Net income is unfair, because people will game the system to take large expenses at the same time that they realize large incomes, in order to keep net income down.
This is a sincere question: what large expenses? Do you mean buy lots of useless office equipment, for example? If the expenses involve buying something, then whoever is selling that stuff will be taxed anyway. Why is that a problem?
Yeah, and you'd have the most unfair (notice I didn't say inequitable) taxing system ever. What a mess this would be! The poor, who currently pay basically no taxes on their 18K per year suddenly owe $3.600 / year, which is like 4 months rent.
One reason why the US tax system is so messy is because people like you (and I don't mean that as an insult) want to use it also as a social equalizer. Thus, you get a credit for taking care of a child, or an elderly person, or for being blind, etc, depending on what portion of the population you think deserves a break.
Alternatively, you can pursue equalizers on the spending side. Give free healthcare to the poor. Give free (and good!) schooling to the poor. Give them low-cost housing or low interest housing loans. The principle matters more than the examples I'm raising here.
Now, this may look like simply transferring the mess, but notice that it's much easier to monitor and control government spending than it is to even figure out how much money you did not collect due to various tax credits. The added benefit is a much smaller IRS and much simpler tax form.
Can we instead talk to a developer who wants to talk about the best way of doing things, rather than someone whose job is to come up with problems where MS is the solution?
Are you actually familiar with the job description of the title? It might be a position of advocating external standards (i.e., HTML) internally, thinking all day of Microsoft products that can be improved with it. If so, they would be the right people to talk to.
If you don't like MY smoke, don't come into MY house... or MY business.
You're welcome to smoke in your house or at your place of work (provided you are the employer), silly. I'm talking about your smoking at my place of business, and public buildings that I enter. I completely agree that people have the right to harm their own lungs, as long as they agree they have no right to harm mine.
On an amusing side note, how can a post that has not received any rating (moderation) be "overrated"?
They can't help it. Christianity is evangelical by nature, and its members are asked to spread the gospel and save the non-believers from hell. At its purest interpretation, they are driven by the inability to accept another person's choice to what they consider sinful. In theory, they'd have failed their God if they left you alone.
This is why the separation of Church and State is so important. The State is so powerful that it cannot be permitted to act as an agent of the Church, lest you end up with a monolithic society like the Taliban Afghanistan in terms of thought control.
more and more places are going smoke-free, including places thought of as "liberal" such as New York city and the entire state of California.
The banning of smoking in various indoor venues is not an attack on your right to smoke, but a protection of my right not to have to inhale your smoke. This is similar to the concept that your right to punch ends where my face begins. The relevant question is whether I am harmed by your optional actions, not one of liberal or conservative thinking.
But, with my experience, Linux on the desktop is MUCH more elegant than Windoze in every way. Under Linux, I have fewer crashes,
Your Windows experience might be a bit outdated. As much as I dislike Microsoft, Windows 2000 and XP are very solid platforms for desktop use. The point is no longer which OS is more stable, because both are stable enough for productive use.
better performance,
For about $100 you can get a P4 CPU clocked at nearly 2 GHz. This is enough performance for most desktop tasks.
The point is not that Linux isn't better. The fact is that recent versions of Windows are good enough for most tasks, which leaves Linux with killer features (the MacOS X way) and price to attract switchers. You can no longer rely on Win98 BSODs and people needing the most out of their 486/66 to be running Linux.
and my choice of window managers. On Windoze, I have Windoze and a series of for-pay "hacks" to make my system look different.
I think it's pretty conclusive that choice of window managers means nearly nothing to most desktop users.
The printer is a Canon, which has no support in CUPS outside of TurboPrint...and Games are well, games...they don't matter as much in the grand scheme of things, considering that I have a PS2 already...
If your solution to not having games in Linux is to spend $180 on a PS2, I hope you understand why it's not a compelling reason to ditch Windows (which appears to cost most new computer buyers nothing). Not being able to use your printer is also a pretty big problem.
As far as ease of use, that's coming. [...] Under Linux it just works...
So which is it, coming or just works?
The point is, I think it's time to stop cutting Linux any slack just because we like what it stands for. I think it's nearly ready to compete entirely on all-around technical merits, and coddling it with double standards will only slow its progress. I'm not saying you should abuse the volunteer programmers behind the effort, but what would you say if Windows won't play most games? Or if it won't recognize your new printer? Would you say such an OS is ready for the desktop?
For the last 20 years we have had an open, digital, non-DRM music standard which has succeded wildly.
