With a flat tax, ALL taxation would be in proportion to wealth. You make more, you pay more. You make less, you pay less. But everybody actually pays taxes in that system, which is important in a Democratic Republic, lest a significant portion of the public comes to see those richer than them as their meal ticket, and develop an entitlement to what others have earned. Which is exactly what has happened. That chunk of the populace has discovered that they can vote themselves other people's money. Two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner, in a kind of way.
Indeed. Pity the rich, for they are the true victims of modern society.
And why they did this just before hundreds of millions of dollars became available for services like the ones they offer, from an organization that really doesn't like Wikileaks.
You do understand that a strategic decision like this takes months, if not years to make, right ? That someone didn't just wake up a week ago and decide "we're going cloud" ?
Back in the day when Microsoft was advertising Windows NT 3.51 was C2-certified, we looked into the docs and one of the requirements on whatever PS/2 it was that was certified was that the floppy disk drive be removed. And off the network.
I think you'll find that was a requirement for any system to be C2-certified - it was part of the spec.
High frequency trading actually facilitates more accurate pricing of securities because of the liquidity it introduces to the market. The benefit of accurate pricing is hard to explain fully without getting deeper into the economics of markets, but it's definitely there. The animosity you raised is probably due to a perceived lack of contribution (no tangible products produced). But actually, facilitating better pricing will route investment into areas that deserve it (e.g. to the guy who produces 2 potatoes per unit resource instead of 1.5 potatoes). The sum effect of these actions is a raised social utility.
I want to know what can change about a company in a second that can meaningfully adjust its value, that wouldn't also have the same result on a timescale of hours (or even days).
Oops, just tried it in IE, and it opened a new window. Alt+Space M seems to work in Access.
It works fine in IE. I don't have Access installed so I can't test, but since Alt+space is the system-wide combo to bring up a window's system menu, there's no reason I can think of that it shouldn't work. Heck, you can often use this trick to minimise windows that "shouldn't" be minimisable.
What you're actually doing is opening the system menu with Alt+space, then selecting "Minimise" from that with 'n'. There is not a specific single "Minimise window" combo so far as I know. The same process can also be used to maximise, restore, resize, move and close windows from the keyboard. In Windows, pressing the underlined letter (for menus) or Alt+underlined letter (in dialogs) will "click" that item. Tab will iterate through dialog box elements.
The Acer came with Win 7, and its documentation dodn't seem much if any better than XP's.
In Windows 7, opening up help and typing "keyboard shortcuts" results in a page full of hits. The 7th item is called "Keyboard shortcuts" and from a quick sampling probably lists all of them. Not to mention they're nearly always listed beside the relevant items in menus anyway.
Maybe I should buy a Mac...
I wouldn't advise it if you want good keyboard access. Even today, MacOS clearly betrays its thou-shalt-use-the-single-button-mouse roots - its keyboardability only has delusions of adequacy, especially by default. Enabling "keyboard accessibility" improves things a bit, but still not in the same league as Windows.
If you want to stimulate job creation, you give tax breaks to the middle clas and poor. Especially the poor, who have to spend that money out of necessity.
The problem with this is a) tax cuts for the poor and middle classes almost always inherently include tax breaks for the wealthy (albeit minor ones) and b) most of the poor don't end up paying tax anyway, so the benefit to them of paying less tax is frequently zero.
We have intellectual property because we decided a long time ago that ideas have value. If they have value, should it not be possible to buy, sell, or trade them?
Yes.
And if they can be bought, sold, or traded, are ideas then not a form of property that can be owned?
No.
We've gotten a bit ridiculous with our protection in that regard recently, but the core of the thing - protecting ideas - is essential for ideas to flourish.
Because otherwise people will stop having ideas ? Most of the last few millenia of recorded history seem to disagree.
I never could figure out why they use Alt+Tab for switching between windows.
Because it's exceptionally easy to hit, quickly and consistently. Two relatively large keys, almost exactly where your thumb and little finger sit naturally.
Seems they could have used SysReq.
Awesome, needing two hands to switch windows.
