Why? Why not use headphones? How will this affect the final product?
Clearly, you've never worked in a studio and tried to track and mix anything.
Please. I can use the same set of heads for months. Of course you'll want new heads for a recording, but unless you're bashing the shit out of the drums with heavy sticks,
You've just described Grohl's style -- baseball bats for sticks and he bashes the shit out of the drums.
you're not going to go through one set per song. That is just plain wasteful, and unnecessary.
The point here is that the producer was looking for a consistent sound, and the heads change with use.
If I buy a new car, park it in a barnyard for six years, and then try to drive it, will the car sense that it has been abandoned and refuse to operate?
No, the car won't sense that it was abandoned, but it may not start -- the battery could be dead, the hoses could have dried up and all of your coolant leaked out, a seal could have dried up and your oilpan leaked, the starter motor could have seized, the gasoline could have gone bad (it does) or any of the hundreds of things that can go wrong when a car is left sitting. I'm sure the tires will be flat, too, and you might as well check to see if any rodents have eaten any of the wiring.
Anyways, you'll probably want to tow it to the dealer (at their cost) and have 'em fix the thing (at their cost) because it's failed due to your negligence.
I don't agree. Sure, people were suckered into buying "cheap" inkjet printers but don't try to tell me they did this in the full realization they would get ripped off on the ink.
The local CompUSA sells the ink cartridges right across from the printers. In fact, you can read the prices from across the aisle.
I bought an HP inkjet printer years ago, when they still charged for the actual printer when you bought it. It sees some use, fairly light. I don't go through ink cartridges very fast.
Fair enough...
But now I'm expected to pay through the nose for ink to make up for the CURRENT printers which I do not use? That's bad enough, but add that now the ink cartridge will commit suicide if I don't wastefully print more than I need to.
Ummmm, genius, the inks for your old printer don't have chips, and even if they did, your printer (and its driver) don't have any way to read or write the chips, so the new cartridge you buy for your old printer won't self-destruct.
An AC points out the obvious: Did it seem odd to anyone else that these were all predicatable, softball questions? "How come you're going to beat Linux?" doesn't lead to an answer that qualifies as news. A real question would be something like "If an organization is moving an app from a Sun/SGI/HPUX server to x86 equipment, why would they move it to Win2003 Server instead of Linux?" Make him think and/or squirm.
See, these "reporters" subscribe to the same school of "professional journalism" as the people that cover the White House. Basically, a) They desire the access, so they don't ask the hard questions, and b) if the response didn't come from "official" sources, then it's unsubstantiated and as such can't be printed as "news."
My response? Well, as for a), the powers-that-be oughta be able to handled -- and to expect -- the hard questions. If they've got something to hide, it'll be clear.
And as for b), if a reporter is unwilling to dig, then he's not a reporter, and then "news" reduces to whatever lies the powers-that-be want to tell the public.
Typical AC: am no fan of Bush (I didn't vote for either of them), but I do believe in Capitol Punishment
Hmmm...punishment on the steps of the US Capitol building? Learn to spell. The word you want is "capital."
and I do beleive that Saddam must be dealt with and that diplomacy is not in Saddam's deck of cards.
...and it's in Dubya's clearly-stacked deck? You know, the one that's marked...
Bush may have been way too aggressive with Iraq, but I would NEVER claim that he trashed 50 years of diplomacy,
YOU won't, you misinformed fuckwit, but anyone who's been PAYING ATTENTION (and not just to Rush and the rest of the anti-liberal media) understands that in two short years, Dubya's managed to cause grave harm to the United States' foreign policy.
A typical A.C.: Yes folks, it's a curious thing, it seems many lawyers use macs. Al Gore isn't the only one. Have a look at Dubya posing with his PowerBook on the campaign trail...
Dubya is not a lawyer. When he applied to the law school at the University of Texas, he was told that "he would make an excellent law school student. Just not at the University of Texas."
Small wonder he hates lawyers!
So, anyway, that's why he took the preferential legacy admission tip and headed off to Yale, where he bumbled his way through an MBA program.
(Which, of course, is proof enough that an MBA is a joke of a degree.)
Teddy: My question is does this board, or ANY SOUND CARD work in a 64bit/ 66mhz / 3.3 volt pci slot like the one that the intel SCB2 "server" boards have.
