True, I suppose my ass was also covered, as well. But here's a story on the other side. I was working at a large systems integrator and needed a C compiler on HPUX for something. They said it would take weeks to get the C compiler purchased and it would have to be purchased by the client, so I suggested GCC. They asked how much that would cost. To which I replied, it's free. Okay, they replied but according to our policy of software licensing and purchasing, blah blah blah... we need to show we have a legally purchased copy and we must purchase support.
Part of it is also the testing. The reason people are being suckered (or "see the value") in spending 4k, is hopefully it was tested on a variety of configurations.
The slickest scam ever was reproducing a lot of VMS with additional bugs, tied to a buggy Gui, with everything shipped late and with reduced features. Convincing the business community that you're an innovative technology company when you can barely reproduce the features/stability of systems based on Unix or OS/360. On top of that convincing customers that you comply with standards, except changing them in subtle ways to make it work with only your products. Convincing the US government that having 95% of all desktops is not a monopoly. The whole thing has been one long, continuous scam.
I think this illustrates the myth of "software support." How often have you openend a ticket with a vendor only to see it drag on for weeks, exchanging log files for untested patches, only to find the work-around yourself? Having worked with well respected (Gartner approved, but not Microsoft) "enterprise" products from a major "enterprise" software and hardware vendor, I was stunned by how often I was essentially left holding my... er... pencil in my hand. For the most part they were closed source. Nothing beats having competant administrators and some degree of source code access. Yet I see clients demanding that someone offer paid support for anything - even if we all know the support is worthless.
Kerberos auth has problems if the clocks are > 300 sec out of sync. It's not that you couldn't do it manually, you just run the risk of a "hickup", like no one in the domain is allowed to log in.
It's probably likely that the tax law needs to be revisited so that if you make 75% of your income from US operations, you pay taxes to the US on that 75%.
But, there's a big difference between the US and overseas. We are much less restrictive of how foreign corporations can operate in the US. For example, China often requires you to partner with a Chinese company to form a joint-venture. Europe makes firing damn near impossible. Closing a factory in France can shut down Paris with protests.
The corporation is a separate entity from its owners. If the corporation kills 1,000,000, or goes bankrupt, the shareholders are not held liable (except in a few rare cases that hardly ever apply to large, publicly traded companies). So, when a corporation makes money, it pays taxes as a separate entity under the law. Proceeds paid to its investors are payments to distinct entities under the law, and taxes are owed by those entities because they (hopefully) made money on their investment in the corporation. In addition, selling stock is a different form of financing than borrowing money.
You are welcome to create sole proprietorships or partnerships, where the business is not taxed separately from its owners. However, you now become liable for the legal, criminal, and financial obligations of the partnership/proprietorship. You cannot sell stock in your entity, however, you can bring in new partners to raise money.
As a sole proprietor of an LLC, I agree. Abolish the income tax and only tax consumption. I live simply, make good money as an IT consultant, and would love not to pay taxes.
What you're describing is not unusual. When times are good no one looks at the books much all sorts of crud gets through (and that is definitely part of the problem). However, when communities loose large employers their deficits and budgets go up, and it is usually driven by much higher levels of spending for social services. Food stamps, CHIPS, unemployment insurance, emergency fuel services, state portions of medicare/medicaide, unreimbursed medical at state/county hospitals, etc. All of these are driven by need, which is created by chronic unemployment, not necessarily malfeasance or incompetance. In some states these social programs are paltry and barely serve any real needs. When they loose 10,000 jobs 9,900 people fall back below the poverty line with so support, no health insurance, bankruptcy and little or no hope. In some states these programs are very generous and attempt to really put people back on their feet, again. A lot of people like to blame their state and county governments (and as I said before they are not without waste) but those are exactly the governments we have the *most* control over.
The Rochester area sounds like it was faced both by a change in technology and the effect of globalization. If the state of NY had slashed taxes paid by Kodak, I don't see how it would have materially changed the outcome. US workers are still paid 100's of times more than some of their Asian counter-parts. States like South Carolina are loosing jobs to overseas factories not because of South Carolina's high taxes and generous benefits (they have neither), but because the same t-shirt can be produced overseas cheaper. I'm sure Rochester could give Kodak a 99 year tax holiday but still wouldn't be attractive compared to sub-contracting all film cutting, spooling and packaging to a factory overseas where your health benefits are a cab ride home if you cut off a finger.
