Why do we not have a simple, flat-tax structure that everyone can handle?
I was listening to a debate on talk radio about this a week or so ago. The proponent for the flat tax argued that you should only have to list your income and deductions, and then multipy by a percentage and that would be your tax. Nice and simple.
I don't see it as being so simple. Is my company sponsored health care plan part of my income? How about my brother-in-law? Is his company car (which can't be justified for company use as he works in a single factory) income? Should I be able to deduct the expense of new t-shirts that I wear to work since I would just wear the old ones if I were working from home?
Indeed, figuring my own taxes year to year, I have discovered the complexity in taxes isn't in figuring the rate (a simple stepped percentage, which most people can look up in the tables). The complexity lies in computing what to apply that rate to.
Bush wants to spur economic growth in the US by encouraging the technology sector with tax shelters. Will I qualify for those shelters? Dammit, he just made my taxes more complicated.
My point is that the tax code is complicated in the US and all other countries because politicians cave in to 'good causes' by passing out tax breaks. If you want a simple tax system, recind all tax breaks and deductions. Let politicians vote a donation to things they support (of course, you'll suddenly find a lot less 'support'), instead of disguising what they're giving away behind euphanisms.
Why is the entire planet apparently obsessed with silly little pieces of green (or other colored) paper with pictures and numbers printed on them? Why is money treated as the be-all and end-all of existence?
If you have a good answer for that one, I think we'd all like to hear it.
People are obsessed with money, because money is how we denominate resources and controlling resources equates to power in any social situation. Say I go into a restaurant. If I have money, I can convince the proprieters of the establishment to bring me food. They will even ensure that my drink remains filled. They do this with the idea that if they do it enough then they will garner enough resources to convince a car manufacturer to trade them a vehicle for all the green paper they've collected. This will enable them to travel to the country where they can trade more of their green paper to stay at a bed-n-breakfast where someone else will serve them and keep their drink full. If they collect enough green paper, they might be able to convince someone of the opposite sex to travel with them in their new vehicle and play with them at the bed-n-breakfast. If they've worked really hard, and saved a lot of the green paper, the may convince several of the opposite sex to go with them at the same time to play at the bed-n-breakfast.
If this isn't something to get obsessed about, I don't know what is.
Where are my moderator points when I need them? The most sensible post in the whole thread sitting at 1.
My whole house only needs 1 IP. I don't have enough money to buy enough devices to use all of the reserved addresses. Who cares if NAT requires rewriting of FTP packets? Computation power is so cheap that it isn't worth tracking the MIPS necessary to rewrite every packet going out over a cable modem.
Besides, why would my frig need a world addressable IP? I don't need it to call the serviceman when it thinks that it's broke so that he can come and charge me $50 for changing the lightbulb.
Nearly every problem I see that needs 128bit IPs as a solution are marketing hype or manufactured bullsh*t. I do understand that IPv6 has other features (QOS, multicasting, etc), and these features may be worth the cost of conversion, but being able to address every grain of sand in the world is not what I consider a goal worthy of much investment.
Use this process to coat the rings and cylinder wall for my trucks engine. While there at it, coat everything that rubs or has water running through it. With its low coefficient of friction, and long wear, the engine will double in horsepower, get twice the mileage and practically never wear out (with proper maintenance).
The long life will mean that the most environmentally damaging the vehicles do in their lifespan (other than crushing small woodland critters), being made, will be done less often.
There's got to be more to the story than what you say.
No there doesn't. You just have to read what I said. The pertinent part was Associates in Electronic Engineering Technologies. That's a two year degree, versus your bachelor, a four year degree.
This reminds me of 'long ago', about '92 I think it was. I was getting ready to finish my first degree, an Associates in Electronic Engineering Technologies. All the professional industry magazines that I was reading kept proclaiming what a shortage of technical workers there was. I was so excited to be earning a degree in field with such a demand.
I graduated with about 20 other guys. I got lucky and landed a job in a union shop where I got about $10/hr. The best the others could find were some jobs paying $7/hr. As a point of reference, the job I had to get through school was as a security guard. I sat at a desk and had people sign a paper when they came in. I made $6/hr.
