>It sounds like he understood the meaning of the phrase "no holds barred" and she didn't.
It sounds like all of you don't understand what a no-holds barred fight is.
If you don't let me use my flame thrower attached to a laser-guided grenade lancher in one hand and a man-eating robotic land-shark with chainsaws for teeth on a leach in the other, well, you might as hog-tie me up naked.
>Compare it to what we have now, essentially swiss cheese the size of Jupiter.
Thats true, but there are lots of patches, eg Alternative Minimum Tax.
I can't see how Fair Tax will be better in the long run. Those patches will have to be done.
>I'm still waiting to hear from you how this is a "loophole."
Its the part where businesses will not be taxed to create jobs. If I'm a sales person, I will get the contract/work/job better if I wear an expensive suit rather than a tshirt and pair of jeans. So shouldn't that be something that shouldn't be taxed because my business needs it to create jobs. And what about that personnal jet that I use to impress clients?
Here in Canada, bicycle messengers can charge $10 a day of food as "fuel" for their taxes. Will this be taxed too? If so, how will they not pay the retail tax on this when they have to buy their food at retail stores? According to the FairTax, business-to-business transactions will not be taxed, but how will a retail store know/verify the person they are selling to is for business purposes?
I'm not saying that FairTax isn't a good idea, I just think that its been tried elsewhere and its not as clean as people think it is. In a few years, it will get complicated or, as seen in other countries, even worst then the current system.
>You can't escape the reality, however, that under the national sales tax, the people with more money are paying more in taxes than those who make less
The reality is, that no matter how simple or fair you think a national sales tax is, it will get complicated fast and there will be holes that you can drive a truck through.
From your website (which I just only briefly looked at); "Under the FairTax plan, money retained in the business and reinvested to create jobs, build factories, or develop new technologies, pays no tax"
I can see this as a huge loophole. Big time. Just like *IAA should never underestimate the will and power of people with computers connected to highspeed Internet, don't underestimate the will and power of rich people who are connected to accountants and polititions.
In many countries there is a national sales tax and they do have exceptions for necessities and alot of little strange little rules around this. If you want to simplify taxes, this is not the way to go. If you want to reduce taxes, this is not the way to go.
For example, here in Canada we have the GST. The exceptions are; http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tax/business/gstgui des/rc 4045/rc4045-e.html So notice that full sized pies are not taxed but single servings are. And I'm sure that other countries have rules like that too.
I do realize that you have a specific app that makes things work good for you and its different from the apps that I work on. I'm just trying to flesh out the problems I've encountered/see.
>The server-side script does this and the result is stored in the database.
Thats interesting. You have the business rules on both sides. The code that implements it and the on the database tables that has the results. If the business rules changes then you have to change both the code and previously existing result data you've stored on the database, correct?
>If I were to screw up the on-save business layer, that's not good. But if I were to screw up an on-read design, then every single record is broken.
Both ways every single record is screwed up (or just the important ones that matter in our case). If the business rules are wrong, it goes into the database result tables wrong and it gets read wrong. If the on-read design is wrong, it gets read wrong. Both have the same result. I'm not sure how one way is more worse than others, from a "correctness" point of view.
You are distracting from your own good points that you have and makes people question if you actually have a good point or have you an extreme bias and are blinded by love/hate.
>I use it on/. mainly to counteract the M$ propaganda most people see on their PC keyboards every day.
Thats about effective as saying I use IRC chat spelling or l33t-speak to combat against the mass oppression of the traditional educational system. It says more about you than it does about your message.
>Either way making up juvinile insulting variations on the name doesn't help your cause, it just makes you look immature.
Read that point again and then look at how many times you typed "M$".
We can focus on your points about Microsoft's actions and the debate surrounding the different parties and be open to new ideas... or we can be distracted by your interesting use of the dollar sign and what you mean by it.
>But business data is best implemented in a layer far abstracted from anything else.
The problem for me here is that having the business data is useless if you have it in J2EE and you are trying to use a tool that doesn't interface with J2EE.
