"fuck, you didn't think that was going to be a good movie when you first heard about it did you?"
The trailers looked interesting and the ticket was a bit of an impulse buy. I thought the movie was "alright" until a few years later when I was curious about what else this guy who wrote Stranger in a Strange Land put out.
I am no longer able to sit through the movie.
If I wanted to look at "nice tits" (as you so eloquently put it) I have an internet connection. The things I play Metroid for are far more difficult to find on the file-sharing networks.
I have the sinking feeling that missing armor won't be the only thing Metroid's translation by Hollywood will share with Starship Troopers. Remember what that movie did to the characters?
"Yes, hopefully she will be an over-muscular female body builder and have a skin condition (probably due to the suit)."
Hey, I'm all for sexy women, but Hollywood has the nasty habit of saying "sexy==unrealistic" (which often ends up being unsexy anyway), especially where strong female characters are concerned. In this case, no Samus shouldn't look like a body builder but she should definately look like a warrior, not a pop star (which is also why she shouldn't look like a body builder).
IMO, I think even Nintendo has forgotten about this. I could believe the woman at the end of Super Metroid was a battle-hardened, solitary warrior. I can't say the same about who I see at the end of Fusion or Zero Mission. Ironicly enough it seems her fan base in North America (and Retro Studios in particular, thank God!) "get it" more than her creators.
""New Scientist is running a front page article about the Sony's QRIO bot [QRIO= Quest for Curiosity] successfully conducted an entire orchestra at the Tokyo Philharmonic Society."
Israeli soldiers + Arab country = gasoline + fire. It's the same reason they stayed out of the first Gulf War as well (though Saddam tried really hard by shooting SCUDs at them).
If you want to start a major war that spans across the entire region, one that would probably answer the question "Who has WMDs?" with absolute certainty, this is how you would start it.
"Now, on the other side, if you tax the hell out of something with elastic demand (luxury items, like say a yacht), people just won't buy the yacht and the government will never see any of the money. Therefor, the taxes on these items have to be lower, so that (rich) people will still buy them. "
So what? Why must we sell yachts? Why must the government have more money?
"Combine that with the fact poor people have less money than rich people and you have a nice recipe for a good gap between the rich and the poor."
As I've been saying ad naseam in this thread that gap only becomes apparent when the rich people spend their money. If a rich person is a tightwad that only spends as much as a poor person, guess what kind of standard of living they have.
There's no gap until the rich person buys that yacht you're talking about.
"The government never tried Capone for his mob activities, just his tax evasion. If the government got rid of income tax, then they would get rid of a way to put away people they suspect of wrong doing but can't provide proof beyond a reasonable doubt."
I don't consider the ability to catch a few slippery criminals to be justification to violate the financial privacy of over a hundred million taxpayers without a warrant.
"Why not negotiate a treaty to keep weapons out of space without a global threat, as determined by the UN?"
Yeah, look how well the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty kept nuclear weapons out of India and Pakistan and stopped nuclear research in DPRK, Iran, Lybia, etc.
"The person with $150K who lives on $15K (including a consumption tax on everything) has made some choices -- maybe they got sick, and elected not to see a doctor."
Here you're beginning to assume motive. The reason the $150K person is saving their money may or may not be frivilous, and they may not even see what they did as a "choice" per se. For example, they may have "chosen" not to see a doctor because they're saving up for a child's future college tuition.
"For the person with $15K who gets sick, the tax they paid on other things (under the assumption that everything is taxed) may well have been the difference between being able to see a doctor or not."
But what about the person who earns $15K who would have been able to afford that doctor's visit if they hadn't bought all those lottery scratch-off tickets? And again, they may not even have seen this as a "choice."
Without Big Bro^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hthe IRS sifting through everybody's financial records you can't decide whether or not someone's spending habits were "right" or "wrong," and even then that decision can only be made on a case-by-case basis. Ignoring for the moment whether the government should be making the right/wrong judgment, that means a monstrously large bureaucracy that's charged both with keeping track of millions of individual taxpayers as well as byzantine tax laws that try to guess motive with what could still be considered too little information.
You'll still have a similar problem in a sales tax scheme (what goods/services are "necessity" versus "luxury?"), but the advantage here is that the right/wrong judgment is based on what the taxpayer did with their money instead of what they might be doing with it, which is all you can really get from looking solely at income instead of expenditures.
"But the money invested does make the economy as a whole better off."
Only when the entity invested in spends the investment. Investing in a start-up doesn't help the economy until the start-up uses that investment to rent office space, buy computers, etc. Money that isn't converted into useful goods/services is literally nothing more than ink on paper.
"A 15% tax on someone trying to live on $15K/year will cut into the basics -- food, minimal shelter, health care. "
Then don't tax those sales. Why must it be an income tax?