It's been said often, but never loudly enough. The shortage isn't of qualified workers. The shortage is of qualified workers who will give their services away for free.
Why isn't there a shortage of qualified CEOs for technical oriented companies? If colleges aren't putting out enough people who know how to program, how are they putting out enough who know how to manage programmers? Someone should argue before Congress that the increase in H1-B for technical workers should be tied to an increase in H1-B for management positions.
A popular mechanic was so busy that he couldn't handle all his paperwork, so he hired a secretary. She wasn't qualified to keep the books, so he had to hire an accountant. Before long, he needed an office manager. It wasn't long before the accountant noticed that the company was running in the red, so the office personel had a meeting to discuss ways to cut the budget. The first suggestion came from the office manager. "I know," he said, "let's get rid of that guy out back."
A professional guild would go a long way toward establishing guidelines for what should be expected of a professional engineer and what are acceptable working conditions. I shy away from 'union', because the term has become to be synonomous with 'racket', and very few engineers want to deal with having a second boss (I've worked in a union shop, and that is exactly what a union boils down to). The guild would set guidelines for behaviour versus negotiating contracts. You could still work 70hr weeks, but it would be understood that you were working more than what is reasonable (which it is!!).
If I walk on a lot and the prices aren't posted on the cars, I immediately leave. Their goal is to size you up and determine how much they can take you for. For instance, they'll take a woman and try to convince her that the rattling from under the hood is insignificant while ranting over the cool in-dash make-up kit, and try to convince her that this makes the car worth $3000 more than the bluebook value. Totally disgusting behavior, which tics my wife off so bad that I HAVE to go car shopping with her just to discourage the jerks. (Guess what I spent my labor day weekend doing.)
This type of profiling is the same in my eyes. Amazon wants to figure out what you as an individual, rather than the market in general, are willing to pay for an item. It's just that in this case, there is a sticker price in the window so you can fill all secure inside that you are being treated fairly, but the sticker you get isn't the same one everyone else gets.
As for comparison shopping, what happens when this profiling database gets distributed? Everyone knows that you like Anime, and you have to pay twice as much as I, no matter where you shop. Are we back to the situation where only the people who don't need credit can get it?
As all geeks know, positive feedback systems are inherently(sp?) unstable. Increased output pushes up the input, which increases the output until the system overloads.
The way collected funds are distributed could produce a positive feedback system here could it not? Taxes are collected from all forms of recordable media, but who are they distributed to? If the funds are proportioned according to market share, that means that the largest corps get extra input which will encourage more output which will increase market share....
How much goes to small bands? Can I strum a guitar, call myself a musician, and then lay claim to my share of the taxes? How do you qualify to be a distributor? If I record my guitar strum, put it on a CDR while releasing it as an MP3, do I then qualify as a distributor with the right to lay claim to my fair share of the bounty?
If you divide the booty up by market share, would that be a share of units sold or value of units sold? If I gave away crap in a cereal box, does that increase my market share?
It never ceases to amaze me that legislatures happily pass totally unenforceable laws that create more problems than they solve. Some things just cannot be fixed by edicts from on high.
To say it in my own words, it seems as if certain corporations hold the mistaken view that the public airwaves are not public, but are instead owned by them.
Ok. This statement has me worried. The FCC decided to auction off the airwaves recently. If we've granted rights to corps through this action, the airwave may not be public property in the US anymore. Could someone with better insight on this speak up?
But it's not fair. Those meanies are trying to take my VCR away. I deserve my VCR. Waah!!
Those letters will do nothing but irritate the powers that be. Use strong reasoning that quotes laws (section and paragraph), and case law. This is what the commissioners understand. They assume that the majority of the populace are a bunch of crybabies who'll accept anything as long as they get their bread and circuses. They actually get scared when the find that they are coming up against a large group of people who actually know stuff.
Go forth. Scour the internet for information where Congress/courst/State legislatures have deemed that people actually have rights to information that is broadcast over public airwaves and facilities (the controlled monopoly nature of most cable systems make them a public facility in my view). Let the FCC know that they can't pull a fast one here without someone taking it to court.