Assuming that both the card and the slot were designed correctly (according to PCI spec), any 32-bit/33 MHz PCI card will work in a 64-bit/66 MHz slot. It just won't run at 66 MHz and it won't use the 64-bit datapath.
I have not been able to get a clear answer from either creative
Well, Creative's tech support is rather useless. And their cards are 32-bit/33 MHz.
and the last non-compatible card I tried in one of the boxes fried the power supply [yes; repeatable]...
Did the card fit in the slot without being forced?
Bishop: I agree that sound in games is vastly underated. Part of the problem is that "computer speakers" are garbage. Even the high end "500watts" 5.1 systems are not worth listening too. This limits the usefullness of consumer 24/96 audio.
I agree, which is why my computer is usually hooked up to a pair of Genelec 1031A studio monitors. Makes playing Wolfenstein a completely engrossing experience!
First, I'll say I agree. I bought an SB Live! when it was out for a few months, and the damn thing blue-screened immediately. I downloaded newer drivers and still no love. So I returned it and vowed never again to buy another Creative product. Their driver support sucks, has always sucked, and probably WILL always suck.
Second was a PCI-128, I was lucky enough to get an Ensonique card (that I've found to be a good card anyway, works well in the Linux box).
Yeah, Creative bought Ensoniq, most likely because Ensoniq was eating their lunch in the pre-install biz. Back around 1995 or so, Gateway and a couple of other PC makers were choosing the Ensoniq cards over Soundblasters. First of all, the Ensoniq cards WERE better -- they measured lower noise and less distortion than the SB cards. Also, the drivers WERE better. Ensoniq had some, um, "internal issues" which ultimately lead to them selling out to Creative Labs.
The Creative PCI cards are Ensoniq designs using Ensoniq ASICs.
So I'm now using two no-name external USB devices, which... give... low S/N ratio...
I'm sure you mean high S/N. It's signal to noise, higher signal meaning higher ratio:)
This is provably useless to anyone who has done any basic signal theory.
* 24 bit gives a SNR of 144dB. How many people have mikes and/or baffles with such a quality ? 24bit is useless unless maybe for processing, in order not to lose significant digits, but that should be in pure software. Case dismissed.
The point is that a DAC or ADC with higher resolution is more accurate. 16-bit converters aren't really 16-bit accurate. So, a 24-bit converter gives you 21 or 22 good bits, and while the rest is noise, it's still more accurate than a 16-bit part.
Besides, the 24-bit parts are the ones the chip vendors are pushing, and they're at the right price. Good luck even BUYING a 16-bit part!
* Your ears filter out anything above 20kHz. Make it 24 kHz for the so called golden ears. Therefore according to nyquist anything above 48 kHz is useless. Case dismissed
Um, the whole point of sampling at higher frequencies is so that the anti-aliasing filter doesn't have to be this sharp-cutoff ringing thing that was commment when sampling at 44.1kHz. Instead of having a transition band of 2.05 kHz (between 20 kHz and 22.05kHz in a 44.1kHz system), you have a leisurely 28 kHz (between 20 kHz and 48 kHz in a 96 kHz system). Gentler antialiasing filters == much less time-domain ringing and sampling artifacts.
Class dismissed. Please do your homework before posting about things you don't understand.
jmu1: As for property taxes, I don't really care how much it is... but that you can really don't own your own property(and in some areas, it is even worse). It should be done away with. Texas doesn't have it... Florida doesn't have it. They seem to be doing just fine.
It's worth noting that Texas consistently rates among the bottom five in services for citizens, including education and access to healthcare.
jmu1: Simply speaking, it's the power of choice that the sales tax gives us that I'm trying to emphasize. Income is universal(unless you're some scumbag living off the state). It's just like buying generic goods... they are cheaper, and i pay less tax on them. I made that decision. I don't get to choose how much income tax I pay.
So, by choosing to not to make purchases, you choose how much tax to pay. Now, consider what would happen if the fire department was funded by sales taxes. Imagine a scheme whereby the fire dept. knows how much you've "chosen" to not contribute to their operation. If you haven't paid "enough," they may decide to let your house burn.
