1) Most the israeli military budget is actually US money. We give them money taxpayers money and they give that money to the defence industry to buy weapons.
Freedom is more important then features. Economic development is more important then features. Controlling your own destiny is more important then features.
If your only criterea in choosing software is features then you are not choosing the best tool.
They tried to. UN is a useless organization and that was made obvious when it could not stop a stronger country from invading and occupying a weaker one.
"Why did the U.N. let Iraq kick the weapons inspectors out several years ago?"
See above. Without an enforcement arm it could do nothing. At the time US was an ally of iraq.
" Why were France and Russia illegally doing business with Saddam?"
Because the sanctions themselves were illegal and immoral. The sanctions were starving millions of people and causing them untold suffering. In fact a combination of the sanctions and depleted uranium weapons used by the US killed more people then saddam did.
"Look, if Bush was being dishonest about the reasons for war, that pisses me right off."
No it does not. You are lying. He was lying and you now know it. It does not piss you off because you are defending him and not calling for his impeachment. Bill Clinton lied about his cock and got impeached why the double standard?
"It's not a sure thing that he was, as some would have you believe"
How much more prrof do you need? He is now backtracking. Denying things he said and talking about "programs" rather then the weapons themselves. He was very specific, he claimed imminent danger to the US, he talked about locations and amounts and they were all lies.
" But the fact of the matter is that Saddam was a murderer and the Iraqi people are better off without him."
Besides the point. GW never said his reason for invading iraq was because saddam is a bad guy. GW never complained about saddam when saddam was gassing the kurds, slaugtering iraqis, killing the shiites. Now that I think about it you were not either, neither was cheney, rumsfeld or colin powell. This shit has been going on for decades and not a peep from the likes of you. All of a sudden you wake up with a conscience? All of a sudden you are concerned about the iraqi people? What did you say about all those human rights organizations that were condeming saddam for decades? Did you call them names? did you give them money?
People like you make me sick. You have no morals or conscience. You would sit idly by for decades while mass murders and torture are going on but when it suits your needs all of a sudden you are bleeding heart liberal.
Hey since you now have a conscience and are concerned about dark skinned people all of a sudden how about we start invading half of africa, north korea, china, tibet, palestine and all the other countries where people are starving and being tortured and killed.
Did you know that over two thirds of the people in occupied terratories are living below poverty? That's over two million people living on less then $2.15 per day. When is the US army going to invade and free them by kicking out the israeli army?
"Instead he just kicked out a dictator who was responsible for the murder and execution of thousands of his own people."
Saddam has been killing people for years now. Reagan gave him chemical weapons. Buch could have taken him down at any time if that was his reason. How come you, reagan, bush sr, dick chener, donald rumsfeld and all the rest of the republican dunderheads never said anything about saddam killing people while it was actually happening. Did you just yesterday hear from god that killing people was wrong?
Go read some history. After saddam gassed teh kurds the UN drafted a resolution to condemn him. DO you know what happened? Reagan, rumsfeld, cheney blocked it.
Go get a conscience mutherfucker. You should have been joining the "liberal" human rights advocates who were constantly harping about saddams mass murders when that shit was going on.
I don't think intent comes into play in civil cases but I could be wrong.
Do you know if this law requires intent? I didn't get that from the web site explaining the law. It said nothing about intent.
" Now here's an idea, get the RIAA to start prosecuting singing in the park, and we'll see how fast Congress changes the law to something more reasonable. (Well, a guy can hope, can't he?)"
As I said before sometimes laws are ignored just be enforced agains. The drug laws were pretty much ignored all over this country until reagan got into office. He then started a campaign to "educate the public" and passed zero tolerance laws. In under six months you went from being able to smoke a joint in the park without anybody hassling you to losing your house because the cops found a seed in the ashtray.
Americans are stupid and easily manipulate by politicians. They will believe anything if you say it enough times. Once the RIAA starts telling people that singing is the same as terrorism they will back laws to round up singers and ship them off to cuba for "detention".
"IANAL, but I believe copyright violation is a civil offense not a criminal offense. "
Yes it is. And I suppose losing your life savings and declaring bankrupcy is better then being in jail.
