Given that sales tax imposes an unreasonable burden on the poor, I can't begin to imagine why anyone would believe this.
Actually, sales tax would be the ultimate tax relief for the poor. Like other posters have said, if essential things, like food and clothing, are tax-free, then the poor are off the hook. This is what I meant by "very specific exclusions"--food, clothing, school supplies, and, perhaps, birth control.
Besides, I'd rather pay an extra $10 in taxes this year than let some poor kid with a bullet in her stomach die on the street.
Think of the children? What about the drug dealer who fired the gun?
Artificially high drug prices pay the drug dealer. The drug dealer can afford an illegal gun. Dealer shoots kid. Now, I have to pay for the drug dealer's crime?
Nationalized health care will solve nothing. Instead it will force each taxpayer to pay even more on top of excessive law enforcement, judicial overload, and prison overcrowding.
More and more band-aids on top of a chronically infected tumor aren't the cure, here.
So are federal income taxes. At least sales taxes can be kept low by the voting public, and, with very specific exclusions and reasonably far-sighted planning, they can be very fair and sustainable, too. Sales tax is marginally better than income tax, but, like you said, there are other potentially better options out there.
I think the most telling aspect of Davis has been his reaction to this whole thing. After the recall vote was certified, Davis could have gone out and touted his accomplishments to clear his name. After all, if Davis is right and he shouldn't be recalled, then there should be some reasons to keep him in office, right? But no. The first thing he does is huddle in a room with some lawyers for a week to come up with a ridiculous suit against the recall process itself. When that fails, he flies to Chicago to meet with big labor union bosses to negotiate their "support". And instead of campaigning for himself, all he has done so far is belittle his opponents and the recall process in general.
Granted, many people are unhappy with the current Republican administration; however, the above discussion about Davis is a good example why a Democratic administration would be no better.
Vote for a third party in 2004! Isn't it time to stir the pot a bit? Isn't it time to set the status quo on edge?
The increasing use of fertility drugs in the past 15-20 years has caused a massive increase in multiple births, and likely increased the number of Chimeras as well.
Well, if a couple is so desparate to reproduce that they will risk having six or eight children at one time, why not take advantage of this situation to make all eight kids physically one (an eight-way chimera, for example).
Only native-born American citizens over 35 are qualified to be President, so this scenario is impossible.
It is certainly possible (though certainly unlikely) for a native-born US citizen to go nuts, become an enemy of the state/organized criminal/expatriated loony, commit mass electronic election fraud, and really mess with the system, in general.
You know, U.S. citizens have been terrorists, too. It isn't just those for'ners over there. This also happens to be why TIA is so dangerous--it turns Americans against themselves, which is just insanity, IMO.
If you want a reliable solution to a problem use Occams razor.
An alternative simple approach would be to hold a national contest, where mathematicians and computer scientists get to pull out all their formal methods to PROVE an electronic voting method. If a voting algorithm can be proven secure, even in light of its implementation, then we can give the go-ahead for electronic voting.
Simply hiring some very green college graduates via Diebold to hack together an electronic system is far from adequate.
Plus, just for fun, they could leave the little wheels with pictures of fruit on it.
No, I get enough of this just watching presidential press conferences (if you look really closely, you will see that two lemons came up in the pres' eyes).
In a stunning upset, Indian Prime Minister Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee has been unanimously elected President of The United States of America.
What is scary is that it really is possible for a foreign leader or political activist to be eligible to become a U.S. President, as long as he/she meets the eligibility requirements, right?
What if two random Americans, eligible in every respect--except presently comotose--were elected to President and VP via electronic voting. Imagine a presidency, where the third-in-line gets the oval office right off the bat (I bet the eligibility requirements are more lax for this person, too).
Actually, I haven't done a default install of any linux distro in ages - does redhat install talk-server by default?
I think Red Hat now comes with "drool proof" security settings (low, medium, and high--pretty funny, IMO).