And the Window key bugs me as well. Yes, there's Win+L etc, but it seems Ctrl+L would be better.
Well, what they *should* have done with Windows 95 was rebase and restandardise all the standard keyboard shortcuts (for close windows, copy/paste, etc) around the Windows key, like Apple does with the Command key. Unfortunately they instead chose to do it around the Ctrl key instead.
Can anybody tell me how to minimize or maximise a window without the mouse?
Alt+space, n (in Windows, MacOS has relatively poor keyboardability so there probably isn't one, and in Linux it could be anything, depending on which GUI you're running this week).
There's a lot about modern OSes that either don't make sense, are undocumented, or are poorly undocumented.
Most things are very well documented, you just need to look. Typing "keyboard shortcuts" into Windows Help will get you to a list of all the standard ones.
- Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command, Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 4.
- Turn on the computer.
Though since "turn on the computer" is actually Step 3, it's not as silly as the above makes it sound...
But seriously, one thing Microsoft did get right is that they pretty much reserved the windows-key as a system-wide shortcut key. Start-D (desktop), Start-L (lock), Start-R (run), Start-F (find), Start-E (explorer). I *love* those key bindings.
I like the Windows key shortcuts as well, but I lament the completely missed opportunity to rebase and restandardise all keyboard shortcuts on the Windows key, much like MacOS does with the Command key. The Windows key is grossly underutilised.
Contrast with Mac's F9, F10, F11 and F12 keys. If your program just happens to use one of those keys, you're shit-out-of-luck (as is the case when trying to debug something in Visual Studio in a virtual machine, for example).
These are relatively easy to trigger using the Fn- (or Command- on non-laptop keyboards, I think) modifier. If you need to trigger a scroll lock, however, and are on a Mac laptop or have one of their awful wireless keyboards, you really are SOL.
Additionally, those of us accustomed to working with *nix operating systems know that CTRL-INS and SHIFT-INS are handy combinations for copy & paste, [...]
Entertainingly enough, those keyboard shortcuts originated in Windows, via IBM's influence.
I've known people with all those conditions who have succeeded.
Great. Should we ignore all the rest because of that ?
And here in the US of A and just about ANY post industrial country, there is no excuse for poverty, not going to school or not knowing how to read or write.
There are plenty of good excuses, from drug addicted parents to bad luck.
As for marketable skills, only one skill is needed for just about any job, desire.
Oh, bullshit. You need to be in an area with work available. You need to know where to look. You need to know how to present yourself as employable.
That's just for minimum wage jobs that often don't even provide enough income to live on.
I didn't say it was easy, probably easier to sit on sidewalk with a sign that says "will work for food", which most people know is a lie. They won't work, for anything, for any reason.
Except you think this sort of person is representative of the majority of poor, and therefore justification for not assisting the poor, whereas the complete opposite is true.
I imagine the targets would be different, and the system we've got in place still has enough protection that they can't go out and be quite so blatant about it, but I can easily see a highly religious government in the states doing things like arresting homosexuals for sodomy, or getting a lot more hard line on "christian values."
The bigger problem is that the jury pool ends up being people that are less educated or retired and don't necessarily get shown a lot of respect by the politicians that require them to be there. The court staff does treat jurros well typically, but it's hard to feel appreciated when you're being asked to lose so much money to serve.
The proper solution here is for legislation that requires employers to treat jury duty as paid time off *separate* to normal vacation time.
And most of the homeless I've encountered are that way for a reason of their own making.
You mean like mental illness ? The lack of any resources to bootstrap themselves into work ? No marketable skills and no way to get them ? Born into poverty, never gone to school and can't even read and write ?
I can certainly respect this. It's true altruism, quite unlike when government takes money by force and redistributes it. This is 100% voluntary, and therefore much more impressive and worthy of respect than any government program.
If there were sufficient "altruism" then said Government programs would not be necessary.
However, history has - and continues - to demonstrate this will never happen.
No. The latest version of the document will be opened, depending on if the two programs belong to the same virtual session. Think about it as if you are using a Virtual Machine for each application.
So if the system allows applications to access data in the same virtual session, who decides whether or not applications are "equal" ?
