The Seattle Wireless crew came up with the best solution I've seen: the local net is "free", but Internet access is via gateways that might not be free. A local ISP could hook up to the "free" net and sell subscription access to the Internet, as could the more clueful national ISPs like Earthlink. This would actually lower the ISPs costs and remove their #1 headache: dealing with the telco and/or cable monopolies. The companies currently building home WiFi routers could build mesh network APs for not much more.
Also, we already have a 22Mbps variant of the 11Mbps 802.11b standard, and the 55Mbps (or thereabouts) 802.11g standard is in the works. There's no reason why the mesh network APs couldn't start with at least 22Mbps radios. Even with real throughput at a bit over half the stated amount, that's enough to start.
DRESDEN, GERMANY -- August 15, 2002 --AMD (NYSE: AMD) said today that its AMD Saxony operations located in Dresden, Germany - including production at the facility's Fab 30 plant - continue to operate normally despite severe flooding across Germany's Saxony region. "Although much of the larger Dresden area is being affected by unprecedented floods, our production is running according to plan and employee morale remains high," said Hans Deppe, vice president and general manager of AMD Saxony. "Because of the preventive controls built-in to our facility and the exemplary dedication of our workforce, we expect to continue to operate normally despite the conditions."
AMD Saxony has its own on-site power plant, and remains accessible via the Dresden airport and federal highways. AMD Saxony's operations, including Fab 30, are located high up on the rim of the river valley and have not been directly affected by the flooding in other parts of Dresden and surrounding areas. The company does not expect that operations will be impacted even if the local flood situation worsens.
These guys are designing Opteron servers, including dual Opteron 1U servers (web and render farm goodness) and quad Opteron 3U servers. Very impressive specs. The management is dominated by senior IBMers, plus a senior marketing weasel from Dell. Hmm, Dell skipped the Itanic2...
Somehow, I suspect their designs are going to get licensed by some very big vendors. Call it a hunch.
But Bush did file his Form 144 properly, the one announcing his intent to sell and arguably the more important of the two. Form 4 is just after-the-fact accounting, what was actually sold (you can change your mind and not sell y'know) and for how much. If his intent was to deceive, why file the Form 144? The explanation given, that the accountants and/or SEC lost the Form 4 paperwork, makes the most logical sense.
With as much infrastructure as Worldcom owns, I seriously doubt GW Bush and the other Corporate Cronies on the Hill will allow it to simply collapse.
Not going to happen. #1, Republicans would get crucified for it, and #2, we're generally content to let the geniuses who got caught in their own mess swing in the wind. That goes double if they've done anything to embarrass us.
Watch Warren Buffet. He's using his stake in L3 Communications as a launching pad for other telecom acquisitions. If he sees anything interesting in the Worldcom wreckage, he'll probably buy it. If he doesn't, someone else probably will.
Maybe the Democrats don't want to delve into Enron too closely, seeings how former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, now at Citibank, lobbied his former colleagues at the Bush Treasury department to help bail out Enron. Citibank's on the hook big-time for Enron loans. The Bushies politely told Rubin to go away. So far, Rubin is the only compromised politico related to Enron that anyone's been able to find.
When they can straighten out who did what to whom, I'm sure we'll see Enron weasles being hauled into jail. But before a prosecutor goes up against a potential OJ jury he's going to want to take time to assemble a bulletproof case. Proving intentional fraud (rather than mere incompetence, "irrational exuberance", etc) can be a bitch.
So what. This isn't illegal. Exclusive contracts are not illegal as a matter of course. They happen all the time.
I never said it was.
Proof positive that there is no Intel monopoly.
Near monopoly at the top-tier level?
The fact this is possible proves there is no monopoly.
There won't be very soon:-).
I know, Intel doesn't have a monopoly in the strict sense of the word (government sanctioned and all that). But they've been awfully heavy-handed, not to mention pushing garbage like the P4 Celerons on the market (ewww!), and it's going to be soooo much fun watching them get Hammered. AMD has for the most part responded properly, though their occassional lawsuits have been disappointing.
How could anyone in their right mind think that AMD and Intel do not compete has equals?
Because Intel can still scare the big OEMs into not offering AMD chips, or at least not offering, say, high-end AMD notebook configurations. The new Compaq 900US is a great improvement on this front (DDR SDRAM! Decent video chip! In stores now!), but it still only has a 1024x768 res screen.
Of course, the "white box" vendors have been gaining market share as a result of all this. Oops.