For example, you want to slap on a simple an Excel spreadsheet to pull data out and do some funky things. J2EE does not integrate well/easily with Excel, but Excel does with the database. Same thing with loads of different products such as Crystal Reports or my old Fortran program. Database connectivity is tested and common. Integration with EJB is not.
I would love to have the business rules independent of any layer/technology, but the reality is that it needs to be accessable more than abstracted.
> I recently had to pay $500 to get my furnace fixed, when the whole thing was probably only worth a few grand.
A furnance is pretty important during the cold season. And, depending on what type, you have to do it right or else it becomes a health hazzard. A computer, to most people, isn't that important.
I'm sorry, but for me that was the biggest thing against DMCA. Civil copyright infringement is one thing, but making thoughts/code/expressions of an idea or algorithm illegal just is too oppressive.
>but it still eats away a chunck of my fair-use rights.
I'm not 100% sure if thats addressed yet. From the government article (non-FAQ);
"Even as the bill addressing the short-term issues identified in the Section 92 Report is readied for introduction, the Government is preparing to consult on certain priority medium-term issues. Foremost among these is private copying. The Act's private copying regime provides for an exception to copyright that permits the making of a copy of a sound recording for private use. It also provides for a levy to be paid by manufacturers and importers of blank audio recording media."
Trust me, Blizzard hasn't reached it yet. And it doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling when they start posting for key database and network positions soon after the release.
>What do you expect Blizzard to do about it, beyond what they have done?
1. Not screw up how they assign players: i.e. Agent Dawn server. This is a RPG server, as labeled by Blizzard, but for 3 months(?) everyone who allowed the game to pick a PvE server got assigned to it. 2. Have the ability to move characters to another server. They are only this limited functionality now, months after it should have been. 3. Assign limits to servers. If you have a friend who is on the server, have them "sponser" you so you can get on. Do something to limit it.
>The problem is that players have naturally wanted to play with their friends,
No, the problem is Blizzard didn't forsee this and is able to handle this.
>The point of contention in this case isn't the actual censorship of pornsites but rather the sites that get blacklisted just because they give information about sex.
But its optional by the end-user. The person freely decides that the internet connect he is paying for does not recieve that sort of information.
If he is better or worse for his decision, isn't that up to him? Or are you saying that you know what is best for him?
I understand that. But there the idea is that now you have some sort of support, like someone big like the federal government. Hell, you don't even need to do anything, just complain, with documentation, to the Privacy Commission and let them at it.
For lower years, a good wordy descriptive book is nice. As you get more specialized and closer to leaving school (or moving on to the next level), a dry technical reference should all you would need and will be more valuable to the student.
>I've seen too many movies like 28 Days Later to not imagine some accident or oversight to cause some sort of mutant airborne HIV.
28 Days Later had zombies. Is that what you are afraid of? Zombies?
You want scary? Take a look at the front section of any major newspaper and do some indepth research into its topic. Zombies are an entertaining distraction in comparision.
From the article they had their reasons, purely legal and not personal/ethical,
From the article; One rationale in the documents sent to Newman is that such a patent would be "inconsistent with the constitutional right to privacy." After all, the office wrote, a patent allows the owner to exclude others from making the claimed invention. If a patent were to be issued on a human, it would conflict with one of the core privacy rights in the Constitution-- a person's right to decide whether and when to procreate.
Patents on humans also could conflict with the 13th Amendment's prohibition against slavery. That is because a patent permits the owner to exclude others from "using" the invention. Because "use" can mean "employ," officials wrote, a patent holder could prevent a person from being employed by any other -- which "would be tantamount to involuntary servitude."
Finally, the office noted it is illegal to import products that are made abroad using processes patented in the United States. To show how that could cause a problem in a world in which people are patentable, it gave an example in which a man goes overseas and undergoes one of the many surgical procedures patented by US doctors. Simply by returning to America, the office said, that "surgically altered human" could be guilty of patent infringement for illegally importing himself.
> a random number generator in a controlled environment
Seriously, they can't. Randi needs a totally controlled environment. The project uses a random generator and world events, both of which I don't think you can get into a controlled envrionment that would satisfy all.
