I'm going to disagree with you on this one. A system of taxation that exempts *any* group is a Bad Idea(tm). IMHO, a sales tax distributes the burden of taxation in the most rational manner. Those who have the resources to purchase more will pay more.
Imagine never having to file an income tax return ever again. IIRC, the average taxpayer in the US spends something like 48 hours each year preparing returns and handling the required records. This is a complete waste of time.
Why in the world should taxes be so complicated that an entire industry developed just to figure out how much you should pay.
Virtually all businesses collect sales tax, the mechanism is already in place. It would cost far less to collect federal taxes in this manner.
There are many subtle social implications involved here. One that comes to mind is the sense of empowerment that comes with fully participating in society.
This does not strike me as regressive at all. Our current system *is* regressive in one sense. Unless you are nearly destitute, you have to file a tax return. This costs time or money or both. Employers are obligated to withhold tax, this costs them money. How much of this wasted money could be in your pocket and mine? Just because the poor do not have a direct tax liability does not mean they are not paying indirectly.
The federal income tax should be scrapped and replaced with a national sales tax. Lower cost of compliance and fairness are two good reasons that come to mind.
Of course the IRS would still be needed, perhaps scaled down somewhat. I realize the chance for this happening is nearly zero, because the true extent of the tax bite would be evident.
Going to mars would be obscenely expensive. Why not add a few more bucks and establish a permanant lunar base that can be used as a source of bulk materials needed for a mars run?
A lunar base could solve some of the problems regarding material launch costs. The mars ship could be boosted from earth empty, and loaded with fuel produced on the moon. Ditto oxygen and water, possibly food. With the possibility of having all the fuel you could want waiting in orbit, the mars mission would then have the luxury of using a more fuel intensive profile.
Since it costs roughly the same to earth launch a kilo of fuel as it does to launch a kilo of equipment, it makes sense to just send up the stuff that is too difficult to make off earth.
The primary focus of such a base would be to produce and stockpile materials for later use. I'd like to see solar furnaces used to produce aluminum and glass. Waste gasses (which would include a large percentage of oxygen) could be captured and refined. Water is another material that would be fairly easy to fabricate.
Since most of the production could be monitored and controlled from earth, only a small crew would be required on-site.
Materials produced could be combined with equipment from earth to build facilities for getting the bulk material into lunar orbit.
The base could have a small staff, whose primary function would be keeping a small fleet of remote control machinery running.
Minimal communication lag would allow earth based operators to control and monitor virtually all important systems in near real time.
No environment to trash means simple and effective methds for producing required materials on site. Water, fuel, oxygen, metals and more can be had.
Supporting a mars mission is not reason enough to build a lunar base. It would need to serve other purposes as well. The base itself would be an ideal place to test and refine the technology for doing real work. The base would also facilitate scienttific research like astronomy.
Just the idea of having a wireless LAN on a Naval vessel is radical. These ships are carefully shielded to reduce EM emissions, so allowing anything that actively transmits RF is not an easy sell.
I can attest to the speed of the Nimitz class carriers, having served aboard the USS Dwight D eisenhower (CVN 69). Each of the four screws is larger than my house. With over 110,00 bhp to spin them, it can really cook. The rated speed is 35+ knots... that is a very conservative figure.
If you ever get the opportunity to tour one of these monsters, don't pass it up.
Designing DC electonics to run reliably in a car is an ugly business.
A PC in particular has some interesting challenges, You've got multiple output voltages, different polarities, and absolute cr*p for an input.
The charging circuit in your car delivers roughly 13.8VDC with the engine running. This is enough over the desired +12V to run a series pass type regulator with no problem. The trouble is you are not guaranteed to get that voltage. With the engine off or with something drawing heavily, you may have less than 12 volts available. Expect to see about 11.5 volts with the engine stopped. Even worse is while cranking the engine, the voltage will probably dip into the +8-10 volt range.
This dictates a DC-DC step-up converter to ensure you never run below the regulators minimum input voltage. You could buy/build/borrow one.... but why? It would be far cheaper to run an inverter and a standard PS.