Now, with AMD converting nearly all of their Dresden fab to.13 micron Hammer production and UMC ramping up for Athlon production under contract, AMD will be able to supply enough chips for those OEMs to tell Intel to go fsck themselves if they threaten to cut off their chip supply or play other such games. "Volume is our vaccine", sayeth Jerry Sanders. Watch the fun and games begin in early 2003.
Along with replacing its workstations, ILM also has installed a 1,000-processor render farm based on Advanced Micro Devices' Athlon processors and a server cluster built with Compaq Alpha processors.
So Intel chips get the headline but Athlon MP rackmounts do the serious computation. I bet if ILM had found a top-tier vendor with a decent Athlon business (vs. consumer) desktop configuration they'd have Athlon XP's on their desktops too. Or Athlon MP dual CPU workstations, which cost about the same as a high-end uniprocessor P4. Having fought with some thoroughly screwed up Dell Optiplexes recently, the support geeks at ILM have my sympathies.
(Not that the whole business vs. consumer thing really matters, until you try to convince purchasing of that point...)
Re:Will there be micro or flex ATX versions?
on
nForce2 Preview
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Toshiba's Satellite 1955-S801 has a 16" 1280x1024 display too, GeForce4 440 Go (32meg), etc. Unfortunately, like the Sony it uses an Intel P4 CPU. I gave up waiting for someone to make a decent Athlon laptop, gave my old Toshiba K62-333 laptop to my parents, and switched back to a custom-built desktop. Compaq's upcoming Presario 900 looks like the best bet, 15" screen, ATI Radeon graphics.
Slashdot-Branded Area Provides Forbes.com Readers With Cutting-Edge, High Tech Content ACTON, MA--(INTERNET WIRE)--Jun 18, 2002 -- OSDN and Forbes.com today announced that Forbes.com will feature a newsfeed from Slashdot® -- one of OSDN's premier web sites -- providing senior-level business readers with access to cutting-edge, high-tech content online.
Forbes.com's recent web site redesign prominently features a Slashdot-branded area with a newsfeed from the site. Slashdot is one of the largest tech sites on the web, with coverage ranging from the ultra-technical to the ultra-controversial. Slashdot joins sites such as Reuters, which provides widespread news, and The McKinsey Group, which provides research updates, to Forbes.com readers.
"We were thrilled when Forbes.com expressed interest in a newsfeed from Slashdot because it will direct even more senior-level business professionals to the Slashdot site," said Richard French, general manager, OSDN. "This move will help to position OSDN to business readers as the place for high tech content, and will help OSDN continue to gain credibility in broader business markets."
"We pursued Slashdot because we think it will add to Forbes.com's Technology channel by providing the caliber of high-tech news our senior executive readership wants," said Paul Maidment, editor, Forbes.com. "Slashdot is a welcome addition to our site."
It's not just the evil proprietary nature of Dell's power supplies, it's the fact that they're underpowered. We ordered a bunch configured with a pair of Barracuda IV's, factory installed, and the poor thing couldn't take it. Hit all the drives at once and Windows goes flakey. Installing Intel's Application Accelerator (basically a fancy caching system) masks the problem, I'm not willing to concede that it cures it.
I build all my own PCs, but Dell has finally degenerated to the point that we'll be switching to MicronPC, who use 300W supplies and offer Athlons.
I found mwave to be a pain in one regard: shipping to an address other than the billing address.
They require that you call up your credit card company and register your work address (or wherever) as a valid shipping address. This is a common enough requirement that the Citibank rep I talked with immediately knew what I was talking about. I've had lots of stuff shipped to my work address from both mwave and Newegg (which has the same requirement) and recommend them both. Between the two I can usually find the gear I want.
The Boeing design was known as "Monica" after Lewinsky.
I wondered how long it'd take for someone to post that (heh).
It (the JSF) is a better air superiority fighter than anything we have in service now - while being a better ground support plane than an A-10 Warthog.
Can it absorb AAA and small arms fire like an A-10? Can it survive a SAM hit like an A-10? Does it carry a gun remotely comparable to the tank-shredding Avenger? Didn't think so.
Sorry, it annoys me every time someone says they're going to replace the A-10 with some fragile supersonic fighter. Close air support requires serious armor and armament, which no fighter aircraft is ever going to have. The Air Force should transfer the A-10's to the Army where they'd be appreciated. Then we'd see the A-10's and Apaches go tag-team, which would be a beautiful thing.