OpenBSD is solid in the default install. If you want talk, you have to turn it on. A wise computer geek would grab one of the BSDs and put it on a separate box between the broadband connection and the PC. Firewalling really isn't that hard to set up (OpenBSD's man pages are quite good, BTW).
...shouldn't programs like the famous Gator be considered illegal.
Could you write a law such that other innocent programs and people are not victimized as a result? Think in terms of the DMCA (printer cartriges? academic research? full disclosure?).
What is needed is education and companies, such as Norton, to captialize on Gator (e.g., properly classifying it as a trojan).
If one has faith in the free market, then for every bad apple, two good ones spring up to deal with it. For example, Microsoft exists, thus Norton, McAffe, FPROT, etc. etc. etc. exist. People who own Microsoft software and have a little education to work with can, then, pay more money to isntall Norton, which drives up the true cost of that Microsoft software. Eventually, Microsoft will be seen for the crap-covered behemoth it is, and alternatives like Red Hat Linux or Sun's Mad Hatter pop up. Did you know the beginnings of Microsoft's fall are already in the works? It is no different for other crap-covered companies like Gator.
It shouldn't take people dying for others to recognize a problem. Our society is already to a point where the control over information is as important as many other aspects of our lives. Computer users really should have some basic knowledge before connecting to any network, whether it is the Internet or a BBS.
The fact that the e-mail worms that require user intervention are so successful is very good evidence that there is insufficient end-user knowledge out there. This doesn't warrant state licensing schemes, but, at a minimum, should put some customer awareness and security engineering burdens on companies like Microsoft. The click-and-drool syndrome is just too damn common.
Sites like Slashdot, zealots and trolls included, help to this end, by pointing out problems. Now, there needs to be a much broader audience, somehow (I think persistent full disclosure to mainstream media would really be a good thing).
Either way, this defence is flawed and in my opinion the prosecution could have done a whole lot better on this one.
Until home computers are secure (probably never) it should be the prosecution's burden to prove that the accused actually put the offending material on his computer.
For example, I run a non-Windows OS at home with a draconian OpenBSD firewall enroute to the Internet. It would be much easier to prosecute me than some Windows-toting ignoramus who relies on police-reporting computer repair shops for maintaince (repair shops seem to be the most common source of child-porn reports--at least in my city).
Quite honestly, Microsoft and lax broadband providers could be the child-pornographer's lawyers' best friends.
If there was a bloody Atari game, it was probably created after the point where Nolan lost control.
I remember Doom being a flagship game for the Jaguar, at least in the marketing. Although I never had a Jaguar, my Lynx games were generally pretty clean (actaully the Lynx was a pretty darn good hand-held).
That's because you're one of those goofy people that realizes CPUs are damn freaking fast and that oodles of rack-mounted SMP servers, J2EE and Oracle out the wazoo, and a team of inexperienced developers aren't needed for "enterprise" websites.
One is to buy a studly, fire-breathing DB server that can process requests faster than your web servers can send them.
Okay, I've spent the last several years breeding my race horse and dragon hybrid abomination of the animal kingdom and plugged in the Ethernet cable...but nothing happens! I need help! Thanks in advance.
This is the #1 bottleneck in web servers, the more clients you have, the longer it takes to deal with each one of them. Losts of processes to switch between, long arrays in an out of select(), etc.
With fair to decent rack-mount servers so cheap, any more (a $1000 server should handle a few hundred thousand hits/day for simple content, right?), adding more servers is a better solution than throttling, etc., too.
Get a little 2-foot-high rack, sit it on a desk, and pack in a few CPUs, a load balancer, and a switch into it, and Slashdot should be nothing more than an annoying mosquito of the Internet.
Oh, come on. Even my little old G3 iMac is capable of handling quite a load from Slashdot...
Aceshardware.com, also a Slashdot survivor, is run from a comparatively dinky computer: A single Sun Blade 100 (500MHz UltraSPARC IIe CPU; a decent low-wattage CPU, but a SPEC contender it ain't).
