Perhaps you should consider changing that statement to 'I will not buy more new CDs'?
As I understand it, if you buy a used CD, the right of first ownership applies and no money goes to the people you're boycotting. You still get to listen to something besides that old Yanni or Deep Purple that you're stuck with, but you don't support the status quo.
For used media, Wherehouse Music usually has an extensive selection of used CD's and DVD's. It's where I buy virtually all my music anymore. $2-$10 per CD and not a penny to the leeches - gotta like that. Sure I end up waiting for certain disks but that's ok - I can always download lower quality MP3's to listen to until I find it in the used rack.
I suppose you're probably just trolling but in case you're actually an elitist snob; Why? So the guy is working his way up and isn't afraid of getting his hands dirty. Many employers would look on that kind of work ethic as a plus - not a minus.
Heh - I was/am using a similar free e-mail service at Email.com. They made this same change recently. They kept sending me 'subscribe now and save' messages in order to continue their mail forwarding service. The cutoff date came and went, their warnings have stopped, but they're still forwarding my mail. At first I thought it was for real and maybe they just hadn't gotten around to turning off my forwarding, but now (weeks later) I'm starting to think it was just a ploy to get people to send them money. Kinda weird.
I'm not inclined to subscribe to these kinds of things. I have enough email addresses that I pay for as part of a domain or ISP service that it doesn't interest me to pay for additional mail services. I also don't freak out over targeted advertising. I'll put up with it (read, ignore it), to receive a free service. I don't begrudge someone wanting to make money for providing a service. I've paid for plenty of shareware and I do subscribe to some things, but this strikes me as a sort of bait and switch tactic. 'Let's give it to them free until they're dependent on it - then we can stick it to 'em! Bwuhahahahaha!'
Ok - maybe it's not as nefarious as all that and they really do just need to make some money to keep the ship afloat. That's fine - I guess I get to choose whether to contribute or not. At this point, I'm leaning toward 'not'. Pop access sure is convenient, but checking mail via web still works.;-)
Maybe it creates a whole new insurance industry for programmer's insurance.
Yeah - that's just what we need. A bigger insurance industry. Can you imagine malpractice insurance for programming? This aspect alone should scare the be-jeezus out of coders. Just look at what the insurance industry has done to the cost of health care. I recently was in an emergency room getting stitches in my thumb. The doctor sewing me up spent half the time complaining about how he wouldn't get paid for the work for at least 3-4 months due to the insurance company dragging it's feet. Let's hope this is not the future of the software industry!
That's a poor analogy. What you're describing is a return. Which results in the tax being refunded along with the purchase price. Now, if you were to say A sells to B and B sells to C, then you might have a case, but only if each party is a business. Most people perform private sales without bothering with sales taxes. Probably not strictly legal, (per the IRS), but that's reality. Think E-bay or garage sales, for instance.
1. Repeal Federal Income Tax. 2. Institute Federal Sales Tax (say.. 10% - or pick a 'better' number if you like). 3. State sales taxes and income taxes stay in place. 4. No tax on necessities (e.g., food). 5. Tax exemptions for low-income folk. 6. No tax on goods for resale (currently true).
Benefits:
1. I keep the money I make until I decide to spend it on something. Whether I'm an individual, an organization, a corporation, etc. has no bearing. If I spend, I pay tax - period.
2. All this purchasing across state lines to avoid taxes becomes moot. Believe me when I tell you that I do it as much as possible. If I buy a book, a DVD player, a CD, a computer system, whatever, I try to buy out of state to avoid the tax, (I also batch-buy smaller items like books and CD's to cut the freight costs:).
3. The government collects all those dollars that they are whining about missing out on because of internet sales.
4. The IRS can be re-structured to become a collector of sales tax for the fed. No more need for complicated, convoluted tax forms.
Drawbacks:
1. Puts a bunch of accountants, tax lawyers, etc. out of business. (Or at least makes them re-structure their businesses.)
It's from the novel, The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk. Captain Queeg was played by Humphrey Bogart in the movie adaptation. It's a perfect analogy, IMO.
For values of "cool" equaling "a waste of time and a duplication of effort"...
Sorry - I have to disagree. I'm currently re-working our company web-site and have decided to build two sites. One with Java, CSS, tables, etc... The other is text-based with limited product graphics. (This one is under construction, so please don't flame me for broken links, missing content, etc..)
I'm starting with the text first. The layout is almost finished with more content to be added. I won't start any whiz-bang stuff until I'm finished catering to the 28.8 connected, Lynx-only crowd. They are all potential customers, and worth the effort, in my opinion. Then again, I work for a fairly small manufacturing company, not a Fortune 500 that can discard customers without caring...
