I guess that even if Saddam or Al Qaeda did reach it say 10 years ago they would encounter properly protected bases of Nazis and would be blown up before landing.
But you still managed to reach a valid conclusion, at least in regards to blowing things up: we have to blow-up the Moon because last time I checked, Nazis are still "bad" (the only exception are their uniforms, which are chic/sexi/cool/whatever that's why people still like watching movies about WWII... which will include this Good Nazi Tom Cruise as reporded in IIRC The Daily Show).
Anyone heard about Onehalf? We're talking something like 1992-94 IIRC.:)
If my memory serves me right even further, the virus is from Kosice, Slovakia. It spread quite quickly (even though there was essentialy no Internet at that time in Slovakia) but later on, I believe ESET produced a utility to detect it and clean it up. Nice thing was, that it did not need to boot from clean boot floppy in order to do the clean-up (which was quite unussual at that time).
Funny thing then was, that few month later, as we though that Onehalf is - thanks to that utility - dead and old news, story came from USA that Onehalf reached there and that after a lot of trouble Norton was able to detect it. But not clean it. What a joke. If we've had email, we would happily mass-mail that ESET's anti-Onehalf utility to every one.
How soon before a "one ring" is technolically possible?
How about right now? Technology is here. It only needs to be deployed and "tuned" and the "operators" trained and getting used to it.:)
Britain is deploying a lot of cameras right now. China is trialing even much "better" surveliance network (with not just cameras but also RFID chips in ID cards people are carrying with them).
So now its essentialy only about "getting used to it" for both the watchers and the watched. And then for some ussual evolutionary improvements as with every other technology.
And for same "backwater" lands to either stay forgotten or become isles of freedom (or terrorism, depending on the point of view - see the quote "one person's terrorist is another person's freedom-fighter" I do not remember from whom).
I guess you are from some post-socialistic country. Correct me if I'm wrong.
I'm from Slovakia. Former member of Czechoslovakia. Formed socialistic republic under the rule of Communist parties (Czech, Slovak and Russian ones, maybe more:).
What I find quite disturbing, but also quite logical, is that we... of former Soviet/communist/... block got rid of that totalitarian system only to find out that almost all of our shiny examples of democracy (USA, France,...) are heading in a direction we're trying to get away from.
And we try to talk to those people, having some fresh memories from planned economy, one party rules them all, secret police and domestic spying, free speech so long as you do not say bad things about the party, lack of freedoms and thus diminishing amount of responsibility among people and thus their increased dependance on someone (preferably strong nany state), Lenin and Soviet union forever, etc.
If yes, then there is really no bad point in what you wrote.
Even if it is legal for me as a person to learn your secrets, I guess it would be still illegal to abuse them and get your money without your permission. So if I do so, you can fight me. And it would quite fair fight, man against man, some people on my side, some (I believe more) on yours, plus state justice will be helping you.
But if state takes your money, they can "rule" and "redefine" the nature of that act so it wont be a fair fight - you against government.
I guess that if you trust your government and this trust is justified, such data retention is still dangerous to you. Because it broadens the possibilities for criminal elements to do you harm. Criminal maybe wont be able to corrupt some clerk or official to get your data, but he can simply break into some computer. If the data is not there, no harm to you. But if the data exists...
But if you do not trust your government... because there are corrupt and/or incompetent people then it's much bigger problem. There is still this alredy mentioned criminal. But he has broader spectrum of means of getting to the data about you. Plus there are those corrupt and/or incompetent government officials which will (either by purpose or simply by accident) use tha data about you to cause you harm.
So to sum it: Trustworthy government should present some good argument for data retention which should outweight the risk I mentioned. Untrustworthy one... can do whatever they can, we simply have to oppose them. If for nothing else than for our own selfishess - we do not what them to cause us harm.
And I for one do not trust my government. Based on what I know they do. Based on what I hard/red them saying. Based on what I see on the streets and in the country. Simply, based on what I see/hear/feel/..., based on my experience in my country.