Even if Microsoft's study was the greatest contribution to scientific knowledge since Einstein, I would still choose Linux over "embedded" Windows. If considering several embeddable systems, Windows would be at the end of the pack.
The reason is simple: Microsoft has a proven track record for security and reliability--a bad one. Also, they are a greedy, closed, and sinister company. Even further, if I want to ensure an embedded system is useful over the long-term, why would I choose a proprietary system, anyway? Companies come and go like the wind (even Microsoft), but it is much harder to unseat a particular version of Linux.
What can we do to prevent them from no longer being available?
Just lay out your yard and your house with moats, mechanical boats, and remote control planes to look just like Air Sea Battle, ignore your neighbor's screaming, and live, eat, and drink, the classics.
Games do represent an abstract reality, if you remove the abstractions...
If the president espoused views that were backed by no organized religion whatsoever, would you start claiming violation of the "separation of church and state" due to the obvious agnostic or atheistic stance?
Only a small subset of those things considered moral can be argued as such without relying on religion (i.e., is it much easier to form a religion-independent argument about murder than it is for homosexuality).
The president's public statements exhibit arbitrary moral judgements that ware formulated only in the context of his religion. This isn't about keeping religious people from public office, this is about keeping religious zealots out of public office. If a public official can't be modest and objective with regards to what is and is not moral, then that person is not qualified for that position.
The U.S. government's duty is to maintain basic civil order while the people are otherwise free to do what they want. If any citizen is ostracized or repressed due to laws or policies that are solely based on arbitrary moral decisions by religious public officials, then that is nothing less than a great injustice. Yet, we have laws in states like North Carolina and Texas which do nothing but arbitrarily regulate people's sexuality. This is simply insane.
Slashdot Mirror
Given that sales tax imposes an unreasonable burden on the poor, I can't begin to imagine why anyone would believe this.
Actually, sales tax would be the ultimate tax relief for the poor. Like other posters have said, if essential things, like food and clothing, are tax-free, then the poor are off the hook. This is what I meant by "very specific exclusions"--food, clothing, school supplies, and, perhaps, birth control.
Besides, I'd rather pay an extra $10 in taxes this year than let some poor kid with a bullet in her stomach die on the street.
Think of the children? What about the drug dealer who fired the gun?
Artificially high drug prices pay the drug dealer. The drug dealer can afford an illegal gun. Dealer shoots kid. Now, I have to pay for the drug dealer's crime?
Nationalized health care will solve nothing. Instead it will force each taxpayer to pay even more on top of excessive law enforcement, judicial overload, and prison overcrowding.
More and more band-aids on top of a chronically infected tumor aren't the cure, here.
I think illegal immegrants should get healthcare...
Do you think money grows on trees, too?
Sales taxes are a bad idea.
So are federal income taxes. At least sales taxes can be kept low by the voting public, and, with very specific exclusions and reasonably far-sighted planning, they can be very fair and sustainable, too. Sales tax is marginally better than income tax, but, like you said, there are other potentially better options out there.
I think the most telling aspect of Davis has been his reaction to this whole thing. After the recall vote was certified, Davis could have gone out and touted his accomplishments to clear his name. After all, if Davis is right and he shouldn't be recalled, then there should be some reasons to keep him in office, right? But no. The first thing he does is huddle in a room with some lawyers for a week to come up with a ridiculous suit against the recall process itself. When that fails, he flies to Chicago to meet with big labor union bosses to negotiate their "support". And instead of campaigning for himself, all he has done so far is belittle his opponents and the recall process in general.
Granted, many people are unhappy with the current Republican administration; however, the above discussion about Davis is a good example why a Democratic administration would be no better.
Vote for a third party in 2004! Isn't it time to stir the pot a bit? Isn't it time to set the status quo on edge?
The increasing use of fertility drugs in the past 15-20 years has caused a massive increase in multiple births, and likely increased the number of Chimeras as well.