>Add it all up and you'll find that just by chance, this machine is EXPECTED to have major spikes before world events
Actually, the people involved in the project are already aware of this; From their FAQ: How do you make the leap that the deviations from randomness are related to world events or consciousness? After all, when you find a deviation you can check the news and ALWAYS find some world event that is taking place, because world events happen every day. There are never days without world events anymore, so it seems that there is a possibility that this is just a coincidence.
The leap we make is only to ask the question. The answer seems to be yes, there are correlations. With regard to your concern that we can always find a special event to fit the data, we fully agree. However, we do our experimental work the other way around from what you have inferred. First we make a prediction that some identified event will have an effect, then we assess the data to see the actual outcome. Though some people suggest that we should do so, we never "find a deviation [and then] check the news", because you are right -- it will always be possible to find some event that we might imagine was the cause. The GCP methodology is prediction-based. Before the data are examined, a prediction is registered, with all necessary analysis specifications, and only then do we perform the analysis that allows us to quantify the correlation and assign it a probability against chance.
Slashdot Mirror
>It sounds like he understood the meaning of the phrase "no holds barred" and she didn't.
It sounds like all of you don't understand what a no-holds barred fight is.
If you don't let me use my flame thrower attached to a laser-guided grenade lancher in one hand and a man-eating robotic land-shark with chainsaws for teeth on a leach in the other, well, you might as hog-tie me up naked.
>Compare it to what we have now, essentially swiss cheese the size of Jupiter.
Thats true, but there are lots of patches, eg Alternative Minimum Tax.
I can't see how Fair Tax will be better in the long run. Those patches will have to be done.
>I'm still waiting to hear from you how this is a "loophole."
Its the part where businesses will not be taxed to create jobs. If I'm a sales person, I will get the contract/work/job better if I wear an expensive suit rather than a tshirt and pair of jeans. So shouldn't that be something that shouldn't be taxed because my business needs it to create jobs. And what about that personnal jet that I use to impress clients?
Here in Canada, bicycle messengers can charge $10 a day of food as "fuel" for their taxes. Will this be taxed too? If so, how will they not pay the retail tax on this when they have to buy their food at retail stores? According to the FairTax, business-to-business transactions will not be taxed, but how will a retail store know/verify the person they are selling to is for business purposes?
I'm not saying that FairTax isn't a good idea, I just think that its been tried elsewhere and its not as clean as people think it is. In a few years, it will get complicated or, as seen in other countries, even worst then the current system.
>You can't escape the reality, however, that under the national sales tax, the people with more money are paying more in taxes than those who make less
The reality is, that no matter how simple or fair you think a national sales tax is, it will get complicated fast and there will be holes that you can drive a truck through.
From your website (which I just only briefly looked at);
"Under the FairTax plan, money retained in the business and reinvested to create jobs, build factories, or develop new technologies, pays no tax"
I can see this as a huge loophole. Big time. Just like *IAA should never underestimate the will and power of people with computers connected to highspeed Internet, don't underestimate the will and power of rich people who are connected to accountants and polititions.
In many countries there is a national sales tax and they do have exceptions for necessities and alot of little strange little rules around this. If you want to simplify taxes, this is not the way to go. If you want to reduce taxes, this is not the way to go.
i des/rc 4045/rc4045-e.html
For example, here in Canada we have the GST. The exceptions are;
http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tax/business/gstgu
So notice that full sized pies are not taxed but single servings are. And I'm sure that other countries have rules like that too.
>I think we're not talking about the same thing.
I do realize that you have a specific app that makes things work good for you and its different from the apps that I work on. I'm just trying to flesh out the problems I've encountered/see.
>The server-side script does this and the result is stored in the database.
Thats interesting. You have the business rules on both sides. The code that implements it and the on the database tables that has the results. If the business rules changes then you have to change both the code and previously existing result data you've stored on the database, correct?
>If I were to screw up the on-save business layer, that's not good. But if I were to screw up an on-read design, then every single record is broken.