If your heart is set on doing this, You might want to hack up an old ps... redesign the input switcher to work on +12. That would probably require winding a new toroidal transformer and a smallish PCB to hold the new switcher. The bonus here is you get to reuse the regulator circuitry and case. I've done this with excellent results, but I've been building power supplies for 30+ years. There's two huge time wasters implied here: figuring out the supply's original schematic, the other being getting the right magnetics. I ended up winding a new transformer.
whatever you decide to do, you'll probably want to stay within the ATX specs, one source is here.
IIRC, The textile industry uses a 30% solution for bleaching cloth. Since those vendors are used to dealing with much smaller quantities, I wonder if that could be purchased and then concentrated at John Cormack's site. Alternatively, they may be able to directly supply stuff stronger than the normal concentrations.
There is already something like to describe. it is an automated lawmower that looks something like a turtle, and is in use at the pentagon.
Turns out that it was horribly expensive to get security clearances for all the groundskeepers required for upkeep there, so this was developed.
It features solar panels for power, but a very limited intelligence. The boundries for its opereration are determined by buried cables, much like the inveisible fence system for dogs. they even have a simple safety and security system that disables thatm if they are picked up or turned over; you need to enter a PIN to reactivate it. I want one!
Just as important as the technology is the protocol used. There needs to be several layers of accountablity, with provable results. Each vote could be assigned a unique serial number and logged to a networked tally server, plus dumped to a printed and electronic log. The only problem I foresee with serializing each vote event
is the loss of total anonymity for the voter ( prehaps this can be worked around. Ideas? ).
There should be TWO printers at each kiosk; one for a hard copy log, another that prints a receipt for the voter to retain. Each printer should be directly connected to each voting kiosk, rather than networked. The tallies from each kiosk can be cross checked by comparing the number recorded on the tally server with the sums
from the logs. Furthermore, the logs themselves can be verified for internal consistancy. If it is suspected that the log has been tampered with,
the serial number can be used to validate suspect entries.
The whole thing ought to be run on mission critical style code. These things can run on small, cheap, and simple PC's. Simple is the key here, as there is a need to PROVE that the whole system tight.
I seem to recall a project called "Corridors" being developed as a replacement for IRC. I'm not sure what the current status of this is, or even if it the project is still alive.
( IRIC, there was a post on/. regarding this. )
Slashdot Mirror
Imagine never having to file an income tax return ever again. IIRC, the average taxpayer in the US spends something like 48 hours each year preparing returns and handling the required records. This is a complete waste of time.
Why in the world should taxes be so complicated that an entire industry developed just to figure out how much you should pay.
Virtually all businesses collect sales tax, the mechanism is already in place. It would cost far less to collect federal taxes in this manner.
There are many subtle social implications involved here. One that comes to mind is the sense of empowerment that comes with fully participating in society.
This does not strike me as regressive at all. Our current system *is* regressive in one sense. Unless you are nearly destitute, you have to file a tax return. This costs time or money or both. Employers are obligated to withhold tax, this costs them money. How much of this wasted money could be in your pocket and mine? Just because the poor do not have a direct tax liability does not mean they are not paying indirectly.
The federal income tax should be scrapped and replaced with a national sales tax. Lower cost of compliance and fairness are two good reasons that come to mind.
Of course the IRS would still be needed, perhaps scaled down somewhat. I realize the chance for this happening is nearly zero, because the true extent of the tax bite would be evident.
A lunar base could solve some of the problems regarding material launch costs. The mars ship could be boosted from earth empty, and loaded with fuel produced on the moon. Ditto oxygen and water, possibly food. With the possibility of having all the fuel you could want waiting in orbit, the mars mission would then have the luxury of using a more fuel intensive profile.
Since it costs roughly the same to earth launch a kilo of fuel as it does to launch a kilo of equipment, it makes sense to just send up the stuff that is too difficult to make off earth.
The primary focus of such a base would be to produce and stockpile materials for later use. I'd like to see solar furnaces used to produce aluminum and glass. Waste gasses (which would include a large percentage of oxygen) could be captured and refined. Water is another material that would be fairly easy to fabricate.
Since most of the production could be monitored and controlled from earth, only a small crew would be required on-site.
Materials produced could be combined with equipment from earth to build facilities for getting the bulk material into lunar orbit.