Now, if the fire dept. is funded via income tax (which is typically NOT the case; most municipalities fund these services through property taxes), the amount you contribute is based on your ability to pay. In other words, you are compelled to pay for the service, unlike if the service was funded by sales tax and you choose not to participate.
What's even worse than income tax is damned property tax.
I believe that property taxes are regressive, in the sense that a potential homebuyer may not have too much choice in how much to spend on a home. For example, say my job is in San Jose and I want to buy a home. Well, I'm shit outta luck because there's no way I'll find anything less than, oh, half a mil, and the property tax will also be high as a result.
Random Feature: Whoa there.. so because someone makes more money they should pay more in general?
Yes. That is the argument for a progressive tax system.
Of course the taxes paid by the poor guy for necessities is more of his income, he makes less. So? The result is that poor dude pays $3 in taxes and SO DOES THE RICH GUY. That's fair. Same taxes. Same product.
BUT YOU MISS THE POINT. Which is: that $3 in taxes has a much larger impact on the purchasing power of the poor person. While $3 may not mean much to someone who makes $75K, it certainly does mean something to someone that takes home $250/wk and has to pay rent, food, etc.
AC: Ever buy tires? They're all tax. I work for a nonproft in a state that forgives these taxes. A set of 4 nice snow skins - Goodyear UltraGrip for a large van - retail to the drones for about $450. Nonprofits get them for $200 and the GSA buys them for $90.
Jeez, you have no idea of the difference between "wholesale" and "retail."
The GSA buys the things direct from the factory, and in huge quantities. No middlemen and huge numbers mean they get the things for a fraction over cost.
Joe Consumer, on the other hand, pays the cost of the tire, plus the cost of the person and the business that exist to sell it to him, plus the cost of advertising that tire, and so forth.
jmu1: The rich buying their Lincolin Navigators would be paying more, while me in my little VW will pay less than half!
However -- the rich have the option of NOT buying that Navigator, and instead, buying a little VW just like you did. So, they pay the SAME amount of tax that you did. And, I'm willing to bet that the $1400 in sales tax (7% of $20,000) hurts YOU a lot more than it hurt the rich guy.
Nolife: "The federal gov wants to lower taxes so you will have more money to buy more things and hopefully jump start the bad economy."
No, the Federal Gov't is in the grip of a conservative orthodoxy whose mantra demands zero tax collection. Unfortunately, it's not clear how a government is supposed to run on zero revenue.
It's been shown that tax cuts, especially those that benefit the rich, have no effect on "jumpstarting" the economy, especially when the majority of consumers are scared that their job may be axed.
"The states want to start collecting taxes to collect more revenue because the economy is bad and they are in the red."
They're in the red for many reasons, not the least of which is that the federal government mandates all sorts of programs and policies (like, um, the "Homeland Security" clusterfuck) and then helpfully decides not to fund them -- leaving the states in the hole for the costs of these programs.
Remember that a lot of states have their state income tax rates pegged to the federal tax rate -- so any time the White House starts talking about abolishing capital gains taxes, or taxes on dividends, or reducing the federal tax rate, the states start quaking because THEIR revenues go down. And, unlike the feds, state governments are not allowed to run deficits.
So, think about it: which federal, state and local taxpayer-funded programs would you like to see shitcanned? Do you like your roads to be paved? Your police officers and firemen to be trained and paid? How about your teachers?
Doggo: "Having just engaged in a spree of online shopping I noticed that it's not as great a deal as once thought. Sure, the price for my O'Reilly book is less than what I'd pay at the local B&N or Borders, or even from O'Reilly.com,"
I've noticed that many of the low-price Internet retailers, like Computers4Sure, aren't offering discounts at all! I mean, I paid $499 at the local CompUSA for an HP CP1700 printer because C4Sure and everyone else was ALSO charging $499, and the damn thing is so big and heavy that the sales tax was LESS than the shipping. Plus, I was able to take it home and play with it right away:) Fry's Electronics in Tempe isn't a bargain, either. I guess at some point, these operations figured they needed to make money in order to stay in business.
And Barnes and Nobles' free shipping isn't exactly a bargain, when you realize that it may take two or three WEEKS for your stuff to arrive. Of course, you could win the jackpot, when after three weeks, you call them and say, "My books haven't arrived," and they promptly refund your credit card. And two weeks later, the books show up!