Also, remember, your Congresspeople have more pull than you. Be nice to them. Some of them seem to be on our side, despite their initial support for DMCA. Some of them might actually be looking for retribution over how that one went.
Let me get this straight. There's a trojan floating around which requires some libraries be installed in secure locations, which requires root permissions. So the article goes on about how the trojan works, but gives not one indication of how the thing gets installed. Not to worry though, they have a product that will plug the hole for you.
Why do I smell old fish? It sounds to me that there is an attempt to sell a product by scare-mongering. How can an IRC chat session install files in a directory that requires root permissions? If someone is chatting in IRC as root and allows unchecked software to be installed from a remote server, aren't they getting what they deserve in the same way that I would get my just deserts from driving my car without motor oil? Open-source does not equate to security in spite of stupidity!!
After all this seems to be another technology that no one has asked for like HDTV.
I've asked for this several times. In fact I've begged for it.
Added to this it also seems to provide services that can already be provided by existing tech, as some posts have already pointed out. If I can already get internet on my tv, though a console, why would i need this.
Can that TV console pull up an XTerm and let you recompile the kernel on you're server? How is the text on that TV? No, not the large artistic fonts..the paragraph text. Is it even legible?
This boils down to a cool, quiet, roaming X display terminal. With it I could leave that hot, noisy server in the office, and go to a more comfortable place to compute. My wife will stop complaining that I spend all day in the office. Just think, I could ignore her in person now!!
To invalidate the possibility of others producing patents, IBM publishes a journal. Any good ideas that are borderline patentable get put in the journal. If someone sues IBM over patent issues, the journal is one of the first things that are searched.
Slashdot code could be used to the same purpose. Submit a patent idea as a story, let others flesh it out. Any open-source product that gets a cease and desist letter can send back a URL of where to pick up the discussion on Slashdot.
We can get down to the 7 per minute range...if you buy in lots of 500-1000. I probably spend 30min on the phone a month total, and I consider that too much. It would probably be down to 15 if it weren't for all the damn telemarketers.
Why is it that they *always* rule against Microsoft but yet they are always ruling in favor of the MPAA and Amazon and all of these other bullshit lawsuits?
Because, Bill Gates thinks that he's smart enough to be an advisor to GOD, and that all of these politicians and "laws" are below his contempt. M$ plays as if they can play smart judges and plaintiffs as fools like they do the general public. Unfortunately, judges, and smart people in general, don't like to be toyed with. M$ therefore gets slammed at every turn.
RIAA/MPAA/et.al., on the other hand, being the mafia dons they are, have a little more respect for the powers that be. They've paid off the right people beforehand, so that everything they do has a "legal" argument. They genuflect and smile when appropriate, and never scream about "thier intellectual property" (notice how they're always looking out for someone else?)
70% of making way in this life is not about how you treat others, but how you can convince others that you are treating them. M$ isn't doing as good a job of convincing as the other mafia groups.
It seems this technique requires the sun to heat the bag to cause the liquid to boil. Would this technique work at Mars which is further away from the sun? I realize they tested the balloon in similar temperature conditions (-50C), but how do you test for less solar energy? Make half the balloon white?
Intel could care less about the people who are worried about having to replace their cases. People who are upgrading processors, almost by definition, are buying in very small quantities. Nearly always, one and sometimes two at a time. Corporation have been turned off to component upgrades. It's cheaper for them to buy a whole new system than to pay someone to upgrade systems individually, and then incur all the other compatability problems that won't be covered by a warranty.
Since their big customers are buying whole new systems anyway, it's no problem to specify a new case and PS design. Dell and Gateway will make a few changes that will be amortized to nothing over the 100,000 units they will build.
It's worse than that. It used to be that you tipped for excellent service, and a decent tip was around 10%. Now crummy waiters act as if they're entitled to 15% gratuity. You dropped a $30 meal on my table, disappeared for 30 minutes as I choked on a dry steak without access to water, and now you come to me wanting me to pay you $5 for the pleasure of your non-service?