Well, if a couple is so desparate to reproduce that they will risk having six or eight children at one time, why not take advantage of this situation to make all eight kids physically one (an eight-way chimera, for example).
Only native-born American citizens over 35 are qualified to be President, so this scenario is impossible.
It is certainly possible (though certainly unlikely) for a native-born US citizen to go nuts, become an enemy of the state/organized criminal/expatriated loony, commit mass electronic election fraud, and really mess with the system, in general.
You know, U.S. citizens have been terrorists, too. It isn't just those for'ners over there. This also happens to be why TIA is so dangerous--it turns Americans against themselves, which is just insanity, IMO.
If you want a reliable solution to a problem use Occams razor.
An alternative simple approach would be to hold a national contest, where mathematicians and computer scientists get to pull out all their formal methods to PROVE an electronic voting method. If a voting algorithm can be proven secure, even in light of its implementation, then we can give the go-ahead for electronic voting.
Simply hiring some very green college graduates via Diebold to hack together an electronic system is far from adequate.
Plus, just for fun, they could leave the little wheels with pictures of fruit on it.
No, I get enough of this just watching presidential press conferences (if you look really closely, you will see that two lemons came up in the pres' eyes).
In a stunning upset, Indian Prime Minister Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee has been unanimously elected President of The United States of America.
What is scary is that it really is possible for a foreign leader or political activist to be eligible to become a U.S. President, as long as he/she meets the eligibility requirements, right?
What if two random Americans, eligible in every respect--except presently comotose--were elected to President and VP via electronic voting. Imagine a presidency, where the third-in-line gets the oval office right off the bat (I bet the eligibility requirements are more lax for this person, too).
May I suggest two tin cans and a piece of string as a more private medium? ;-)
Don't knock PPPoTTCPOS until you've tried it!
Actually, I haven't done a default install of any linux distro in ages - does redhat install talk-server by default?
I think Red Hat now comes with "drool proof" security settings (low, medium, and high--pretty funny, IMO).
OpenBSD is solid in the default install. If you want talk, you have to turn it on. A wise computer geek would grab one of the BSDs and put it on a separate box between the broadband connection and the PC. Firewalling really isn't that hard to set up (OpenBSD's man pages are quite good, BTW).
...shouldn't programs like the famous Gator be considered illegal.
Could you write a law such that other innocent programs and people are not victimized as a result? Think in terms of the DMCA (printer cartriges? academic research? full disclosure?).
What is needed is education and companies, such as Norton, to captialize on Gator (e.g., properly classifying it as a trojan).
If one has faith in the free market, then for every bad apple, two good ones spring up to deal with it. For example, Microsoft exists, thus Norton, McAffe, FPROT, etc. etc. etc. exist. People who own Microsoft software and have a little education to work with can, then, pay more money to isntall Norton, which drives up the true cost of that Microsoft software. Eventually, Microsoft will be seen for the crap-covered behemoth it is, and alternatives like Red Hat Linux or Sun's Mad Hatter pop up. Did you know the beginnings of Microsoft's fall are already in the works? It is no different for other crap-covered companies like Gator.
I think you're overstating the case. Nobody died.
It shouldn't take people dying for others to recognize a problem. Our society is already to a point where the control over information is as important as many other aspects of our lives. Computer users really should have some basic knowledge before connecting to any network, whether it is the Internet or a BBS.
The fact that the e-mail worms that require user intervention are so successful is very good evidence that there is insufficient end-user knowledge out there. This doesn't warrant state licensing schemes, but, at a minimum, should put some customer awareness and security engineering burdens on companies like Microsoft. The click-and-drool syndrome is just too damn common.
Sites like Slashdot, zealots and trolls included, help to this end, by pointing out problems. Now, there needs to be a much broader audience, somehow (I think persistent full disclosure to mainstream media would really be a good thing).
Either way, this defence is flawed and in my opinion the prosecution could have done a whole lot better on this one.
Until home computers are secure (probably never) it should be the prosecution's burden to prove that the accused actually put the offending material on his computer.