And as someone who has owned businesses or been in business for himself for about half my working life, state and local taxes have never entered into my calculation of weather or not something was profitable. If it makes money, I pay taxes and that's a fact of life. If it doesn't make money, I don't have to pay taxes. But, if I can't get past the cost of county business license, state incorporation fee, a couple of hours with an attorney or accountant, then it probably wasn't a good idea to begin with.
I agree. I think the best thing we could do in this country is simplify the tax code. Think about the money that we spend in complying with it. That, in itself, is a hidden tax. I actually think that a Repubican controlled legislature and a Democratic president is the best combination to try to keep government in check. I think that division of power and opinion is the big reason we ran surpluses in the late 1990's. (There's nothing wrong with a surplus - it serves to brake the economy just like raising interest rates but at least you get some debt paid off).
I see where people say politicians become addicted to spending, but it really is we that become addicted to spending. The bridge to nowhere, in Alaska, I'm sure has its staunch defenders. What I may call a waste of Federal tax dollars, might be the most important and far-sighted government program by others. Frankly, it's us, we the people, who've come to expect a government that keeps taxes low, but gives us a much higher level of service. In fact, I think that's the basic problem of American culture - the credit card mentality, paid for by borrowing against your home, has ruined our ability to make real choices. For the most part, the Pols in Washington are buying our votes - but we're the ones selling.
The point being is that the taxes in NYC outweight the money to be made in NYC. Until the advent of digital cameras, I believe Kodak did very well in upstate NY. Both Kodak and Xerox benefitted from (what I understand) are good schools and a local University. I don't think NY taxes had anything to do with the advent of digital photography (and buggy-whipping of film), or the lack of business accumen at Xerox.
I think that we need to partake in the global economy but we can't just tell a city like Rochester, or Flint "tough luck" when the employers move out, and the profitability of the company is more important than the lives of 10's of thousands, if not millions of people. I think we need to start asking ourselves what a company like Xerox owes a community when it pulls out. Or, maybe, what the business community owes US citizens as a whole for the freedom to move around as businesses choose, possibly destroying entire cities. I don't think it has to be a choice between taking care of people or doing what's best for companies. I think you can do both at the same time. Financials
I think part of it has to do with the "business culture" we've created in this country. Google hires accountants and lawyers who've worked at other successful companies where this is "how it's done." I think the reason we aren't more appalled at behavior like this is we've come to believe what's "good for business is good for America." Yet, we forget why we allow public incorporation in the first place. We create a better business climate because the country as a whole benefits from good wages, employment, and sufficient taxes to pay for schools, military, police, etc. (People forget but until about the 19th century it was almost a requirement for just about any business of any size to be part owned by the rulers, subject to numerious and arbitrary taxes, and generally owned by one family. This was a huge impediment to wealth creation for the countries/communities as a whole.)
So what happens when Google and the people profitting off Google are able to avoid contributing back to the common good? Are we at the point where the "business culture" has become self serving? Have we lost the notion that Google is part of a social contract - even if implicit - that allows it to use our courts, patent office, and state department to enforce its intellectual property hear and abroad? That paying for these things is in Google's interest?
Maybe in the short run you're correct, but in the long run I'm afraind you're wrong. Sure, over the next couple of years it won't affect your tax rate. However, there are essentially three parts to government spending. The first is interest on the debt - which we have to pay or else we'll never be able to borrow a dime again without paying ridiculous interest rates. A lot of people think this is something we could default on since they believe the fiction that "it's money we owe ourselves." However, we borrow a significant chunk from overseas - so not paying it is actually off the table. The second are obligations that are a matter of law - like social security. If we wanted to reduce our social security obligations we have to pass a law stating that you and I won't get our promised benefits. That's hard to do politically. Finally, there are discretionary items, like the military. We do have some wiggle room there, but not a tonn.