RocketScientist:.but rich people tend to spend more, so they pay more tax. It's the exact same percentage of what they pay on goods/services if you're rich or poor. That's why tax theorists favor it, its FAIR.
No, it's not fair.
The proportion of income that poorer persons pay for the necessities -- food, shelter, transportation -- is greater than the the proportion of income that a richer person pays.
And, no -- we're not talking extravagances here.
$20 for dinner may seem like no big deal if you're a working IT person bringing in the cash, but if you're making $6/hr, it's a huge expense.
And the argument that "rich people spend more money" doesn't wash, because the rich person doesn't need to buy the BMW when a Chevy would suffice. If the rich persons chose to be frugal -- which many of them do, which is how they get rich in the first place (unless they're like Dubya and born into it) -- that could have a serious impact on tax receipts.
The only truly progressive tax system is a graduated income tax. And that tax should not be so full of loopholes so as to make it unfair.
An income tax will also allow the governments to make a more accurate assessment of their tax receipts. Example: your city may base much of its budget planning on expected sales tax receipts. In lean times, like the recession we're in right now, consumers choose to spend less (because of fears over losing a job, or whatever). Thus, the city doesn't bring in the expected tax revenue, and there's a budget deficit. At least with an income tax, they can better estimate the revenue.
As you readers can tell, I'm in favor of an income tax over any sort of sales/use tax. That doesn't mean that I'm in favor of how our federal government is spending my money. Given the choice, I'd say NO to the war in Iraq, and YES YES YES to universal health care, education and services for the citizens of this country.
Adzoox: Also, EVERYTHING I sell is used. Taxes cannot be charged on used goods. Taxes were ALREADY paid.
Um, wrong. The tax is on the sale, not the item. The tax is on the transaction, if you will.
That's why the buyer of your used car pays you sales tax (that you are supposed to remit to the state).
If you trade in your old car, the sales tax you pay on your new one is reduced by the amount of tax the buyer (the dealer, in this case) pays on your old one. You simply subtract the sale price of the old car from the new one and calculate the tax you pay.
heroine: "Doing stuff in hardware is neat because it runs real fast, you're interacting with the real world instead of living in a black box, and you can charge money for it. Other than that, it's too expensive to use in most commercial situations and you need to go back to a general purpose computer. Let's put it this way. The ML300 is $4695 in materials. A standalone FPGA with supporting electronics and PCB fabrication is $100 in materials. Pure software on a general purpose computer is $0 in materials."
The board is expensive because tech support for something like this is expensive. By charging a non-trivial amount of money, the vendor is able to weed out the non-serious players.
g4dget: " Ummm--no. The `FP' in `FPGA' stands for `field-programmable', and it is field programmability that I'm arguing against. Field programmability usually means that I, the user, need to do something to the device.
In this case, you're wrong. "Field Programmable," in this case, means, "the opposite of factory mask programmed." The device is programmed by the board manufacturer prior to shipping.
The FPGAs we're discussing here are the SRAM-based types. These require some sort of external storage that loads the configuration at power-on (or whenever the user requires reconfiguration). Typically, this configuration is stored in a serial EEPROM, but it can also be loaded from a one-time-programmable (OTP) serial ROM, or even from a microprocessor bus.
Note that there are a bunch of FPGAs that are OTP. Actel and QuickLogic only make OTP FPGAs. Xilinx and Altera will sell you OTP versions of their SRAM devices.
Then, of course, Lattice has their new xPGAs, which are FPGAs with built-in configuration EEPROM.
Sure, it's possible to design a board that the end-user can configure. In fact, most FPGA- and CPLD-based systems are designed that way -- so the design, test and production engineers can load configuration code. However, how many end users have JTAG dongles for their computers? How many end users have EPROM programmers? The point, of course, is that the hardware vendors don't expect end users to update the products.
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Add perfectly matched, pro level monitors.
Why? Why not use headphones? How will this affect the final product?
Clearly, you've never worked in a studio and tried to track and mix anything.
Please. I can use the same set of heads for months. Of course you'll want new heads for a recording, but unless you're bashing the shit out of the drums with heavy sticks,
You've just described Grohl's style -- baseball bats for sticks and he bashes the shit out of the drums.
you're not going to go through one set per song. That is just plain wasteful, and unnecessary.