Nothing. It remains there, waiting to be opened by another application.
Sounds like things could get mighty cluttered (or an opening for a DoS attack).
The application developers.
Ok. So we're relying on application developers not to be stupid/ignorant/lazy/malicious. That hasn't worked out too well so far, what makes you think it would be any different this time ?
Well, ok. But it does not virtualize everything, so it does not do what I propose.
My point is that the fundamental capability is already present, so there's no need to do a ground-up reimplementation.
The programs themselves are particularly complex.
I sincerely doubt they're any more complex than Microsoft Office, Photoshop, or even something like Firefox, let alone a whole general purpose OS.
However, even if they are it's not really relevant. The complexity that's being discussed is one of the overall environment, not specific applications.
No, because they are programmed without the required quality.
Correct. Because there are more important priorities for them - features, time-to-market, cost, capabilities, etc.
No, no, and no. QNX, for example.
QNX is a good example, but the way it is typically implemented as an embedded system is not really a form in which is could substitute for OS X.
QNX is also not without security vulnerabilities, either.
That doesn't exclude spying, treason, unhappy personnel, sabotage, etc.
All of which are problems for a general purpose OS *as well*.
Oh, they do in a regular basis. All ships have internet, and all ships run internet applications. They regularly play flash games etc.
Er, yeah, but you're missing the point: they're not running them on the same embedded systems that manage the ship.
The tasks they have to do are vastly complex, much more complex than Microsoft Word and Internet Explorer and Outlook.
How so ?
Not only that, but lives depend on the software. Furthermore, software changes frequently on those ships, by updating and creating new modules.
After it's been thoroughly tested, QAed and approved by a central authority. No-one randomly loads up some piece of software on these systems and expects it to work, if the system even allows them to get that far.
No. You analogy is deeply flawed. Software from one vessel can not run in any another vessel because of different protocols. General purpose OSes run the same protocols: http, html, jpeg, email, x-windows, tcp/ip etc. Military grade software that can run in anything that runs the same protocol.
When you miss the point this badly, there's not really much I can respond with, but I'll have another go.
The embedded systems you are describing are designed and built to perform a very limited set of tasks in a static, known environment. That is why the software from ship A cannot (generally) run the systems on ship B - it's simply not built to. It has nothing to do with "protocols", it's an inherent part of the design and implementation (limited purpose).
A general purpose OS is the complete opposite - it is designed and built to perform a wide range of arbitrary tasks in a dynamic, unknown environment. That is why it can be installed on dozens (if not hundreds) of unique PC configurations, with thousands of different software combinations and still work.
Wrong. A military system or an avionics system or a nuclear station system is manufactured in such a way that even if someone tries to add an unknown piece of software to
There's a big difference. A lot of the hardcore socialists I know don't believe that a person can 'earn' more than X number of dollars.
Sure, and lots of hardcore libertarians think even the Police should be privatised. That doesn't make their views relevant to the mainstream.
I don't believe there should be limits on what a person can earn. If I invent a toy that costs a penny to make, I pay my workers well, and I sell a billion of them for $2 each, why shouldn't I be a billionaire?
Even a 99% tax rate technically doesn't put an upper limit on your income.
It's time to say: "If you give a good benefit package to your employees that includes 80% of healthcare, 6% match on the 401k, and compliance with the Family Leave Act, we'll cut 50% of your corporate income tax!
That is to say, "if your workers get the same deal the rest of the Western world does *by law*, we'll lower your tax rate" ? A moral solution would simply be to enact said standards by legislation.
So much so that it will be -cheaper- to treat employees well, and you can still keep your billions". The trick is to shift the taxes to corporate profits instead of personal income first.
Taxing corporations is basically ineffective because such expenses are just moved directly to customers. You need to tax individuals otherwise you just get more and more wealth funneled to them and the wealth gap continues to grow.
And ? No sane manager is going to trade that off (assuming it could all be funneled seamlessly in, which it obviously couldn't) against personal gaol time and the dissolution of the company.
Of course. But this is true for ANY country, so how does that make the US worse?