Okay, all of this is paid for by incoming taxes. If the taxes aren't sufficient to cover the expenses, then we borrow, adding to the debt. So, the amount we pay in interest on the debt goes up, further reducing the ability we have to make decisions about how much money to spend on which program. Eventually, if there's no fiscal discipline and companies are allowed to avoid paying taxes, the rest of us will have to pitch in more money. So, in the short run, you're right in that your taxes are not a function of Google's taxes. However, in the long run, the more companies game the system to avoid paying taxes, the more likely we will have to raise taxes on individuals in order to meet payment on the debt and obligatory expenditures. In addition, these companies benefit from operating in the US. They are protected by our military, when their CEO has a heart attack the ambulance comes an picks him up, and the police stop the "G-8 protesters" from throwing trashcans through their plate glass windows. They use the same public services we all use, shouldn't they pay their fair share?
You hit the fundamental problem with tax systems on the head. Their complicated nature and rules allows the system to be gamed (or, in a sense, bugs to be exploited). Perhaps this is not by intent, just like complexity in code makes bugs harder to find. Under US law it is perfectly legal to interprit and use the tax law to your advantage. (If the IRS differs - they *might* let you know if you're one of the precious few that get audited.) In fact, if you don't exploit the law you're not doing all you can to protect your shareholders' interests and therefore violating your fiduciary obligation to the shareholders. (There's a debate about weather or not this narrow definition of interests of the shareholders is actually in the best interests of the shareholders or the public at large - but let's put that aside for now).
On a side note: I'm tired of companies and individuals of claiming that they'll go "somewhere else" if there's a tax hike in their country. In the US we have a very low tax rate over-all, so I'm not exactly sure where these companies or individuals would go. In addition, people in the NYC area pay a sum total of Federal, State and County taxes that are higher than almost anywhere else in the US, yet they have not all moved out of the NY area to go live in Alaska or Texas (where there is no state income tax). In fact, if a company like Maersk says "Gee - the taxes are so high we'll move elsewhere," say - fine, splash it all over the papers and raise taxes. I'll bet you Maersk will not move one inch.
The real meaning they won't tell you in "books"
on
Define - /etc?
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Or other "sources of information." And it won't be repeated by "Intelligent People." It actually stands for "Edward The Crommulent," who embiggened all of us by providing lower case letters. You see, back in the day computers had only 14 upper-case letters to represent everything (U S R A L I B D C W P E T H), which is why you have to type passwd (no "o" because that wasn't available and we liked it that way)./USR,/LIB,/VAR,/ETC,/BIN, CD, LS, SH were all legall things we could type on those keyboards. (Actually type is a misnomer - we had to strike the 3lb keys with a ball-pean hammer to make them move unless you were one of those lucky bastards with punch-cards and an exacto knife.) Edward's first act was to give us the remaining 12 letters of the US alphabet and numbers. Then, he gave us lower-case letter so we could talk about Unix without SHOUTING ALL THE TIME. Since the reign of ETC we've had it good, before the dark ages of the GUI... But that's a tale for another time.
As I said, your yardstick may differ. For example, being able to own a gun is more important to you than not having your phone calls tapped without warrants, or having a "sneak and peak" search conducted on your house, or being detained indefinitely and without the right to challenge the detention in court (habeas corpus) because of an arbitrary designation that you are an enenmy combatant*. According to your definition, the Swiss are the freest people on Earth, since they get to keep their military weapons (I'm talkin' full fledged machine guns - none of this semi-auto crap) after they leave their service.
You can infringe on a patent even though you have a completely clean-room, novel implementation of a feature. Here's the f-ed up world we've created in the US with patent law: You come out with a nifty widget. I get a patent on the widget. I then sue you because you didn't file for a patent until after I filed (happened to Apple recently). I get a patent on something bogus like storing user preferences in hidden files in the user's home directory. I sue you, asking for $100,000. It's going to cost you five times that to fight the suit. In some industries a patent fight is almost good manners.
