I remember the moment when I loaded a web page in an alpha release of Mosaic like people remember where they were when they heard about the JFK assassination or 9/11. I announced to the room full of internet users that "This is going to change the world". One of my coworkers said "Big deal. So they threw together an app that can download html files and some helper apps to display bitmaps and play sounds. We could have done that." I replied, "Maybe so, but mark my words: this is going to change the world." Looks like I was right about something for once.
They suck the life out of every individual that is forced to work an average of 10 years during their lifetime (based on around a 15% income tax and a 60 year lifespan)
If only it were true! Even the poorest Americans have a little more than 15% of the gross shown on each paycheck withheld (half shown on the check stub, half hidden) for Social Security, for an effective rate of 14% of their full gross (counting the hidden 7.6%). If the average FIT is 15% (for an an effective rate of 14% of the full gross pay), that makes a total average Federal tax on income of about 28%.
Consider the wealth the average taxpayer could amass by retirement if allowed instead to first use that 14% to pay off a house note and following that, invest it. Social Security is nothing other than the most brilliantly deceptive and successful political scheme ever devised: an engine for maintaining people in poverty while paradoxically garnering their fervent political support!
Re:I thought so.
on
Genome Surprise
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Of course race has a genetic basis. It is inherited, after all. Black people have black children.
If you were talking about skin colour, then this would make sense. But you are speaking about 'race', which is a word that is used to refer to a fuzzy concept that has no clear scientific definition. You might as well have said "Of course phlogiston flows. Things do change temperature, after all."
They were not 'police' officers. They were police officers. They were simply enforcing the law, just as police officers in the US enforce the state's decisions about what we can and cannot ingest. If it is strange for the state to drug everyone, it is no stranger for them to forbid people to drug themselves.
Highly placed sources within Slashdot have revealed on condition of anonymity that the news service has today put into place its new plan, developed after a reassessment of its target audience by their marketing research firm, to move into the supermarket tabloid space and compete toe-to-toe with the National Enquirer.
Stories soon to appear include:
Did Rapture Occur in 1979? Study Reveals Green Beans Cure All Cancers One Third of New York Population are Space Aliens
Well, anyone who thought about it much would see that there is another sense in which gold differs greatly from unbacked paper money: the quantity of gold in the world is severely limited, whereas states can roll the currency printing presses without limit. Surely it is not insane to take that fact into consideration.
NPR has a valid beef, but they are trying to apply the wrong law. The unauthorized copying of information is not what distinguishes the abusive linking cases to which NPR alludes from the benign ones. What distinguishes them is that the offending websites are framing the information in such a way as to make it appear that they are the originators of it. In other words, they are claiming authorship, committing a sort of plagiarism without actually copying anything. It is as though I were to start propagating, in an effect manner, the idea that I had directed the movie Minority Report, and figured out an angle to make money off of the ruse. As far as I know, the copyright law does not address this. It also seems close to the kind of act that trademark law guards against, but in a reverse sort of way. Trademark and servicemark law tries to prevent the confusion of the public as to who is the purveyor of merchandise or services. The typical violation of trademark, however, involves the offendor applying someone's trademark to his own product. But in these cases, the offendor is in effect applying his own trademark to someone else's product. It does appear to me that this could dilute the trademark. But do the current US trademark laws actually reach this kind of case?Perhaps someone with detailed knowledge of the relevant laws could enlighten us on that question.
You are assuming that the Netherlands is governed by laws, not men. The judge has ordered only the defendant not to link to the sites, not anyone else, including himself.
What we see this judge doing is something that can happen to small people put in positions of authority. They end up becoming lawless in their efforts to control those under them. This case reminds me of a recent one in the United States in which a school principal made some high-handed ruling that incensed practically his entire student body. The students informally agreed to wear red shirts the next day as a quiet protest. The principal promptly decreed that no student could wear a red shirt the next day, despite it being totally within the rules to wear a red shirt!