Over most of the last 20 years, there was no way to distribute that music widely and cheaply. The Internet really did change the equation for the recording industry. "Piracy" among friends used to be an acceptable loss partially offset by the free marketing, but today if they take no action it can literally shut them down.
The first way this happens is obvious. P2P enables massive distribution at little cost to the participants. The second way is that, even if fans are still willing to pay for music, artists can easily set up their own website and sell music directly. How can the middleman not be afraid?
If I OWN my car, I can spray paint it with polka dots and grow a chia pet on the hood and the government can't do jack.
If you can cheaply replicate any car you buy and legally sell it to many buyers, then you bet the laws will change very quickly. You'll send the same shockwave to the automobile industry as the recording industry feels today.
The recording industry didn't go around suing everybody when audio tapes could be copied. This is because the copies were expensive, and distribution is limited. Today, the copy is essentially free (at 2 GB per dollar of hard disk storage, we're talking just over a hundredth of a cent per song), and the distribution network is global. They are terrified.
The point is not that you shouldn't fight IP laws, or that you shouldn't fight the inevitable Anti-Replicator Law if such a machine should be invented. The point is that the absence of an Anti-Replicator Law for your car doesn't imply anything. The two products simply are not comparable.
it's illegal to leverage that monopoly, which is what's happenning.
Again, false. The only thing Microsoft is leveraging, if it is proven that they are selling below cost, is their money. Now, if they had bundled an X-Box with every purchase of Microsoft Windows, that would be illegally leveraging their Windows monopoly.
It's a bit counterintuitive, I know, but not every "unfair" business practice is illegal and actionable. Big companies have more money, and that's inherently unfair.
how much of this shortage is due to the fact that the minis have 4GB microdrives in them, which by themselves cost more than $250 [ebay.com]?
Based on your eBay link, at most 61 of them. I can understand a little cottage industry of iPod Mini dissecters selling cannibalized drives on eBay. Can you really imagine more than a percent or two of customers dissecting a new $250 product by themselves to save some money on their digital camera?
I can't imagine the latter, so based on the volume actually on eBay, I would have to say only a negligible portion of the shortage is due to this.
They would buy Apple computers if Apple would get some Retail presence in New Mexico - so that they could have a place to buy software and peripherals and such....
No, retail stores in rural or remote areas for niche products is a terrible idea. It's nearly impossible to get the volume to sustain the store. These are the perfect customers for on-line stores.
Re:Missing the point of CMYK?
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CMYK is a fairly basic feature. Once you engineer in the object and the methods it really would be quite cheap to do. This is why CMYK output was implemented so quickly. And $5K can buy a lot of programmer time in India.
All fine points, except you still don't address the main point in the post you were responding to. In addition to the $5K in programmer time, your team of ten graphics artists are sitting idly (and more importantly, not doing billable work) waiting for the code to be written. After that, they'll almost certainly become beta-testers of the code. You also fail to address the risks: what happens if your programmers suddenly disappear with your downpayment? What happens if they were simply incompetent, and could not finish the job?
How much does that cost?
Re:Missing the point of CMYK?
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Gimp Hits 2.0
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10 liceneses at around $5000 would buy a lot of coding time.
You've ignored the time cost. Your team of ten graphic artists would be doing nothing while waiting for this feature to be completed, and most likely end up being beta testers. If the programmer screws up and you fail to deliver on a project, how much would your lost reputation cost, nevermind the project itself?
If they're not going to sell the binaries any more, then why would they care if people share them?
Because being able to get a free older Mac version may mean less incentive to buy their new Windows version.
Re:Missing the point of CMYK?
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Gimp Hits 2.0
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If you can't code, then go to rentacoder or simular sites and pay somebody to add the features you think you need... chances are it will still be cheaper than paying for an equivalent commercial product.
In many cases, it won't be. Photoshop retails for $700, which is a 40-hour man-week if the programmer accepts $17.50 per hour (for those not in the US, it's not the greatest salary). It's not likely to buy you something as significant as CMYK support for Gimp. Secondly, particular for major features, time is not free. A graphic designer customer can buy Photoshop and start working (read: billing customers) tomorrow, while trying rentacoder incurs a time penalty as well as a not insignificant risk that your hired gun doesn't shoot straight.
IOW, in many cases it's only worthwhile if a lot of other people help you pay for development... which is, when you think about it, Adobe's business model.
Clearly, there are works out there which hold a good deal of intellectual value, but hold no commercial value for their owner.