Both ways every single record is screwed up (or just the important ones that matter in our case). If the business rules are wrong, it goes into the database result tables wrong and it gets read wrong. If the on-read design is wrong, it gets read wrong. Both have the same result. I'm not sure how one way is more worse than others, from a "correctness" point of view.
>Or we can do both.
/. mainly to counteract the M$ propaganda most people see on their PC keyboards every day.
You are distracting from your own good points that you have and makes people question if you actually have a good point or have you an extreme bias and are blinded by love/hate.
>I use it on
Thats about effective as saying I use IRC chat spelling or l33t-speak to combat against the mass oppression of the traditional educational system. It says more about you than it does about your message.
>Either way making up juvinile insulting variations on the name doesn't help your cause, it just makes you look immature.
Read that point again and then look at how many times you typed "M$".
We can focus on your points about Microsoft's actions and the debate surrounding the different parties and be open to new ideas... or we can be distracted by your interesting use of the dollar sign and what you mean by it.
>But business data is best implemented in a layer far abstracted from anything else.
The problem for me here is that having the business data is useless if you have it in J2EE and you are trying to use a tool that doesn't interface with J2EE.
For example, you want to slap on a simple an Excel spreadsheet to pull data out and do some funky things. J2EE does not integrate well/easily with Excel, but Excel does with the database. Same thing with loads of different products such as Crystal Reports or my old Fortran program. Database connectivity is tested and common. Integration with EJB is not.
I would love to have the business rules independent of any layer/technology, but the reality is that it needs to be accessable more than abstracted.
> I recently had to pay $500 to get my furnace fixed, when the whole thing was probably only worth a few grand.
A furnance is pretty important during the cold season. And, depending on what type, you have to do it right or else it becomes a health hazzard. A computer, to most people, isn't that important.
> things like DeCSS won't be illegal in itself,
I'm sorry, but for me that was the biggest thing against DMCA. Civil copyright infringement is one thing, but making thoughts/code/expressions of an idea or algorithm illegal just is too oppressive.
>but it still eats away a chunck of my fair-use rights.
I'm not 100% sure if thats addressed yet. From the government article (non-FAQ);
"Even as the bill addressing the short-term issues identified in the Section 92 Report is readied for introduction, the Government is preparing to consult on certain priority medium-term issues. Foremost among these is private copying. The Act's private copying regime provides for an exception to copyright that permits the making of a copy of a sound recording for private use. It also provides for a levy to be paid by manufacturers and importers of blank audio recording media."
>The hardware has limits.
Trust me, Blizzard hasn't reached it yet. And it doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling when they start posting for key database and network positions soon after the release.
>What do you expect Blizzard to do about it, beyond what they have done?
1. Not screw up how they assign players: i.e. Agent Dawn server. This is a RPG server, as labeled by Blizzard, but for 3 months(?) everyone who allowed the game to pick a PvE server got assigned to it.
2. Have the ability to move characters to another server. They are only this limited functionality now, months after it should have been.
3. Assign limits to servers. If you have a friend who is on the server, have them "sponser" you so you can get on. Do something to limit it.
>The problem is that players have naturally wanted to play with their friends,
No, the problem is Blizzard didn't forsee this and is able to handle this.
>The point of contention in this case isn't the actual censorship of pornsites but rather the sites that get blacklisted just because they give information about sex.
But its optional by the end-user. The person freely decides that the internet connect he is paying for does not recieve that sort of information.
If he is better or worse for his decision, isn't that up to him? Or are you saying that you know what is best for him?
>It appears to me that Ramanujan's name was left out purposely to help understanding and spark interest.
Thats like saying when someone types in all capitals its purposefully to help understanding and spark interest.
You don't say "That MIT guy" or "That English guy in the wheelchair" just to help understanding. It verges on the disrepectful.
If you want to spark interest do it on his work/his merit. Not on his nationality.
>Not everyone performs legally
I understand that. But there the idea is that now you have some sort of support, like someone big like the federal government. Hell, you don't even need to do anything, just complain, with documentation, to the Privacy Commission and let them at it.