Still though the thought that an artist can sue me because I choose to sing a song pretty much demonstrates exactly how far along we have gotten in our zeal to establish a police state in the US.
" Show me a single loophole that allows someone to (a) avoid paying taxes on money and (b) spend that money. "
Spending money is a means not an end. The fact of the matter is that billionaire CEOs routinely get cars, jewelry, real estate or other valuables without paying for them.
BTW if I knew of the specific loopholes I would not be posting here, I would be out whoring for billionaires.
" You can make all kinds of speculations about wether they would arrest you or not, but you need to show some examples of significant numbers of regular people being arrested for singing a song for their own amusement."
a significant number of people have been ordered not to sing "happy birthday" anymore. They haven't been arrested but most have stopped. This is why you don't hear happy birthday in restaurants and instead hear they own made up song.
" I suspect you won't be able to cite a single instance."
Does that count?
"Don't forget that it should be an instance that regular people can relate to, not someone 'busted' for singing covers on a stage."
have you thought about how ridiculus it is that someone can be "busted" for singing a song on stage? Why is this OK with you? On what planet or reality should an artist have that much control over their songs?
According to your web site public performance is defined as.
"place open to the public or at a place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances are gathered."
This fits my example of a street or a park.
"Now, everyone who sang "happy birthday" as a class in school, please make your royalty check payable to..."
Have you ever wondered why they don't sing happy birthday in those chain restaurants and instead make up their song? It's because happy birthday is copyrighted and these restaurants would have to pay money everytime a waiter sang happy birthday.
Even when you think you are being ridiculus you are right.
" No, you're wrong. An artist can not exert that kind of a control over their work. They would have to trespass to break into my house and hear me singing the song in the shower."
What if you were singing in the street? What if you were singing in the park?
The fact is that it's illegal for you to sing an artists song. If anybody heard you singing that is a performance and you owe the record company money. Sure if you are singing in the shower the police would have to break in but if you are singing in the street they don't have to.
You can make all kinds of speculations about whether they would arrest you or not but that does not change the fact that what you are doing is illegal. I remember a time when the cops would never arrest you for smoking a joint, in fact one time a friend of mine got pulled over with a bag of dope and a bong the cops just confiscated his stash and let him go. These days the cops would throw you in jail and confiscate your car. The laws that are not being enforced to day could be enforced with a zero tolerance in the future.
"It's really annoying when people get all philosophical and abstract about their right to the labor of others."
Granted the analogies got out of hand but here is another one.
What if you were not allowed to sing a song you head on the CD? Guess what technically that's true. You do not have the right to sing a song you heard on the radio without paying the recording company. Don't you think this is going too far? Can an artist exert that kind of a control over their work? These days they can and it's sad.
"Which loopholes? I posit that such "loopholes" are largely an urban legend."
The wealthy have tons of loophones. They shuttle money overseas, they have bogus companies, they hide income in a thousand ways. Did you hear about Ken Lay and Enron and Worldcom? They have more loopholes then we can even imagine.
"Most of the massive complexity in the tax code exists to provide breaks and credits to the middle class and particular low-income segments of the population (like small farmers) and to incent particular worthy behaviors, as well as to deal with things like the taxation of foreign investments and income"
This is also way offbase. The tax loopholes exist because companies lobby to get them in the code. In every state and on a national level there are laws which say things like "any company which employes more then 500 employees in a rural area west of the river who use more then X number of joules of energy gets to deduct their enery costs". This means that there is a nearby aliminum plant which just gave the legislature 300 grand in campaign contributions. Do you really think those corporations and billionaires give money to politicians for the fun of it?
" A simple, progressive income tax, even one that went all the way up to 100% of income would leave the bulk of taxes on the middle class because, simply, the full net incomes of the wealthy are still not anywhere near enough to fund the government."
No. It's possible for the top 5% of earners to pay a vast majority of the income tax. It would help the middle class. I don't think you'll ever eliminate the taxes on the middle class but you can reduce it significantly.