What keeps companies from Eolas out of suing Linux vendors is there's no money. Microsoft's goal is to keep people from using Linux. They don't care about the laptop I'm using right now, but about Ford or the US Navy deciding that Linux would be better than Windows for their desktop needs. If they were to actually sue someone, it would be a distro. Since their primary concern isn't money, Ubuntu would be a fine target, although RedHat would be a better target. They have plenty of patents to choose from, not just Samba. They could sue for FAT and the FAT drivers normally bundled with the kernel. I'm sure they have patents (even if they may not be enforceable) that could be seen as covering key aspects of the Linux kernel. But you're right, additional products like Open Office might also be available targets.
Hmmm... Good questions. IANAL, but it seems like courts are very lenient with regards to how long you wait to do something about patents. (Although they seem less friendly to "submarine" patents, but I don't know if that was a change in the law or a change in the courts.) I actually think of it from this perspective: I have clients that pay me good money to give them advice (tell them what to buy).
I would not recommend a technology if it could cause a problem for them in the future. That aversion to risk is actually larger as the project and costs become larger. A single server can be swapped out tommorrow. A farm of 4 servers is a bigger headache, but not the end of the world. How about 24 servers, complete with paid support packages costing 1,000's of dollars, and services and custom applications costing 100,000's, if not 1,000,000's, of dollars? What if I thought there might be additional legal liabilities because Microsoft is talking about going after users? What if my client's legal counsel tells my client to can my project because of "possible concerns?" What happens when you're the CTO for a company looking at 5,000 linux desktops? How much do you want to put your job on the line?
Not knowing the true extent of the risks is probably more adventageous to Microsoft than actually declaring them. After all they can say they're not commenting because they are considering litigation. (Although they do have to give the distro the oppportunity to mitigate damages as I understand it). If they felt they had to, I'm sure they would sue. If Microsoft does pull the trigger and sue someone they know they could loose. It would cost them a lot of money, possibly tarnish their image, bring up the anti-trust issues again, etc. I don't expect them to sue anyone, except maybe for something like FAT. The FAT filesystem, as I understand it, is something they invented or own the rights to. It is within their right to charge money to users of the FAT file system (even if it is their own implementation) for its use. If Microsoft got all the distros to pull FAT support from the kernel untless they paid a license fee, then it would make Linux incompatible with all sorts of devices. There used to be an exemption in the law that allowed "reverse engineering," but the DMCA has put a crimp in that.
Maybe the answer is to have IBM issue a distro or Oracle. IBM and Oracle, along with Apple, HP, SGI, etc. all have cross licensing arangements. It essentially allows them to use each others patented technologies without fear of a law-suit. Maybe a distro produced by IBM would be protected from infringement claims, as they might fall under the cross-licensing agreements. However, how would linux feel if it were packaged and delivered by IBM (and possibly not free as in beer)?
I would be stunned if Linux doesn't "infringe" on some patent that Microsoft holds. There have been so many patents issued for so many crap ideas that it may be impossible to build anything without infringing on someone's patent. (And in some cases two people hold different patents covering the same thing). The patent in question could be as *stupid* and possibly *indefensible* as "method of communicating with a computer using a keyboard." But they won't fire a shot. Get used to phrases such as "Our attourneys are examining the matter and we don't want to comment on possible litigation." Also get used to Microsoft trying to decide how to pursue the matter, and there are so many ways. It will scare off business users, who might be considering 10,000 desktop roll-outs, to pass on Linux to avoid lawsuits. If they actually go to court they could loose (and it would cost s lot of money). IANAL, but I would imagine they would start building a case by threatening vendors into a Novel style deal, if they actually do anything at all.
He's going to make unsubstantiated allegations, veiled threats of law-suits, and all sorts of FUD. For the business user (and that's where you're going to see Linux go from 2% to 10% of the desktop market), even the slim chance of getting sued is taken very seriously. I won't eat my hat, but I would be very surprised if Microsoft ever files 1 scrap of paper in court, suing a linux distributor for patent violations, or an end user for some kind of piracy(?) charge.
That's true, you don't have a market without buyers. However, I think we've had a kind of "boil the frog" situation. Companies have gotten cheaper and cheaper over time (the big evidence I have for this is the disappearance of research in most companies). So, every year it gets a little worse, but no one really complains that bitterly. However, with regards to:
go right back and buy more cheap, heavily advertised crap from the same vendors I don't think there are really "other vendors" to choose from. I think they've all gotten into the ship it before its ready mentality and then discontinue the model in 3 months. (Or in many cases they just buy another somewhat OTS solution from a company in Asia).