The point here is that the producer was looking for a consistent sound, and the heads change with use.
Another anonymous fuckwit writes:
If I buy a new car, park it in a barnyard for six years, and then try to drive it, will the car sense that it has been abandoned and refuse to operate?
No, the car won't sense that it was abandoned, but it may not start -- the battery could be dead, the hoses could have dried up and all of your coolant leaked out, a seal could have dried up and your oilpan leaked, the starter motor could have seized, the gasoline could have gone bad (it does) or any of the hundreds of things that can go wrong when a car is left sitting. I'm sure the tires will be flat, too, and you might as well check to see if any rodents have eaten any of the wiring.
Anyways, you'll probably want to tow it to the dealer (at their cost) and have 'em fix the thing (at their cost) because it's failed due to your negligence.
Scottme:
I don't agree. Sure, people were suckered into buying "cheap" inkjet printers but don't try to tell me they did this in the full realization they would get ripped off on the ink.
The local CompUSA sells the ink cartridges right across from the printers. In fact, you can read the prices from across the aisle.
An anonymous genius writes:
I bought an HP inkjet printer years ago, when they still charged for the actual printer when you bought it. It sees some use, fairly light. I don't go through ink cartridges very fast.
Fair enough ...
But now I'm expected to pay through the nose for ink to make up for the CURRENT printers which I do not use? That's bad enough, but add that now the ink cartridge will commit suicide if I don't wastefully print more than I need to.
Ummmm, genius, the inks for your old printer don't have chips, and even if they did, your printer (and its driver) don't have any way to read or write the chips, so the new cartridge you buy for your old printer won't self-destruct.
An AC points out the obvious: Did it seem odd to anyone else that these were all predicatable, softball questions? "How come you're going to beat Linux?" doesn't lead to an answer that qualifies as news. A real question would be something like "If an organization is moving an app from a Sun/SGI/HPUX server to x86 equipment, why would they move it to Win2003 Server instead of Linux?" Make him think and/or squirm.
See, these "reporters" subscribe to the same school of "professional journalism" as the people that cover the White House. Basically, a) They desire the access, so they don't ask the hard questions, and b) if the response didn't come from "official" sources, then it's unsubstantiated and as such can't be printed as "news."
My response? Well, as for a), the powers-that-be oughta be able to handled -- and to expect -- the hard questions. If they've got something to hide, it'll be clear.
And as for b), if a reporter is unwilling to dig, then he's not a reporter, and then "news" reduces to whatever lies the powers-that-be want to tell the public.
A shameful state of affairs.
Torpor: There's nothing that says "Pro = digital multitrack with multiple busses from the house mix".
Actually, "Pro = isolated split for all mics and lines on the stage feeding a truck with a recording console and 24-track 2" tape machine."
IF you wanna be pedantic, that is...
AC: bush ... is one of the few presidents to have a master's degree.
Because they wouldn't let him into law school. And he got a Gentleman's C in the MBA program.
Typical AC: am no fan of Bush (I didn't vote for either of them), but I do believe in Capitol Punishment
Hmmm...punishment on the steps of the US Capitol building? Learn to spell. The word you want is "capital."
and I do beleive that Saddam must be dealt with and that diplomacy is not in Saddam's deck of cards.
...and it's in Dubya's clearly-stacked deck? You know, the one that's marked...
Bush may have been way too aggressive with Iraq, but I would NEVER claim that he trashed 50 years of diplomacy,
YOU won't, you misinformed fuckwit, but anyone who's been PAYING ATTENTION (and not just to Rush and the rest of the anti-liberal media) understands that in two short years, Dubya's managed to cause grave harm to the United States' foreign policy.
A typical A.C.: Yes folks, it's a curious thing, it seems many lawyers use macs. Al Gore isn't the only one. Have a look at Dubya posing with his PowerBook on the campaign trail...
Dubya is not a lawyer. When he applied to the law school at the University of Texas, he was told that "he would make an excellent law school student. Just not at the University of Texas."
Small wonder he hates lawyers!
So, anyway, that's why he took the preferential legacy admission tip and headed off to Yale, where he bumbled his way through an MBA program.
(Which, of course, is proof enough that an MBA is a joke of a degree.)
pclminion: Now I can finally use my computer as an oscilloscope with 24 bits of precision at 96 KHz? Hell, I even get *two* stereo channels!