Yup, that's for example this Airbus spying by americans I mentioned in my other post.
If you are able to sufficiently distance yourself from your government in terms of feelings and day to day routine so as to allow yourself a chance to clearly think about stuff, than it's usually quite funny to decompose official arguments for something the government is doing and finding a real motive.
Like some instances of those red light cameras you mentioned.
Or strict gun regulations, "free" services provided by state to its citizens and so on.
Right now, in Slovakia, current champion in this regard is new press law: Officialy the purpose of the changes is to allow all the people (including politicians - they're people too, at least so far:) to demand the publication of their reply to any article if the article is about them. It does not matter whether the article is telling the truth or not. Of course a lot of people clearly see it as a way for current ruling parties to limit the amount of articles about them because ussualy they are criticizing them (because ussualy there is a lot of bad stuff to write about). Newspapers will then either fight it or at the (ridiculous) end will (for the fear of litigation) simply write only about entities which are not able to demand the publication of reply.:)
Those 11% of people should be simply shot dead. They're terrorists anyway so why risking wasting resources for example on court cases where some of them try to sue the state for the surveliance using stupid arguments like free speech, privacy and so on.
Of course I'm joking.
Of course some people did take measures. There were cases IIRC where americans were spying on Airbus in order to give Boeing some advantage in contracts where they were bidding against each other. (surely they have reason for spying, they said that Airbus was bribing... blah blah blah; I mean bribing should be solved by other means than by the other side simply using different dirty trick as countermeasure but that's for other discussion).
And I guess that yes, there is a difference between big multinational corporation and small enterpreneurs and private citizens but still - I think a person does not consider itsef unworthy or something and feels threatened in similar ways by say mentioned data retention. This person's life and business is threatened. Yes, smaller sums of money are involved then in case of Airbus and Boeing. But when in proportion to that persons scale, they are much more important. And additionally, money is not everything.
... targeted attack against Estonia shut that country down... That, officials said, was executed by cyber terrorists from Russia...
AFAIR (as far as I remember) that attack on Estonia has been performed by one guy. Yes, some servers used in the attack were based in Russia. Yes, a lot of zombies around the world has been used in the attack. And yes this guy's nationality was Russian, but the guy has been citizen of Estonia.
But abovementioned officials may have far more information. Maybe the guy was a citizen of Estonia but secretly employed by his mother Russia. Who knows?
There were times, when Arabs were we can say scientific superpower. It was (maybe as a coincidence) at times when science was not greatly popular in Europe (middle ages).
So the question is, whether USA is following similar path taken previously by ancient Europe and then by Arabs. (side question is, whether something like renaissance will occur on islamic countries)
Mainly because IPSs idea of "what's important and should be prioritized" may not be in line with what's really important for the users.
But even bigger risk, the one you're asking about is like this:
Big enough group ISPs implements various QoS and throtling methods to properly "manage" current traffic needs. They may be even sufficiently expert and honest enought to do it properly to not to cheat users.
Somebody in the garage is working on a Next-Big-Thing but it requires "neutral network" (i.e. one not "tuned" to "manage" current network workloads).
While he is only in the garage and lacks funding, he has do devise some "workaround". Unfortunately, he does wont find it.
We loose the Next-Big-Thing.
Think about YouTube, Linux distros as an examples we may have missed if such QoS has been alredy used few years ago.
Recently I saw some South Park episode in which Bono played quite a big role (episode 1109: More Crap). I assume it's thanks to all his previous activities and so.
And it appears to me that maybe Mr. McGuinness is kind of jealous of that and wants to appear in South Park too.
Well, Mr. McGuinness, keep up the "good work" and maybe you'll be worth making fun of in the South Park quite soon.:)
Great, when you can find me that version of Alibre 3D design software that runs on Windows, Mac, and Ubuntu, let me know...