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True, I suppose my ass was also covered, as well. But here's a story on the other side. I was working at a large systems integrator and needed a C compiler on HPUX for something. They said it would take weeks to get the C compiler purchased and it would have to be purchased by the client, so I suggested GCC. They asked how much that would cost. To which I replied, it's free. Okay, they replied but according to our policy of software licensing and purchasing, blah blah blah ... we need to show we have a legally purchased copy and we must purchase support.
lol
Part of it is also the testing. The reason people are being suckered (or "see the value") in spending 4k, is hopefully it was tested on a variety of configurations.
The slickest scam ever was reproducing a lot of VMS with additional bugs, tied to a buggy Gui, with everything shipped late and with reduced features. Convincing the business community that you're an innovative technology company when you can barely reproduce the features/stability of systems based on Unix or OS/360. On top of that convincing customers that you comply with standards, except changing them in subtle ways to make it work with only your products. Convincing the US government that having 95% of all desktops is not a monopoly. The whole thing has been one long, continuous scam.
I think this illustrates the myth of "software support." How often have you openend a ticket with a vendor only to see it drag on for weeks, exchanging log files for untested patches, only to find the work-around yourself? Having worked with well respected (Gartner approved, but not Microsoft) "enterprise" products from a major "enterprise" software and hardware vendor, I was stunned by how often I was essentially left holding my ... er... pencil in my hand. For the most part they were closed source. Nothing beats having competant administrators and some degree of source code access. Yet I see clients demanding that someone offer paid support for anything - even if we all know the support is worthless.
Kerberos auth has problems if the clocks are > 300 sec out of sync. It's not that you couldn't do it manually, you just run the risk of a "hickup", like no one in the domain is allowed to log in.
Because it's usually an empty threat - like Sean Penn moving to Canada, after 2004. I'm just saying, call their bluff.
It's probably likely that the tax law needs to be revisited so that if you make 75% of your income from US operations, you pay taxes to the US on that 75%.
But, there's a big difference between the US and overseas. We are much less restrictive of how foreign corporations can operate in the US. For example, China often requires you to partner with a Chinese company to form a joint-venture. Europe makes firing damn near impossible. Closing a factory in France can shut down Paris with protests.
The corporation is a separate entity from its owners. If the corporation kills 1,000,000, or goes bankrupt, the shareholders are not held liable (except in a few rare cases that hardly ever apply to large, publicly traded companies). So, when a corporation makes money, it pays taxes as a separate entity under the law. Proceeds paid to its investors are payments to distinct entities under the law, and taxes are owed by those entities because they (hopefully) made money on their investment in the corporation. In addition, selling stock is a different form of financing than borrowing money.
You are welcome to create sole proprietorships or partnerships, where the business is not taxed separately from its owners. However, you now become liable for the legal, criminal, and financial obligations of the partnership/proprietorship. You cannot sell stock in your entity, however, you can bring in new partners to raise money.
As a sole proprietor of an LLC, I agree. Abolish the income tax and only tax consumption. I live simply, make good money as an IT consultant, and would love not to pay taxes.
What you're describing is not unusual. When times are good no one looks at the books much all sorts of crud gets through (and that is definitely part of the problem). However, when communities loose large employers their deficits and budgets go up, and it is usually driven by much higher levels of spending for social services. Food stamps, CHIPS, unemployment insurance, emergency fuel services, state portions of medicare/medicaide, unreimbursed medical at state/county hospitals, etc. All of these are driven by need, which is created by chronic unemployment, not necessarily malfeasance or incompetance. In some states these social programs are paltry and barely serve any real needs. When they loose 10,000 jobs 9,900 people fall back below the poverty line with so support, no health insurance, bankruptcy and little or no hope. In some states these programs are very generous and attempt to really put people back on their feet, again. A lot of people like to blame their state and county governments (and as I said before they are not without waste) but those are exactly the governments we have the *most* control over.
