So they are taxing people who use network based communication systems not run my outside companies.
On the surface, it seems like it's taxation without representation: the networks are privately built and maintained. And what do those networks run over for companies that have multiple offices? Outside phone lines, which the Gov't helped build. Ok, it can be argued that there is representation here.
But think about it: if those lines are already running to the buildings and being used, then the taxes are already being paid on them, in the form of basic service fees.
It seems like this law was made to make companies that run their own lines to pay taxes on them, which is taxation without representation. Now it's being applied to people who are already paying the service fees and taxes on them, and are now going to be taxed again for using said lines.
This is going to do one of two things:
1) Make a lot of criminals
2) Be challenged and not stand up in court.
Feel free to tell me I'm an idiot and don't know what I'm talking about, just back it up with reasons and facts, please.
Just nit-picking here, but for a while, Toyotas have been made in Mexico, and within the past year or so have moved their base of operations into the US.
Nissan is also locally made, in Texas and Mexico. Next time, try ranting with Honda, Daihatsu, or some other obscure company that makes bad cars:-p
I believe that's a federal law here in the US, and if not, it's at least a state law here in PA, but I don't know about NY (PA and NY are the two states the Susquehanna river is in).
Perhaps this has something to do with the recent partnerships with AMD and Fujitsu?
I think it went a bit more like this:
Mr. Ballmer: You know, guys, you can't be part of the "in" crowd until you throw away your last chance at success... What? No, this isn't about removing a competing technology from the market. What would give you that idea? Trust me. Everybody's doing it. Just take a look at SCO, they're doing just great in Australia!
According to the article, the research is not trivial because research "already has resulted in two master's theses [...] and future graduate research probably will focus on propeller design and ultralight control mechanisms."
Do we really need control systems this light? They have set a "wind date" for this competition for fear of a gust of wind destroying the MAVs; how will we make something reliable out of this?
You have to remember that profit (income-[cost+expenses]=profit) is not the same for every product or company. Right now PC retailers are making little more than $10 per PC they sell. How much should Dell be penalized for selling the most PCs?
Your bell curve gets distorted very quickly based on market, and more specifically, product.
if Microsoft charges $100 for Windows 3000 and has a 90% market share, they would have to collect $190 from the purchaser and send $90 to the government
Not what the article says. It implies that MS would be getting taxed on things they buy, not taxing the end user, although that's how it would even out for MS.
First, you have missed the point altogether, that we want large companies not to get more market share
Great idea. The taxing of a company that has 90% market share could be seen as a blessing. But it won't happen, and not because the government is too dumb, as the article implies.
Let's start with why this taxing scheme is a bad idea up front: pretend you started a company. You produce a product and it becomes accepted in the market, gaining popularity as time passes. You continue to make this product better and it gets more popular. You realize you have enough customers to have a chunk of Market Share(TM), we'll say at 6%. Great for you! You pay 6% tax of things your company purchases. Not bad, since that's standard PA sales tax.
So what's the incentive to grow bigger? You end up paying more and more and getting less and less profit if you keep growing. You get to 15% market share and realize that you won't be making much money at all soon. What do you do? Stop getting more popular. How? Don't make your product better anymore. That'll keep people from evangelizing for ya (after all, word of mouth is the best advertising). See where this path leads?
IF it were to be implemented, and that's a really, really big if, there would need to be a lower limit on the tax scheme. That, of course, leads to questions like, "Who will decide what the best market share is?" and, "Should that share amount change from market to market?"
Now for why the proposed system is fundamentally broken: it effectively prevents new markets from being opened. Take iTunes, for example (I dont use the service myself, but it's something the/. crowd can understand easily). Apple opened up an entirely new market with this service (to be honest, there were companies doing this long before Apple, I remember hearing about it back in '98, but Apple made it into a feasible market by bringing in masses of new customers).
When it started, Apple had about 99% market share. By your model, they should be charged 99% tax because they have a monopoly on this new market. Obviously, no company would want to open a new market like that, lest they be smited with over taxation.
So make it a case-by-case process, right? Then we encounter extreme backups and massive amounts of red tape, along with accusations (some not unfounded) of discriminatory taxation.
Just because an idea is clever doesn't make it right or fully thought through.
