Correct. I wrote (and implied) nothing about drivers. My point was that states (at least those I have knowledge of) has not proven competent to judge them.
If you are saying nothing about drivers, how have you drawn a conclusion about whether the boogyman^W"state" has not proven competent to judge them ? Is your fundamental argument here the "state" is not capable of judging anyone ? Should we be living in a lawless, free-for-all society ?
This means your selection of Games is dependent on the OS you use, which is fucking retarded in every sense of the word -- It's bad for gamers, it's bad for game devs, it's bad for hardware makers, it's bad for everyone but.... Microsoft.
Actually it's quite good for customers and developers because developers not having to worry about multi-platform QA means their time to market is quicker and their maintenance overheads are lower. The only people single-platform software is bad for are the ones without that platform.
Chip makers did. In fact, because of so much proprietary Windows market share, and resistance to architecture changes meant that the bloated x86 had to stick around FAR longer than it was actually needed. For fuck's sake man, we have interpretors on the chip just to emulate rarely used instructions! That's not an advance! That's Retardation!
Windows was multi-architecture from the early '90s. The market wasn't interested. Microsoft did nothing to hold anyone on to x86 and were ready to move whichever way the CPU architecture wars went.
It's blatantly wrong, but for the sake of argument, Windows consumes more cycles than BSD, Linux, and some OSX versions.
No, once you equalise for features and capabilities Windows is no heavier than the others (particularly OSX, which was far and away the heaviest OS on the market, especially in the 2000s - you literally could not buy a Mac that ran it well for *years* after its release - no version of Windows has ever been that bad).
Their decade long lag with IE6, and non adherence to standards is the scourge of every the web designer. We'd have had the web we have now, but Sooner and FASTER without MS's browser shenanigans, i.e., w/o IE.
Long before IE6 were IE3 and IE4, which killed Netscape and their dreams of a proprietary client-server WWW, while delivering better standards compliance, performance and feature set.
Even if I gave you this one too, the progress would have been made by someone else. If Alexander G. Bell would have died at birth, we'd have had the Telephone one hour later. We had incandescent bulbs two years before Edison figured out which gas to put in them, others were doing the same work, but he had more money -- Someone would have replaced the vacuum bulb with argon, there's only so many known elements. MS could have never existed and nothing of value would have been lost.
But they didn't, so it was Microsoft. Seriously, do you have a problem crediting Bell and Edison even though someone else would have eventually done it as well ?
MS's OS GUI wasn't vastly superior to OS2, X, or MacOS.
It certainly was to anything you'd find on X (which isn't even a GUI) until the 2000s when KDE and GNOME started to mature. Classic MacOS's instability and lack of decent multitasking, then OS X's atrocious performance and responsiveness until the mid-2000s and common availability of G5s/x86 made its GUI awful as well. So, for a good 7-odd years the Windows "GUI" _was_ easily the best on the market.
Were the solutions MS provided to be provided by a company other than MS, there would have been a chance that interoperability issues would have been resolved sooner and RISC-esque chipsets would likely have been more prevalent pulling less power for the same computations, thus consuming far less energy.
Laughable. Microsoft had Windows NT running on multiple RISC platforms in the '90s and no-one was interested. Why ? Because they were proprietary and/or hideously expensive. You clearly have a chip on your shoulder and a desire to blame everything on Microsoft, which is why you're ignoring the real culprits for the (dubious) "crime" of constraining cross-platform software: the software developers.
There is no way that any new software we would accept could suck so hard that this hardware wouldn't serve it fast.
I'd like you to meet one of our (multiple) in-house applications that are single-threaded. We (the Systems - ie: infrastructure - Architecture team) had to explain to the lead software developer (who has been here thirty years and is politically untouchable) why his brand new $100k, quad-socket, 32-core server was actually slower than his dual-core desktop at running his code.
"a basic living wage to the masses" is a guarantee that the huge fraction of the populace that thinks that just getting by is good enough will expand, and never work a day in their lives.