This line is a gem. One really important thing to realize is that not all value is expressible in money.
Perhaps what we need is some sort of system that if a work has not been used commercially for x period of time, it should be deemed to have no commercial viability and be released to the public domain.
This isn't any easier from the perspective of the future person who wants to use the work but cannot locate the original author. What you really want to be able to do is to open the book to the copyright page, and see if it's been X years. Failing that, having to check an easily-accessible government registry is still acceptable. However, "real research" is likely going to be beyond the abilities and resources of most people.
Also, what's "used commercially"? If I have a friend pay me $1 every year for it, does that count? Consider also that many works have only become valuable after the author's death, so it would be rightful (in the sense of encouraging creativity even if you won't personally benefit) for the author's designated beneficiaries to receive some protection.
Persuading the American public that it was all about sex, not perjury, was a brilliant propaganda achievement by Clinton.
There's also that little matter of Kenneth Starr spending years and millions of dollars investigating Clinton, only to catch him lying about an affair. Try to think back a bit: what was Clinton supposed to be answering for on the witness stand?
This isn't to defend Clinton, but to point out why the American public were not really convinced that the Republicans were not overreaching (and to some, outright malicious) in their prosecution. Their hatred for everything Clinton was hardly contained.
Note that I was responding to the statement quoted below:
Trolltech have simply decided that commercial parties need to pay them money to use it, while everyone else can use the GPL.
Using only the GPL, Trolltech has no such power. As we agreed, once you release under the GPL, you have given the licensee the right to redistribute under the GPL even to commercial entities. They are still bound by the GPL, but Trolltech has no way to charge GPL commercial software for Qt.
The Trolltech website doesn't really make a distinction between open versus closed source and proprietary versus non-proprietary software. For the most part, it's probably close enough, but it's not exactly true that all commercial users must use the commercial license. They can simply be a GPL licensee of one of Trolltech's GPL licensees.
They sell a non-GPL version for use by those that don't want to GPL their entire application.
The point is that the GPL explicitly states:
Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions.
where "these terms and conditions" refers to the GPL. IOW, even if the original author is unwilling to license directly to commercial usage under GPL, a non-commercial licensee can turn right around and redistribute the code under GPL terms...
...unless an additional restriction is placed upon the original non-commercial GPL licensee, which is entirely legal but the GPL does not do. A "GPL" that prohibits redistribution to commercial entities under the GPL is not the GPL.
The holders of the copyright can decide which license applies to which parties. Trolltech have simply decided that commercial parties need to pay them money to use it, while everyone else can use the GPL.
Doesn't work that way. The GPL explicitly permits your licensee (who in this case is not a commercial entity if you refuse) to give out the source code to anybody. If you additionally require your licensees not to give it to a commercial entity (which is legal), then it's no longer GPL.
future R&D is halted... unless you expect the pirates to do R&D in the future.
You are sorely mistaken. Americans have been very innovative, but do not have monopoly in innovation. I very much expect the pirates of today to be the innovators of tomorrow.
In the 1980's, Taiwan was producing illegal Apple ][ clones (not just using the same ROM and DOS code, but literally the same plastic cases, some even with off-color Apple logos!). Today, Taiwanese businesses are some of the largest producers of computer electronics, including crucial parts like motherboards and monitors, and of course less crucial parts like keyboards and mice. Along the way, it has produced world-class brands like Asus, Acer, and others. These developments were funded (both in the money sense and the talent sense) by initially infringing on IP.
if you had tremendous amounts of R&D money invested, and someone else was turning your effort into market share and killing you, you might fail to detect humor in the situation.
That situation is never funny, but not all bad situations should lead to litigation. You may have spent millions in R&D, but were you working on something non-obvious?
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This is a sincere question: what large expenses? Do you mean buy lots of useless office equipment, for example? If the expenses involve buying something, then whoever is selling that stuff will be taxed anyway. Why is that a problem?
One reason why the US tax system is so messy is because people like you (and I don't mean that as an insult) want to use it also as a social equalizer. Thus, you get a credit for taking care of a child, or an elderly person, or for being blind, etc, depending on what portion of the population you think deserves a break.
Alternatively, you can pursue equalizers on the spending side. Give free healthcare to the poor. Give free (and good!) schooling to the poor. Give them low-cost housing or low interest housing loans. The principle matters more than the examples I'm raising here.
Now, this may look like simply transferring the mess, but notice that it's much easier to monitor and control government spending than it is to even figure out how much money you did not collect due to various tax credits. The added benefit is a much smaller IRS and much simpler tax form.