"Why? Because if you allow the definition of income to be flexible, the very wealthy can always arrange to "earn" relatively little. OTOH, if you don't allow that "flexibility", small business owners, particularly those starting new companies, will be destroyed by taxes because such a large portion of their revenues will get classified as income."
I agree that the rich would try to shirk their taxes. As I said before they would even renouce their citizenship and abandon their country. They have no sense of obligation or gratitude to this country or it's citizens. The rules would almost certainly need to get fiddled with as the rich found clever ways to avoid paying taxes. The point is that as the rules are being adjusted the idea is to keep in mind that the people who earn the most pay the most taxes. Right now it's the opposite. The rich buy politicians who then adjust the tax system to benefit the rich most.
"That depends on what your tax rate on wealth is. Nearly all of the wealth of the nation is invested in companies. 90% is a reasonable figure. Supposing that you put a, say, 20% tax on accumulated wealth, you'd be talking about liquidation of around 18% of the US-based capitalization of all US companies. "
This is voodoo math here. You are saying that people will actually get rid of their wealth to avoid paying taxes. I don't think so.
"Maybe you mean something different by taxing wealth?"
I do mean something different. I used the wealth as a measure of comparison. The fact is the the wealthiest 5% probably are also in the top 5% of earners.
BTW you can probably achieve the same thing by simply closing all the loopholes that exist only for the rich.
I think a simple but progressive tax code that can be distilled to a few pages would take care of the problem right there.
"OO Spreadsheets often because corrupted being opened on Excel (VERY BIG DEAL)"
There is no cure for this. MS can always make excel crash when opening up OO files and they probably will. Not just excel but all the MS office products.
"Windows isn't done till lotus won't run" remeber that one?
"Do you really think we would be better off if you taxed people according to their wealth rather than their income?"
Yes I do.
"Keep in mind that wealthy people do not keep their money stuffed in a mattress somewhere, or in any kind of physical form, really. It's all invested, mostly in businesses that employ people."
OK. So what. A little less money will be invested but this will be offset by more investment from the middle class who are now unburdened by taxes.
The middle class would also consume more if they paid less taxes thereby increasing the profits of companies which will further enrich the top 5% who own the majority of stock in the corporations.
"Making the wealthiest 5% of the population support 95% of the tax burden would result in massive stock selloffs so that the taxman could be paid -- at least until those wealthy people figured out how to get their money out of the country."
I think you overestimate the selloff, as I said above this would be offset by greater middle class investment.
I do agree with you however that the rich would desert this country. They have feelings of patriotism or loyalty to the US. There would have to be some sort of a law to prevent them from doing business in the US if they renounce their citizenship.
"but I suspect it would be completely offset by the elimination of any incentive to work hard and get ahead, since the government is just going to take all your "excess" from you anyway."
Have you ever heard anybody anywhere turn down money because they would have to pay taxes on it? I haven't. That's a silly argument.
" If the task so easy that a bunch of full time civil-service-duff programmers could be thrown together and code a replacement for Autocad "
I know that it's fashionable in some circles to believe that govt workers are somehow more stupid then you. It probably makes you feel better to think that somebody is incompetent just because they work for the govt and that you are so superior to those "gummit employees".
The fact of the matter is that the govt employs tens of thousands of programmers. There is no reason why they could not employ a dozen more and get them working on a competing open source project. With that kind of dedicated effort and funding a competing product may indeed emerge.
Look what happened to Mozilla. A combination of volunteers and paid programmers ended up making a browser that is superior to IE.
Slashdot Mirror
You noticed I used the word "paraphrase". The ideas were all the same the subjects were flipped around.
The govt is not mandating anything. They are choosing open source products for themselves.
The us govt chooses to use only MS products for example but it does not mandate that I do the same. Same here.
Your figues are based on total dollars.
1) Most the israeli military budget is actually US money. We give them money taxpayers money and they give that money to the defence industry to buy weapons.
2) You need to do a per capita calculation.
Freedom is more important then features. Economic development is more important then features. Controlling your own destiny is more important then features.
If your only criterea in choosing software is features then you are not choosing the best tool.
Oh yes there is also price.