Ok, so they are developing something that can be seen as acceptable in an otherwise unacceptable field of technology: a device that makes cell phones not recieve calls so they don't ring. So, what stands to question, is can the cell phones still make outgoing calls? Remember, from the description in the article, it's not a normal jammer, although those are mentioned.
Sounds like the kind of thing that'll encourage similar behaviour to Windows
Funny, but this idea of "install a program and all files needed to run it to the program's own directory" sounds like precisely what the Program Files folder is for on Windows systems.
Nothing new here, just having to do it in an extra step due to a different file system.
color me ignorant, but...
on
Titanic Saturn
·
· Score: -1, Troll
Would somebody please explain to me why each of these things is important?
It seems they have already discovered the "hydrocarbon" liquid on the surface, so that's nothing new. Waves? Ok, why should I care?
New dark spots. I guessing something to do with storms? We get them all the time here. What significance do they provide on the surface of Saturn?
The only thing I could see as being important is the atmosphere around Titan, given that Titan is one of the few chunks of rock believed to be able to support life as we currently understand it.
Perhaps IBM should say that SCO's Unix is a "reverse parody" of Linux, and sue on the grounds of defamation of a good product by releasing one that's more of a joke?
This seems like a logical extention of the pokemon style gameboy games. Hardware will be a big limiting factor, though, as will time if the game continues to play while you're not.
a 48-hour game competition for the TI-89 would be a fun thing to do
Great idea, but you would have to limit it a bit based on hardware and language.
For example, there were two hardware verions of the TI-89, HW1 and HW2. The HW1 edition came with a 8MHz Dragonball processor, and the HW2 came with 12MHz Dragonball processor, which didn't use the same assembly language.
Also, the TI-92 calculator used the same processor as the 89 HW2, but with a full qwerty keyboard and a better chipset. Also, it had a larger screen. Both the 89 HW2 and the 92 could run the same programs, in both basic and assembly.
The version of assembly used on the HW2 was 68k, I have no idea what was used on the HW1.
Although having all that information permanently embedded into my brain, I never learned assembly, mainly because when I tried, I tried learning the version for the HW1 when I had a HW2, so it didn't work out well. Besides, you can't program assembly while pretending to be doing work in math class.
As for C, well, I never learned that one either, for about the same reason: I was reading a book for one compiler and using another. The result? Hello World didn't work. Bah. VB was easier, so I wrote Monopoly in that and used it for a health class project (took 8 hours to design, write, and make the graphics for it the night before it was due:P).
So if it's a basic competition you're looking for, I'd be up for it, as I just dug out all my old documentation for the thing (the manual wasn't any help at all).
If it was in basic, it would have been on a single calc, otherwise basic would have gone way too slow communicating over that link cable.
Depending on whether he had two HW2 editions or not, it could have been done on 68K assembly, if he wrote a custom link program that didn't have all the system slowdowns, but it would have to have been the HW2 for the 12Mhz processor instead of the HW1 that used the 8Mhz.
Or at least that was the common thinking when I was programming for it.
Well, you were modded up very quickly, partially because moderators don't read the aticle themselves, but I'm sure some people will mod you up simply because you run a service they like.
Therefore, because you run a service for people and openly advertise that you do it, and because it's not a service that's exactly socially acceptable, people will return the service in an anonymous way that also requires no spending of money on their part, thus modding you up when they get mod points.
Granted, I have seen some on-topic and insightful posts from you that deserved the modding they get, but I really don't see that many people on/. that are going to mod-bomb you because they don't agree with what you do, thus countering the others.
Of course, I could be completely wrong. Care to inform?
Slow Down Cowboy!
Slashdot requires you to wait 2 minutes between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
It's been 1 minute since you last successfully posted a comment, and we don't like you, so you have to wait.
Webmail also works great. No automagic opening of emails/attachments/code/etc, and you can delete a message without even previewing the latest spam inside.
And since there are _many_ different webmail programs you can use (my server gives the option of three different ones when you log in), I highly recommend it to anybody.
Slashdot Mirror
What kind of person does this? Now we will all have to RTFA if we want to read comments. Jackass.
</sarcasm>
So they are taxing people who use network based communication systems not run my outside companies.
On the surface, it seems like it's taxation without representation: the networks are privately built and maintained. And what do those networks run over for companies that have multiple offices? Outside phone lines, which the Gov't helped build. Ok, it can be argued that there is representation here.
But think about it: if those lines are already running to the buildings and being used, then the taxes are already being paid on them, in the form of basic service fees.