It is harder to write cross platform software when compared to "we support just this few releases of OS XYZ". When Microsoft is illegally maintaining their Windows OS at a monopoly position, it have a "positive" feedback (for Microsoft): it is pushing application vendors into supporting only the major OS (i.e. MS Windows). Thus such vendors are helping Microsoft to maintain their monopoly.
If the EU (or whoever) makes it possible for you (me, them,...) to instead choose the OS based really on the price, performance, features, stability,... then it would be much harder for application vendors to choose "major" OS thus the logical conclusion would be to code cross-platform.
In short time, it will make application development more painful and expensive.
But then, as usual, various frameworks, libraries and standardizations will occur and then it wont be nothing special to make application cross platform - price for such development will drop down.
And that in itself is another "positive" feedback, this time one not preferred by Microsoft - it will make OS selection even more easier because your choice will be less about "is that particular application available for this OS" and more about alredy mentioned price, quality,.. of the OS.
As I alredy wrote, in short term, we can expect difficulties with such attitude. But in the long term, we will have:
more choices in regard to OS
better prices for the OS
more choices in regards to applications: imagine application which are not initialy available on PC with Windows but become "famous" on for example some game console but then - thanks to easy cross platform development - will "magicaly" become available also for Windows PC for same price
more choices in regard to HW platform: while you are not limited to say Windows OS, you are no longer limited to PC so you can choose HW which suits you much better, be it Mac or some brand you computer which gets rid of 30 year old backward compatibility clutter of PC and delivers superb multitasking, media and security with lower power consuption etc.
...
As others wrote, choice is hard if you are to choose from something you are not expert in. But for that there are consultants and sales people themselves. As long as the market is/stays competitive (no single dominant OS supplier, no single dominant CPU supplier, no single dominant PC supplier/seller) you have not just OS choice, HW choice, but you can choose suppliers which can help you choose and which have good track record on such help not based on what precisely they are recommending but whether their recommendations actualy worked for the customers.
So if this gets throug, it would be possible for you to come to coputer shop and ask: Hey, I want Alibre 3D. I have about that much money for that and I need also to X, Y and Z on the computer. And they will recomend you computer best suited for your needs (line something utilizing those Cell processors found in PS3), not being limited to Windows and PC platform.
Fedora claims few hundred thousands installations of their recent Fedora 7.
I would gladly sell that amount of naked PCs to someone. I just have to figure out how to build up component purchases, manufacturing and packaging, order processing and distributions, all that in at least few "western" countries at the same time.
And all that while trying to compete with big, established companies like HP, Dell,... who I suppose have very good deals to buy components so are able to offer good prices even if they have to pay some fees to Microsoft.
So much for business plan.:)
But IMO it's not that bad. Ussualy there are companies who sell just components (so no fees for OEM Windows, etc. while buying from them). Then, there are local small businesses who buy those components and make whole PCs from them. And are thus able (and I suppose also willing) to sell naked PC to anybody who is interested.
So if we want naked PCs, we just ask local vendors. Sure, they do not have world-wide brand and presence and maybe their company name does not sound cool, but do we want naked PCs to do Linux computing or a style item for dick contest?:)
Some people are willing to pay for sex too... does that mean that people should be taxed every time they engage in said activity?
Well of course: yes, it does mean precisely that! This "free sex" should be taxed (if not outlawed straight away as it's just "free prostitution").
And can you even imagine the amount of money of which the state treasuries all around the world are injustly deprived of because some scumbags like me are having "free sex" with their wive/girlfriend/whatever?
But of course I'm joking! Slashdotters do not have wives nor sex... again, joking.:)
Common sense tells us, that all income should be taxed.
Something is income even if it is not in money - say you bartered your car for two motorcycles with your neighbor, thus there were we, can say, two business transactions: one you selling the car (your neighbor had income, which he should tax) and second your neighbor selling motorcycles (thus you have income...).
Something (somewhere) is not considered income: gifts, services done "for free", etc. Those are not supposed to be taxed.
At the end, it all boils down what the state/tax office declare (or exempt from declaration) as business transaction (and in same breath declare it taxable) and what "business transactions" taxpayers include in their "books".