Or the Air Force should be merged back into the Army, which isn't such a bad idea.
Many of the countries where people are starving to death have been economically devastated by "free market" reforms demanded by the World Bank, such as the reduction of food import tariffs to levels far below those in the developed world, and forcing farmers to abandon food production in favour of cash crops for export.
We hard-core capitalists would love to zero-fund the fscking morons at the IMF and World Bank, both of which are usually run by European socialists. It's one of the rare things the left and right agree on. See Forbes, National Review, etc. Damned if I know why we haven't done this.
No, SDI was one of many things that encouraged the Soviets to spend themselves into oblivion. At this point, it probably *is* possible, and with lunatics like the North Korean dictatorship able to shoot ICBMs (as of a few years ago), just for starters, missile defense is now a VERY good idea. If piss-poor third world nations think building ICBMs is worth the trouble, then we damn well better have a defense against them.
Unless we invade and force a regime change, which I'm not necessarily against. Worked for National Socialist Germany and Imperial Japan, and the bad guys aren't exactly an even match today.
It's not just for ICBMs either. Shorter range ballistic missiles, like the several hundred that China has pointed at Taiwan, could be defended against by ground-based interceptors. (Guess why China is all cranky about our pulling out of the ABM treaty with the Nation That No Longer Exists.)
...when the 130nm Athlon XP chips come out. Hopefully that includes notebook chips, and maybe someone will finally have the cajones to build a decent Athlon notebook. I want brute force computation along with my GeForce 4, dammit!
I have to disagree. I've built three AMD systems: A7V, A7V133, and A7V333-R, and all have been solid, as has my P3-based ASUS CUBX. OTOH, my Epox 8KHA went flakey, and it's got the same VIA KT266 chipset the A7V266 has. VIA really pooched the KT266, I had HD corruption problems until installing their WinXP IDE miniport driver, but the KT266A that quickly replaced it has been good (Epox 8KHA+ in the system I'm typing with now). ASUS is more expensive than average but I trust them over everyone else. The A7V333-R in particular has been very impressive.
It's that simple. If you do boneheaded things like use cheap, weak 200W power supplies like Dell uses and put one too many drives in the machine (two Seagate Barracuda IV's in the 1GHz Celeron box in this case), you'll have an unstable, flakey system (unplugging the second drive fixed that). If you don't install the current Service Pack, updates, and drivers (like Dell failed to do), you'll get an unstable Windows system (yes, I know, run Linux, but we don't have the source to everything that'd need porting).
If you carried over your 5-year-old ATX power supply to your new Athlon system just because the plug fit and didn't buy an Athlon-certified power supply (the P4's second power plug forced upgrade spared them from that), you'll have a flakey system. If you bought a VIA chipset board (ASUS's A7V333 is great, just so y'know) and didn't install the current 4in1 driver set, you'll risk a flakey system. If you bought an Intel board because you don't like VIA and didn't check out the nVidia nForce boards (which are driving AMD's invasion of the big OEM market), you're an idiot.
Building Athlons requires slightly more skill than building an Intel-based system. If you can't handle it, go buy a prebuilt system from someone who can.
But you still have to pay capital gains on the money from the buyback right? Wouldn't this only be 'good' if you make more than a certain amount of money so that the capital gains rate is less than your income tax rate?
The people who choose to sell the stock pay capital gains, but that may be the long-term capital gains tax (which is significantly lower). You'll pay the same tax on dividend-paying stock, but if you reinvested your dividends to buy more shares you'll have an accounting nightmare figuring out your tax.
Since your money is untaxed until you cash out, you'll wind up with much more money with a zero-dividend stock that averages 7% per year growth versus a stock paying 7% per year of dividends that get heavily taxed and no stock appreciation. Most stocks have lower dividends and some price appreciation, but you get the idea.
In order to be fair we should stop taxing dividends, either letting companies tax deduct dividend payments from their income or letting investors receive dividends tax-free (because the company paid tax when it earned the income). The latter would be simplest, one big tax payment at the source. Neither will get passed because investing is "for the rich".
Slashdot Mirror
The Seattle Wireless crew came up with the best solution I've seen: the local net is "free", but Internet access is via gateways that might not be free. A local ISP could hook up to the "free" net and sell subscription access to the Internet, as could the more clueful national ISPs like Earthlink. This would actually lower the ISPs costs and remove their #1 headache: dealing with the telco and/or cable monopolies. The companies currently building home WiFi routers could build mesh network APs for not much more.