Provide evidence for this assertion. Actual evidence, as well, not "I know this guy who does nothing but collect welfare cheques, smoke dope and surf" anecdotes. You might start by looking at the countries where living on welfare is, in fact, possible yet most people still choose to work. Actually, it might be easier for you to find the countries where living on welfare is possible and some appreciable proportion of the population choose _not_ to pursue better paying employment (as far as I know, there aren't any).
The reality is, 15 year olds having sex is way too common because all of society seems okay with it. And it is 14, and 13 too. When, as a society, are we (society) going to take responsibility for the message that "sex is great, do not wait" message that is permeating media today?
Today ? Teenagers have been having sex since time immemorial. Even when the cost of doing so (ie: painful death) was far more serious than it i today. There's nothing unusual - socially or biologically - about people having sex once they have reached sexual maturity. Nearly all, however, when given the option, are eager to separate sex from procreation.
I have daughters who are virgins into their 20's, and people think this is crazy!
It is. The social conditioning (or, less politely, religious brainwashing) required is mind-boggling. I pity your children.
Evidence tends toward no. Hell, most states can't even properly decide a driver's competence. I wouldn't trust them a bit with guns. Your dissonance is staggering, yet unsurprising. You apparently argue the same people who incapable of driving a car should be allowed to own and operate deadly weapons without even the most basic forms of regulation and control around access, competency and storage.
I'm comparing arbitrary criteria that can be used for discrimination.
Guns aren't arbitrary criteria. Arbitrary criteria would be things like how you take your coffee, or what your favourite colour is. Things that actually have zero relevance to the rest of the society you live in.
You miss the point. Weapons shouldn't be registered to start with. The state shouldn't have any idea who owns what. It's none of their business.
It is, however, the business of the thousands of people who live near you to be confident you have some capability and competency of how to handle said weapons.
Hence the reason we have licenses for other things that are of similar importance, like driving or practicing medicine.
If seagate drives really had anything close to a 33% failure rate, it'd be plastered all over every bit of vaguely consumer protection oriented media in the world.
for example if i buy a new suit "for work" (and for weddings etc) and i pay $1000 for it, when it comes to tax time i get $500 back for that suit because for a $250k salary you're paying 50% tax on most of it
No you're not. The federal tax bracket for $250k is 33%, and even that only applies from ~$180k upwards. There are of course state and local taxes as well, but they're not going to come within a bull's roar of "paying 50% tax on most of it".
There are only a handful of countries where the overall tax burden is near 50%, and the USA - one of the lowest taxing developed countries in the world - is most assuredly not one of them.
Likely, based on what? With a flat-tax and no deductions (save the one I mentioned) I believe the government would end up with more revenue than it does now.
Believe ? Based on what ?
Or are you advocating a flat tax rate up around the 30-35% mark, where people in the upper income brackets effectively end up now ?
It would also become (due to the single deduction that helps low-income people more) a progressive-tax as the more you make the higher your effective tax rate goes (until it flat-lines at the flat tax rate).
Or you could just have a progressive tax system in the first place, without trying to complicate it with deductions and other shennanigans.
Not to mention that it would allow most of the IRS (and its expenses) to go away.
Surely you jest. There's plenty of other taxation that needs to be evaded other than just income tax.
A flat income tax is regressive in the context of the entire tax structure. If flat taxes are so fair, how about we have a flat tax on assets instead ?
Easy for you to say, it's not your million. What if that person has a million or more in costs? Suddenly 25% is crippling to them too.
Then they should manage their money better.
Oh, I get it, you don't care that it's crippling to them. Nice selective compassion there...
I care whether it's crippling for someone to meet the expenses of a basic, comfortable lifestyle.
I don't care whether someone's life of luxury is marginally impinged by an inability to buy a fourth.
Bottom line - it's their money, not yours (both the 30K'er and the 1M'er). Stop telling yourself that it's "yours" under the banner of "fairness" or "progressive".