I didn't say it made it worse, I was pointing out that it makes it equivalent.
And yet that's why the founding fathers thought the people should be armed. To protect themselves from a bad government! It even states so in the declaration of independence.
No, it doesn't.
Unlike your so-called "civilized" nations where the poor Jews were not allowed to arm themselves and had no means to prevent 6 million of their people being sent off to the slaughter.
I sincerely doubt anyone would have called Germany at the height of the Holocaust "civilised". Take your straw man elsewhere.
So again, you want to me to choose between a European nation, where the government can deny all my rights and I have zero recourse, or the US, where the government could try deny all my rights but at least I would have a fighting chance. Well I know which I'll pick.
This means that it is inevitable that eventually lawmakers will gradually successfully be able to raise press restrictions without any final legal recourse to overturn.?
No, it's not.
This is also why almost every other Western nation has been able to suppress the right to firearm ownership with nary a squeak from the populace.
Er, no, it's because every other Western nation's citizens thinks that deadly weapons should be a bit harder to get your hands on than a set of golf clubs.
Finally, note that there is nothing _technically_ preventing Constitutional Amendments being nullified by further Constitutional Amendments.
Going through the leaked documents, finding instances of corruption or wrong-doing, and releasing them would be responsible journalism. [...] If you don't have the resources to conduct such a review, give the docs to a news organization which does.
So far as I know, that's exactly what Wikileaks did.
But that's precisely the problem with "the cloud" because all your services (sure, in this case it may just be email, but that's not really the issue) are only available so long as your connection to the cloud is available. (This also raises the question: is the quality of the service only as good as your connection to the cloud?) An in-house setup would mean that you're still up and running internally. Your remote users might have trouble accessing the internal system, but you aren't completely cut off from whatever service the cloud was supposed to provide.
Any organisation of non-trivial size will almost certainly be hosting its "internal" servers off-site anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
For online purchases, yes. In other situations, there's always an alternative that's superior in these respects.
For example ?
With a flat tax, ALL taxation would be in proportion to wealth. You make more, you pay more. You make less, you pay less. But everybody actually pays taxes in that system, which is important in a Democratic Republic, lest a significant portion of the public comes to see those richer than them as their meal ticket, and develop an entitlement to what others have earned. Which is exactly what has happened. That chunk of the populace has discovered that they can vote themselves other people's money. Two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner, in a kind of way.
Indeed. Pity the rich, for they are the true victims of modern society.
And why they did this just before hundreds of millions of dollars became available for services like the ones they offer, from an organization that really doesn't like Wikileaks.
You do understand that a strategic decision like this takes months, if not years to make, right ? That someone didn't just wake up a week ago and decide "we're going cloud" ?
Back in the day when Microsoft was advertising Windows NT 3.51 was C2-certified, we looked into the docs and one of the requirements on whatever PS/2 it was that was certified was that the floppy disk drive be removed. And off the network.
I think you'll find that was a requirement for any system to be C2-certified - it was part of the spec.
High frequency trading actually facilitates more accurate pricing of securities because of the liquidity it introduces to the market. The benefit of accurate pricing is hard to explain fully without getting deeper into the economics of markets, but it's definitely there. The animosity you raised is probably due to a perceived lack of contribution (no tangible products produced). But actually, facilitating better pricing will route investment into areas that deserve it (e.g. to the guy who produces 2 potatoes per unit resource instead of 1.5 potatoes). The sum effect of these actions is a raised social utility.
I want to know what can change about a company in a second that can meaningfully adjust its value, that wouldn't also have the same result on a timescale of hours (or even days).
Oops, just tried it in IE, and it opened a new window. Alt+Space M seems to work in Access.
It works fine in IE. I don't have Access installed so I can't test, but since Alt+space is the system-wide combo to bring up a window's system menu, there's no reason I can think of that it shouldn't work. Heck, you can often use this trick to minimise windows that "shouldn't" be minimisable.
What you're actually doing is opening the system menu with Alt+space, then selecting "Minimise" from that with 'n'. There is not a specific single "Minimise window" combo so far as I know. The same process can also be used to maximise, restore, resize, move and close windows from the keyboard. In Windows, pressing the underlined letter (for menus) or Alt+underlined letter (in dialogs) will "click" that item. Tab will iterate through dialog box elements.
