As you've explained it, the public domain grants you every possible freedom...
Actually, it's not even that. In the absence of IP laws, there would be no restrictions on copying anything. Copyright is an exception--a useful and important one--to First Amendment free speech guarantees. Put another way, if you took away Article I, Section 8, of the US Constitution, copyright would be unconstitutional because it restricts speaking and writing.
So "public domain" grants you nothing. The First Amendment guarantees your right to copy anything you like, but then the copyright clause takes that right away in certain cases specified by law.
The bracket-rate system is the simplest part of our tax regulations. Going to a flat rate, or a flat rate with a big personal exemption, would do very little to simplify the US tax system. The complex part is defining "income," which in accounting terms is an inherently slippery subject for anyone who doesn't live on straight salary or wages.
Say I own some rental property. Is the rent I collect all income? That's not reasonable, I have associated expenses. Is all my rent net of expenses to be considered income? That's not reasonable either, I had to acquire the building too. Do I take out the cost of the building in the year I buy it? That's ridiculous, it would give me a massive negative income that year. Do I depreciate the building over time? That makes more sense, but what's the useful lifetime of the building? Current tax laws account for this--sometimes clumsily, but still so.
I own stocks and mutual funds. Are my dividends all income? Probably. What about the increase in the value of my holdings? In economic terms, in balance-sheet terms, hell yes that's income. But if I have to pay taxes on it I'm out some cash flow that I don't have because I'm still holding the securities. So current tax law cuts me a break, as it lets me delay paying taxes on capital gains until I sell, which isn't ideal either because I'm lumping all my income into that one year...
I own an unincorporated business. Are all of my sales income? Of course not, they should be offset by cost of goods and expenses. Is my new computer an expense or a capital investment? Depends on how long I'm keeping it and a dozen other factors.
"Flat tax" is such a simplistic idea. The federal income tax isn't complicated because it has a few brackets, nor because of "loopholes" per se, but because an accurate picture of "income" is so hard to figure in all but the most trivial cases.
...Microsoft applications tend to pander to user pressure for more and more features...
I disagree. It's not users pressuring for more features. Did anyone really ask for Clippy? Some new features are cool and/or useful, but many look like mere version churning. Microsoft applications tend to pander to marketing pressure for more and more features, or for incompatible upgrade paths.
A long time ago I saw an ad in the Sunday paper for a receptionist position at the company where I worked. On Monday I congratulated the current receptionist on her promotion and she had no idea what I was talking about.
Ooops. And would you believe I actually caught crap from my boss for leaking what was in the paper the previous day?
As I understand it--and I am not a labor lawyer nor any other kind of lawyer--the owner's salary isn't subject to fair labor practices law. But wages and salaries of employees are.
It was a private company and the CEO had the legal right to take the money...
No he didn't. Wages and salaries are legally privileged above other costs of the business. Your boss can't legally withhold your paycheck. It's not merely a civil matter between you and him... it's literally a Federal Case.
...steadily resisting the idea of even password protecting the.mdb file...
I don't have a big problem with this part of it. He resisted the idea of password-protecting the.mdb file because it wouldn't do any good. His explicit argument was that you'd still have to give the password to the election officers and the results would be just as insecure as before. What he didn't mention was also that it doesn't take much to reverse-engineer the password out of an.mdb file anyway.
I'd be more concerned if they were talking about password-protecting the.mdb files as if it were a good thing.
My VAX-crashing pal did something very similar, IIRC. The application was supposed to draw fractals on some graphics device, "something" went wrong, and it took up all CPU time until the OS choked to death.
It was pretty impressive at the time--we honestly had never heard of a user process crashing a computer. It seemed exotic, even nonsensical. Today people think it's normal! So much for progress.
This morning, while feeding the kids their Saturday ration of mindless TV, we caught a rerun episode of Pokemon. Our hero Ash opened up a bunch of windows (like five or so) on his computer screen, and it crashed hard. His sidekicks ridiculed him for causing the crash.
Not that it would help, I pointed out to the kids (aged 3, 6, 9, and 12) that with any reasonable OS if you truly opened "too many" windows or otherwise exceeded a resource limit, it should simply refuse the request, not crash.
Yeah, it's just a dumb cartoon, but it shows how far Microsoft crap has infested pop culture. Everyone including little kids and cartoon writers assumes that computers just crash unpredictably and for no good reason. They assume random downtime is a fact of life. It's crazymaking for me--having been raised in a VMS shop, where they planned reboots weeks ahead of time and the guy who found a way to crash the VAX with a user-level program became a legend.
Yeah. I'm saying this would tend to be one of those exceptions, because Kucinich is to the left of most of the Democratic Party (good for him!) and Ohio leans rather Republican. South of I-70 they talk about Cleveland like it's some other planet, I'm telling you.
You need to understand the major points of the most important legislation. PATRIOT was rushed through without any examination of details even though it was well known at the time that its effect on traditional American values would be significant. Any sitting member of Congress who voted for PATRIOT and now says it was a mistake is either lying or incompetent. This is not a matter of reading every little thing, it's a matter of having a good idea of what the most important bills contain and their effects.