If your employer isn't paying you enough, quit. I didn't hire you and I'm not going to pay your salary. If a 15% tip is required, it should be printed on the damn menu.
"the objective was to travel the furthest on a flat surface."
And yet the computer didn't produce a simple wheeled vehicle. This seems to be nothing more than hype to me. How were the intermediate designs evaluated and selected (the crux of any genetic algorithm)? Wouldn't it have been much more impressive if the computer had developed the simple, yet extremely efficient, wheel independantly?
Fucking moron? Why don't you write your congreemen about that?
There is not a scarcity of information, once it is created. The problem is that there is only a limited number of people capable of creating information that anyone else wishes to share. Information can be duplicated, but it cannot be created at zero cost. Now that gives you another glib remark that you can go about repeating mindlessly.
Land, at the time of European invasion, was for all intent, limitless in America. My analogy stands.
Microsoft is attempting to stop the advancement in gaming hardware technology. These advancements haven't benefited anyone except hardware companies in the past, so M$ is going to mark a line in the sand and say, "This is it! No more advancement, no innovation, until WE say so!" Since M$ is the one true king, they are the ones who should be rightfully able to do this.
Now that we have that out of the way, I have one question. Instead of chasing the high end, authors could be just as creative using the middle of the road stuff out there, technology that has settle down and has the kinks worked out of it. Microsoft claims that they are doing this, stopping development so that the technology can settle down and get the kinks worked out.
How are the game designers supposed to become successful all of a sudden? If chasing the high-end is so expensive that it's driving companies to bankruptcy, why are they doing it? Why aren't they getting all creative with what's there now? I have a suspicion that in the factory-line software houses (game A looks just like game B) it is much easier to convince the PHBs to add hooks to the latest hardware than it is to actually allow someone to be creative.
One more question. 6 months after the X-box is out, it will be mediocre hardware. What's to stop company Y from adding a couple hooks so that it runs better on a regular PC with graphics card Z? Will we see M$ tying developers to the Xbox and not allowing them to move games to other platforms? Game developers, I do not mean to spread FUD, but be afraid. Be VERY afraid.
all the US has to do is expressly state that the judicial branch of government will not get involved in disputes over domain names in anything but the.us TLD. Plain and simple. Just say that if you want us to protect your trademark name, then you had better register it in our TLD. Otherwise, it is a free for all.
The biggest problem here will be figuring out how to get out of the way as all the big corps rush to register and advertise their.us 2nd level. The public education of how the DNS naming works would be worth the effort in itself.
Of course, I would apply the rules proposed by a previous poster. You can't register a.us 2nd level unless you were somehow involved in all 50 states. I would only be allowed "me".durham.nc.us, but Ms. Portman has a claim to hotgrits.us.
The people who have the information don't want YOU to get it, so they can monopolize their possesion of it and make money from it.
This is the way of the world. Native Americans didn't have a concept of private land ownership at the time of European invasion. One day, a member of a nearby tribe was letting his horse eat in a field. The farmer who had fenced off the patch of ground took issue with the native's actions, and asked if he didn't realize that the land was private property. "Did you create the land? Can you make the grass grow?" was the reply of the slightly confused native.
It's often said on/. that information wants to be free. Unfortunately, when it is free it has no monetary value. If anyone can go anywhere and do as they please, private land ownership becomes meaningless. In the same way, if no one is allowed to build fences around information and stake a claim to it, information property ownership becomes meaningless.
Be very clear about it, dear slashdotter. Knowledged is being fenced off, and 'NO TRESPASSERS' signs are being posted. The powers that be will go to war, decimating anyone who stand in their way, to enforce these artificial boundaries in the same way that the Native Americans were decimated in times past. Since the ones in control have smelled the possibility of lucre in partitioning knowledge, it will happen. In a few years everyone will think you nuts if you say that things should be otherwise. (If I claim that no one should have exclusive rights to a piece of land, how much support would I garner?)
You cannot stop the river, but you may be able to bend it.
Slashdot Mirror
Why do we not have a simple, flat-tax structure that everyone can handle?
I was listening to a debate on talk radio about this a week or so ago. The proponent for the flat tax argued that you should only have to list your income and deductions, and then multipy by a percentage and that would be your tax. Nice and simple.