The Acer came with Win 7, and its documentation dodn't seem much if any better than XP's.
In Windows 7, opening up help and typing "keyboard shortcuts" results in a page full of hits. The 7th item is called "Keyboard shortcuts" and from a quick sampling probably lists all of them. Not to mention they're nearly always listed beside the relevant items in menus anyway.
Maybe I should buy a Mac...
I wouldn't advise it if you want good keyboard access. Even today, MacOS clearly betrays its thou-shalt-use-the-single-button-mouse roots - its keyboardability only has delusions of adequacy, especially by default. Enabling "keyboard accessibility" improves things a bit, but still not in the same league as Windows.
If you want to stimulate job creation, you give tax breaks to the middle clas and poor. Especially the poor, who have to spend that money out of necessity.
The problem with this is a) tax cuts for the poor and middle classes almost always inherently include tax breaks for the wealthy (albeit minor ones) and b) most of the poor don't end up paying tax anyway, so the benefit to them of paying less tax is frequently zero.
We have intellectual property because we decided a long time ago that ideas have value. If they have value, should it not be possible to buy, sell, or trade them?
Yes. And if they can be bought, sold, or traded, are ideas then not a form of property that can be owned?
No.
We've gotten a bit ridiculous with our protection in that regard recently, but the core of the thing - protecting ideas - is essential for ideas to flourish.
Because otherwise people will stop having ideas ? Most of the last few millenia of recorded history seem to disagree.
I never could figure out why they use Alt+Tab for switching between windows.
Because it's exceptionally easy to hit, quickly and consistently. Two relatively large keys, almost exactly where your thumb and little finger sit naturally.
Seems they could have used SysReq.
Awesome, needing two hands to switch windows.
And the Window key bugs me as well. Yes, there's Win+L etc, but it seems Ctrl+L would be better.
Well, what they *should* have done with Windows 95 was rebase and restandardise all the standard keyboard shortcuts (for close windows, copy/paste, etc) around the Windows key, like Apple does with the Command key. Unfortunately they instead chose to do it around the Ctrl key instead.
Can anybody tell me how to minimize or maximise a window without the mouse?
Alt+space, n (in Windows, MacOS has relatively poor keyboardability so there probably isn't one, and in Linux it could be anything, depending on which GUI you're running this week).
There's a lot about modern OSes that either don't make sense, are undocumented, or are poorly undocumented.
Most things are very well documented, you just need to look. Typing "keyboard shortcuts" into Windows Help will get you to a list of all the standard ones.
- Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command, Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 4.
- Turn on the computer.
Though since "turn on the computer" is actually Step 3, it's not as silly as the above makes it sound...
But seriously, one thing Microsoft did get right is that they pretty much reserved the windows-key as a system-wide shortcut key. Start-D (desktop), Start-L (lock), Start-R (run), Start-F (find), Start-E (explorer). I *love* those key bindings.
I like the Windows key shortcuts as well, but I lament the completely missed opportunity to rebase and restandardise all keyboard shortcuts on the Windows key, much like MacOS does with the Command key. The Windows key is grossly underutilised.
Contrast with Mac's F9, F10, F11 and F12 keys. If your program just happens to use one of those keys, you're shit-out-of-luck (as is the case when trying to debug something in Visual Studio in a virtual machine, for example).
These are relatively easy to trigger using the Fn- (or Command- on non-laptop keyboards, I think) modifier. If you need to trigger a scroll lock, however, and are on a Mac laptop or have one of their awful wireless keyboards, you really are SOL.
Additionally, those of us accustomed to working with *nix operating systems know that CTRL-INS and SHIFT-INS are handy combinations for copy & paste, [...]
Entertainingly enough, those keyboard shortcuts originated in Windows, via IBM's influence.
I've known people with all those conditions who have succeeded.
Great. Should we ignore all the rest because of that ?
And here in the US of A and just about ANY post industrial country, there is no excuse for poverty, not going to school or not knowing how to read or write.