But it is their obligation to read and understand the most important points of major legislation such as PATRIOT. By no standard was PATRIOT a trivial bill, and every member of Congress knew that at the time. They had every right and obligation to say "hey, slow down, let's go through the normal committee process so the staffers can have a look at it and advise us." But no. And it beggars belief that DoJ didn't have time to submit the bill for committee review--it's scores of pages of very dense material, you don't write this stuff in an afternoon.
If it's a major bill, and you don't understand it, don't vote yes. Particularly when it looks like the executive branch is pulling a fast one. That's your obligation as a Senator or Representative.
It's not a matter of making a mistake or changing one's mind. It's a matter of fulfilling the responsibilities of office, which include reading and understanding a bill of this importance before voting for it. PATRIOT is not a trivial piece of legislation, but it is obvious from the rushed way in which it was passed that Congress as a whole did not take its job seriously.
No way. The time to vote against PATRIOT was when it mattered. I don't have time for a sitting member of Congress who can't be bothered to read before voting.
I don't know. Kucinich is THE MAN in Cleveland, but I don't think he has a lot of fans south of the Turnpike. I seriously doubt Kucinich would win Ohio.
But mankind hasn't always owned land. Kings owned land. That's what made them kings. Land (taken generally, as stuff that isn't made by humans, and is just "out there") had always been up for grabs for anyone to use. Without a king or some kind of sovereign to say "here, this is yours, everyone else stay off," you don't have any meaningful legal right. This is different from labor and capital items, which are obviously yours if you make them or trade for them.
Modern economists make a hash of things by conflating Land with Capital. They're two entirely different things.
In civilization, we like to keep the violence down to a dull roar, so access to natural resources (i.e., stuff that nobody actually made, so it doesn't rightfully belong to anyone) has to be regulated somehow. That's where the state comes in. If you want civilization, and you want private access to land, it comes from the state. That may even be the definition of civilization.
Sure, until someone posts a book named
foo'; drop database bookexchange; '
or somesuch.
I don't believe you can realistically do a useful amount of input checking in a mere 1000 lines of C. Unless your idea of a "line" of C is unreasonable.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, it's not even that. In the absence of IP laws, there would be no restrictions on copying anything. Copyright is an exception--a useful and important one--to First Amendment free speech guarantees. Put another way, if you took away Article I, Section 8, of the US Constitution, copyright would be unconstitutional because it restricts speaking and writing.
So "public domain" grants you nothing. The First Amendment guarantees your right to copy anything you like, but then the copyright clause takes that right away in certain cases specified by law.
It's a nitpick, I know.
It worked okay for Berry Gordy though.
The bracket-rate system is the simplest part of our tax regulations. Going to a flat rate, or a flat rate with a big personal exemption, would do very little to simplify the US tax system. The complex part is defining "income," which in accounting terms is an inherently slippery subject for anyone who doesn't live on straight salary or wages.
Say I own some rental property. Is the rent I collect all income? That's not reasonable, I have associated expenses. Is all my rent net of expenses to be considered income? That's not reasonable either, I had to acquire the building too. Do I take out the cost of the building in the year I buy it? That's ridiculous, it would give me a massive negative income that year. Do I depreciate the building over time? That makes more sense, but what's the useful lifetime of the building? Current tax laws account for this--sometimes clumsily, but still so.
I own stocks and mutual funds. Are my dividends all income? Probably. What about the increase in the value of my holdings? In economic terms, in balance-sheet terms, hell yes that's income. But if I have to pay taxes on it I'm out some cash flow that I don't have because I'm still holding the securities. So current tax law cuts me a break, as it lets me delay paying taxes on capital gains until I sell, which isn't ideal either because I'm lumping all my income into that one year...
I own an unincorporated business. Are all of my sales income? Of course not, they should be offset by cost of goods and expenses. Is my new computer an expense or a capital investment? Depends on how long I'm keeping it and a dozen other factors.
"Flat tax" is such a simplistic idea. The federal income tax isn't complicated because it has a few brackets, nor because of "loopholes" per se, but because an accurate picture of "income" is so hard to figure in all but the most trivial cases.
I disagree. It's not users pressuring for more features. Did anyone really ask for Clippy? Some new features are cool and/or useful, but many look like mere version churning. Microsoft applications tend to pander to marketing pressure for more and more features, or for incompatible upgrade paths.
It wasn't an environment variable. It was a CONFIG.SYS setting, which doesn't show up in the environment table.
A long time ago I saw an ad in the Sunday paper for a receptionist position at the company where I worked. On Monday I congratulated the current receptionist on her promotion and she had no idea what I was talking about.
Ooops. And would you believe I actually caught crap from my boss for leaking what was in the paper the previous day?
As I understand it--and I am not a labor lawyer nor any other kind of lawyer--the owner's salary isn't subject to fair labor practices law. But wages and salaries of employees are.