I don't see it as being so simple. Is my company sponsored health care plan part of my income? How about my brother-in-law? Is his company car (which can't be justified for company use as he works in a single factory) income? Should I be able to deduct the expense of new t-shirts that I wear to work since I would just wear the old ones if I were working from home?
Indeed, figuring my own taxes year to year, I have discovered the complexity in taxes isn't in figuring the rate (a simple stepped percentage, which most people can look up in the tables). The complexity lies in computing what to apply that rate to.
Bush wants to spur economic growth in the US by encouraging the technology sector with tax shelters. Will I qualify for those shelters? Dammit, he just made my taxes more complicated.
My point is that the tax code is complicated in the US and all other countries because politicians cave in to 'good causes' by passing out tax breaks. If you want a simple tax system, recind all tax breaks and deductions. Let politicians vote a donation to things they support (of course, you'll suddenly find a lot less 'support'), instead of disguising what they're giving away behind euphanisms.
Why is the entire planet apparently obsessed with silly little pieces of green (or other colored) paper with pictures and numbers printed on them? Why is money treated as the be-all and end-all of existence?
If you have a good answer for that one, I think we'd all like to hear it.
People are obsessed with money, because money is how we denominate resources and controlling resources equates to power in any social situation. Say I go into a restaurant. If I have money, I can convince the proprieters of the establishment to bring me food. They will even ensure that my drink remains filled. They do this with the idea that if they do it enough then they will garner enough resources to convince a car manufacturer to trade them a vehicle for all the green paper they've collected. This will enable them to travel to the country where they can trade more of their green paper to stay at a bed-n-breakfast where someone else will serve them and keep their drink full. If they collect enough green paper, they might be able to convince someone of the opposite sex to travel with them in their new vehicle and play with them at the bed-n-breakfast. If they've worked really hard, and saved a lot of the green paper, the may convince several of the opposite sex to go with them at the same time to play at the bed-n-breakfast.
If this isn't something to get obsessed about, I don't know what is.
Where are my moderator points when I need them? The most sensible post in the whole thread sitting at 1.
My whole house only needs 1 IP. I don't have enough money to buy enough devices to use all of the reserved addresses. Who cares if NAT requires rewriting of FTP packets? Computation power is so cheap that it isn't worth tracking the MIPS necessary to rewrite every packet going out over a cable modem.
Besides, why would my frig need a world addressable IP? I don't need it to call the serviceman when it thinks that it's broke so that he can come and charge me $50 for changing the lightbulb.
Nearly every problem I see that needs 128bit IPs as a solution are marketing hype or manufactured bullsh*t. I do understand that IPv6 has other features (QOS, multicasting, etc), and these features may be worth the cost of conversion, but being able to address every grain of sand in the world is not what I consider a goal worthy of much investment.
Use this process to coat the rings and cylinder wall for my trucks engine. While there at it, coat everything that rubs or has water running through it. With its low coefficient of friction, and long wear, the engine will double in horsepower, get twice the mileage and practically never wear out (with proper maintenance).
The long life will mean that the most environmentally damaging the vehicles do in their lifespan (other than crushing small woodland critters), being made, will be done less often.
There's got to be more to the story than what you say.
No there doesn't. You just have to read what I said. The pertinent part was Associates in Electronic Engineering Technologies. That's a two year degree, versus your bachelor, a four year degree.
This reminds me of 'long ago', about '92 I think it was. I was getting ready to finish my first degree, an Associates in Electronic Engineering Technologies. All the professional industry magazines that I was reading kept proclaiming what a shortage of technical workers there was. I was so excited to be earning a degree in field with such a demand.
I graduated with about 20 other guys. I got lucky and landed a job in a union shop where I got about $10/hr. The best the others could find were some jobs paying $7/hr. As a point of reference, the job I had to get through school was as a security guard. I sat at a desk and had people sign a paper when they came in. I made $6/hr.
It's been said often, but never loudly enough. The shortage isn't of qualified workers. The shortage is of qualified workers who will give their services away for free.