Um, the antialiasing filter still rolls off above 20 kHz, just not as severly as the filter in a 48 kHz system.
Still a good 'scope idea, just don't expect it to show you anything above 20 kHz.
Teddy: My question is does this board, or ANY SOUND CARD work in a 64bit/ 66mhz / 3.3 volt pci slot like the one that the intel SCB2 "server" boards have.
Assuming that both the card and the slot were designed correctly (according to PCI spec), any 32-bit/33 MHz PCI card will work in a 64-bit/66 MHz slot. It just won't run at 66 MHz and it won't use the 64-bit datapath.
I have not been able to get a clear answer from either creative
Well, Creative's tech support is rather useless. And their cards are 32-bit/33 MHz.
and the last non-compatible card I tried in one of the boxes fried the power supply [yes; repeatable]...
Did the card fit in the slot without being forced?
Bishop: I agree that sound in games is vastly underated. Part of the problem is that "computer speakers" are garbage. Even the high end "500watts" 5.1 systems are not worth listening too. This limits the usefullness of consumer 24/96 audio.
I agree, which is why my computer is usually hooked up to a pair of Genelec 1031A studio monitors. Makes playing Wolfenstein a completely engrossing experience!
sfe_software:
First, I'll say I agree. I bought an SB Live! when it was out for a few months, and the damn thing blue-screened immediately. I downloaded newer drivers and still no love. So I returned it and vowed never again to buy another Creative product. Their driver support sucks, has always sucked, and probably WILL always suck.
Second was a PCI-128, I was lucky enough to get an Ensonique card (that I've found to be a good card anyway, works well in the Linux box).
Yeah, Creative bought Ensoniq, most likely because Ensoniq was eating their lunch in the pre-install biz. Back around 1995 or so, Gateway and a couple of other PC makers were choosing the Ensoniq cards over Soundblasters. First of all, the Ensoniq cards WERE better -- they measured lower noise and less distortion than the SB cards. Also, the drivers WERE better. Ensoniq had some, um, "internal issues" which ultimately lead to them selling out to Creative Labs.
The Creative PCI cards are Ensoniq designs using Ensoniq ASICs.
So I'm now using two no-name external USB devices, which ... give ... low S/N ratio...
I'm sure you mean high S/N. It's signal to noise, higher signal meaning higher ratio :)
Stud:
This is provably useless to anyone who has done any basic signal theory.
* 24 bit gives a SNR of 144dB. How many people have mikes and/or baffles with such a quality ? 24bit is useless unless maybe for processing, in order not to lose significant digits, but that should be in pure software. Case dismissed.
The point is that a DAC or ADC with higher resolution is more accurate. 16-bit converters aren't really 16-bit accurate. So, a 24-bit converter gives you 21 or 22 good bits, and while the rest is noise, it's still more accurate than a 16-bit part.
Besides, the 24-bit parts are the ones the chip vendors are pushing, and they're at the right price. Good luck even BUYING a 16-bit part!
* Your ears filter out anything above 20kHz. Make it 24 kHz for the so called golden ears. Therefore according to nyquist anything above 48 kHz is useless. Case dismissed
Um, the whole point of sampling at higher frequencies is so that the anti-aliasing filter doesn't have to be this sharp-cutoff ringing thing that was commment when sampling at 44.1kHz. Instead of having a transition band of 2.05 kHz (between 20 kHz and 22.05kHz in a 44.1kHz system), you have a leisurely 28 kHz (between 20 kHz and 48 kHz in a 96 kHz system). Gentler antialiasing filters == much less time-domain ringing and sampling artifacts.
Class dismissed. Please do your homework before posting about things you don't understand.
jmu1: As for property taxes, I don't really care how much it is... but that you can really don't own your own property(and in some areas, it is even worse). It should be done away with. Texas doesn't have it... Florida doesn't have it. They seem to be doing just fine.
It's worth noting that Texas consistently rates among the bottom five in services for citizens, including education and access to healthcare.
jmu1: Simply speaking, it's the power of choice that the sales tax gives us that I'm trying to emphasize. Income is universal(unless you're some scumbag living off the state). It's just like buying generic goods... they are cheaper, and i pay less tax on them. I made that decision. I don't get to choose how much income tax I pay.