Are you actually familiar with the job description of the title? It might be a position of advocating external standards (i.e., HTML) internally, thinking all day of Microsoft products that can be improved with it. If so, they would be the right people to talk to.
You're welcome to smoke in your house or at your place of work (provided you are the employer), silly. I'm talking about your smoking at my place of business, and public buildings that I enter. I completely agree that people have the right to harm their own lungs, as long as they agree they have no right to harm mine.
On an amusing side note, how can a post that has not received any rating (moderation) be "overrated"?
This is why the separation of Church and State is so important. The State is so powerful that it cannot be permitted to act as an agent of the Church, lest you end up with a monolithic society like the Taliban Afghanistan in terms of thought control.
The banning of smoking in various indoor venues is not an attack on your right to smoke, but a protection of my right not to have to inhale your smoke. This is similar to the concept that your right to punch ends where my face begins. The relevant question is whether I am harmed by your optional actions, not one of liberal or conservative thinking.
Your Windows experience might be a bit outdated. As much as I dislike Microsoft, Windows 2000 and XP are very solid platforms for desktop use. The point is no longer which OS is more stable, because both are stable enough for productive use.
better performance,
For about $100 you can get a P4 CPU clocked at nearly 2 GHz. This is enough performance for most desktop tasks.
The point is not that Linux isn't better. The fact is that recent versions of Windows are good enough for most tasks, which leaves Linux with killer features (the MacOS X way) and price to attract switchers. You can no longer rely on Win98 BSODs and people needing the most out of their 486/66 to be running Linux.
and my choice of window managers. On Windoze, I have Windoze and a series of for-pay "hacks" to make my system look different.
I think it's pretty conclusive that choice of window managers means nearly nothing to most desktop users.
The printer is a Canon, which has no support in CUPS outside of TurboPrint...and Games are well, games...they don't matter as much in the grand scheme of things, considering that I have a PS2 already...
If your solution to not having games in Linux is to spend $180 on a PS2, I hope you understand why it's not a compelling reason to ditch Windows (which appears to cost most new computer buyers nothing). Not being able to use your printer is also a pretty big problem.
As far as ease of use, that's coming. [...] Under Linux it just works...
So which is it, coming or just works?
The point is, I think it's time to stop cutting Linux any slack just because we like what it stands for. I think it's nearly ready to compete entirely on all-around technical merits, and coddling it with double standards will only slow its progress. I'm not saying you should abuse the volunteer programmers behind the effort, but what would you say if Windows won't play most games? Or if it won't recognize your new printer? Would you say such an OS is ready for the desktop?
Over most of the last 20 years, there was no way to distribute that music widely and cheaply. The Internet really did change the equation for the recording industry. "Piracy" among friends used to be an acceptable loss partially offset by the free marketing, but today if they take no action it can literally shut them down.
The first way this happens is obvious. P2P enables massive distribution at little cost to the participants. The second way is that, even if fans are still willing to pay for music, artists can easily set up their own website and sell music directly. How can the middleman not be afraid?
If you can cheaply replicate any car you buy and legally sell it to many buyers, then you bet the laws will change very quickly. You'll send the same shockwave to the automobile industry as the recording industry feels today.
The recording industry didn't go around suing everybody when audio tapes could be copied. This is because the copies were expensive, and distribution is limited. Today, the copy is essentially free (at 2 GB per dollar of hard disk storage, we're talking just over a hundredth of a cent per song), and the distribution network is global. They are terrified.
The point is not that you shouldn't fight IP laws, or that you shouldn't fight the inevitable Anti-Replicator Law if such a machine should be invented. The point is that the absence of an Anti-Replicator Law for your car doesn't imply anything. The two products simply are not comparable.
You have to read Morse code just to be a mugger these days? Boy, the digital divide really is widening.
Again, false. The only thing Microsoft is leveraging, if it is proven that they are selling below cost, is their money. Now, if they had bundled an X-Box with every purchase of Microsoft Windows, that would be illegally leveraging their Windows monopoly.
It's a bit counterintuitive, I know, but not every "unfair" business practice is illegal and actionable. Big companies have more money, and that's inherently unfair.
Microsoft does not have a monopoly in the game console market.
Based on your eBay link, at most 61 of them. I can understand a little cottage industry of iPod Mini dissecters selling cannibalized drives on eBay. Can you really imagine more than a percent or two of customers dissecting a new $250 product by themselves to save some money on their digital camera?