He is an arab. He is leaving the US. Not a bad idea if you ask me.
Could you please tell me which speech of hitlers you were paraphrasing? I want to read it in the original german.
Thanks.
"Why didn't the U.N. step in?"
They tried to. UN is a useless organization and that was made obvious when it could not stop a stronger country from invading and occupying a weaker one.
"Why did the U.N. let Iraq kick the weapons inspectors out several years ago?"
See above. Without an enforcement arm it could do nothing. At the time US was an ally of iraq.
" Why were France and Russia illegally doing business with Saddam?"
Because the sanctions themselves were illegal and immoral. The sanctions were starving millions of people and causing them untold suffering. In fact a combination of the sanctions and depleted uranium weapons used by the US killed more people then saddam did.
"Look, if Bush was being dishonest about the reasons for war, that pisses me right off."
No it does not. You are lying. He was lying and you now know it. It does not piss you off because you are defending him and not calling for his impeachment. Bill Clinton lied about his cock and got impeached why the double standard?
"It's not a sure thing that he was, as some would have you believe"
How much more prrof do you need? He is now backtracking. Denying things he said and talking about "programs" rather then the weapons themselves. He was very specific, he claimed imminent danger to the US, he talked about locations and amounts and they were all lies.
" But the fact of the matter is that Saddam was a murderer and the Iraqi people are better off without him."
Besides the point. GW never said his reason for invading iraq was because saddam is a bad guy. GW never complained about saddam when saddam was gassing the kurds, slaugtering iraqis, killing the shiites. Now that I think about it you were not either, neither was cheney, rumsfeld or colin powell. This shit has been going on for decades and not a peep from the likes of you. All of a sudden you wake up with a conscience? All of a sudden you are concerned about the iraqi people? What did you say about all those human rights organizations that were condeming saddam for decades? Did you call them names? did you give them money?
People like you make me sick. You have no morals or conscience. You would sit idly by for decades while mass murders and torture are going on but when it suits your needs all of a sudden you are bleeding heart liberal.
Hey since you now have a conscience and are concerned about dark skinned people all of a sudden how about we start invading half of africa, north korea, china, tibet, palestine and all the other countries where people are starving and being tortured and killed.
Did you know that over two thirds of the people in occupied terratories are living below poverty? That's over two million people living on less then $2.15 per day. When is the US army going to invade and free them by kicking out the israeli army?
"Instead he just kicked out a dictator who was responsible for the murder and execution of thousands of his own people."
Saddam has been killing people for years now. Reagan gave him chemical weapons. Buch could have taken him down at any time if that was his reason. How come you, reagan, bush sr, dick chener, donald rumsfeld and all the rest of the republican dunderheads never said anything about saddam killing people while it was actually happening. Did you just yesterday hear from god that killing people was wrong?
Go read some history. After saddam gassed teh kurds the UN drafted a resolution to condemn him. DO you know what happened? Reagan, rumsfeld, cheney blocked it.
Go get a conscience mutherfucker. You should have been joining the "liberal" human rights advocates who were constantly harping about saddams mass murders when that shit was going on.
"Yup, Bush sure is evil."
I don't think anybody would argue with that.
" The difference between Bush and Clinton is that Clinton is no danger anymore"
The difference is that clinton lied about his who stuck his cock into, bush lied about why he took us to war and killed tens of thousands of people.
"Fair enough - I guess I just have a little more faith in humanity and common sense than you do. "
I used to hold out hope but after GW invaded and occupied iraq with the blessing of the american people I gave up.
"Yes, but most laws require intent"
I don't think intent comes into play in civil cases but I could be wrong.
Do you know if this law requires intent? I didn't get that from the web site explaining the law. It said nothing about intent.
" Now here's an idea, get the RIAA to start prosecuting singing in the park, and we'll see how fast Congress changes the law to something more reasonable. (Well, a guy can hope, can't he?)"
As I said before sometimes laws are ignored just be enforced agains. The drug laws were pretty much ignored all over this country until reagan got into office. He then started a campaign to "educate the public" and passed zero tolerance laws. In under six months you went from being able to smoke a joint in the park without anybody hassling you to losing your house because the cops found a seed in the ashtray.