So, the "free sex" you mentioned... according to common sense it's not a business transaction and should not be taxed. But, well, tax offices around the world are taxing often quite bizzare things contrary to "common sense" all thanks to complicated tax laws and regulations which are in line to the saying "ask two lawyers and you get three opinions"...
So please, do not give dangerous suggestions... maybe some politicians or tax office people are reading./ and than what? It maybe wont ruin./-ers but think about general population? And your parents? Would you be even born if they were taxed for making you?
Another, and very old IMO, "alternate currency" is barter: I give you some amount of something, you give me some different amount of something else and no exchange of money occurs. Of course, it's harder to barter than to "shop regularly... with money".
Plus also any tax office may argue that it does not matter whether there were money involved - business transaction occured: there was an exchange of things which had some value. So they claim they are eligible to want tax derived from that value, money or no money, does not matter.
At the end it all boils down as to whether the "exchange" has been officialy booked somewhere: barters are ussualy not booked as income/payment, while money ussualy (but not always) are. And that's what counts for the purpose of tax. And that's why cash registers are mandatory at a lot of places - so that the machine keeps track of all the cache income and make it harder for merchant to accept payments without including them in his "books".
Tax office is like racketeer (racketeer uses thugs, tax office uses judges, executors, police,...): thay want "their share" of all your income no matter what and you can successfully argue with them only of you have more muscle/guns that them. Or you are their family. Or you are their boss. Or family/friend of their boss.:)
So as I assume we, nerds, are sincere and honest, we like (good) rules and (good) rules being followed. So there is only one solution to avoid excessive taxation: to use are democratic rights and vote for politicians which tell the tax office to tax us the way we prefer. But some say, that's impossible.
Slashdot Mirror
You've got it all wrong - Moon is occupied for quite some time by Nazis.
I guess that even if Saddam or Al Qaeda did reach it say 10 years ago they would encounter properly protected bases of Nazis and would be blown up before landing.
But you still managed to reach a valid conclusion, at least in regards to blowing things up: we have to blow-up the Moon because last time I checked, Nazis are still "bad" (the only exception are their uniforms, which are chic/sexi/cool/whatever that's why people still like watching movies about WWII ... which will include this Good Nazi Tom Cruise as reporded in IIRC The Daily Show).
Anyone heard about Onehalf? We're talking something like 1992-94 IIRC. :)
If my memory serves me right even further, the virus is from Kosice, Slovakia. It spread quite quickly (even though there was essentialy no Internet at that time in Slovakia) but later on, I believe ESET produced a utility to detect it and clean it up. Nice thing was, that it did not need to boot from clean boot floppy in order to do the clean-up (which was quite unussual at that time).
Funny thing then was, that few month later, as we though that Onehalf is - thanks to that utility - dead and old news, story came from USA that Onehalf reached there and that after a lot of trouble Norton was able to detect it. But not clean it. What a joke. If we've had email, we would happily mass-mail that ESET's anti-Onehalf utility to every one.
Maybe further info: ESET's One Half entry.
How about right now? Technology is here. It only needs to be deployed and "tuned" and the "operators" trained and getting used to it. :)
Britain is deploying a lot of cameras right now. China is trialing even much "better" surveliance network (with not just cameras but also RFID chips in ID cards people are carrying with them).
So now its essentialy only about "getting used to it" for both the watchers and the watched. And then for some ussual evolutionary improvements as with every other technology.
And for same "backwater" lands to either stay forgotten or become isles of freedom (or terrorism, depending on the point of view - see the quote "one person's terrorist is another person's freedom-fighter" I do not remember from whom).
I guess you are from some post-socialistic country. Correct me if I'm wrong.
I'm from Slovakia. Former member of Czechoslovakia. Formed socialistic republic under the rule of Communist parties (Czech, Slovak and Russian ones, maybe more :).