Also, we already have a 22Mbps variant of the 11Mbps 802.11b standard, and the 55Mbps (or thereabouts) 802.11g standard is in the works. There's no reason why the mesh network APs couldn't start with at least 22Mbps radios. Even with real throughput at a bit over half the stated amount, that's enough to start.
AMD Saxony Operations Unaffected by Dresden Flooding
DRESDEN, GERMANY -- August 15, 2002 --AMD (NYSE: AMD) said today that its AMD Saxony operations located in Dresden, Germany - including production at the facility's Fab 30 plant - continue to operate normally despite severe flooding across Germany's Saxony region.
"Although much of the larger Dresden area is being affected by unprecedented floods, our production is running according to plan and employee morale remains high," said Hans Deppe, vice president and general manager of AMD Saxony. "Because of the preventive controls built-in to our facility and the exemplary dedication of our workforce, we expect to continue to operate normally despite the conditions."
AMD Saxony has its own on-site power plant, and remains accessible via the Dresden airport and federal highways. AMD Saxony's operations, including Fab 30, are located high up on the rim of the river valley and have not been directly affected by the flooding in other parts of Dresden and surrounding areas. The company does not expect that operations will be impacted even if the local flood situation worsens.
These guys are designing Opteron servers, including dual Opteron 1U servers (web and render farm goodness) and quad Opteron 3U servers. Very impressive specs. The management is dominated by senior IBMers, plus a senior marketing weasel from Dell. Hmm, Dell skipped the Itanic2...
Somehow, I suspect their designs are going to get licensed by some very big vendors. Call it a hunch.
Their position is that it will save them hardware costs to run on Intel machines instead of big IBM or Sun iron.
:-)
You mean AMD Athlon MP machines, right?
But Bush did file his Form 144 properly, the one announcing his intent to sell and arguably the more important of the two. Form 4 is just after-the-fact accounting, what was actually sold (you can change your mind and not sell y'know) and for how much. If his intent was to deceive, why file the Form 144? The explanation given, that the accountants and/or SEC lost the Form 4 paperwork, makes the most logical sense.
With as much infrastructure as Worldcom owns, I seriously doubt GW Bush and the other Corporate Cronies on the Hill will allow it to simply collapse.
Not going to happen. #1, Republicans would get crucified for it, and #2, we're generally content to let the geniuses who got caught in their own mess swing in the wind. That goes double if they've done anything to embarrass us.
Watch Warren Buffet. He's using his stake in L3 Communications as a launching pad for other telecom acquisitions. If he sees anything interesting in the Worldcom wreckage, he'll probably buy it. If he doesn't, someone else probably will.
Maybe the Democrats don't want to delve into Enron too closely, seeings how former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, now at Citibank, lobbied his former colleagues at the Bush Treasury department to help bail out Enron. Citibank's on the hook big-time for Enron loans. The Bushies politely told Rubin to go away. So far, Rubin is the only compromised politico related to Enron that anyone's been able to find.
When they can straighten out who did what to whom, I'm sure we'll see Enron weasles being hauled into jail. But before a prosecutor goes up against a potential OJ jury he's going to want to take time to assemble a bulletproof case. Proving intentional fraud (rather than mere incompetence, "irrational exuberance", etc) can be a bitch.
So what. This isn't illegal. Exclusive contracts are not illegal as a matter of course. They happen all the time.
:-).
I never said it was.
Proof positive that there is no Intel monopoly.
Near monopoly at the top-tier level?
The fact this is possible proves there is no monopoly.
There won't be very soon
I know, Intel doesn't have a monopoly in the strict sense of the word (government sanctioned and all that). But they've been awfully heavy-handed, not to mention pushing garbage like the P4 Celerons on the market (ewww!), and it's going to be soooo much fun watching them get Hammered. AMD has for the most part responded properly, though their occassional lawsuits have been disappointing.
How could anyone in their right mind think that AMD and Intel do not compete has equals?
.13 micron Hammer production and UMC ramping up for Athlon production under contract, AMD will be able to supply enough chips for those OEMs to tell Intel to go fsck themselves if they threaten to cut off their chip supply or play other such games. "Volume is our vaccine", sayeth Jerry Sanders. Watch the fun and games begin in early 2003.
Because Intel can still scare the big OEMs into not offering AMD chips, or at least not offering, say, high-end AMD notebook configurations. The new Compaq 900US is a great improvement on this front (DDR SDRAM! Decent video chip! In stores now!), but it still only has a 1024x768 res screen.