Why isn't there a shortage of qualified CEOs for technical oriented companies? If colleges aren't putting out enough people who know how to program, how are they putting out enough who know how to manage programmers? Someone should argue before Congress that the increase in H1-B for technical workers should be tied to an increase in H1-B for management positions.
A popular mechanic was so busy that he couldn't handle all his paperwork, so he hired a secretary. She wasn't qualified to keep the books, so he had to hire an accountant. Before long, he needed an office manager. It wasn't long before the accountant noticed that the company was running in the red, so the office personel had a meeting to discuss ways to cut the budget. The first suggestion came from the office manager. "I know," he said, "let's get rid of that guy out back."
A professional guild would go a long way toward establishing guidelines for what should be expected of a professional engineer and what are acceptable working conditions. I shy away from 'union', because the term has become to be synonomous with 'racket', and very few engineers want to deal with having a second boss (I've worked in a union shop, and that is exactly what a union boils down to). The guild would set guidelines for behaviour versus negotiating contracts. You could still work 70hr weeks, but it would be understood that you were working more than what is reasonable (which it is!!).
I would compare it more to car sales.
If I walk on a lot and the prices aren't posted on the cars, I immediately leave. Their goal is to size you up and determine how much they can take you for. For instance, they'll take a woman and try to convince her that the rattling from under the hood is insignificant while ranting over the cool in-dash make-up kit, and try to convince her that this makes the car worth $3000 more than the bluebook value. Totally disgusting behavior, which tics my wife off so bad that I HAVE to go car shopping with her just to discourage the jerks. (Guess what I spent my labor day weekend doing.)
This type of profiling is the same in my eyes. Amazon wants to figure out what you as an individual, rather than the market in general, are willing to pay for an item. It's just that in this case, there is a sticker price in the window so you can fill all secure inside that you are being treated fairly, but the sticker you get isn't the same one everyone else gets.
As for comparison shopping, what happens when this profiling database gets distributed? Everyone knows that you like Anime, and you have to pay twice as much as I, no matter where you shop. Are we back to the situation where only the people who don't need credit can get it?
As all geeks know, positive feedback systems are inherently(sp?) unstable. Increased output pushes up the input, which increases the output until the system overloads.
The way collected funds are distributed could produce a positive feedback system here could it not? Taxes are collected from all forms of recordable media, but who are they distributed to? If the funds are proportioned according to market share, that means that the largest corps get extra input which will encourage more output which will increase market share....
How much goes to small bands? Can I strum a guitar, call myself a musician, and then lay claim to my share of the taxes? How do you qualify to be a distributor? If I record my guitar strum, put it on a CDR while releasing it as an MP3, do I then qualify as a distributor with the right to lay claim to my fair share of the bounty?
If you divide the booty up by market share, would that be a share of units sold or value of units sold? If I gave away crap in a cereal box, does that increase my market share?
It never ceases to amaze me that legislatures happily pass totally unenforceable laws that create more problems than they solve. Some things just cannot be fixed by edicts from on high.
To say it in my own words, it seems as if certain corporations hold the mistaken view that the public airwaves are not public, but are instead owned by them.
Ok. This statement has me worried. The FCC decided to auction off the airwaves recently. If we've granted rights to corps through this action, the airwave may not be public property in the US anymore. Could someone with better insight on this speak up?
send letters to the FCC along the lines of:
But it's not fair. Those meanies are trying to take my VCR away. I deserve my VCR. Waah!!
Those letters will do nothing but irritate the powers that be. Use strong reasoning that quotes laws (section and paragraph), and case law. This is what the commissioners understand. They assume that the majority of the populace are a bunch of crybabies who'll accept anything as long as they get their bread and circuses. They actually get scared when the find that they are coming up against a large group of people who actually know stuff.
Go forth. Scour the internet for information where Congress/courst/State legislatures have deemed that people actually have rights to information that is broadcast over public airwaves and facilities (the controlled monopoly nature of most cable systems make them a public facility in my view). Let the FCC know that they can't pull a fast one here without someone taking it to court.