What I find quite disturbing, but also quite logical, is that we ... of former Soviet/communist/... block got rid of that totalitarian system only to find out that almost all of our shiny examples of democracy (USA, France, ...) are heading in a direction we're trying to get away from.
And we try to talk to those people, having some fresh memories from planned economy, one party rules them all, secret police and domestic spying, free speech so long as you do not say bad things about the party, lack of freedoms and thus diminishing amount of responsibility among people and thus their increased dependance on someone (preferably strong nany state), Lenin and Soviet union forever, etc.
Question is: Do you trust your government?
If yes, then there is really no bad point in what you wrote.
Even if it is legal for me as a person to learn your secrets, I guess it would be still illegal to abuse them and get your money without your permission. So if I do so, you can fight me. And it would quite fair fight, man against man, some people on my side, some (I believe more) on yours, plus state justice will be helping you.
But if state takes your money, they can "rule" and "redefine" the nature of that act so it wont be a fair fight - you against government.
I guess that if you trust your government and this trust is justified, such data retention is still dangerous to you. Because it broadens the possibilities for criminal elements to do you harm. Criminal maybe wont be able to corrupt some clerk or official to get your data, but he can simply break into some computer. If the data is not there, no harm to you. But if the data exists ...
But if you do not trust your government ... because there are corrupt and/or incompetent people then it's much bigger problem. There is still this alredy mentioned criminal. But he has broader spectrum of means of getting to the data about you. Plus there are those corrupt and/or incompetent government officials which will (either by purpose or simply by accident) use tha data about you to cause you harm.
So to sum it: Trustworthy government should present some good argument for data retention which should outweight the risk I mentioned. Untrustworthy one ... can do whatever they can, we simply have to oppose them. If for nothing else than for our own selfishess - we do not what them to cause us harm.
And I for one do not trust my government. Based on what I know they do. Based on what I hard/red them saying. Based on what I see on the streets and in the country. Simply, based on what I see/hear/feel/..., based on my experience in my country.
Yup, that's for example this Airbus spying by americans I mentioned in my other post.
If you are able to sufficiently distance yourself from your government in terms of feelings and day to day routine so as to allow yourself a chance to clearly think about stuff, than it's usually quite funny to decompose official arguments for something the government is doing and finding a real motive.
Like some instances of those red light cameras you mentioned.
Or strict gun regulations, "free" services provided by state to its citizens and so on.
Right now, in Slovakia, current champion in this regard is new press law: Officialy the purpose of the changes is to allow all the people (including politicians - they're people too, at least so far :) to demand the publication of their reply to any article if the article is about them. It does not matter whether the article is telling the truth or not. Of course a lot of people clearly see it as a way for current ruling parties to limit the amount of articles about them because ussualy they are criticizing them (because ussualy there is a lot of bad stuff to write about). Newspapers will then either fight it or at the (ridiculous) end will (for the fear of litigation) simply write only about entities which are not able to demand the publication of reply. :)
Those 11% of people should be simply shot dead. They're terrorists anyway so why risking wasting resources for example on court cases where some of them try to sue the state for the surveliance using stupid arguments like free speech, privacy and so on.
Of course I'm joking.
Of course some people did take measures. There were cases IIRC where americans were spying on Airbus in order to give Boeing some advantage in contracts where they were bidding against each other. (surely they have reason for spying, they said that Airbus was bribing ... blah blah blah; I mean bribing should be solved by other means than by the other side simply using different dirty trick as countermeasure but that's for other discussion).
And I guess that yes, there is a difference between big multinational corporation and small enterpreneurs and private citizens but still - I think a person does not consider itsef unworthy or something and feels threatened in similar ways by say mentioned data retention. This person's life and business is threatened. Yes, smaller sums of money are involved then in case of Airbus and Boeing. But when in proportion to that persons scale, they are much more important. And additionally, money is not everything.
For users it certainly is not - continual expenses for connectivity vs. one-time price for somehow obtaining right CD.