There are plenty of good excuses, from drug addicted parents to bad luck.
As for marketable skills, only one skill is needed for just about any job, desire.
Oh, bullshit. You need to be in an area with work available. You need to know where to look. You need to know how to present yourself as employable.
That's just for minimum wage jobs that often don't even provide enough income to live on.
I didn't say it was easy, probably easier to sit on sidewalk with a sign that says "will work for food", which most people know is a lie. They won't work, for anything, for any reason.
Except you think this sort of person is representative of the majority of poor, and therefore justification for not assisting the poor, whereas the complete opposite is true.
I imagine the targets would be different, and the system we've got in place still has enough protection that they can't go out and be quite so blatant about it, but I can easily see a highly religious government in the states doing things like arresting homosexuals for sodomy, or getting a lot more hard line on "christian values."
Or, say, preventing them from getting married...
The bigger problem is that the jury pool ends up being people that are less educated or retired and don't necessarily get shown a lot of respect by the politicians that require them to be there. The court staff does treat jurros well typically, but it's hard to feel appreciated when you're being asked to lose so much money to serve.
The proper solution here is for legislation that requires employers to treat jury duty as paid time off *separate* to normal vacation time.
And most of the homeless I've encountered are that way for a reason of their own making.
You mean like mental illness ? The lack of any resources to bootstrap themselves into work ? No marketable skills and no way to get them ? Born into poverty, never gone to school and can't even read and write ?
Truly, such people deserve everything they have.
This may come as something of a shock to you, but most poor people aren't "dysfunctional alcoholics" or "homeless bums".
People who "want to help themselves" aren't rare, they're common.
I can certainly respect this. It's true altruism, quite unlike when government takes money by force and redistributes it. This is 100% voluntary, and therefore much more impressive and worthy of respect than any government program.
If there were sufficient "altruism" then said Government programs would not be necessary.
However, history has - and continues - to demonstrate this will never happen.
No. The latest version of the document will be opened, depending on if the two programs belong to the same virtual session. Think about it as if you are using a Virtual Machine for each application.
So if the system allows applications to access data in the same virtual session, who decides whether or not applications are "equal" ?
Nothing. It remains there, waiting to be opened by another application.
Sounds like things could get mighty cluttered (or an opening for a DoS attack).
The application developers.
Ok. So we're relying on application developers not to be stupid/ignorant/lazy/malicious. That hasn't worked out too well so far, what makes you think it would be any different this time ?
Well, ok. But it does not virtualize everything, so it does not do what I propose.
My point is that the fundamental capability is already present, so there's no need to do a ground-up reimplementation.
The programs themselves are particularly complex.
I sincerely doubt they're any more complex than Microsoft Office, Photoshop, or even something like Firefox, let alone a whole general purpose OS.
However, even if they are it's not really relevant. The complexity that's being discussed is one of the overall environment, not specific applications.
No, because they are programmed without the required quality.
Correct. Because there are more important priorities for them - features, time-to-market, cost, capabilities, etc.
No, no, and no. QNX, for example.
QNX is a good example, but the way it is typically implemented as an embedded system is not really a form in which is could substitute for OS X.
QNX is also not without security vulnerabilities, either.
That doesn't exclude spying, treason, unhappy personnel, sabotage, etc.
All of which are problems for a general purpose OS *as well*.
Oh, they do in a regular basis. All ships have internet, and all ships run internet applications. They regularly play flash games etc.
Er, yeah, but you're missing the point: they're not running them on the same embedded systems that manage the ship.
The tasks they have to do are vastly complex, much more complex than Microsoft Word and Internet Explorer and Outlook.
How so ?
Not only that, but lives depend on the software. Furthermore, software changes frequently on those ships, by updating and creating new modules.
After it's been thoroughly tested, QAed and approved by a central authority. No-one randomly loads up some piece of software on these systems and expects it to work, if the system even allows them to get that far.
No. You analogy is deeply flawed. Software from one vessel can not run in any another vessel because of different protocols. General purpose OSes run the same protocols: http, html, jpeg, email, x-windows, tcp/ip etc. Military grade software that can run in anything that runs the same protocol.