I do get your point that you can't be all things to all people. I just think it's worth the effort to cover as many bases as possible.
As far as web-site usability, I subscribe to Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox newsletter. This guy is right on with his assessments of what the web should be, IMHO.
I read something once to the effect that all the trash the United States would produce in 300 years would fit in a landfill measuring 30 miles per side and 30 feet deep.
I don't mean to flame anyone here but c'mon - just because you read this somewhere, it must be true, right? Where'd you read it? Rush Limbaugh's Ditto-head newsletter? At least try to come up with something a little more substantive. I can't believe this was rated 3:Informative, not to mention that it misses the real point; it's not the volume, it's the toxicity of the scrap.
Donating it to schools, storing it in a closet, leaving it in the front yard with a 'FREE' sign. All bad ideas, this stuff will eventually end up somewhere. The only real answer is to do the work to break it down into it's elemental parts and re-use those components. IOW - melt the lead, gold and other stuff down and re-use it in new circuit boards, etc. This is expensive and won't happen anytime soon. Not without good incentives to the manufacturer's for doing so.
The bottom line here is that California is trying to institute another tax. And if they get away with it, the rest of the country will follow. Others have already said it better than I can; this won't solve the problem. All it will do is create another layer of government waste on top of the real waste that is occurring. Think vehicle emissions testing. What a load of malarky that is; A company contracts with the state to check your vehicle emissions. If your car doesn't pass, you can get an exemption by spending a set amount of money trying to fix it. It doesn't lead to cleaner air, it just feeds the economy from the pockets of the poor who are least likely to afford the repair bill while being the most likely to own older cars that require the repairs. At least that's how it works here in Washington State -- YMMV.
This issue has the potential to go the same direction as the above scenario. At the rate this is going, I'm gonna end up driving one of those old cars that can't pass emissions, wondering where I'm gonna get the 75 bucks to get past the gov'mint regs. We have to be very careful here. Getting the government directly involved in the cleanup is not the answer! They may very well pass some benign legislation that will deal with the cleanup in a logical manner. They might also grab the opportunity to tax us without fixing the problem yet again. If you live in California, please tell your congress critters that this is a Bad IdeaTM. Urge them to come up with a more equitable solution that benefits society and the world.
I've always thought it ironic that Alfred Nobel was the driving force behind the huge success of Europe's biggest munitions factory of the 20th century.
Do you have any specific information on that ruling? I'd be interested in reading the details. My cableco, (affectionately referred to as 'The Bastards' around my house), insists on charging me extra per month for any additional outlets in the house - whether there's a TV plugged into them or not. I'd love to find some legal ammo to make them back off on this.
And Oregon, that I know of. They have state income tax instead of sales tax.
I don't disagree with you. I just think that there's not a snowball's chance of abolishing the IRS. There might be a chance of modifying it's function if enough people got on board with the idea of repealing income tax and replacing it with a reasonable sales tax tho'. Probably the same chance I have of waking up as a congressional representative tomorrow (heh!)
I also don't think you'll be able to get all 50 states to agree to drop their local fiscal jurisdictions to hand control over to the feds. That's just not the way government works (how's that for an oxymoron?:)
I dunno, I think the best chance of anything like this succeeding is to leverage the system that is already in place - the IRS.
I guess I don't get your point - why would you want the postal service collecting taxes? Like you say, they don't get revenue from taxes now - why let them start? I like the idea that if I want to snail-mail something, I buy a stamp for $0.37 and send it. If I don't send, guess what? I don't pay. Which is my point when it comes to income taxes; I like the idea of not paying taxes until I decide to. Why go the other direction and make the USPS dependent on collected taxes?
>If the governement taxed email, > say a penny a piece, > legitimate users would harly notice, > but spammers would be tanked...
A penny today... $0.34 tomorrow... wait a sec - make that $0.37!. Once it starts, where does it stop? Are you, perchance, an IRS troll trying to drum up yet another source of revenue for the gov'mint?
Also, aren't you being a bit 'US-centric' here?
Sheesh -- talk about needing a 'clue-by-four'!!
/ENDRANT
Ok - at the risk of going off-topic, let's explore a tangent to this comment....
Since we've taken a turn onto the slippery slope of taxation, can anyone explain to me why the following would not work?:
1. Repeal Federal Income Tax.
2. Institute Federal Sales Tax (say.. 10% - or pick a 'better' number if you like).
3. State sales taxes and income taxes stay in place.
4. No tax on necessities (e.g., food).
5. No tax on goods for resale (currently true).
Benefits:
1. I keep the money I make until I decide to spend it on something. Whether I'm an individual, an organization, a corporation, etc. has no bearing. If I spend, I pay tax - period.
