depending on distinguishing tab and space (make, I'm looking at you!)."
Actually Python also distinguishes between tab and space (since it can make no assumptions on how many spaces equal 1 tab). So "1 tab + 4 spaces", while it may look identical to "12 spaces", "8 spaces", or "6 spaces", etc, depending on your editor's view settings, Python doesn't consider them equivalent whatsoever.
This means that people using the (incredibly stupid) default settings of Emacs will produce indents with a mix of spaces and tabs (indent = 4, tab char = 8, 3 level indent = 1 tab + 4 spaces). While that's a huge pain in the ass for any language when dealing with more then one developer (Emacs was first and still still pretty unique in even allowing the completely inane setting of tab size != indent size), it's still just a formatting pita....actual code functionality isn't affected nor does the reader's logical view of the code differ from the actual execution.
Python however? No matter how the code *looks* on your screen, if there are tabs in it you're playing Russian Roulette with your execution trees.
Tab characters as valid whitespace has proven an exceptionally bad idea in any language (even make, which is stuck with it), and the first thing any source control admin should do is ban commits of any code file (that isn't a make file....) that has a literal tab character.
Honestly, the moment Python decided whitespace would affect execution logic, they should have banned all tabs as a compile time syntax error no matter where or why they're found in the file.
But you're not "simply being alive".
You are a resident of this land, a consumer of its commonwealth resources both natural and man made. One of those commonwealth resources is a healthcare system that will always treat you first and ask how/if you're able to pay second.
To borrow your words, "If you don't live in the US, you do not need health insurance".
And there would be nothing wrong with allowing them to sell across state lines...Just so long as the insurance regulations of the customer's state were required to be followed.
That's the rub; The insurance industry wants to only be subjected to the laws of the state they have their offices in, allowing them to shop around for the most favorable state regulations (meaning those that allow the insurance companies the most flexibility in how they can screw over their customers).
It would mean the only real regulation would be exclusively at the Federal level; State oversight would be toothless. So much for States Rights...
---
The fact is TODAY, any company in the country can sell insurance to anyone else anywhere in the country...so long as they abide by the laws and regulations of the consumer's state. There are plenty of insurance companies today that operate cross-state.
They know that even if the the merger is blocked, T-Mobile is screwed. [...]
You're ignoring the fact that if the merger is blocked, AT&T must give T-Mobile $3 billion in cash, part of its wireless spectrum, and reduce charges for calls into AT&Tâ(TM)s network, a total package estimated at about $7 billion.
That's a huge boost for T-Mobile. I'm also not sure where you're getting the idea customers are leaving; in this down economy the idea of actually unlimited plans for almost half of what AT&T/Verizon charge is really tempting.
Yours has a Y?!?!
I think the lower capital gains taxes are there to encourage investment into businesses/economy/society.
That's the excuse, but there's zero science behind it. Even multi-billionaire Warren Buffett says, "I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone -- not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 -- shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain. People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off."
Capital gains exist only so those who don't work for a living can keep more of the money they did not earn themselves. It's welfare for the rich, nothing more.
So you make speed a disadvantage:
0.5% transaction fee on any and all trades, payable by the seller. No "short term" vs "long term" math to game, just a flat fee on the gross amount of any transaction of any kind.
It wouldn't affect real, long-term investment negatively at all; In fact it'd encourage stability by discouraging caching out (you take a 0.5% hit the moment you sell, even if you are taking a net loss, so it's in your best interest to hold for the long term).
It would however, completely destroy the "business model" scam of high-frequency trading that only exists to leech money off of real investors by making every real seller get a bit less and every real buyer pay a bit more. The only way the scam works is if transactions are effectively free.
---
At the same time the entire elitist concept of separate "capital gains" tax rates being distinct from "earned income" must be abolished completely. What the income tax system used is (progressive, flat tax, whatever), there is no legitimate reason on the face of God's green earth that makes one man's $10 bill any more special then another man's $10 bill.... If anything the person that actually worked for their $10 is far more deserving of a break then the person who sat on their fat ass doing nothing while $10 magically appeared in their account as "capital gains".
Agreed. Heck, at my current company we ended up getting a bunch of our top executives to install Chrome because neither FF or IE were fast enough to run the internal metrics app that we built for them.