No he didn't. Wages and salaries are legally privileged above other costs of the business. Your boss can't legally withhold your paycheck. It's not merely a civil matter between you and him... it's literally a Federal Case.
I had a recruiter submit my resume to one of my current employer's major clients. I don't know why I didn't sue her and retire on the settlement.
I don't have a big problem with this part of it. He resisted the idea of password-protecting the .mdb file because it wouldn't do any good. His explicit argument was that you'd still have to give the password to the election officers and the results would be just as insecure as before. What he didn't mention was also that it doesn't take much to reverse-engineer the password out of an .mdb file anyway.
I'd be more concerned if they were talking about password-protecting the .mdb files as if it were a good thing.
Incorrect. NT's kernel was written by Dave Cutler's crew, but none of the code came from VMS. (Duh, it belongs to Compaq, they can't just copy it.)
My VAX-crashing pal did something very similar, IIRC. The application was supposed to draw fractals on some graphics device, "something" went wrong, and it took up all CPU time until the OS choked to death.
It was pretty impressive at the time--we honestly had never heard of a user process crashing a computer. It seemed exotic, even nonsensical. Today people think it's normal! So much for progress.
This morning, while feeding the kids their Saturday ration of mindless TV, we caught a rerun episode of Pokemon. Our hero Ash opened up a bunch of windows (like five or so) on his computer screen, and it crashed hard. His sidekicks ridiculed him for causing the crash.
Not that it would help, I pointed out to the kids (aged 3, 6, 9, and 12) that with any reasonable OS if you truly opened "too many" windows or otherwise exceeded a resource limit, it should simply refuse the request, not crash.
Yeah, it's just a dumb cartoon, but it shows how far Microsoft crap has infested pop culture. Everyone including little kids and cartoon writers assumes that computers just crash unpredictably and for no good reason. They assume random downtime is a fact of life. It's crazymaking for me--having been raised in a VMS shop, where they planned reboots weeks ahead of time and the guy who found a way to crash the VAX with a user-level program became a legend.
Okay, "either lying, incompetent, or in this case untrustworthy." You don't just "change your mind" about warrantless searches and secret trials!
Yeah. I'm saying this would tend to be one of those exceptions, because Kucinich is to the left of most of the Democratic Party (good for him!) and Ohio leans rather Republican. South of I-70 they talk about Cleveland like it's some other planet, I'm telling you.
This is unfortunate. I love Dennis.
Yeah, you go hitting that straw man.
You need to understand the major points of the most important legislation. PATRIOT was rushed through without any examination of details even though it was well known at the time that its effect on traditional American values would be significant. Any sitting member of Congress who voted for PATRIOT and now says it was a mistake is either lying or incompetent. This is not a matter of reading every little thing, it's a matter of having a good idea of what the most important bills contain and their effects.
I give you... Al Gore.
But it is their obligation to read and understand the most important points of major legislation such as PATRIOT. By no standard was PATRIOT a trivial bill, and every member of Congress knew that at the time. They had every right and obligation to say "hey, slow down, let's go through the normal committee process so the staffers can have a look at it and advise us." But no. And it beggars belief that DoJ didn't have time to submit the bill for committee review--it's scores of pages of very dense material, you don't write this stuff in an afternoon.
If it's a major bill, and you don't understand it, don't vote yes. Particularly when it looks like the executive branch is pulling a fast one. That's your obligation as a Senator or Representative.
It's not a matter of making a mistake or changing one's mind. It's a matter of fulfilling the responsibilities of office, which include reading and understanding a bill of this importance before voting for it. PATRIOT is not a trivial piece of legislation, but it is obvious from the rushed way in which it was passed that Congress as a whole did not take its job seriously.
No way. The time to vote against PATRIOT was when it mattered. I don't have time for a sitting member of Congress who can't be bothered to read before voting.
I don't know. Kucinich is THE MAN in Cleveland, but I don't think he has a lot of fans south of the Turnpike. I seriously doubt Kucinich would win Ohio.
Yeah, but the Mindkiller and Stardance series were excellent, and in reasonably good accord with "real" science.
But mankind hasn't always owned land. Kings owned land. That's what made them kings. Land (taken generally, as stuff that isn't made by humans, and is just "out there") had always been up for grabs for anyone to use. Without a king or some kind of sovereign to say "here, this is yours, everyone else stay off," you don't have any meaningful legal right. This is different from labor and capital items, which are obviously yours if you make them or trade for them.
Modern economists make a hash of things by conflating Land with Capital. They're two entirely different things.
Sure, if you're opposed to civilization.
In civilization, we like to keep the violence down to a dull roar, so access to natural resources (i.e., stuff that nobody actually made, so it doesn't rightfully belong to anyone) has to be regulated somehow. That's where the state comes in. If you want civilization, and you want private access to land, it comes from the state. That may even be the definition of civilization.
Sure, until someone posts a book named foo'; drop database bookexchange; ' or somesuch.
I don't believe you can realistically do a useful amount of input checking in a mere 1000 lines of C. Unless your idea of a "line" of C is unreasonable.