On the other hand, also ISPs/telcos should be quite happy with that. Especially if the "phoning home" needs to transfer quite a lot of data. :)
AFAIR (as far as I remember) that attack on Estonia has been performed by one guy. Yes, some servers used in the attack were based in Russia. Yes, a lot of zombies around the world has been used in the attack. And yes this guy's nationality was Russian, but the guy has been citizen of Estonia.
But abovementioned officials may have far more information. Maybe the guy was a citizen of Estonia but secretly employed by his mother Russia. Who knows?
There were times, when Arabs were we can say scientific superpower. It was (maybe as a coincidence) at times when science was not greatly popular in Europe (middle ages).
So the question is, whether USA is following similar path taken previously by ancient Europe and then by Arabs. (side question is, whether something like renaissance will occur on islamic countries)
Yup, market will choose a better solution. But it takes sooooooooo looooooooong. :/
Even with all the knowledge properly disclosed and accessible to all, there is still something unique to each individual:
So at the end even with all the knowledge equaly accesible to all, there will still be some people whose life would be "more worthy". To others.
Of course those "not worthy" can still reason "well, that's just your opinion" but all those "more worthy" millionairs "know better". :)
Mainly because IPSs idea of "what's important and should be prioritized" may not be in line with what's really important for the users.
But even bigger risk, the one you're asking about is like this:
Think about YouTube, Linux distros as an examples we may have missed if such QoS has been alredy used few years ago.
Oh, thank you so much. Now I properly understand that South Park episode I mentioned here. Thank you, thank you, thank you. :)
Oh, I forgot: yeah, yeah, yeah!
Recently I saw some South Park episode in which Bono played quite a big role (episode 1109: More Crap). I assume it's thanks to all his previous activities and so.
And it appears to me that maybe Mr. McGuinness is kind of jealous of that and wants to appear in South Park too.
Well, Mr. McGuinness, keep up the "good work" and maybe you'll be worth making fun of in the South Park quite soon. :)
It is harder to write cross platform software when compared to "we support just this few releases of OS XYZ". When Microsoft is illegally maintaining their Windows OS at a monopoly position, it have a "positive" feedback (for Microsoft): it is pushing application vendors into supporting only the major OS (i.e. MS Windows). Thus such vendors are helping Microsoft to maintain their monopoly.
If the EU (or whoever) makes it possible for you (me, them, ...) to instead choose the OS based really on the price, performance, features, stability, ... then it would be much harder for application vendors to choose "major" OS thus the logical conclusion would be to code cross-platform.
In short time, it will make application development more painful and expensive.
But then, as usual, various frameworks, libraries and standardizations will occur and then it wont be nothing special to make application cross platform - price for such development will drop down.
And that in itself is another "positive" feedback, this time one not preferred by Microsoft - it will make OS selection even more easier because your choice will be less about "is that particular application available for this OS" and more about alredy mentioned price, quality, .. of the OS.
As I alredy wrote, in short term, we can expect difficulties with such attitude. But in the long term, we will have:
As others wrote, choice is hard if you are to choose from something you are not expert in. But for that there are consultants and sales people themselves. As long as the market is/stays competitive (no single dominant OS supplier, no single dominant CPU supplier, no single dominant PC supplier/seller) you have not just OS choice, HW choice, but you can choose suppliers which can help you choose and which have good track record on such help not based on what precisely they are recommending but whether their recommendations actualy worked for the customers.
So if this gets throug, it would be possible for you to come to coputer shop and ask: Hey, I want Alibre 3D. I have about that much money for that and I need also to X, Y and Z on the computer. And they will recomend you computer best suited for your needs (line something utilizing those Cell processors found in PS3), not being limited to Windows and PC platform.
Then how will we be able to enjoy the news about Father of all bombs?
But what if such filtering is applied also to phone calls?
"Hey? Police? There is a ter<carrier lost>"
Terrible somebody or something? Terrorist? Someone or something named Tersomething? ...
Of course police will maybe figure it out but ... telling the thing exactly is much better than police trying to figure out the rest.