>Common sense has to enter the equation at some point
I think thats what the law is about. If I don't want it, leave me alone.
Just because you think that I may be a customer doesn't mean that you have the right to disrupt me.
> It's a public domain, anyone who chooses to can contact you wether or not it's against the law.
Sorry buddy, thats exactly what the law is against. You have a certain amount of privacy, including your information.
>If you don't want to deal with it, don't put it out in the first place.
OR can you make a law so you can put it out there. Some laws protect corporations more, some laws protect individuals more. This falls into the later.
I wished more of my university had done this.
For lower years, a good wordy descriptive book is nice. As you get more specialized and closer to leaving school (or moving on to the next level), a dry technical reference should all you would need and will be more valuable to the student.
Um... where's England?
>I've seen too many movies like 28 Days Later to not imagine some accident or oversight to cause some sort of mutant airborne HIV.
28 Days Later had zombies. Is that what you are afraid of? Zombies?
You want scary? Take a look at the front section of any major newspaper and do some indepth research into its topic. Zombies are an entertaining distraction in comparision.
Woops. Make that the 13th Constitutional Amendment.
>Will we create Frenkenstein?
If we have the knowledge, we will. I can't think of one thing that we have the technology and resource to do that we have set as off-limits.
>Will it mean a race of sub-human slaves?
No. At least not in the US, due to the 14th Constitutional Amendment.
From the article they had their reasons, purely legal and not personal/ethical,
From the article;
One rationale in the documents sent to Newman is that such a patent would be "inconsistent with the constitutional right to privacy." After all, the office wrote, a patent allows the owner to exclude others from making the claimed invention. If a patent were to be issued on a human, it would conflict with one of the core privacy rights in the Constitution-- a person's right to decide whether and when to procreate.
Patents on humans also could conflict with the 13th Amendment's prohibition against slavery. That is because a patent permits the owner to exclude others from "using" the invention. Because "use" can mean "employ," officials wrote, a patent holder could prevent a person from being employed by any other -- which "would be tantamount to involuntary servitude."
Finally, the office noted it is illegal to import products that are made abroad using processes patented in the United States. To show how that could cause a problem in a world in which people are patentable, it gave an example in which a man goes overseas and undergoes one of the many surgical procedures patented by US doctors. Simply by returning to America, the office said, that "surgically altered human" could be guilty of patent infringement for illegally importing himself.
>they are made to pay $20 for 15 tracks from an artist when only 1-2 of them are good.
g /Online_Cata logue_Jessica_Simpson_409.html
Thats the artist/producer control. Not RIAA.
>Back in the day when LPs were popular, you could buy a disc with just the one song you wanted.
You can do that today. Its called CD singles.
Example;
http://www.mattscdsingles.com/acatalo
> a random number generator in a controlled environment
Seriously, they can't. Randi needs a totally controlled environment. The project uses a random generator and world events, both of which I don't think you can get into a controlled envrionment that would satisfy all.
>Add it all up and you'll find that just by chance, this machine is EXPECTED to have major spikes before world events
Actually, the people involved in the project are already aware of this;
From their FAQ:
How do you make the leap that the deviations from randomness are related to world events or consciousness? After all, when you find a deviation you can check the news and ALWAYS find some world event that is taking place, because world events happen every day. There are never days without world events anymore, so it seems that there is a possibility that this is just a coincidence.
The leap we make is only to ask the question. The answer seems to be yes, there are correlations. With regard to your concern that we can always find a special event to fit the data, we fully agree. However, we do our experimental work the other way around from what you have inferred. First we make a prediction that some identified event will have an effect, then we assess the data to see the actual outcome. Though some people suggest that we should do so, we never "find a deviation [and then] check the news", because you are right -- it will always be possible to find some event that we might imagine was the cause. The GCP methodology is prediction-based. Before the data are examined, a prediction is registered, with all necessary analysis specifications, and only then do we perform the analysis that allows us to quantify the correlation and assign it a probability against chance.