Americans are stupid and easily manipulate by politicians. They will believe anything if you say it enough times. Once the RIAA starts telling people that singing is the same as terrorism they will back laws to round up singers and ship them off to cuba for "detention".
"IANAL, but I believe copyright violation is a civil offense not a criminal offense. "
Yes it is. And I suppose losing your life savings and declaring bankrupcy is better then being in jail.
Still though the thought that an artist can sue me because I choose to sing a song pretty much demonstrates exactly how far along we have gotten in our zeal to establish a police state in the US.
" Show me a single loophole that allows someone to (a) avoid paying taxes on money and (b) spend that money. "
Spending money is a means not an end. The fact of the matter is that billionaire CEOs routinely get cars, jewelry, real estate or other valuables without paying for them.
BTW if I knew of the specific loopholes I would not be posting here, I would be out whoring for billionaires.
" You can make all kinds of speculations about wether they would arrest you or not, but you need to show some examples of significant numbers of regular people being arrested for singing a song for their own amusement."
a significant number of people have been ordered not to sing "happy birthday" anymore. They haven't been arrested but most have stopped. This is why you don't hear happy birthday in restaurants and instead hear they own made up song.
" I suspect you won't be able to cite a single instance."
Does that count?
"Don't forget that it should be an instance that regular people can relate to, not someone 'busted' for singing covers on a stage."
have you thought about how ridiculus it is that someone can be "busted" for singing a song on stage? Why is this OK with you? On what planet or reality should an artist have that much control over their songs?
"Also, (and again IANAL) it would make a difference whether you intended your "performance" to be "public""
Not according to that site you(?) posted the link to.
According to your web site public performance is defined as.
"place open to the public or at a place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances are gathered."
This fits my example of a street or a park.
"Now, everyone who sang "happy birthday" as a class in school, please make your royalty check payable to..."
Have you ever wondered why they don't sing happy birthday in those chain restaurants and instead make up their song? It's because happy birthday is copyrighted and these restaurants would have to pay money everytime a waiter sang happy birthday.
Even when you think you are being ridiculus you are right.
" No, you're wrong. An artist can not exert that kind of a control over their work. They would have to trespass to break into my house and hear me singing the song in the shower."
What if you were singing in the street? What if you were singing in the park?
The fact is that it's illegal for you to sing an artists song. If anybody heard you singing that is a performance and you owe the record company money. Sure if you are singing in the shower the police would have to break in but if you are singing in the street they don't have to.
You can make all kinds of speculations about whether they would arrest you or not but that does not change the fact that what you are doing is illegal. I remember a time when the cops would never arrest you for smoking a joint, in fact one time a friend of mine got pulled over with a bag of dope and a bong the cops just confiscated his stash and let him go. These days the cops would throw you in jail and confiscate your car. The laws that are not being enforced to day could be enforced with a zero tolerance in the future.
"It's really annoying when people get all philosophical and abstract about their right to the labor of others."
Granted the analogies got out of hand but here is another one.
What if you were not allowed to sing a song you head on the CD? Guess what technically that's true. You do not have the right to sing a song you heard on the radio without paying the recording company. Don't you think this is going too far? Can an artist exert that kind of a control over their work? These days they can and it's sad.
"Which loopholes? I posit that such "loopholes" are largely an urban legend."
The wealthy have tons of loophones. They shuttle money overseas, they have bogus companies, they hide income in a thousand ways. Did you hear about Ken Lay and Enron and Worldcom? They have more loopholes then we can even imagine.
"Most of the massive complexity in the tax code exists to provide breaks and credits to the middle class and particular low-income segments of the population (like small farmers) and to incent particular worthy behaviors, as well as to deal with things like the taxation of foreign investments and income"
This is also way offbase. The tax loopholes exist because companies lobby to get them in the code. In every state and on a national level there are laws which say things like "any company which employes more then 500 employees in a rural area west of the river who use more then X number of joules of energy gets to deduct their enery costs". This means that there is a nearby aliminum plant which just gave the legislature 300 grand in campaign contributions. Do you really think those corporations and billionaires give money to politicians for the fun of it?