Oh yes, I forgot - police wont be subject to the filtering.
:)
You mean a Beowulf cluster of lawyers, right?
Fedora claims few hundred thousands installations of their recent Fedora 7.
I would gladly sell that amount of naked PCs to someone. I just have to figure out how to build up component purchases, manufacturing and packaging, order processing and distributions, all that in at least few "western" countries at the same time.
And all that while trying to compete with big, established companies like HP, Dell, ... who I suppose have very good deals to buy components so are able to offer good prices even if they have to pay some fees to Microsoft.
So much for business plan. :)
But IMO it's not that bad. Ussualy there are companies who sell just components (so no fees for OEM Windows, etc. while buying from them). Then, there are local small businesses who buy those components and make whole PCs from them. And are thus able (and I suppose also willing) to sell naked PC to anybody who is interested.
So if we want naked PCs, we just ask local vendors. Sure, they do not have world-wide brand and presence and maybe their company name does not sound cool, but do we want naked PCs to do Linux computing or a style item for dick contest? :)
OK, I'll rephrase my example:
Well, ask for example RIAA how they come-up with a US$ 6 billion loses from what they call piracy.
Well, ask for example RIAA how they come-up with a $700 or so per pirated track.
Logic such as used by them is beyond me thus I agree with you.
Well of course: yes, it does mean precisely that! This "free sex" should be taxed (if not outlawed straight away as it's just "free prostitution").
And can you even imagine the amount of money of which the state treasuries all around the world are injustly deprived of because some scumbags like me are having "free sex" with their wive/girlfriend/whatever?
But of course I'm joking! Slashdotters do not have wives nor sex ... again, joking. :)
Common sense tells us, that all income should be taxed.
Something is income even if it is not in money - say you bartered your car for two motorcycles with your neighbor, thus there were we, can say, two business transactions: one you selling the car (your neighbor had income, which he should tax) and second your neighbor selling motorcycles (thus you have income ...).
Something (somewhere) is not considered income: gifts, services done "for free", etc. Those are not supposed to be taxed.
At the end, it all boils down what the state/tax office declare (or exempt from declaration) as business transaction (and in same breath declare it taxable) and what "business transactions" taxpayers include in their "books".
So, the "free sex" you mentioned ... according to common sense it's not a business transaction and should not be taxed. But, well, tax offices around the world are taxing often quite bizzare things contrary to "common sense" all thanks to complicated tax laws and regulations which are in line to the saying "ask two lawyers and you get three opinions" ...
So please, do not give dangerous suggestions ... maybe some politicians or tax office people are reading ./ and than what? It maybe wont ruin ./-ers but think about general population? And your parents? Would you be even born if they were taxed for making you?
:)
Another, and very old IMO, "alternate currency" is barter: I give you some amount of something, you give me some different amount of something else and no exchange of money occurs. Of course, it's harder to barter than to "shop regularly ... with money".
Plus also any tax office may argue that it does not matter whether there were money involved - business transaction occured: there was an exchange of things which had some value. So they claim they are eligible to want tax derived from that value, money or no money, does not matter.
At the end it all boils down as to whether the "exchange" has been officialy booked somewhere: barters are ussualy not booked as income/payment, while money ussualy (but not always) are. And that's what counts for the purpose of tax. And that's why cash registers are mandatory at a lot of places - so that the machine keeps track of all the cache income and make it harder for merchant to accept payments without including them in his "books".
Tax office is like racketeer (racketeer uses thugs, tax office uses judges, executors, police, ...): thay want "their share" of all your income no matter what and you can successfully argue with them only of you have more muscle/guns that them. Or you are their family. Or you are their boss. Or family/friend of their boss. :)
So as I assume we, nerds, are sincere and honest, we like (good) rules and (good) rules being followed. So there is only one solution to avoid excessive taxation: to use are democratic rights and vote for politicians which tell the tax office to tax us the way we prefer. But some say, that's impossible.