Of course, the "white box" vendors have been gaining market share as a result of all this. Oops.
Now, with AMD converting nearly all of their Dresden fab to
Along with replacing its workstations, ILM also has installed a 1,000-processor render farm based on Advanced Micro Devices' Athlon processors and a server cluster built with Compaq Alpha processors.
So Intel chips get the headline but Athlon MP rackmounts do the serious computation. I bet if ILM had found a top-tier vendor with a decent Athlon business (vs. consumer) desktop configuration they'd have Athlon XP's on their desktops too. Or Athlon MP dual CPU workstations, which cost about the same as a high-end uniprocessor P4. Having fought with some thoroughly screwed up Dell Optiplexes recently, the support geeks at ILM have my sympathies.
(Not that the whole business vs. consumer thing really matters, until you try to convince purchasing of that point...)
Yes.
Toshiba's Satellite 1955-S801 has a 16" 1280x1024 display too, GeForce4 440 Go (32meg), etc. Unfortunately, like the Sony it uses an Intel P4 CPU. I gave up waiting for someone to make a decent Athlon laptop, gave my old Toshiba K62-333 laptop to my parents, and switched back to a custom-built desktop. Compaq's upcoming Presario 900 looks like the best bet, 15" screen, ATI Radeon graphics.
How about:
"Hey you commies, Meditate This!"
"Your mother wears Mao suits."
"The satellite is mightier than the tank."
(It's the best I can do until the caffeine kicks in...)
Tuesday June 18, 8:00 am Eastern Time
Press Release
SOURCE: OSDN
Forbes.com Provides Readers With Newsfeed From Slashdot
Slashdot-Branded Area Provides Forbes.com Readers With Cutting-Edge, High Tech Content
ACTON, MA--(INTERNET WIRE)--Jun 18, 2002 -- OSDN and Forbes.com today announced that Forbes.com will feature a newsfeed from Slashdot® -- one of OSDN's premier web sites -- providing senior-level business readers with access to cutting-edge, high-tech content online.
Forbes.com's recent web site redesign prominently features a Slashdot-branded area with a newsfeed from the site. Slashdot is one of the largest tech sites on the web, with coverage ranging from the ultra-technical to the ultra-controversial. Slashdot joins sites such as Reuters, which provides widespread news, and The McKinsey Group, which provides research updates, to Forbes.com readers.
"We were thrilled when Forbes.com expressed interest in a newsfeed from Slashdot because it will direct even more senior-level business professionals to the Slashdot site," said Richard French, general manager, OSDN. "This move will help to position OSDN to business readers as the place for high tech content, and will help OSDN continue to gain credibility in broader business markets."
"We pursued Slashdot because we think it will add to Forbes.com's Technology channel by providing the caliber of high-tech news our senior executive readership wants," said Paul Maidment, editor, Forbes.com. "Slashdot is a welcome addition to our site."
OK, now I'm scared...
It's not just the evil proprietary nature of Dell's power supplies, it's the fact that they're underpowered. We ordered a bunch configured with a pair of Barracuda IV's, factory installed, and the poor thing couldn't take it. Hit all the drives at once and Windows goes flakey. Installing Intel's Application Accelerator (basically a fancy caching system) masks the problem, I'm not willing to concede that it cures it.
I build all my own PCs, but Dell has finally degenerated to the point that we'll be switching to MicronPC, who use 300W supplies and offer Athlons.
I found mwave to be a pain in one regard: shipping to an address other than the billing address.
They require that you call up your credit card company and register your work address (or wherever) as a valid shipping address. This is a common enough requirement that the Citibank rep I talked with immediately knew what I was talking about. I've had lots of stuff shipped to my work address from both mwave and Newegg (which has the same requirement) and recommend them both. Between the two I can usually find the gear I want.
The Boeing design was known as "Monica" after Lewinsky.
I wondered how long it'd take for someone to post that (heh).
It (the JSF) is a better air superiority fighter than anything we have in service now - while being a better ground support plane than an A-10 Warthog.
Can it absorb AAA and small arms fire like an A-10? Can it survive a SAM hit like an A-10? Does it carry a gun remotely comparable to the tank-shredding Avenger? Didn't think so.
Sorry, it annoys me every time someone says they're going to replace the A-10 with some fragile supersonic fighter. Close air support requires serious armor and armament, which no fighter aircraft is ever going to have. The Air Force should transfer the A-10's to the Army where they'd be appreciated. Then we'd see the A-10's and Apaches go tag-team, which would be a beautiful thing.