2. All this purchasing across state lines to avoid taxes becomes moot. Believe me when I tell you that I do it as much as possible. If I buy a book, a DVD player, a CD, a computer system, whatever, I try to buy out of state to avoid the tax, (ok, I do batch-buy smaller items like books and CD's to cut the freight costs:).
3. The government collects all those dollars that they are whining about missing out on because of internet sales.
4. The IRS can be re-structured to become a collector of sales tax for the fed. No more need for complicated, convoluted tax forms.
Drawbacks:
1. Puts a bunch of accountants, tax lawyers, etc. out of business. (Or at least makes them re-structure their businesses.)
How much money do you think Intel got back from Randall Schwartz?
According to this page, "Randal received a deferred 90 day jail term, 5 years probation, and 480 hours community service. His legal fees have run over $170,000 and he has been ordered to pay over $68,000 in restitution".
Here is another link with more extensive information on the case for those who might be interested.
Well... think about it - which activity creates more money for law enforcement, traffic tickets or catching crackers? We already have technology that could control how traffic moves. But that would threaten the highway patrol 'industry' that's already in place. What a joke!
It is possible to purchase a PC sans OS y'know. My last 'puter came with nothing installed. A blank slate for me to do with what I wanted. I get your point that this is not the 'normal' way that people buy their PC's, but it is possible. And on that (admittedly) small percentage, MS does lose out on the sale.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps you should consider changing that statement to 'I will not buy more new CDs'?
As I understand it, if you buy a used CD, the right of first ownership applies and no money goes to the people you're boycotting. You still get to listen to something besides that old Yanni or Deep Purple that you're stuck with, but you don't support the status quo.
For used media, Wherehouse Music usually has an extensive selection of used CD's and DVD's. It's where I buy virtually all my music anymore. $2-$10 per CD and not a penny to the leeches - gotta like that. Sure I end up waiting for certain disks but that's ok - I can always download lower quality MP3's to listen to until I find it in the used rack.
Just my 40% of a nickel...
I suppose you're probably just trolling but in case you're actually an elitist snob; Why? So the guy is working his way up and isn't afraid of getting his hands dirty. Many employers would look on that kind of work ethic as a plus - not a minus.
To keep your account costs $0.00. To have your mail forwarded or access it via POP will cost you.
Yawn...
Heh - I was/am using a similar free e-mail service at Email.com. They made this same change recently. They kept sending me 'subscribe now and save' messages in order to continue their mail forwarding service. The cutoff date came and went, their warnings have stopped, but they're still forwarding my mail. At first I thought it was for real and maybe they just hadn't gotten around to turning off my forwarding, but now (weeks later) I'm starting to think it was just a ploy to get people to send them money. Kinda weird.
;-)
I'm not inclined to subscribe to these kinds of things. I have enough email addresses that I pay for as part of a domain or ISP service that it doesn't interest me to pay for additional mail services. I also don't freak out over targeted advertising. I'll put up with it (read, ignore it), to receive a free service. I don't begrudge someone wanting to make money for providing a service. I've paid for plenty of shareware and I do subscribe to some things, but this strikes me as a sort of bait and switch tactic. 'Let's give it to them free until they're dependent on it - then we can stick it to 'em! Bwuhahahahaha!'
Ok - maybe it's not as nefarious as all that and they really do just need to make some money to keep the ship afloat. That's fine - I guess I get to choose whether to contribute or not. At this point, I'm leaning toward 'not'. Pop access sure is convenient, but checking mail via web still works.
Yeah - and then Hollywood'll make a stoopid, overblown movie out of it starring some wise-cracking wooden actor from Austria.
Oh wait...
Maybe it creates a whole new insurance industry for programmer's insurance.
Yeah - that's just what we need. A bigger insurance industry. Can you imagine malpractice insurance for programming? This aspect alone should scare the be-jeezus out of coders. Just look at what the insurance industry has done to the cost of health care. I recently was in an emergency room getting stitches in my thumb. The doctor sewing me up spent half the time complaining about how he wouldn't get paid for the work for at least 3-4 months due to the insurance company dragging it's feet. Let's hope this is not the future of the software industry!
Bzzzzt, try again.
That's a poor analogy. What you're describing is a return. Which results in the tax being refunded along with the purchase price.