Which...oddly...is all Flash based and doesn't even care about Javascript speed. Yet still, running in Chrome is the difference between working well and barely functioning at all... Go figure. :-/
That said, I still run Firefox myself. I hate beyond hate the Chrome UI and can't stand not having my Firefox addons (especially developer addons).
It's well known that the current "check engine light" and problem code system is specifically designed to artificially lock customers into dealership service, including car makers suing 3rd party companies that dared to make problem code readers and/or publish lookup tables.
Throw that crap out and it'd be incredibly trivial to display the code to the driver with a one line summary. That gets us 99% of what this new auto Clippy could ever offer.
But Clippy will never happen for the same reason a simple 1 line text summary will never happen: It's still primarily a lock-in system to artificially prop up dealership service centers by making it often impossible for an owner or even the corner shop mechanic to read thus making it effectively impossible to fix without the car manufacturer's blessing.
It's a damn shame he never filed a patent on the NULL pointer, he could have made bank!
Of course, if the new "patent reform" law passes he'll have another chance to be "first to file" the new patent on the NULL pointer and qualify to sue nearly everyone that's touched code in the last forty years. Whoohoo!!
I'll admit possible iOS development is why I asked for a Macbook Pro this time around.
That said...I've regretted it ever since.
I'm amazed how bad Mac OS really is from a productivity stand point. A file management app (Finder) that can't manage files. A terminal app that's not even upto par with xterm. A "pure GUI" OS design that sends users Googling for arcane command line strings to do the most basic of things like turn off mouse acceleration. Forcing a shutdown (ok, "sleep", still kills all active connections) just to switch to an external monitor. Forcing sleep (with no option to disable whatsoever) when the lid is closed. The list of issues really never ends and few even have half-ass work arounds. I'm really rather amazed...I fully expected some difficulties in switching (although Windows is hardly my only skilled system), but I'm constantly astonished how I keep running into issues and even the most devout Mac users can only shrug and agree, offering whatever sad workaround they're currently using.
For all the praise the Macbook Pro hardware gets, some is deserved but most is hype. The keyboard gets lauded frequently, but personally I find it abysmal. Give me a ThinkPad keyboard anyday.
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I strongly doubt iOS development has any real bearing on the numbers. Some sure, but the vast majority of business PC users are not developers. I'd suggest the requests for Macs are coming from normal users who barely are qualified to use any computer and spend 90% of their time in email and a web browser. The other 10% is in excel and power point. Generally speaking these are not power users and their is very little they ever demand from the OS. They don't need their OS to be productive or efficient to use.
So they don't really care...or know enough to care... So for those folks the choice is really "boring PC" or "Sexy Mac!". I would say the real "HUGE" factor is 100% about style and image, having fuck-all to do with which actually is going to help them get their job done easier. The iPhone and iPad have done a great job at making everything Apple produces seem more Sexy, even if in the end it's just an overpriced fashion statement.
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If I ever end up doing iOS development, I'll be running my "build machine" in a VM hosted by a real OS. Worst case I'll use a Hackintosh and SSH into it.
The problem is, if $ONLINE_SELLER doesn't have a physical location in your state, then they are NOT your "neighbor". They have zero responsibility to pay taxes in your state, because they are not receiving any services from that state.
The retailer isn't the one paying the sales/use tax, so who cares what services they do or don't receive?
It's the customer who pays sales/use tax, to their local government, for services they directly receive. Currently the customer is legally obligated to pay local sales tax (aka use tax) on any and all purchases made from "sales tax free" vendors like Amazon, etc. That has never changed.
That almost no one actually pays their use taxes doesn't mean they do not already exist. What we have here is a collection issue, not a tax issue. Traditionally retailers collected the sales taxes owed by the customer from the customer. That worked mostly ok until online sales skyrocketed... States and local governments are only trying to plug the new collection hole for existing taxes that are already owed, by demanding retailers step up to their traditional duty of collector for sales/use tax from customers.
Reducing collateral damage isn't actually a good thing, holistically speaking.
For true peace, war needs to be hell, it needs to be bloody, it needs to as brutal and insane as it can be.
When war is clean, cheap, and easy, it's employed much more indiscriminately, more frequently, and allowed to continue for much longer. War needs to be expensive, yes monetarily but also morally expensive. The images of thousands of innocent people dead and dieing is one of the last true deterrents of war. A deterrent that is already being chipped away quickly by the greatly expanded use of drones over the last couple decades.