There are better things for accountants to do. I'd rather have them looking for ways to make a business more efficient than slogging through piles of government paperwork, for example. As for the lawyers, a lot of them would do fine job in the sales profession.
I think we either need to abolish individual income taxes or corporate income taxes.
We can do better than that. If we abolish all taxes on earnings, and move entirely to consumption-based taxation, we'll reverse a lot of bad habits (like our negative rate of savings, for one example). Add to that, the benefit of being able to make business decisions without wasting huge amounts of time and effort on puzzling out the tax consequences. Not to mention, all the brain power we waste on tax compliance.
I'm sure you think that's a clever gybe, but it's not. The long and short of it is, oil is a fungible commodity and whoever ends up in control of an oil field anywhere in the world is going to be selling that oil in the world market. As it happens, Exxon didn't get the contracts to operate Iraq's oil fields and pipelines.
Fire in the Valley talked about it, but the book I'm talking about was just about IMSAI and the legal fallout of its destruction. I wish I could remember the title.
My favorite quote: "The chiropractic therapeutics rest upon the doctrine that the way to get rid of such pinches is to climb upon a table and submit to a heroic pummeling by a retired piano-mover. This, obviously, is buncombe doubly damned."
I read a pretty interesting book about IMSAI a while back, and how they self-destructed. Apparently, their management was all caught up in the "EST" cult, so they simply ignored any negative information at all. Instead of dealing with problems, they fired anyone who insisted on mentioning them.
It's a chicken-and-egg problem. Intel's success with the 8008 and the 8080 were a major factor in convincing MOS technology to hire Chuck Peddle and the rest of his Motorola team to develop the 6502.
I'm still quite amused by the current crop of "hackers" who think they're all that but never built their own computer from chips and raw PC boards.
Think that's bad? I knew someone who was a manager of a software test group at HP who didn't even understand basic household wiring. He had a hell of a time grasping how a simple three-way switch works.
Sometime around 1987 or so, he was working on a startup called "Georgia Medical Electronics", and his plan was to make very cheap, stackable modules that had an Altair-bus on the top and the bottom, so you could snap a CPU together with a disk module and a power control module and have a simple process control computer for a factory (for example). My partner at the time was one of the few people left who remembered how to write a CP/M BIOS, and we went down to Atlanta to talk to him about working together. It didn't pan out, but I was glad to get the chance to meet him.
Very little gets done because it might interfere with what the uneducated masses think is best for them.
You know, it's that contempt for ordinary people that is the basis of all tyranny. Why in the world am I supposed to believe that someone like, say, YOU, is better qualified to make decisions for the people you despise, than the people themselves are? I heartily invite you to go fuck yourself.
There is also the little detail that armchair despots like Lovelock ignore, which is that the environmental record of totalitarian countries is a great deal worse than average. The freer any country is, the more it does for environmental protection.
> Abraham Fucking Lincoln was what you'd call a Christian Fundamentalist.
Not even close. Lincoln was always ambivalent about religion. After he was killed, the deification propaganda tried to convince people he was acting from divine inspiration.
Google has decided that they WILL NOT censor the web for 1/4 of the world's population,
Well, to be precise, Google went along with the censorship until they caught the Red Dynasty fucking with their servers, and decided that they'd had enough.
Slashdot Mirror
There are better things for accountants to do. I'd rather have them looking for ways to make a business more efficient than slogging through piles of government paperwork, for example. As for the lawyers, a lot of them would do fine job in the sales profession.
-jcr
I think we either need to abolish individual income taxes or corporate income taxes.
We can do better than that. If we abolish all taxes on earnings, and move entirely to consumption-based taxation, we'll reverse a lot of bad habits (like our negative rate of savings, for one example). Add to that, the benefit of being able to make business decisions without wasting huge amounts of time and effort on puzzling out the tax consequences. Not to mention, all the brain power we waste on tax compliance.
-jcr
I'm sure you think that's a clever gybe, but it's not. The long and short of it is, oil is a fungible commodity and whoever ends up in control of an oil field anywhere in the world is going to be selling that oil in the world market. As it happens, Exxon didn't get the contracts to operate Iraq's oil fields and pipelines.