So, by choosing to not to make purchases, you choose how much tax to pay. Now, consider what would happen if the fire department was funded by sales taxes. Imagine a scheme whereby the fire dept. knows how much you've "chosen" to not contribute to their operation. If you haven't paid "enough," they may decide to let your house burn.
Now, if the fire dept. is funded via income tax (which is typically NOT the case; most municipalities fund these services through property taxes), the amount you contribute is based on your ability to pay. In other words, you are compelled to pay for the service, unlike if the service was funded by sales tax and you choose not to participate.
What's even worse than income tax is damned property tax.
I believe that property taxes are regressive, in the sense that a potential homebuyer may not have too much choice in how much to spend on a home. For example, say my job is in San Jose and I want to buy a home. Well, I'm shit outta luck because there's no way I'll find anything less than, oh, half a mil, and the property tax will also be high as a result.
Random Feature: Whoa there.. so because someone makes more money they should pay more in general?
Yes. That is the argument for a progressive tax system.
Of course the taxes paid by the poor guy for necessities is more of his income, he makes less. So? The result is that poor dude pays $3 in taxes and SO DOES THE RICH GUY. That's fair. Same taxes. Same product.
BUT YOU MISS THE POINT. Which is: that $3 in taxes has a much larger impact on the purchasing power of the poor person. While $3 may not mean much to someone who makes $75K, it certainly does mean something to someone that takes home $250/wk and has to pay rent, food, etc.
AC: Ever buy tires? They're all tax. I work for a nonproft in a state that forgives these taxes. A set of 4 nice snow skins - Goodyear UltraGrip for a large van - retail to the drones for about $450. Nonprofits get them for $200 and the GSA buys them for $90.
Jeez, you have no idea of the difference between "wholesale" and "retail."
The GSA buys the things direct from the factory, and in huge quantities. No middlemen and huge numbers mean they get the things for a fraction over cost.
Joe Consumer, on the other hand, pays the cost of the tire, plus the cost of the person and the business that exist to sell it to him, plus the cost of advertising that tire, and so forth.
jmu1: The rich buying their Lincolin Navigators would be paying more, while me in my little VW will pay less than half!
However -- the rich have the option of NOT buying that Navigator, and instead, buying a little VW just like you did. So, they pay the SAME amount of tax that you did. And, I'm willing to bet that the $1400 in sales tax (7% of $20,000) hurts YOU a lot more than it hurt the rich guy.
Nolife: "The federal gov wants to lower taxes so you will have more money to buy more things and hopefully jump start the bad economy."
No, the Federal Gov't is in the grip of a conservative orthodoxy whose mantra demands zero tax collection. Unfortunately, it's not clear how a government is supposed to run on zero revenue.
It's been shown that tax cuts, especially those that benefit the rich, have no effect on "jumpstarting" the economy, especially when the majority of consumers are scared that their job may be axed.
"The states want to start collecting taxes to collect more revenue because the economy is bad and they are in the red."
They're in the red for many reasons, not the least of which is that the federal government mandates all sorts of programs and policies (like, um, the "Homeland Security" clusterfuck) and then helpfully decides not to fund them -- leaving the states in the hole for the costs of these programs.
Remember that a lot of states have their state income tax rates pegged to the federal tax rate -- so any time the White House starts talking about abolishing capital gains taxes, or taxes on dividends, or reducing the federal tax rate, the states start quaking because THEIR revenues go down. And, unlike the feds, state governments are not allowed to run deficits.
So, think about it: which federal, state and local taxpayer-funded programs would you like to see shitcanned? Do you like your roads to be paved? Your police officers and firemen to be trained and paid? How about your teachers?
Doggo: "Having just engaged in a spree of online shopping I noticed that it's not as great a deal as once thought. Sure, the price for my O'Reilly book is less than what I'd pay at the local B&N or Borders, or even from O'Reilly.com,"
I've noticed that many of the low-price Internet retailers, like Computers4Sure, aren't offering discounts at all! I mean, I paid $499 at the local CompUSA for an HP CP1700 printer because C4Sure and everyone else was ALSO charging $499, and the damn thing is so big and heavy that the sales tax was LESS than the shipping. Plus, I was able to take it home and play with it right away :) Fry's Electronics in Tempe isn't a bargain, either. I guess at some point, these operations figured they needed to make money in order to stay in business.