Or the Air Force should be merged back into the Army, which isn't such a bad idea.
How is this different from corporate control?
Well, for starters, Ted Turner's Castro News Network can't have you thrown into the gulag for watching Rupert Murdoch's Fox News.
See laogai.org, etc.
Many of the countries where people are starving to death have been economically devastated by "free market" reforms demanded by the World Bank, such as the reduction of food import tariffs to levels far below those in the developed world, and forcing farmers to abandon food production in favour of cash crops for export.
We hard-core capitalists would love to zero-fund the fscking morons at the IMF and World Bank, both of which are usually run by European socialists. It's one of the rare things the left and right agree on. See Forbes, National Review, etc. Damned if I know why we haven't done this.
The problem with missile defense is that it upsets the balance of power.
You want to bring Balance to the Force?
No, SDI was one of many things that encouraged the Soviets to spend themselves into oblivion. At this point, it probably *is* possible, and with lunatics like the North Korean dictatorship able to shoot ICBMs (as of a few years ago), just for starters, missile defense is now a VERY good idea. If piss-poor third world nations think building ICBMs is worth the trouble, then we damn well better have a defense against them.
Unless we invade and force a regime change, which I'm not necessarily against. Worked for National Socialist Germany and Imperial Japan, and the bad guys aren't exactly an even match today.
It's not just for ICBMs either. Shorter range ballistic missiles, like the several hundred that China has pointed at Taiwan, could be defended against by ground-based interceptors. (Guess why China is all cranky about our pulling out of the ABM treaty with the Nation That No Longer Exists.)
...when the 130nm Athlon XP chips come out. Hopefully that includes notebook chips, and maybe someone will finally have the cajones to build a decent Athlon notebook. I want brute force computation along with my GeForce 4, dammit!
I have to disagree. I've built three AMD systems: A7V, A7V133, and A7V333-R, and all have been solid, as has my P3-based ASUS CUBX. OTOH, my Epox 8KHA went flakey, and it's got the same VIA KT266 chipset the A7V266 has. VIA really pooched the KT266, I had HD corruption problems until installing their WinXP IDE miniport driver, but the KT266A that quickly replaced it has been good (Epox 8KHA+ in the system I'm typing with now). ASUS is more expensive than average but I trust them over everyone else. The A7V333-R in particular has been very impressive.
It's that simple. If you do boneheaded things like use cheap, weak 200W power supplies like Dell uses and put one too many drives in the machine (two Seagate Barracuda IV's in the 1GHz Celeron box in this case), you'll have an unstable, flakey system (unplugging the second drive fixed that). If you don't install the current Service Pack, updates, and drivers (like Dell failed to do), you'll get an unstable Windows system (yes, I know, run Linux, but we don't have the source to everything that'd need porting).
If you carried over your 5-year-old ATX power supply to your new Athlon system just because the plug fit and didn't buy an Athlon-certified power supply (the P4's second power plug forced upgrade spared them from that), you'll have a flakey system. If you bought a VIA chipset board (ASUS's A7V333 is great, just so y'know) and didn't install the current 4in1 driver set, you'll risk a flakey system. If you bought an Intel board because you don't like VIA and didn't check out the nVidia nForce boards (which are driving AMD's invasion of the big OEM market), you're an idiot.
Building Athlons requires slightly more skill than building an Intel-based system. If you can't handle it, go buy a prebuilt system from someone who can.
But you still have to pay capital gains on the money from the buyback right? Wouldn't this only be 'good' if you make more than a certain amount of money so that the capital gains rate is less than your income tax rate?
The people who choose to sell the stock pay capital gains, but that may be the long-term capital gains tax (which is significantly lower). You'll pay the same tax on dividend-paying stock, but if you reinvested your dividends to buy more shares you'll have an accounting nightmare figuring out your tax.
Since your money is untaxed until you cash out, you'll wind up with much more money with a zero-dividend stock that averages 7% per year growth versus a stock paying 7% per year of dividends that get heavily taxed and no stock appreciation. Most stocks have lower dividends and some price appreciation, but you get the idea.
In order to be fair we should stop taxing dividends, either letting companies tax deduct dividend payments from their income or letting investors receive dividends tax-free (because the company paid tax when it earned the income). The latter would be simplest, one big tax payment at the source. Neither will get passed because investing is "for the rich".