Slashdot Mirror
I remember the moment when I loaded a web page in an alpha release of Mosaic like people remember where they were when they heard about the JFK assassination or 9/11. I announced to the room full of internet users that "This is going to change the world". One of my coworkers said "Big deal. So they threw together an app that can download html files and some helper apps to display bitmaps and play sounds. We could have done that." I replied, "Maybe so, but mark my words: this is going to change the world." Looks like I was right about something for once.
They suck the life out of every individual that is forced to work an average of 10 years during their lifetime (based on around a 15% income tax and a 60 year lifespan)
If only it were true! Even the poorest Americans have a little more than 15% of the gross shown on each paycheck withheld (half shown on the check stub, half hidden) for Social Security, for an effective rate of 14% of their full gross (counting the hidden 7.6%). If the average FIT is 15% (for an an effective rate of 14% of the full gross pay), that makes a total average Federal tax on income of about 28%.
Consider the wealth the average taxpayer could amass by retirement if allowed instead to first use that 14% to pay off a house note and following that, invest it. Social Security is nothing other than the most brilliantly deceptive and successful political scheme ever devised: an engine for maintaining people in poverty while paradoxically garnering their fervent political support!
Of course race has a genetic basis. It is inherited, after all. Black people have black children.
If you were talking about skin colour, then this would make sense. But you are speaking about 'race', which is a word that is used to refer to a fuzzy concept that has no clear scientific definition. You might as well have said "Of course phlogiston flows. Things do change temperature, after all."
They were not 'police' officers. They were police officers. They were simply enforcing the law, just as police officers in the US enforce the state's decisions about what we can and cannot ingest. If it is strange for the state to drug everyone, it is no stranger for them to forbid people to drug themselves.
Highly placed sources within Slashdot have revealed on condition of anonymity that the news service has today put into place its new plan, developed after a reassessment of its target audience by their marketing research firm, to move into the supermarket tabloid space and compete toe-to-toe with the National Enquirer.
Stories soon to appear include:
Did Rapture Occur in 1979?
Study Reveals Green Beans Cure All Cancers
One Third of New York Population are Space Aliens
So if I said that some yellow flowers are roses, the poster would try to prove me wrong like so:
uh, yeah, this would seem reasonable, until its logical consequence emerges:
all roses are yellow
Well, anyone who thought about it much would see that there is another sense in which gold differs greatly from unbacked paper money: the quantity of gold in the world is severely limited, whereas states can roll the currency printing presses without limit. Surely it is not insane to take that fact into consideration.
NPR has a valid beef, but they are trying to apply the wrong law. The unauthorized copying of information is not what distinguishes the abusive linking cases to which NPR alludes from the benign ones. What distinguishes them is that the offending websites are framing the information in such a way as to make it appear that they are the originators of it. In other words, they are claiming authorship, committing a sort of plagiarism without actually copying anything. It is as though I were to start propagating, in an effect manner, the idea that I had directed the movie Minority Report, and figured out an angle to make money off of the ruse. As far as I know, the copyright law does not address this. It also seems close to the kind of act that trademark law guards against, but in a reverse sort of way. Trademark and servicemark law tries to prevent the confusion of the public as to who is the purveyor of merchandise or services. The typical violation of trademark, however, involves the offendor applying someone's trademark to his own product. But in these cases, the offendor is in effect applying his own trademark to someone else's product. It does appear to me that this could dilute the trademark. But do the current US trademark laws actually reach this kind of case?Perhaps someone with detailed knowledge of the relevant laws could enlighten us on that question.
You are assuming that the Netherlands is governed by laws, not men. The judge has ordered only the defendant not to link to the sites, not anyone else, including himself.
What we see this judge doing is something that can happen to small people put in positions of authority. They end up becoming lawless in their efforts to control those under them. This case reminds me of a recent one in the United States in which a school principal made some high-handed ruling that incensed practically his entire student body. The students informally agreed to wear red shirts the next day as a quiet protest. The principal promptly decreed that no student could wear a red shirt the next day, despite it being totally within the rules to wear a red shirt!