For example, I run a non-Windows OS at home with a draconian OpenBSD firewall enroute to the Internet. It would be much easier to prosecute me than some Windows-toting ignoramus who relies on police-reporting computer repair shops for maintaince (repair shops seem to be the most common source of child-porn reports--at least in my city).
Quite honestly, Microsoft and lax broadband providers could be the child-pornographer's lawyers' best friends.
If there was a bloody Atari game, it was probably created after the point where Nolan lost control.
I remember Doom being a flagship game for the Jaguar, at least in the marketing. Although I never had a Jaguar, my Lynx games were generally pretty clean (actaully the Lynx was a pretty darn good hand-held).
I just don't understand it. Really.
That's because you're one of those goofy people that realizes CPUs are damn freaking fast and that oodles of rack-mounted SMP servers, J2EE and Oracle out the wazoo, and a team of inexperienced developers aren't needed for "enterprise" websites.
Why should server slashdotting be any different?
Because were nerds. The fact that something we do actually correlates with the known physical world...is a cause for concern.
One is to buy a studly, fire-breathing DB server that can process requests faster than your web servers can send them.
Okay, I've spent the last several years breeding my race horse and dragon hybrid abomination of the animal kingdom and plugged in the Ethernet cable...but nothing happens! I need help! Thanks in advance.
+1, Good Idea.
Given that there are very few websites that can spike traffic like Slashdot, this idea is so simple, it just might work!
This is the #1 bottleneck in web servers, the more clients you have, the longer it takes to deal with each one of them. Losts of processes to switch between, long arrays in an out of select(), etc.
With fair to decent rack-mount servers so cheap, any more (a $1000 server should handle a few hundred thousand hits/day for simple content, right?), adding more servers is a better solution than throttling, etc., too.
Get a little 2-foot-high rack, sit it on a desk, and pack in a few CPUs, a load balancer, and a switch into it, and Slashdot should be nothing more than an annoying mosquito of the Internet.
Oh, come on. Even my little old G3 iMac is capable of handling quite a load from Slashdot...
Aceshardware.com, also a Slashdot survivor, is run from a comparatively dinky computer: A single Sun Blade 100 (500MHz UltraSPARC IIe CPU; a decent low-wattage CPU, but a SPEC contender it ain't).
Even if Microsoft's study was the greatest contribution to scientific knowledge since Einstein, I would still choose Linux over "embedded" Windows. If considering several embeddable systems, Windows would be at the end of the pack.
The reason is simple: Microsoft has a proven track record for security and reliability--a bad one. Also, they are a greedy, closed, and sinister company. Even further, if I want to ensure an embedded system is useful over the long-term, why would I choose a proprietary system, anyway? Companies come and go like the wind (even Microsoft), but it is much harder to unseat a particular version of Linux.
What can we do to prevent them from no longer being available?
Just lay out your yard and your house with moats, mechanical boats, and remote control planes to look just like Air Sea Battle, ignore your neighbor's screaming, and live, eat, and drink, the classics.
Games do represent an abstract reality, if you remove the abstractions...
If the president espoused views that were backed by no organized religion whatsoever, would you start claiming violation of the "separation of church and state" due to the obvious agnostic or atheistic stance?
Only a small subset of those things considered moral can be argued as such without relying on religion (i.e., is it much easier to form a religion-independent argument about murder than it is for homosexuality).
The president's public statements exhibit arbitrary moral judgements that ware formulated only in the context of his religion. This isn't about keeping religious people from public office, this is about keeping religious zealots out of public office. If a public official can't be modest and objective with regards to what is and is not moral, then that person is not qualified for that position.
The U.S. government's duty is to maintain basic civil order while the people are otherwise free to do what they want. If any citizen is ostracized or repressed due to laws or policies that are solely based on arbitrary moral decisions by religious public officials, then that is nothing less than a great injustice. Yet, we have laws in states like North Carolina and Texas which do nothing but arbitrarily regulate people's sexuality. This is simply insane.