It seems like this law was made to make companies that run their own lines to pay taxes on them, which is taxation without representation. Now it's being applied to people who are already paying the service fees and taxes on them, and are now going to be taxed again for using said lines.
This is going to do one of two things:
1) Make a lot of criminals
2) Be challenged and not stand up in court.
Feel free to tell me I'm an idiot and don't know what I'm talking about, just back it up with reasons and facts, please.
I do like what was said below about using the state change to cool, pumping the gaseous Sapphire away and re-condensing it
Check this out. It doesn't use Sapphire, but it does use the state change to cool the material and then bring it back to the processor.
IMHO, it works very well in my PC.
to climb into their Toyota
:-p
Just nit-picking here, but for a while, Toyotas have been made in Mexico, and within the past year or so have moved their base of operations into the US.
Nissan is also locally made, in Texas and Mexico. Next time, try ranting with Honda, Daihatsu, or some other obscure company that makes bad cars
I believe that's a federal law here in the US, and if not, it's at least a state law here in PA, but I don't know about NY (PA and NY are the two states the Susquehanna river is in).
Perhaps this has something to do with the recent partnerships with AMD and Fujitsu?
I think it went a bit more like this:
Mr. Ballmer: You know, guys, you can't be part of the "in" crowd until you throw away your last chance at success... What? No, this isn't about removing a competing technology from the market. What would give you that idea? Trust me. Everybody's doing it. Just take a look at SCO, they're doing just great in Australia!
did you hear the anouncement of a Warp engine in the next decade?
What?! When did that happen? I'm still waiting for my damn flying car that I was promised!
According to the article, the research is not trivial because research "already has resulted in two master's theses [...] and future graduate research probably will focus on propeller design and ultralight control mechanisms."
Do we really need control systems this light? They have set a "wind date" for this competition for fear of a gust of wind destroying the MAVs; how will we make something reliable out of this?
You have to remember that profit (income-[cost+expenses]=profit) is not the same for every product or company. Right now PC retailers are making little more than $10 per PC they sell. How much should Dell be penalized for selling the most PCs?
Your bell curve gets distorted very quickly based on market, and more specifically, product.
if Microsoft charges $100 for Windows 3000 and has a 90% market share, they would have to collect $190 from the purchaser and send $90 to the government
/. crowd can understand easily). Apple opened up an entirely new market with this service (to be honest, there were companies doing this long before Apple, I remember hearing about it back in '98, but Apple made it into a feasible market by bringing in masses of new customers).
Not what the article says. It implies that MS would be getting taxed on things they buy, not taxing the end user, although that's how it would even out for MS.
First, you have missed the point altogether, that we want large companies not to get more market share
Great idea. The taxing of a company that has 90% market share could be seen as a blessing. But it won't happen, and not because the government is too dumb, as the article implies.
Let's start with why this taxing scheme is a bad idea up front: pretend you started a company. You produce a product and it becomes accepted in the market, gaining popularity as time passes. You continue to make this product better and it gets more popular. You realize you have enough customers to have a chunk of Market Share(TM), we'll say at 6%. Great for you! You pay 6% tax of things your company purchases. Not bad, since that's standard PA sales tax.
So what's the incentive to grow bigger? You end up paying more and more and getting less and less profit if you keep growing. You get to 15% market share and realize that you won't be making much money at all soon. What do you do? Stop getting more popular. How? Don't make your product better anymore. That'll keep people from evangelizing for ya (after all, word of mouth is the best advertising). See where this path leads?
IF it were to be implemented, and that's a really, really big if, there would need to be a lower limit on the tax scheme. That, of course, leads to questions like, "Who will decide what the best market share is?" and, "Should that share amount change from market to market?"
Now for why the proposed system is fundamentally broken: it effectively prevents new markets from being opened. Take iTunes, for example (I dont use the service myself, but it's something the
When it started, Apple had about 99% market share. By your model, they should be charged 99% tax because they have a monopoly on this new market. Obviously, no company would want to open a new market like that, lest they be smited with over taxation.
So make it a case-by-case process, right? Then we encounter extreme backups and massive amounts of red tape, along with accusations (some not unfounded) of discriminatory taxation.
Just because an idea is clever doesn't make it right or fully thought through.
Well, put simply, it's because it was here before.