Also, remember, your Congresspeople have more pull than you. Be nice to them. Some of them seem to be on our side, despite their initial support for DMCA. Some of them might actually be looking for retribution over how that one went.
Let me get this straight. There's a trojan floating around which requires some libraries be installed in secure locations, which requires root permissions. So the article goes on about how the trojan works, but gives not one indication of how the thing gets installed. Not to worry though, they have a product that will plug the hole for you.
Why do I smell old fish? It sounds to me that there is an attempt to sell a product by scare-mongering. How can an IRC chat session install files in a directory that requires root permissions? If someone is chatting in IRC as root and allows unchecked software to be installed from a remote server, aren't they getting what they deserve in the same way that I would get my just deserts from driving my car without motor oil? Open-source does not equate to security in spite of stupidity!!
After all this seems to be another technology that no one has asked for like HDTV.
I've asked for this several times. In fact I've begged for it.
Added to this it also seems to provide services that can already be provided by existing tech, as some posts have already pointed out. If I can already get internet on my tv, though a console, why would i need this.
Can that TV console pull up an XTerm and let you recompile the kernel on you're server? How is the text on that TV? No, not the large artistic fonts..the paragraph text. Is it even legible?
This boils down to a cool, quiet, roaming X display terminal. With it I could leave that hot, noisy server in the office, and go to a more comfortable place to compute. My wife will stop complaining that I spend all day in the office. Just think, I could ignore her in person now!!
To invalidate the possibility of others producing patents, IBM publishes a journal. Any good ideas that are borderline patentable get put in the journal. If someone sues IBM over patent issues, the journal is one of the first things that are searched.
Slashdot code could be used to the same purpose. Submit a patent idea as a story, let others flesh it out. Any open-source product that gets a cease and desist letter can send back a URL of where to pick up the discussion on Slashdot.
They released the balloon at 100,000 feet.
At least that was what the article claimed.
We can get down to the 7 per minute range...if you buy in lots of 500-1000. I probably spend 30min on the phone a month total, and I consider that too much. It would probably be down to 15 if it weren't for all the damn telemarketers.
Why is it that they *always* rule against Microsoft but yet they are always ruling in favor of the MPAA and Amazon and all of these other bullshit lawsuits?
Because, Bill Gates thinks that he's smart enough to be an advisor to GOD, and that all of these politicians and "laws" are below his contempt. M$ plays as if they can play smart judges and plaintiffs as fools like they do the general public. Unfortunately, judges, and smart people in general, don't like to be toyed with. M$ therefore gets slammed at every turn.
RIAA/MPAA/et.al., on the other hand, being the mafia dons they are, have a little more respect for the powers that be. They've paid off the right people beforehand, so that everything they do has a "legal" argument. They genuflect and smile when appropriate, and never scream about "thier intellectual property" (notice how they're always looking out for someone else?)
70% of making way in this life is not about how you treat others, but how you can convince others that you are treating them. M$ isn't doing as good a job of convincing as the other mafia groups.
Let's see.
30 cents a minute.
2 hours reading Slashdot.
That comes to $36 dollars to enjoy reading a lot of useless opinions in a cramped format.
I make a lot, but not that much. If you've got other bills to pay, this is useless.
It seems this technique requires the sun to heat the bag to cause the liquid to boil. Would this technique work at Mars which is further away from the sun? I realize they tested the balloon in similar temperature conditions (-50C), but how do you test for less solar energy? Make half the balloon white?
Intel could care less about the people who are worried about having to replace their cases. People who are upgrading processors, almost by definition, are buying in very small quantities. Nearly always, one and sometimes two at a time. Corporation have been turned off to component upgrades. It's cheaper for them to buy a whole new system than to pay someone to upgrade systems individually, and then incur all the other compatability problems that won't be covered by a warranty.
Since their big customers are buying whole new systems anyway, it's no problem to specify a new case and PS design. Dell and Gateway will make a few changes that will be amortized to nothing over the 100,000 units they will build.
It's worse than that. It used to be that you tipped for excellent service, and a decent tip was around 10%. Now crummy waiters act as if they're entitled to 15% gratuity. You dropped a $30 meal on my table, disappeared for 30 minutes as I choked on a dry steak without access to water, and now you come to me wanting me to pay you $5 for the pleasure of your non-service?