The Rochester area sounds like it was faced both by a change in technology and the effect of globalization. If the state of NY had slashed taxes paid by Kodak, I don't see how it would have materially changed the outcome. US workers are still paid 100's of times more than some of their Asian counter-parts. States like South Carolina are loosing jobs to overseas factories not because of South Carolina's high taxes and generous benefits (they have neither), but because the same t-shirt can be produced overseas cheaper. I'm sure Rochester could give Kodak a 99 year tax holiday but still wouldn't be attractive compared to sub-contracting all film cutting, spooling and packaging to a factory overseas where your health benefits are a cab ride home if you cut off a finger.
And as someone who has owned businesses or been in business for himself for about half my working life, state and local taxes have never entered into my calculation of weather or not something was profitable. If it makes money, I pay taxes and that's a fact of life. If it doesn't make money, I don't have to pay taxes. But, if I can't get past the cost of county business license, state incorporation fee, a couple of hours with an attorney or accountant, then it probably wasn't a good idea to begin with.
I agree. I think the best thing we could do in this country is simplify the tax code. Think about the money that we spend in complying with it. That, in itself, is a hidden tax. I actually think that a Repubican controlled legislature and a Democratic president is the best combination to try to keep government in check. I think that division of power and opinion is the big reason we ran surpluses in the late 1990's. (There's nothing wrong with a surplus - it serves to brake the economy just like raising interest rates but at least you get some debt paid off).
I see where people say politicians become addicted to spending, but it really is we that become addicted to spending. The bridge to nowhere, in Alaska, I'm sure has its staunch defenders. What I may call a waste of Federal tax dollars, might be the most important and far-sighted government program by others. Frankly, it's us, we the people, who've come to expect a government that keeps taxes low, but gives us a much higher level of service. In fact, I think that's the basic problem of American culture - the credit card mentality, paid for by borrowing against your home, has ruined our ability to make real choices. For the most part, the Pols in Washington are buying our votes - but we're the ones selling.
The point being is that the taxes in NYC outweight the money to be made in NYC. Until the advent of digital cameras, I believe Kodak did very well in upstate NY. Both Kodak and Xerox benefitted from (what I understand) are good schools and a local University. I don't think NY taxes had anything to do with the advent of digital photography (and buggy-whipping of film), or the lack of business accumen at Xerox.
I think that we need to partake in the global economy but we can't just tell a city like Rochester, or Flint "tough luck" when the employers move out, and the profitability of the company is more important than the lives of 10's of thousands, if not millions of people. I think we need to start asking ourselves what a company like Xerox owes a community when it pulls out. Or, maybe, what the business community owes US citizens as a whole for the freedom to move around as businesses choose, possibly destroying entire cities. I don't think it has to be a choice between taking care of people or doing what's best for companies. I think you can do both at the same time. Financials
I think part of it has to do with the "business culture" we've created in this country. Google hires accountants and lawyers who've worked at other successful companies where this is "how it's done." I think the reason we aren't more appalled at behavior like this is we've come to believe what's "good for business is good for America." Yet, we forget why we allow public incorporation in the first place. We create a better business climate because the country as a whole benefits from good wages, employment, and sufficient taxes to pay for schools, military, police, etc. (People forget but until about the 19th century it was almost a requirement for just about any business of any size to be part owned by the rulers, subject to numerious and arbitrary taxes, and generally owned by one family. This was a huge impediment to wealth creation for the countries/communities as a whole.) So what happens when Google and the people profitting off Google are able to avoid contributing back to the common good? Are we at the point where the "business culture" has become self serving? Have we lost the notion that Google is part of a social contract - even if implicit - that allows it to use our courts, patent office, and state department to enforce its intellectual property hear and abroad? That paying for these things is in Google's interest?
Maybe in the short run you're correct, but in the long run I'm afraind you're wrong. Sure, over the next couple of years it won't affect your tax rate. However, there are essentially three parts to government spending. The first is interest on the debt - which we have to pay or else we'll never be able to borrow a dime again without paying ridiculous interest rates. A lot of people think this is something we could default on since they believe the fiction that "it's money we owe ourselves." However, we borrow a significant chunk from overseas - so not paying it is actually off the table. The second are obligations that are a matter of law - like social security. If we wanted to reduce our social security obligations we have to pass a law stating that you and I won't get our promised benefits. That's hard to do politically. Finally, there are discretionary items, like the military. We do have some wiggle room there, but not a tonn.