"A 15% tax on someone trying to live on $15K/year will cut into the basics -- food, minimal shelter, health care. A 15% tax on someone living on $150K/year will cut into the luxeries"
Only if the $150E3 person actually buys those luxuries. If the $150E3 person only spends as much as the $15E3 person then they have exactly the same standard of living. The only difference would be some numbers on their bank statements.
On the other hand income taxes penalizes people who earn more money whether they would see any benefit from the extra money or not.
"One should be able to opt out of paying taxes for road maintenance, if one can prove one does not use roads."
Neat trick. Sure, you might have walked to the grocery store, but how did all the food get there? And how did the fuel oil/LNG/coal/uranium/whatever get to your local power plant to power the computer you're reading this on?
Taxes are there to pay for the things everybody uses, even if it's only indirectly (such as roads). Whether or not a particular use really does benefit everybody is something for you to talk to your congresscritter about, but what you're suggesting would create a monstrous, unmanagable bureaucracy worse than the IRS itself, with even worse violations of privacy (they'd have to watch you every minute of every day to verify that you really aren't using roads).
"If income tax was abolished, poorer people would most probably effectively end up paying more tax on basic items such as food and clothing."
It is possible to charge different tax rates for different products and services. Many (most?) states don't charge sales tax on most food and clothing for the very same reasons you mention.
Slashdot Mirror
I doubt it. For that we'd all have to start spelling it correctly.
Maybe next time you should work on a slashdotting simulation instead.
"You mean Pking will become a Political Stance?"
Considering what happened 10 years ago in Rwanda and what may be happening right now in Sudan...
"fuck, you didn't think that was going to be a good movie when you first heard about it did you?"
The trailers looked interesting and the ticket was a bit of an impulse buy. I thought the movie was "alright" until a few years later when I was curious about what else this guy who wrote Stranger in a Strange Land put out.
I am no longer able to sit through the movie.
If I wanted to look at "nice tits" (as you so eloquently put it) I have an internet connection. The things I play Metroid for are far more difficult to find on the file-sharing networks.
"Remember that story about the guy who rode a lawn chair with weather balloons into the sky?"
A guy with balloons tied to his lawn chair wouldn't have a ballistic flightpath and wouldn't reach altitudes that would get NORAD's attention.
On the other hand, you should be able to land relatively alright so long as NMD hasn't been finished yet.
"Yeah, since when is Samus "Sexy"??"
Since she decided there were more important things to do with her life than to try to look pretty. That goes a long way IMO.
"loner who rarely speaks."
How much she says isn't important, it's what she does say when she speaks that counts.
"Why would she be sexy?"
Individualism is sexy, but I realize this is the direct polar opposite of the majority opinion.
I have the sinking feeling that missing armor won't be the only thing Metroid's translation by Hollywood will share with Starship Troopers. Remember what that movie did to the characters?
Call me a cynic, but I doubt Woo is all that familiar with MacBeth.
"Yes, hopefully she will be an over-muscular female body builder and have a skin condition (probably due to the suit)."
Hey, I'm all for sexy women, but Hollywood has the nasty habit of saying "sexy==unrealistic" (which often ends up being unsexy anyway), especially where strong female characters are concerned. In this case, no Samus shouldn't look like a body builder but she should definately look like a warrior, not a pop star (which is also why she shouldn't look like a body builder).
IMO, I think even Nintendo has forgotten about this. I could believe the woman at the end of Super Metroid was a battle-hardened, solitary warrior. I can't say the same about who I see at the end of Fusion or Zero Mission. Ironicly enough it seems her fan base in North America (and Retro Studios in particular, thank God!) "get it" more than her creators.
You're misreading the statement. They mean "Please! For the love of God! Does anybody know how to fly this thing!?"
"Real need to take a leaf out of Adobe's book."
Any conventient Russian programmers for Real to have arrested?
Most people just get hung up on the term "brass monkey" and snicker.
""New Scientist is running a front page article about the Sony's QRIO bot [QRIO= Quest for Curiosity] successfully conducted an entire orchestra at the Tokyo Philharmonic Society."
How is this different from, say, a metronome?
"Nice to know that I can listen to Click and Clack on my computer without being constantly bombarded with pop-ups from a piece of annoyware.
Oh wait, I've been doing that for weeks thanks to Real Alternative."
I'm happier with my solution: Hook my Sirius receiver up to my sound card.
Um... no.
Israeli soldiers + Arab country = gasoline + fire. It's the same reason they stayed out of the first Gulf War as well (though Saddam tried really hard by shooting SCUDs at them).
If you want to start a major war that spans across the entire region, one that would probably answer the question "Who has WMDs?" with absolute certainty, this is how you would start it.