Ok, so they are developing something that can be seen as acceptable in an otherwise unacceptable field of technology: a device that makes cell phones not recieve calls so they don't ring. So, what stands to question, is can the cell phones still make outgoing calls? Remember, from the description in the article, it's not a normal jammer, although those are mentioned.
Sounds like the kind of thing that'll encourage similar behaviour to Windows
Funny, but this idea of "install a program and all files needed to run it to the program's own directory" sounds like precisely what the Program Files folder is for on Windows systems.
Nothing new here, just having to do it in an extra step due to a different file system.
Would somebody please explain to me why each of these things is important?
It seems they have already discovered the "hydrocarbon" liquid on the surface, so that's nothing new. Waves? Ok, why should I care?
New dark spots. I guessing something to do with storms? We get them all the time here. What significance do they provide on the surface of Saturn?
The only thing I could see as being important is the atmosphere around Titan, given that Titan is one of the few chunks of rock believed to be able to support life as we currently understand it.
In other news, makers of the game "Sym-Litigation" narrowly avoid lawsuit by changing one letter.
Perhaps IBM should say that SCO's Unix is a "reverse parody" of Linux, and sue on the grounds of defamation of a good product by releasing one that's more of a joke?
:-p
This seems like a logical extention of the pokemon style gameboy games. Hardware will be a big limiting factor, though, as will time if the game continues to play while you're not.
a 48-hour game competition for the TI-89 would be a fun thing to do
:P).
Great idea, but you would have to limit it a bit based on hardware and language.
For example, there were two hardware verions of the TI-89, HW1 and HW2. The HW1 edition came with a 8MHz Dragonball processor, and the HW2 came with 12MHz Dragonball processor, which didn't use the same assembly language.
Also, the TI-92 calculator used the same processor as the 89 HW2, but with a full qwerty keyboard and a better chipset. Also, it had a larger screen. Both the 89 HW2 and the 92 could run the same programs, in both basic and assembly.
The version of assembly used on the HW2 was 68k, I have no idea what was used on the HW1.
Although having all that information permanently embedded into my brain, I never learned assembly, mainly because when I tried, I tried learning the version for the HW1 when I had a HW2, so it didn't work out well. Besides, you can't program assembly while pretending to be doing work in math class.
As for C, well, I never learned that one either, for about the same reason: I was reading a book for one compiler and using another. The result? Hello World didn't work. Bah. VB was easier, so I wrote Monopoly in that and used it for a health class project (took 8 hours to design, write, and make the graphics for it the night before it was due
So if it's a basic competition you're looking for, I'd be up for it, as I just dug out all my old documentation for the thing (the manual wasn't any help at all).
i'm not wearing socks, you insensitive clod.
If it was in basic, it would have been on a single calc, otherwise basic would have gone way too slow communicating over that link cable.
Depending on whether he had two HW2 editions or not, it could have been done on 68K assembly, if he wrote a custom link program that didn't have all the system slowdowns, but it would have to have been the HW2 for the 12Mhz processor instead of the HW1 that used the 8Mhz.
Or at least that was the common thinking when I was programming for it.
I wasn't aware that Tribes was released on the NES during its prime... Because that's when I was playing Marble Madness on my NES.
to making a game was writing a RPG in basic on my TI-89 calculator.
Now that I look back on it, I don't have to wonder why I failed that math class...
Well, you were modded up very quickly, partially because moderators don't read the aticle themselves, but I'm sure some people will mod you up simply because you run a service they like.
/. that are going to mod-bomb you because they don't agree with what you do, thus countering the others.
Therefore, because you run a service for people and openly advertise that you do it, and because it's not a service that's exactly socially acceptable, people will return the service in an anonymous way that also requires no spending of money on their part, thus modding you up when they get mod points.
Granted, I have seen some on-topic and insightful posts from you that deserved the modding they get, but I really don't see that many people on
Of course, I could be completely wrong. Care to inform?
Slow Down Cowboy!
Slashdot requires you to wait 2 minutes between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
It's been 1 minute since you last successfully posted a comment, and we don't like you, so you have to wait.
.. he runs a porn site. he doesn't need to think.
Webmail also works great. No automagic opening of emails/attachments/code/etc, and you can delete a message without even previewing the latest spam inside.
And since there are _many_ different webmail programs you can use (my server gives the option of three different ones when you log in), I highly recommend it to anybody.