Okay, all of this is paid for by incoming taxes. If the taxes aren't sufficient to cover the expenses, then we borrow, adding to the debt. So, the amount we pay in interest on the debt goes up, further reducing the ability we have to make decisions about how much money to spend on which program. Eventually, if there's no fiscal discipline and companies are allowed to avoid paying taxes, the rest of us will have to pitch in more money. So, in the short run, you're right in that your taxes are not a function of Google's taxes. However, in the long run, the more companies game the system to avoid paying taxes, the more likely we will have to raise taxes on individuals in order to meet payment on the debt and obligatory expenditures. In addition, these companies benefit from operating in the US. They are protected by our military, when their CEO has a heart attack the ambulance comes an picks him up, and the police stop the "G-8 protesters" from throwing trashcans through their plate glass windows. They use the same public services we all use, shouldn't they pay their fair share?
You hit the fundamental problem with tax systems on the head. Their complicated nature and rules allows the system to be gamed (or, in a sense, bugs to be exploited). Perhaps this is not by intent, just like complexity in code makes bugs harder to find. Under US law it is perfectly legal to interprit and use the tax law to your advantage. (If the IRS differs - they *might* let you know if you're one of the precious few that get audited.) In fact, if you don't exploit the law you're not doing all you can to protect your shareholders' interests and therefore violating your fiduciary obligation to the shareholders. (There's a debate about weather or not this narrow definition of interests of the shareholders is actually in the best interests of the shareholders or the public at large - but let's put that aside for now).
On a side note: I'm tired of companies and individuals of claiming that they'll go "somewhere else" if there's a tax hike in their country. In the US we have a very low tax rate over-all, so I'm not exactly sure where these companies or individuals would go. In addition, people in the NYC area pay a sum total of Federal, State and County taxes that are higher than almost anywhere else in the US, yet they have not all moved out of the NY area to go live in Alaska or Texas (where there is no state income tax). In fact, if a company like Maersk says "Gee - the taxes are so high we'll move elsewhere," say - fine, splash it all over the papers and raise taxes. I'll bet you Maersk will not move one inch.
Or other "sources of information." And it won't be repeated by "Intelligent People." It actually stands for "Edward The Crommulent," who embiggened all of us by providing lower case letters. You see, back in the day computers had only 14 upper-case letters to represent everything (U S R A L I B D C W P E T H), which is why you have to type passwd (no "o" because that wasn't available and we liked it that way). /USR, /LIB, /VAR, /ETC, /BIN, CD, LS, SH were all legall things we could type on those keyboards. (Actually type is a misnomer - we had to strike the 3lb keys with a ball-pean hammer to make them move unless you were one of those lucky bastards with punch-cards and an exacto knife.) Edward's first act was to give us the remaining 12 letters of the US alphabet and numbers. Then, he gave us lower-case letter so we could talk about Unix without SHOUTING ALL THE TIME. Since the reign of ETC we've had it good, before the dark ages of the GUI... But that's a tale for another time.
As I said, your yardstick may differ. For example, being able to own a gun is more important to you than not having your phone calls tapped without warrants, or having a "sneak and peak" search conducted on your house, or being detained indefinitely and without the right to challenge the detention in court (habeas corpus) because of an arbitrary designation that you are an enenmy combatant*. According to your definition, the Swiss are the freest people on Earth, since they get to keep their military weapons (I'm talkin' full fledged machine guns - none of this semi-auto crap) after they leave their service.
Jose Padilla is US citizen picked up in Chicago.
You can infringe on a patent even though you have a completely clean-room, novel implementation of a feature. Here's the f-ed up world we've created in the US with patent law: You come out with a nifty widget. I get a patent on the widget. I then sue you because you didn't file for a patent until after I filed (happened to Apple recently). I get a patent on something bogus like storing user preferences in hidden files in the user's home directory. I sue you, asking for $100,000. It's going to cost you five times that to fight the suit. In some industries a patent fight is almost good manners.