"Now, on the other side, if you tax the hell out of something with elastic demand (luxury items, like say a yacht), people just won't buy the yacht and the government will never see any of the money. Therefor, the taxes on these items have to be lower, so that (rich) people will still buy them. "
So what? Why must we sell yachts? Why must the government have more money?
"Combine that with the fact poor people have less money than rich people and you have a nice recipe for a good gap between the rich and the poor."
As I've been saying ad naseam in this thread that gap only becomes apparent when the rich people spend their money. If a rich person is a tightwad that only spends as much as a poor person, guess what kind of standard of living they have.
There's no gap until the rich person buys that yacht you're talking about.
"The government never tried Capone for his mob activities, just his tax evasion. If the government got rid of income tax, then they would get rid of a way to put away people they suspect of wrong doing but can't provide proof beyond a reasonable doubt."
I don't consider the ability to catch a few slippery criminals to be justification to violate the financial privacy of over a hundred million taxpayers without a warrant.
When did THQ hire Acclaim's press agent?
"Why not negotiate a treaty to keep weapons out of space without a global threat, as determined by the UN?"
Yeah, look how well the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty kept nuclear weapons out of India and Pakistan and stopped nuclear research in DPRK, Iran, Lybia, etc.
"It even includes the attempt to eat a usb pen drive, several cops and a 10 minute struggle to subdue the man."
You mean he wasn't "shot while trying to escape?"
"The person with $150K who lives on $15K (including a consumption tax on everything) has made some choices -- maybe they got sick, and elected not to see a doctor."
Here you're beginning to assume motive. The reason the $150K person is saving their money may or may not be frivilous, and they may not even see what they did as a "choice" per se. For example, they may have "chosen" not to see a doctor because they're saving up for a child's future college tuition.
"For the person with $15K who gets sick, the tax they paid on other things (under the assumption that everything is taxed) may well have been the difference between being able to see a doctor or not."
But what about the person who earns $15K who would have been able to afford that doctor's visit if they hadn't bought all those lottery scratch-off tickets? And again, they may not even have seen this as a "choice."
Without Big Bro^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hthe IRS sifting through everybody's financial records you can't decide whether or not someone's spending habits were "right" or "wrong," and even then that decision can only be made on a case-by-case basis. Ignoring for the moment whether the government should be making the right/wrong judgment, that means a monstrously large bureaucracy that's charged both with keeping track of millions of individual taxpayers as well as byzantine tax laws that try to guess motive with what could still be considered too little information.
You'll still have a similar problem in a sales tax scheme (what goods/services are "necessity" versus "luxury?"), but the advantage here is that the right/wrong judgment is based on what the taxpayer did with their money instead of what they might be doing with it, which is all you can really get from looking solely at income instead of expenditures.
"But the money invested does make the economy as a whole better off."
Only when the entity invested in spends the investment. Investing in a start-up doesn't help the economy until the start-up uses that investment to rent office space, buy computers, etc. Money that isn't converted into useful goods/services is literally nothing more than ink on paper.
"When you begin to try to categorise different items people start finding the issues with the categorisation."
The same is true of any tax scheme. Look at the debates that happen over tax-deductable items in income tax implementations.
But dealing these kinds of issues is why we have government to begin with.
"A 15% tax on someone trying to live on $15K/year will cut into the basics -- food, minimal shelter, health care. "
Then don't tax those sales. Why must it be an income tax?
"A 15% tax on someone trying to live on $15K/year will cut into the basics -- food, minimal shelter, health care. A 15% tax on someone living on $150K/year will cut into the luxeries"
Only if the $150E3 person actually buys those luxuries. If the $150E3 person only spends as much as the $15E3 person then they have exactly the same standard of living. The only difference would be some numbers on their bank statements.
On the other hand income taxes penalizes people who earn more money whether they would see any benefit from the extra money or not.
"One should be able to opt out of paying taxes for road maintenance, if one can prove one does not use roads."
Neat trick. Sure, you might have walked to the grocery store, but how did all the food get there? And how did the fuel oil/LNG/coal/uranium/whatever get to your local power plant to power the computer you're reading this on?
Taxes are there to pay for the things everybody uses, even if it's only indirectly (such as roads). Whether or not a particular use really does benefit everybody is something for you to talk to your congresscritter about, but what you're suggesting would create a monstrous, unmanagable bureaucracy worse than the IRS itself, with even worse violations of privacy (they'd have to watch you every minute of every day to verify that you really aren't using roads).
"If income tax was abolished, poorer people would most probably effectively end up paying more tax on basic items such as food and clothing."
It is possible to charge different tax rates for different products and services. Many (most?) states don't charge sales tax on most food and clothing for the very same reasons you mention.