And Barnes and Nobles' free shipping isn't exactly a bargain, when you realize that it may take two or three WEEKS for your stuff to arrive. Of course, you could win the jackpot, when after three weeks, you call them and say, "My books haven't arrived," and they promptly refund your credit card. And two weeks later, the books show up!
RocketScientist: .but rich people tend to spend more, so they pay more tax. It's the exact same percentage of what they pay on goods/services if you're rich or poor. That's why tax theorists favor it, its FAIR.
No, it's not fair.
The proportion of income that poorer persons pay for the necessities -- food, shelter, transportation -- is greater than the the proportion of income that a richer person pays.
And, no -- we're not talking extravagances here.
$20 for dinner may seem like no big deal if you're a working IT person bringing in the cash, but if you're making $6/hr, it's a huge expense.
And the argument that "rich people spend more money" doesn't wash, because the rich person doesn't need to buy the BMW when a Chevy would suffice. If the rich persons chose to be frugal -- which many of them do, which is how they get rich in the first place (unless they're like Dubya and born into it) -- that could have a serious impact on tax receipts.
The only truly progressive tax system is a graduated income tax. And that tax should not be so full of loopholes so as to make it unfair.
An income tax will also allow the governments to make a more accurate assessment of their tax receipts. Example: your city may base much of its budget planning on expected sales tax receipts. In lean times, like the recession we're in right now, consumers choose to spend less (because of fears over losing a job, or whatever). Thus, the city doesn't bring in the expected tax revenue, and there's a budget deficit. At least with an income tax, they can better estimate the revenue.
As you readers can tell, I'm in favor of an income tax over any sort of sales/use tax. That doesn't mean that I'm in favor of how our federal government is spending my money. Given the choice, I'd say NO to the war in Iraq, and YES YES YES to universal health care, education and services for the citizens of this country.
Adzoox: Also, EVERYTHING I sell is used. Taxes cannot be charged on used goods. Taxes were ALREADY paid.
Um, wrong. The tax is on the sale, not the item. The tax is on the transaction, if you will.
That's why the buyer of your used car pays you sales tax (that you are supposed to remit to the state).
If you trade in your old car, the sales tax you pay on your new one is reduced by the amount of tax the buyer (the dealer, in this case) pays on your old one. You simply subtract the sale price of the old car from the new one and calculate the tax you pay.
OK, so I made it sound complicated...
heroine: "Doing stuff in hardware is neat because it runs real fast, you're interacting with the real world instead of living in a black box, and you can charge money for it. Other than that, it's too expensive to use in most commercial situations and you need to go back to a general purpose computer. Let's put it this way. The ML300 is $4695 in materials. A standalone FPGA with supporting electronics and PCB fabrication is $100 in materials. Pure software on a general purpose computer is $0 in materials."
The board is expensive because tech support for something like this is expensive. By charging a non-trivial amount of money, the vendor is able to weed out the non-serious players.
g4dget: " Ummm--no. The `FP' in `FPGA' stands for `field-programmable', and it is field programmability that I'm arguing against. Field programmability usually means that I, the user, need to do something to the device.
In this case, you're wrong. "Field Programmable," in this case, means, "the opposite of factory mask programmed." The device is programmed by the board manufacturer prior to shipping.
The FPGAs we're discussing here are the SRAM-based types. These require some sort of external storage that loads the configuration at power-on (or whenever the user requires reconfiguration). Typically, this configuration is stored in a serial EEPROM, but it can also be loaded from a one-time-programmable (OTP) serial ROM, or even from a microprocessor bus.
Note that there are a bunch of FPGAs that are OTP. Actel and QuickLogic only make OTP FPGAs. Xilinx and Altera will sell you OTP versions of their SRAM devices.
Then, of course, Lattice has their new xPGAs, which are FPGAs with built-in configuration EEPROM.
Sure, it's possible to design a board that the end-user can configure. In fact, most FPGA- and CPLD-based systems are designed that way -- so the design, test and production engineers can load configuration code. However, how many end users have JTAG dongles for their computers? How many end users have EPROM programmers? The point, of course, is that the hardware vendors don't expect end users to update the products.