When you miss the point this badly, there's not really much I can respond with, but I'll have another go.
The embedded systems you are describing are designed and built to perform a very limited set of tasks in a static, known environment. That is why the software from ship A cannot (generally) run the systems on ship B - it's simply not built to. It has nothing to do with "protocols", it's an inherent part of the design and implementation (limited purpose).
A general purpose OS is the complete opposite - it is designed and built to perform a wide range of arbitrary tasks in a dynamic, unknown environment. That is why it can be installed on dozens (if not hundreds) of unique PC configurations, with thousands of different software combinations and still work.
Wrong. A military system or an avionics system or a nuclear station system is manufactured in such a way that even if someone tries to add an unknown piece of software to
There's a big difference. A lot of the hardcore socialists I know don't believe that a person can 'earn' more than X number of dollars.
Sure, and lots of hardcore libertarians think even the Police should be privatised. That doesn't make their views relevant to the mainstream.
I don't believe there should be limits on what a person can earn. If I invent a toy that costs a penny to make, I pay my workers well, and I sell a billion of them for $2 each, why shouldn't I be a billionaire?
Even a 99% tax rate technically doesn't put an upper limit on your income.
It's time to say: "If you give a good benefit package to your employees that includes 80% of healthcare, 6% match on the 401k, and compliance with the Family Leave Act, we'll cut 50% of your corporate income tax!
That is to say, "if your workers get the same deal the rest of the Western world does *by law*, we'll lower your tax rate" ? A moral solution would simply be to enact said standards by legislation.
So much so that it will be -cheaper- to treat employees well, and you can still keep your billions". The trick is to shift the taxes to corporate profits instead of personal income first.
Taxing corporations is basically ineffective because such expenses are just moved directly to customers. You need to tax individuals otherwise you just get more and more wealth funneled to them and the wealth gap continues to grow.
Here's a hint. It's in the hundreds of billions.
And ? No sane manager is going to trade that off (assuming it could all be funneled seamlessly in, which it obviously couldn't) against personal gaol time and the dissolution of the company.
Of course. But this is true for ANY country, so how does that make the US worse?
I didn't say it made it worse, I was pointing out that it makes it equivalent.
And yet that's why the founding fathers thought the people should be armed. To protect themselves from a bad government! It even states so in the declaration of independence.
No, it doesn't.
Unlike your so-called "civilized" nations where the poor Jews were not allowed to arm themselves and had no means to prevent 6 million of their people being sent off to the slaughter.
I sincerely doubt anyone would have called Germany at the height of the Holocaust "civilised". Take your straw man elsewhere.
So again, you want to me to choose between a European nation, where the government can deny all my rights and I have zero recourse, or the US, where the government could try deny all my rights but at least I would have a fighting chance. Well I know which I'll pick.
You have the same recourse in either situation.
This means that it is inevitable that eventually lawmakers will gradually successfully be able to raise press restrictions without any final legal recourse to overturn.?
No, it's not.
This is also why almost every other Western nation has been able to suppress the right to firearm ownership with nary a squeak from the populace.
Er, no, it's because every other Western nation's citizens thinks that deadly weapons should be a bit harder to get your hands on than a set of golf clubs.
Finally, note that there is nothing _technically_ preventing Constitutional Amendments being nullified by further Constitutional Amendments.
Going through the leaked documents, finding instances of corruption or wrong-doing, and releasing them would be responsible journalism. [...] If you don't have the resources to conduct such a review, give the docs to a news organization which does.
So far as I know, that's exactly what Wikileaks did.
But that's precisely the problem with "the cloud" because all your services (sure, in this case it may just be email, but that's not really the issue) are only available so long as your connection to the cloud is available. (This also raises the question: is the quality of the service only as good as your connection to the cloud?) An in-house setup would mean that you're still up and running internally. Your remote users might have trouble accessing the internal system, but you aren't completely cut off from whatever service the cloud was supposed to provide.
Any organisation of non-trivial size will almost certainly be hosting its "internal" servers off-site anyway.