" A simple, progressive income tax, even one that went all the way up to 100% of income would leave the bulk of taxes on the middle class because, simply, the full net incomes of the wealthy are still not anywhere near enough to fund the government."
No. It's possible for the top 5% of earners to pay a vast majority of the income tax. It would help the middle class. I don't think you'll ever eliminate the taxes on the middle class but you can reduce it significantly.
"Why? Because if you allow the definition of income to be flexible, the very wealthy can always arrange to "earn" relatively little. OTOH, if you don't allow that "flexibility", small business owners, particularly those starting new companies, will be destroyed by taxes because such a large portion of their revenues will get classified as income."
I agree that the rich would try to shirk their taxes. As I said before they would even renouce their citizenship and abandon their country. They have no sense of obligation or gratitude to this country or it's citizens. The rules would almost certainly need to get fiddled with as the rich found clever ways to avoid paying taxes. The point is that as the rules are being adjusted the idea is to keep in mind that the people who earn the most pay the most taxes. Right now it's the opposite. The rich buy politicians who then adjust the tax system to benefit the rich most.
"That depends on what your tax rate on wealth is. Nearly all of the wealth of the nation is invested in companies. 90% is a reasonable figure. Supposing that you put a, say, 20% tax on accumulated wealth, you'd be talking about liquidation of around 18% of the US-based capitalization of all US companies. "
This is voodoo math here. You are saying that people will actually get rid of their wealth to avoid paying taxes. I don't think so.
"Maybe you mean something different by taxing wealth?"
I do mean something different. I used the wealth as a measure of comparison. The fact is the the wealthiest 5% probably are also in the top 5% of earners.
BTW you can probably achieve the same thing by simply closing all the loopholes that exist only for the rich.
I think a simple but progressive tax code that can be distilled to a few pages would take care of the problem right there.
"OO Spreadsheets often because corrupted being opened on Excel (VERY BIG DEAL)"
There is no cure for this. MS can always make excel crash when opening up OO files and they probably will. Not just excel but all the MS office products.
"Windows isn't done till lotus won't run" remeber that one?
Lucky for us that 1% is also technically savvy and can be persuaded by technical arguments.
Outlook by itself is a crappy pim compared to most other PIMS on the market.
"Do you really think we would be better off if you taxed people according to their wealth rather than their income?"
Yes I do.
"Keep in mind that wealthy people do not keep their money stuffed in a mattress somewhere, or in any kind of physical form, really. It's all invested, mostly in businesses that employ people."
OK. So what. A little less money will be invested but this will be offset by more investment from the middle class who are now unburdened by taxes.
The middle class would also consume more if they paid less taxes thereby increasing the profits of companies which will further enrich the top 5% who own the majority of stock in the corporations.
"Making the wealthiest 5% of the population support 95% of the tax burden would result in massive stock selloffs so that the taxman could be paid -- at least until those wealthy people figured out how to get their money out of the country."
I think you overestimate the selloff, as I said above this would be offset by greater middle class investment.
I do agree with you however that the rich would desert this country. They have feelings of patriotism or loyalty to the US. There would have to be some sort of a law to prevent them from doing business in the US if they renounce their citizenship.
"but I suspect it would be completely offset by the elimination of any incentive to work hard and get ahead, since the government is just going to take all your "excess" from you anyway."
Have you ever heard anybody anywhere turn down money because they would have to pay taxes on it? I haven't. That's a silly argument.
" If the task so easy that a bunch of full time civil-service-duff programmers could be thrown together and code a replacement for Autocad "
I know that it's fashionable in some circles to believe that govt workers are somehow more stupid then you. It probably makes you feel better to think that somebody is incompetent just because they work for the govt and that you are so superior to those "gummit employees".
The fact of the matter is that the govt employs tens of thousands of programmers. There is no reason why they could not employ a dozen more and get them working on a competing open source project. With that kind of dedicated effort and funding a competing product may indeed emerge.
Look what happened to Mozilla. A combination of volunteers and paid programmers ended up making a browser that is superior to IE.