The base could have a small staff, whose primary function would be keeping a small fleet of remote control machinery running.
Minimal communication lag would allow earth based operators to control and monitor virtually all important systems in near real time.
No environment to trash means simple and effective methds for producing required materials on site. Water, fuel, oxygen, metals and more can be had.
Supporting a mars mission is not reason enough to build a lunar base. It would need to serve other purposes as well. The base itself would be an ideal place to test and refine the technology for doing real work. The base would also facilitate scienttific research like astronomy.
So we could have 3 majors wins:
I can attest to the speed of the Nimitz class carriers, having served aboard the USS Dwight D eisenhower (CVN 69). Each of the four screws is larger than my house. With over 110,00 bhp to spin them, it can really cook. The rated speed is 35+ knots... that is a very conservative figure.
If you ever get the opportunity to tour one of these monsters, don't pass it up.
Why do never have mod points when I need 'em?
Somebody please mod up parent.
The two *are* very similar, but there is a detectable difference. I prefer Carolan's in coffee... but bailey's makes a better mixed drink.
I keep both on hand.
Designing DC electonics to run reliably in a car is an ugly business.
A PC in particular has some interesting challenges, You've got multiple output voltages, different polarities, and absolute cr*p for an input.
The charging circuit in your car delivers roughly 13.8VDC with the engine running. This is enough over the desired +12V to run a series pass type regulator with no problem. The trouble is you are not guaranteed to get that voltage. With the engine off or with something drawing heavily, you may have less than 12 volts available. Expect to see about 11.5 volts with the engine stopped.
Even worse is while cranking the engine, the voltage will probably dip into the +8-10 volt range.
This dictates a DC-DC step-up converter to ensure you never run below the regulators minimum input voltage. You could buy/build/borrow one.... but why? It would be far cheaper to run an inverter and a standard PS.
If your heart is set on doing this, You might want to hack up an old ps... redesign the input switcher to work on +12. That would probably require winding a new toroidal transformer and a smallish PCB to hold the new switcher. The bonus here is you get to reuse the regulator circuitry and case. I've done this with excellent results, but I've been building power supplies for 30+ years. There's two huge time wasters implied here: figuring out the supply's original schematic, the other being getting the right magnetics. I ended up winding a new transformer.
whatever you decide to do, you'll probably want to stay within the ATX specs, one source is here.
Good luck :)
IIRC, The textile industry uses a 30% solution for bleaching cloth. Since those vendors are used to dealing with much smaller quantities, I wonder if that could be purchased and then concentrated at John Cormack's site. Alternatively, they may be able to directly supply stuff stronger than the normal concentrations.
There is already something like to describe. it is an automated lawmower that looks something like a turtle, and is in use at the pentagon. Turns out that it was horribly expensive to get security clearances for all the groundskeepers required for upkeep there, so this was developed. It features solar panels for power, but a very limited intelligence. The boundries for its opereration are determined by buried cables, much like the inveisible fence system for dogs. they even have a simple safety and security system that disables thatm if they are picked up or turned over; you need to enter a PIN to reactivate it. I want one!
Just as important as the technology is the protocol used. There needs to be several layers of accountablity, with provable results. Each vote could be assigned a unique serial number and logged to a networked tally server, plus dumped to a printed and electronic log. The only problem I foresee with serializing each vote event is the loss of total anonymity for the voter ( prehaps this can be worked around. Ideas? ). There should be TWO printers at each kiosk; one for a hard copy log, another that prints a receipt for the voter to retain. Each printer should be directly connected to each voting kiosk, rather than networked. The tallies from each kiosk can be cross checked by comparing the number recorded on the tally server with the sums from the logs. Furthermore, the logs themselves can be verified for internal consistancy. If it is suspected that the log has been tampered with, the serial number can be used to validate suspect entries. The whole thing ought to be run on mission critical style code. These things can run on small, cheap, and simple PC's. Simple is the key here, as there is a need to PROVE that the whole system tight.
I seem to recall a project called "Corridors" being developed as a replacement for IRC. I'm not sure what the current status of this is, or even if it the project is still alive. ( IRIC, there was a post on /. regarding this. )