Taxes in the USA are oppressively high despite being amongst the lowest in the developed world. The only people who benefit from Government expenses are worthless deadbeats who should simply be left to die in the street. The 90% of workers who don't earn enough to live without financial worry would be filthy rich if not for the ~20% of their income they pay in tax.
If companies are allowed to keep more of their money in the US then that will likely be spent in wages and products that support additional wages. No, it'll be spent on executive bonuses sent to their foreign bank accounts.
The last few years of GFC (heck, and the preceding couple of decades) have handily demonstrated how companies will act. Huge wage increases for the handful at the top, soaring profits, sweet fuck all for the average worker.
Bottom line - everyone pays xx% of their income, no matter how poor, or how rich, no matter how many influential people they bribe or sleep with. Set it at about 27 or 28%, and I'll see no change. Set it somewhere, anywhere - then ENFORCE IT FOR EVERYONE!
Trouble is if you setup xx% high enough to be useful, you smash the lower end of the middle class and everyone earning less.
Flat income taxes are regressive. Losing 25% of your income is not a burden for someone pulling in a million a year, but it's crippling for someone pulling in $30k/yr.
No, but they don't always get the latest greatest medical developments found in the US either. MRIs still take months to get in Canada, you really want to be on waiting list for everything?
I'd rather be on A waiting list than NO waiting list.
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No, no it's not.
For a basic example, food is quite objectively more relevant to survival than, say, your favourite TV show.
If you are saying nothing about drivers, how have you drawn a conclusion about whether the boogyman^W"state" has not proven competent to judge them ?
Is your fundamental argument here the "state" is not capable of judging anyone ? Should we be living in a lawless, free-for-all society ?
Actually it's quite good for customers and developers because developers not having to worry about multi-platform QA means their time to market is quicker and their maintenance overheads are lower. The only people single-platform software is bad for are the ones without that platform.
Windows was multi-architecture from the early '90s. The market wasn't interested. Microsoft did nothing to hold anyone on to x86 and were ready to move whichever way the CPU architecture wars went.
No, once you equalise for features and capabilities Windows is no heavier than the others (particularly OSX, which was far and away the heaviest OS on the market, especially in the 2000s - you literally could not buy a Mac that ran it well for *years* after its release - no version of Windows has ever been that bad).
Long before IE6 were IE3 and IE4, which killed Netscape and their dreams of a proprietary client-server WWW, while delivering better standards compliance, performance and feature set.
But they didn't, so it was Microsoft. Seriously, do you have a problem crediting Bell and Edison even though someone else would have eventually done it as well ?
It certainly was to anything you'd find on X (which isn't even a GUI) until the 2000s when KDE and GNOME started to mature. Classic MacOS's instability and lack of decent multitasking, then OS X's atrocious performance and responsiveness until the mid-2000s and common availability of G5s/x86 made its GUI awful as well. So, for a good 7-odd years the Windows "GUI" _was_ easily the best on the market.
Laughable. Microsoft had Windows NT running on multiple RISC platforms in the '90s and no-one was interested. Why ? Because they were proprietary and/or hideously expensive.
You clearly have a chip on your shoulder and a desire to blame everything on Microsoft, which is why you're ignoring the real culprits for the (dubious) "crime" of constraining cross-platform software: the software developers.
I'd like you to meet one of our (multiple) in-house applications that are single-threaded.
We (the Systems - ie: infrastructure - Architecture team) had to explain to the lead software developer (who has been here thirty years and is politically untouchable) why his brand new $100k, quad-socket, 32-core server was actually slower than his dual-core desktop at running his code.
Provide evidence for this assertion.
Actual evidence, as well, not "I know this guy who does nothing but collect welfare cheques, smoke dope and surf" anecdotes.
You might start by looking at the countries where living on welfare is, in fact, possible yet most people still choose to work.
Actually, it might be easier for you to find the countries where living on welfare is possible and some appreciable proportion of the population choose _not_ to pursue better paying employment (as far as I know, there aren't any).
Today ?