If your employer isn't paying you enough, quit. I didn't hire you and I'm not going to pay your salary. If a 15% tip is required, it should be printed on the damn menu.
"the objective was to travel the furthest on a flat surface."
And yet the computer didn't produce a simple wheeled vehicle. This seems to be nothing more than hype to me. How were the intermediate designs evaluated and selected (the crux of any genetic algorithm)? Wouldn't it have been much more impressive if the computer had developed the simple, yet extremely efficient, wheel independantly?
Fucking moron? Why don't you write your congreemen about that?
There is not a scarcity of information, once it is created. The problem is that there is only a limited number of people capable of creating information that anyone else wishes to share. Information can be duplicated, but it cannot be created at zero cost. Now that gives you another glib remark that you can go about repeating mindlessly.
Land, at the time of European invasion, was for all intent, limitless in America. My analogy stands.
Microsoft is attempting to stop the advancement in gaming hardware technology. These advancements haven't benefited anyone except hardware companies in the past, so M$ is going to mark a line in the sand and say, "This is it! No more advancement, no innovation, until WE say so!" Since M$ is the one true king, they are the ones who should be rightfully able to do this.
Now that we have that out of the way, I have one question. Instead of chasing the high end, authors could be just as creative using the middle of the road stuff out there, technology that has settle down and has the kinks worked out of it. Microsoft claims that they are doing this, stopping development so that the technology can settle down and get the kinks worked out.
How are the game designers supposed to become successful all of a sudden? If chasing the high-end is so expensive that it's driving companies to bankruptcy, why are they doing it? Why aren't they getting all creative with what's there now? I have a suspicion that in the factory-line software houses (game A looks just like game B) it is much easier to convince the PHBs to add hooks to the latest hardware than it is to actually allow someone to be creative.
One more question. 6 months after the X-box is out, it will be mediocre hardware. What's to stop company Y from adding a couple hooks so that it runs better on a regular PC with graphics card Z? Will we see M$ tying developers to the Xbox and not allowing them to move games to other platforms? Game developers, I do not mean to spread FUD, but be afraid. Be VERY afraid.
all the US has to do is expressly state that the judicial branch of government will not get involved in disputes over domain names in anything but the .us TLD. Plain and simple. Just say that if you want us to protect your trademark name, then you had better register it in our TLD. Otherwise, it is a free for all.
.us 2nd level. The public education of how the DNS naming works would be worth the effort in itself.
.us 2nd level unless you were somehow involved in all 50 states. I would only be allowed "me".durham.nc.us, but Ms. Portman has a claim to hotgrits.us.
The biggest problem here will be figuring out how to get out of the way as all the big corps rush to register and advertise their
Of course, I would apply the rules proposed by a previous poster. You can't register a
The people who have the information don't want YOU to get it, so they can monopolize their possesion of it and make money from it.
/. that information wants to be free. Unfortunately, when it is free it has no monetary value. If anyone can go anywhere and do as they please, private land ownership becomes meaningless. In the same way, if no one is allowed to build fences around information and stake a claim to it, information property ownership becomes meaningless.
This is the way of the world. Native Americans didn't have a concept of private land ownership at the time of European invasion. One day, a member of a nearby tribe was letting his horse eat in a field. The farmer who had fenced off the patch of ground took issue with the native's actions, and asked if he didn't realize that the land was private property. "Did you create the land? Can you make the grass grow?" was the reply of the slightly confused native.
It's often said on
Be very clear about it, dear slashdotter. Knowledged is being fenced off, and 'NO TRESPASSERS' signs are being posted. The powers that be will go to war, decimating anyone who stand in their way, to enforce these artificial boundaries in the same way that the Native Americans were decimated in times past. Since the ones in control have smelled the possibility of lucre in partitioning knowledge, it will happen. In a few years everyone will think you nuts if you say that things should be otherwise. (If I claim that no one should have exclusive rights to a piece of land, how much support would I garner?)
You cannot stop the river, but you may be able to bend it.