What keeps companies from Eolas out of suing Linux vendors is there's no money. Microsoft's goal is to keep people from using Linux. They don't care about the laptop I'm using right now, but about Ford or the US Navy deciding that Linux would be better than Windows for their desktop needs. If they were to actually sue someone, it would be a distro. Since their primary concern isn't money, Ubuntu would be a fine target, although RedHat would be a better target. They have plenty of patents to choose from, not just Samba. They could sue for FAT and the FAT drivers normally bundled with the kernel. I'm sure they have patents (even if they may not be enforceable) that could be seen as covering key aspects of the Linux kernel. But you're right, additional products like Open Office might also be available targets.
Hmmm... Good questions. IANAL, but it seems like courts are very lenient with regards to how long you wait to do something about patents. (Although they seem less friendly to "submarine" patents, but I don't know if that was a change in the law or a change in the courts.) I actually think of it from this perspective: I have clients that pay me good money to give them advice (tell them what to buy).
I would not recommend a technology if it could cause a problem for them in the future. That aversion to risk is actually larger as the project and costs become larger. A single server can be swapped out tommorrow. A farm of 4 servers is a bigger headache, but not the end of the world. How about 24 servers, complete with paid support packages costing 1,000's of dollars, and services and custom applications costing 100,000's, if not 1,000,000's, of dollars? What if I thought there might be additional legal liabilities because Microsoft is talking about going after users? What if my client's legal counsel tells my client to can my project because of "possible concerns?" What happens when you're the CTO for a company looking at 5,000 linux desktops? How much do you want to put your job on the line?
Not knowing the true extent of the risks is probably more adventageous to Microsoft than actually declaring them. After all they can say they're not commenting because they are considering litigation. (Although they do have to give the distro the oppportunity to mitigate damages as I understand it). If they felt they had to, I'm sure they would sue. If Microsoft does pull the trigger and sue someone they know they could loose. It would cost them a lot of money, possibly tarnish their image, bring up the anti-trust issues again, etc. I don't expect them to sue anyone, except maybe for something like FAT. The FAT filesystem, as I understand it, is something they invented or own the rights to. It is within their right to charge money to users of the FAT file system (even if it is their own implementation) for its use. If Microsoft got all the distros to pull FAT support from the kernel untless they paid a license fee, then it would make Linux incompatible with all sorts of devices. There used to be an exemption in the law that allowed "reverse engineering," but the DMCA has put a crimp in that.
Maybe the answer is to have IBM issue a distro or Oracle. IBM and Oracle, along with Apple, HP, SGI, etc. all have cross licensing arangements. It essentially allows them to use each others patented technologies without fear of a law-suit. Maybe a distro produced by IBM would be protected from infringement claims, as they might fall under the cross-licensing agreements. However, how would linux feel if it were packaged and delivered by IBM (and possibly not free as in beer)?
Funny, great minds must think alike because pr0n was my first thought, too.
I would be stunned if Linux doesn't "infringe" on some patent that Microsoft holds. There have been so many patents issued for so many crap ideas that it may be impossible to build anything without infringing on someone's patent. (And in some cases two people hold different patents covering the same thing). The patent in question could be as *stupid* and possibly *indefensible* as "method of communicating with a computer using a keyboard." But they won't fire a shot. Get used to phrases such as "Our attourneys are examining the matter and we don't want to comment on possible litigation." Also get used to Microsoft trying to decide how to pursue the matter, and there are so many ways. It will scare off business users, who might be considering 10,000 desktop roll-outs, to pass on Linux to avoid lawsuits. If they actually go to court they could loose (and it would cost s lot of money). IANAL, but I would imagine they would start building a case by threatening vendors into a Novel style deal, if they actually do anything at all.
Have they decided not to charge for FAT? Could they raise that old chestnut?
He's going to make unsubstantiated allegations, veiled threats of law-suits, and all sorts of FUD. For the business user (and that's where you're going to see Linux go from 2% to 10% of the desktop market), even the slim chance of getting sued is taken very seriously. I won't eat my hat, but I would be very surprised if Microsoft ever files 1 scrap of paper in court, suing a linux distributor for patent violations, or an end user for some kind of piracy(?) charge.