Teenagers have been having sex since time immemorial. Even when the cost of doing so (ie: painful death) was far more serious than it i today. There's nothing unusual - socially or biologically - about people having sex once they have reached sexual maturity. Nearly all, however, when given the option, are eager to separate sex from procreation.
It is. The social conditioning (or, less politely, religious brainwashing) required is mind-boggling. I pity your children.
So your implication here:
Is _not_ that the typical licensed driver (which, let's face it, is all but equivalent to the typical adult) is incompetent ?
Evidence tends toward no. Hell, most states can't even properly decide a driver's competence. I wouldn't trust them a bit with guns.
Your dissonance is staggering, yet unsurprising. You apparently argue the same people who incapable of driving a car should be allowed to own and operate deadly weapons without even the most basic forms of regulation and control around access, competency and storage.
Guns aren't arbitrary criteria. Arbitrary criteria would be things like how you take your coffee, or what your favourite colour is. Things that actually have zero relevance to the rest of the society you live in.
It is, however, the business of the thousands of people who live near you to be confident you have some capability and competency of how to handle said weapons.
Hence the reason we have licenses for other things that are of similar importance, like driving or practicing medicine.
If the car can't react to it in time, the chances of an inattentive "driver" doing so must be approaching zero.
The plural of anecdote is not data.
If seagate drives really had anything close to a 33% failure rate, it'd be plastered all over every bit of vaguely consumer protection oriented media in the world.
Holy crap. Twenty 3T spindles in a single array ? What do you do to de-stress ? Run between cars on a highway ?
Just for your reference Australia is also one of the lowest taxing countries in the OECD. Overall tax burden is only a bit higher than the USA.
No you're not.
The federal tax bracket for $250k is 33%, and even that only applies from ~$180k upwards. There are of course state and local taxes as well, but they're not going to come within a bull's roar of "paying 50% tax on most of it".
There are only a handful of countries where the overall tax burden is near 50%, and the USA - one of the lowest taxing developed countries in the world - is most assuredly not one of them.
Believe ? Based on what ?
Or are you advocating a flat tax rate up around the 30-35% mark, where people in the upper income brackets effectively end up now ?
Or you could just have a progressive tax system in the first place, without trying to complicate it with deductions and other shennanigans.
Surely you jest. There's plenty of other taxation that needs to be evaded other than just income tax.
A flat income tax is regressive in the context of the entire tax structure.
If flat taxes are so fair, how about we have a flat tax on assets instead ?
(Likely) insufficient tax revenue to meet expenses. A system designed to accelerate wealth gaps and minimise class mobility.
I didn't say they'd be crippling in that context. They'll certainly be disadvantageous, however.
Then they should manage their money better.
I care whether it's crippling for someone to meet the expenses of a basic, comfortable lifestyle.
I don't care whether someone's life of luxury is marginally impinged by an inability to buy a fourth.
I never said it was "mine".
No, problem moved slightly up the income ladder.
He means:
Taxes in the USA are oppressively high despite being amongst the lowest in the developed world. The only people who benefit from Government expenses are worthless deadbeats who should simply be left to die in the street. The 90% of workers who don't earn enough to live without financial worry would be filthy rich if not for the ~20% of their income they pay in tax.
If companies are allowed to keep more of their money in the US then that will likely be spent in wages and products that support additional wages.
No, it'll be spent on executive bonuses sent to their foreign bank accounts.
The last few years of GFC (heck, and the preceding couple of decades) have handily demonstrated how companies will act. Huge wage increases for the handful at the top, soaring profits, sweet fuck all for the average worker.
Bottom line - everyone pays xx% of their income, no matter how poor, or how rich, no matter how many influential people they bribe or sleep with. Set it at about 27 or 28%, and I'll see no change. Set it somewhere, anywhere - then ENFORCE IT FOR EVERYONE!
Trouble is if you setup xx% high enough to be useful, you smash the lower end of the middle class and everyone earning less.
Flat income taxes are regressive. Losing 25% of your income is not a burden for someone pulling in a million a year, but it's crippling for someone pulling in $30k/yr.
I'd rather be on A waiting list than NO waiting list.