I can't imagine the latter, so based on the volume actually on eBay, I would have to say only a negligible portion of the shortage is due to this.
No, retail stores in rural or remote areas for niche products is a terrible idea. It's nearly impossible to get the volume to sustain the store. These are the perfect customers for on-line stores.
All fine points, except you still don't address the main point in the post you were responding to. In addition to the $5K in programmer time, your team of ten graphics artists are sitting idly (and more importantly, not doing billable work) waiting for the code to be written. After that, they'll almost certainly become beta-testers of the code. You also fail to address the risks: what happens if your programmers suddenly disappear with your downpayment? What happens if they were simply incompetent, and could not finish the job?
How much does that cost?
You've ignored the time cost. Your team of ten graphic artists would be doing nothing while waiting for this feature to be completed, and most likely end up being beta testers. If the programmer screws up and you fail to deliver on a project, how much would your lost reputation cost, nevermind the project itself?
Because being able to get a free older Mac version may mean less incentive to buy their new Windows version.
In many cases, it won't be. Photoshop retails for $700, which is a 40-hour man-week if the programmer accepts $17.50 per hour (for those not in the US, it's not the greatest salary). It's not likely to buy you something as significant as CMYK support for Gimp. Secondly, particular for major features, time is not free. A graphic designer customer can buy Photoshop and start working (read: billing customers) tomorrow, while trying rentacoder incurs a time penalty as well as a not insignificant risk that your hired gun doesn't shoot straight.
IOW, in many cases it's only worthwhile if a lot of other people help you pay for development... which is, when you think about it, Adobe's business model.
This line is a gem. One really important thing to realize is that not all value is expressible in money.
Perhaps what we need is some sort of system that if a work has not been used commercially for x period of time, it should be deemed to have no commercial viability and be released to the public domain.
This isn't any easier from the perspective of the future person who wants to use the work but cannot locate the original author. What you really want to be able to do is to open the book to the copyright page, and see if it's been X years. Failing that, having to check an easily-accessible government registry is still acceptable. However, "real research" is likely going to be beyond the abilities and resources of most people.
Also, what's "used commercially"? If I have a friend pay me $1 every year for it, does that count? Consider also that many works have only become valuable after the author's death, so it would be rightful (in the sense of encouraging creativity even if you won't personally benefit) for the author's designated beneficiaries to receive some protection.
There's also that little matter of Kenneth Starr spending years and millions of dollars investigating Clinton, only to catch him lying about an affair. Try to think back a bit: what was Clinton supposed to be answering for on the witness stand?
This isn't to defend Clinton, but to point out why the American public were not really convinced that the Republicans were not overreaching (and to some, outright malicious) in their prosecution. Their hatred for everything Clinton was hardly contained.
Trolltech have simply decided that commercial parties need to pay them money to use it, while everyone else can use the GPL.
Using only the GPL, Trolltech has no such power. As we agreed, once you release under the GPL, you have given the licensee the right to redistribute under the GPL even to commercial entities. They are still bound by the GPL, but Trolltech has no way to charge GPL commercial software for Qt.
The Trolltech website doesn't really make a distinction between open versus closed source and proprietary versus non-proprietary software. For the most part, it's probably close enough, but it's not exactly true that all commercial users must use the commercial license. They can simply be a GPL licensee of one of Trolltech's GPL licensees.
The point is that the GPL explicitly states:
where "these terms and conditions" refers to the GPL. IOW, even if the original author is unwilling to license directly to commercial usage under GPL, a non-commercial licensee can turn right around and redistribute the code under GPL terms...Doesn't work that way. The GPL explicitly permits your licensee (who in this case is not a commercial entity if you refuse) to give out the source code to anybody. If you additionally require your licensees not to give it to a commercial entity (which is legal), then it's no longer GPL.
You are sorely mistaken. Americans have been very innovative, but do not have monopoly in innovation. I very much expect the pirates of today to be the innovators of tomorrow.
In the 1980's, Taiwan was producing illegal Apple ][ clones (not just using the same ROM and DOS code, but literally the same plastic cases, some even with off-color Apple logos!). Today, Taiwanese businesses are some of the largest producers of computer electronics, including crucial parts like motherboards and monitors, and of course less crucial parts like keyboards and mice. Along the way, it has produced world-class brands like Asus, Acer, and others. These developments were funded (both in the money sense and the talent sense) by initially infringing on IP.
That situation is never funny, but not all bad situations should lead to litigation. You may have spent millions in R&D, but were you working on something non-obvious?