-jcr
Fire in the Valley talked about it, but the book I'm talking about was just about IMSAI and the legal fallout of its destruction. I wish I could remember the title.
-jcr
This essay is a classic.
My favorite quote: "The chiropractic therapeutics rest upon the doctrine that the way to get rid of such pinches is to climb upon a table and submit to a heroic pummeling by a retired piano-mover. This, obviously, is buncombe doubly damned."
-jcr
You're a quack. Go cope.
-jcr
Chiropractic is quackery. Of course, in the UK, they spend tax money on homeopathy, too.
-jcr
Read up on it.
-jcr
When did Fred Phelps' little family of douchebags start trolling /.?
If you're going to heaven, and Ed Roberts is in Hell, then I think I'd rather go where he is.
-jcr
I read a pretty interesting book about IMSAI a while back, and how they self-destructed. Apparently, their management was all caught up in the "EST" cult, so they simply ignored any negative information at all. Instead of dealing with problems, they fired anyone who insisted on mentioning them.
-jcr
>if only the altair had been 6502 based.
It's a chicken-and-egg problem. Intel's success with the 8008 and the 8080 were a major factor in convincing MOS technology to hire Chuck Peddle and the rest of his Motorola team to develop the 6502.
-jcr
I'm still quite amused by the current crop of "hackers" who think they're all that but never built their own computer from chips and raw PC boards.
Think that's bad? I knew someone who was a manager of a software test group at HP who didn't even understand basic household wiring. He had a hell of a time grasping how a simple three-way switch works.
-jcr
Assuming that your question is sincere, I was referring to my business partner.
If you're trying to push my buttons, you'll have to try again. Sexual orientation is a non-issue to me.
-jcr
Sometime around 1987 or so, he was working on a startup called "Georgia Medical Electronics", and his plan was to make very cheap, stackable modules that had an Altair-bus on the top and the bottom, so you could snap a CPU together with a disk module and a power control module and have a simple process control computer for a factory (for example). My partner at the time was one of the few people left who remembered how to write a CP/M BIOS, and we went down to Atlanta to talk to him about working together. It didn't pan out, but I was glad to get the chance to meet him.
-jcr
Give it a rest, will you?
-jcr
There will always be someone more educated than you that thinks they know what is better for you than you do.
It's not just the "more educated". Way too many people believe they're entitled to tell other people what to do.
-jcr
Oh, you're just joking about violating human rights en masse? That doesn't make you funny, it makes you a pompous ass.
-jcr
Silverlight does video streaming much better than Flash.
Talk about damning with faint praise!
-jcr
I have no desire enslave them (at this stage anyway)
That doesn't sound like you respect their free will. I repeat: go fuck yourself.
-jcr
Very little gets done because it might interfere with what the uneducated masses think is best for them.
You know, it's that contempt for ordinary people that is the basis of all tyranny. Why in the world am I supposed to believe that someone like, say, YOU, is better qualified to make decisions for the people you despise, than the people themselves are? I heartily invite you to go fuck yourself.
-jcr
Except that US hasn't ever had a war on its on land besides Independence war.
Except for the war of 1812, and Lincoln's great land-grab, you mean?
-jcr
There is also the little detail that armchair despots like Lovelock ignore, which is that the environmental record of totalitarian countries is a great deal worse than average. The freer any country is, the more it does for environmental protection.
-jcr
> Abraham Fucking Lincoln was what you'd call a Christian Fundamentalist.
Not even close. Lincoln was always ambivalent about religion. After he was killed, the deification propaganda tried to convince people he was acting from divine inspiration.
-jcr
Google has decided that they WILL NOT censor the web for 1/4 of the world's population,
Well, to be precise, Google went along with the censorship until they caught the Red Dynasty fucking with their servers, and decided that they'd had enough.
-jcr
Nobody would farm (crops or livestock) if there weren't subsidies, they couldn't afford to!
This turns out not to be the case. See New Zealand for an example of what happens when you stop subsidizing agriculture.
-jcr