Now, if you were to say A sells to B and B sells to C, then you might have a case, but only if each party is a business. Most people perform private sales without bothering with sales taxes. Probably not strictly legal, (per the IRS), but that's reality. Think E-bay or garage sales, for instance.
Or, why not try this...
:).
1. Repeal Federal Income Tax.
2. Institute Federal Sales Tax (say.. 10% - or pick a 'better' number if you like).
3. State sales taxes and income taxes stay in place.
4. No tax on necessities (e.g., food).
5. Tax exemptions for low-income folk.
6. No tax on goods for resale (currently true).
Benefits:
1. I keep the money I make until I decide to spend it on something. Whether I'm an individual, an organization, a corporation, etc. has no bearing. If I spend, I pay tax - period.
2. All this purchasing across state lines to avoid taxes becomes moot. Believe me when I tell you that I do it as much as possible. If I buy a book, a DVD player, a CD, a computer system, whatever, I try to buy out of state to avoid the tax, (I also batch-buy smaller items like books and CD's to cut the freight costs
3. The government collects all those dollars that they are whining about missing out on because of internet sales.
4. The IRS can be re-structured to become a collector of sales tax for the fed. No more need for complicated, convoluted tax forms.
Drawbacks:
1. Puts a bunch of accountants, tax lawyers, etc. out of business. (Or at least makes them re-structure their businesses.)
2. ???
Hey! - I thought you liked my band. You two-faced SOB!! That's it - I'm officially rescinding your invitation to next Saturday's BBQ.
"I break with thee, I break with thee, I break with thee."
Now, where did I leave that dog-poopie...?
Shooting off an email means jack, anyone can do that, writing a real letter will get their attention.
:-)
Yep - especially if you sprinkle it with some talcum powder. (Sorry - couldn't resist
Disclaimer - yes this was just a joke, (albeit a bad one). Please try to lighten up.
But what I want to know is, what does "Queegishly" mean?
heh, look here:
queeg
It's from the novel, The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk. Captain Queeg was played by Humphrey Bogart in the movie adaptation. It's a perfect analogy, IMO.
For values of "cool" equaling "a waste of time and a duplication of effort"...
Sorry - I have to disagree. I'm currently re-working our company web-site and have decided to build two sites. One with Java, CSS, tables, etc... The other is text-based with limited product graphics. (This one is under construction, so please don't flame me for broken links, missing content, etc..)
I'm starting with the text first. The layout is almost finished with more content to be added. I won't start any whiz-bang stuff until I'm finished catering to the 28.8 connected, Lynx-only crowd. They are all potential customers, and worth the effort, in my opinion. Then again, I work for a fairly small manufacturing company, not a Fortune 500 that can discard customers without caring...
I do get your point that you can't be all things to all people. I just think it's worth the effort to cover as many bases as possible.
As far as web-site usability, I subscribe to Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox newsletter. This guy is right on with his assessments of what the web should be, IMHO.
I read something once to the effect that all the trash the United States would produce in 300 years would fit in a landfill measuring 30 miles per side and 30 feet deep.
I don't mean to flame anyone here but c'mon - just because you read this somewhere, it must be true, right? Where'd you read it? Rush Limbaugh's Ditto-head newsletter? At least try to come up with something a little more substantive. I can't believe this was rated 3:Informative, not to mention that it misses the real point; it's not the volume, it's the toxicity of the scrap.
Donating it to schools, storing it in a closet, leaving it in the front yard with a 'FREE' sign. All bad ideas, this stuff will eventually end up somewhere. The only real answer is to do the work to break it down into it's elemental parts and re-use those components. IOW - melt the lead, gold and other stuff down and re-use it in new circuit boards, etc. This is expensive and won't happen anytime soon. Not without good incentives to the manufacturer's for doing so.
The bottom line here is that California is trying to institute another tax. And if they get away with it, the rest of the country will follow. Others have already said it better than I can; this won't solve the problem. All it will do is create another layer of government waste on top of the real waste that is occurring. Think vehicle emissions testing. What a load of malarky that is; A company contracts with the state to check your vehicle emissions. If your car doesn't pass, you can get an exemption by spending a set amount of money trying to fix it. It doesn't lead to cleaner air, it just feeds the economy from the pockets of the poor who are least likely to afford the repair bill while being the most likely to own older cars that require the repairs. At least that's how it works here in Washington State -- YMMV.
This issue has the potential to go the same direction as the above scenario. At the rate this is going, I'm gonna end up driving one of those old cars that can't pass emissions, wondering where I'm gonna get the 75 bucks to get past the gov'mint regs. We have to be very careful here. Getting the government directly involved in the cleanup is not the answer! They may very well pass some benign legislation that will deal with the cleanup in a logical manner. They might also grab the opportunity to tax us without fixing the problem yet again. If you live in California, please tell your congress critters that this is a Bad IdeaTM. Urge them to come up with a more equitable solution that benefits society and the world.
Just my 40% of a nickel...
Heh - apparently, irony is completely lost on the /. moderators. Mod this up please!!
I've always thought it ironic that Alfred Nobel was the driving force behind the huge success of Europe's biggest munitions factory of the 20th century.
Heh, heh - but how do you really feel? :-)
Do you have any specific information on that ruling? I'd be interested in reading the details. My cableco, (affectionately referred to as 'The Bastards' around my house), insists on charging me extra per month for any additional outlets in the house - whether there's a TV plugged into them or not. I'd love to find some legal ammo to make them back off on this.
TIA
And Oregon, that I know of. They have state income tax instead of sales tax.
:)
I don't disagree with you. I just think that there's not a snowball's chance of abolishing the IRS. There might be a chance of modifying it's function if enough people got on board with the idea of repealing income tax and replacing it with a reasonable sales tax tho'. Probably the same chance I have of waking up as a congressional representative tomorrow (heh!)
I also don't think you'll be able to get all 50 states to agree to drop their local fiscal jurisdictions to hand control over to the feds. That's just not the way government works (how's that for an oxymoron?
I dunno, I think the best chance of anything like this succeeding is to leverage the system that is already in place - the IRS.
Internal Revenue Service.
US Postal Service.
I guess I don't get your point - why would you want the postal service collecting taxes? Like you say, they don't get revenue from taxes now - why let them start? I like the idea that if I want to snail-mail something, I buy a stamp for $0.37 and send it. If I don't send, guess what? I don't pay. Which is my point when it comes to income taxes; I like the idea of not paying taxes until I decide to. Why go the other direction and make the USPS dependent on collected taxes?
Please clarify if I'm missing something here.
>If the governement taxed email,
:).
/. faithful?
> say a penny a piece,
> legitimate users would harly notice,
> but spammers would be tanked...
A penny today... $0.34 tomorrow... wait a sec - make that $0.37!. Once it starts, where does it stop? Are you, perchance, an IRS troll trying to drum up yet another source of revenue for the gov'mint?
Also, aren't you being a bit 'US-centric' here?
Sheesh -- talk about needing a 'clue-by-four'!!
/ENDRANT
Ok - at the risk of going off-topic, let's explore a tangent to this comment....
Since we've taken a turn onto the slippery slope of taxation, can anyone explain to me why the following would not work?:
1. Repeal Federal Income Tax.
2. Institute Federal Sales Tax (say.. 10% - or pick a 'better' number if you like).
3. State sales taxes and income taxes stay in place.
4. No tax on necessities (e.g., food).
5. No tax on goods for resale (currently true).
Benefits:
1. I keep the money I make until I decide to spend it on something. Whether I'm an individual, an organization, a corporation, etc. has no bearing. If I spend, I pay tax - period.
2. All this purchasing across state lines to avoid taxes becomes moot. Believe me when I tell you that I do it as much as possible. If I buy a book, a DVD player, a CD, a computer system, whatever, I try to buy out of state to avoid the tax, (ok, I do batch-buy smaller items like books and CD's to cut the freight costs
3. The government collects all those dollars that they are whining about missing out on because of internet sales.
4. The IRS can be re-structured to become a collector of sales tax for the fed. No more need for complicated, convoluted tax forms.
Drawbacks:
1. Puts a bunch of accountants, tax lawyers, etc. out of business. (Or at least makes them re-structure their businesses.)
2. ???
Any comments on this from the
Cheers!
How much money do you think Intel got back from Randall Schwartz?
According to this page, "Randal received a deferred 90 day jail term, 5 years probation, and 480 hours community service. His legal fees have run over $170,000 and he has been ordered to pay over $68,000 in restitution".
Here is another link with more extensive information on the case for those who might be interested.
Well... think about it - which activity creates more money for law enforcement, traffic tickets or catching crackers? We already have technology that could control how traffic moves. But that would threaten the highway patrol 'industry' that's already in place. What a joke!
It is possible to purchase a PC sans OS y'know. My last 'puter came with nothing installed. A blank slate for me to do with what I wanted. I get your point that this is not the 'normal' way that people buy their PC's, but it is possible. And on that (admittedly) small percentage, MS does lose out on the sale.
Amen - brotha' errxn!!
btw - re: your sig...
What happens when pasta and antipasta collide?
Maybe this?