Let me guess, you live on your own isolated, self-sufficient island nation with no need of government services of any kind, right? Yeah, fuck taxes man.
What a crock. This guy apparently runs Sam McGees Hot Gourmet, which of course did not benefit from generations of work by the US Department of Agriculture, the Federal Trade Commission, DARPA (for developing the internet), etc. No sir, this guy is his own man. Did it all by himself.
Even if you are outside of the US, your own agricultural, commerce, and communications ministries (or equivalents) have a large inheritance from their US equivalents. Taxation in the US is and has been vast, and without a doubt corruption of various kinds has been also. The payoff, of course, is a huge body of information, regulations, and services that most people seem to take for granted just as they simultaneously take maximum advantage of it.
What a joke. Whining about sales tax. Implicitly claiming that if it isn't in the constitution, it is not legal. Have you ever seen the Code of Federal Regulations? Have you ever hefted it in your hands? Of course not, unless you can heft over 20,000 pages in your hands at once. State and local laws also tend to fill too many uncomfortably heavy tomes. Wake up, pal. Taxation is a part of life, unless you care to do without the services governments provide.
If this is truly unconstitutional, then support a lawsuit, and count me on your side. This is not taxation without representation, slavery, or an irreversible abuse of power. Your dreaming if you think our bankrupt (in more ways than one) state governments are going to overlook the taxation of online sales.
If you really want to be a dick about it, assuming you are an ecommerce merchant, perhaps you could ensure that you only had a physical presence in the least populated state in the continental (to minimize shipping costs) US. That way, only people in that state would have to pay sales tax. Since it is the least populated, the majority of your customers would probably be out of state, and thus would avoid it.
if you gonna post some crap, at least have some decency to state exactly WHY you believe so.
Read the posts, dude. Dozens (hundreds? thousands? millions?) of eCommerce sites charge sales tax. It is a fact of life. There is nothing fundamental about the net that precludes the paying of sales tax. If the buyer and the seller are in the same state, sales tax is charged. That's it. No rocket science. No abstract mathematical concepts. No need to invoke spiritual entities or evil demons. This shit has been going on for millenia, nothing new here.
Read it. Memorize it. Quit whining. To claim that sales tax is the death knell for eCommerce is pure, complete, and utter bullshit. Just pay your fucking taxes, you goddamn moochers.
Every vertical and horizontal surface, every book, every magazine, TV show, radio show, tape, dvd, CD insert, restaurant menu, bathroom, cereal box, and milk jug in America is covered with one form of advertisement or another.
You are mistaken, it pains me to say. Hold on to your jaw. You ain't seen nothin' yet. 20 years from now you will look back on how free our world is from advertising, manipulation, and exploitation of consumers.
So when the industry won't listen and won't learn and won't even attempt to come to the level of the consumer then what choice does the consumer have? Government regulation! Yes it's sad but true.
No, no, no! There are quite a few posts on this thread from people who have stopped or drastically diminished their consumption of content that is heavily laden with advertising. That is our best strategy, and it is a powerful weapon.
Dropping out doesn't seem to have made TV any better. Most people I know watch maybe a hour or two a week and TV continues to get worse. Movies are crap with few exceptions, music is garbage, I can't pick up a magazine or a newspaper without being frustrated by the amount of ads.
Dropping out isn't for fixing TV or commercial pop music, it's for fixing us! Once you are able to entertain yourself, choose among all of the stuff that is only lightly laden with advertising or even entirely free of it (and believe me, there are a lot of things you can do with your free time), you will have been born again! You will be Neo, escaped from the Matrix!
I have a complementary issue: Why do you or don't you watch TV? Is it fun, worthwhile, interesting, and fulfilling? Is it passive, tedious, exploitative, and manipulative?
If very few people spent much time watching content filled with commercials, what would happen? What would advertisers do?
{ capitalism | socialism synonym } {sucks | is the greatest thing since sliced bread }. If we would only stick with my favorite system and completely eliminate the other one, { all would be well | vast wealth production for all would ensue }.
None of the possible readings of the above is true, nor is it false. It doesn't matter whether you are in a capitalist, socialist, or "mixed" system. You will have to constantly tweak it and evolve it, and after twenty or thirty years you will be so far away from the original that you will be in onbe of the following states:
A social/political/economic crisis occurs, so you freak out and promote a drastic change that will take you back to your ideological roots. The starting conditions are completely different, however, so this just fucks everything up even more.
A social/political/economic crisis occurs, so you ensure that most visible government officials promote the idea that the crisis only affects a minority of citizens, and that recovery has been in progress for about 18 months. It's just that jobs and salaries have been a bit slow to catch up. You also
Make sure people have lots of TV shows and pop music to consume.
Have a big flashy war every year and a half or so. Make sure the press has lots of cool graphics and other content showing how advanced our weapons are, and lots of feel-good images of our happy troops going about their noble business. Conceal human damage to both our own people and those of the the enemy as much as possible. Pretend none of our troops are deserting, committing suicide, etc.
Make sure word gets out among, um, your major political supporters that they'd better cash out as much as possible, 'cuz pretty soon the shit is really gonna hit it.
You and your wealthy cronies realize that you can really game the system. You and others of your ilk independently influence Federal, State, and Local governments to optimize your profits, ignoring any secondary damages that may result. Eventually, a social/political/economic crisis occurs due to accumulated secondary damage.
Realize that you were full of shit to begin with, but luckily you now have a system that more or less works. You will formalize the mechanism that you have been using, and refine it continuously as well
Well, Condolezza Rice said Hussein is an evil man. If being an evil man was our primary invasion criterion, by God there are not boots on the earth sufficient to go after all the rat bastard "leaders" out there.
You show me proof that oil is why we went to Iraq.
You show me that it was anything else. Show proof, not statements by public officials or "thinktanks." You won't be able to, and do you know why? For the same reason I can't show proof, in any mathematical or scientific sense at least, that we are there for the oil. It is not amenable to such proof. All either of us can do is adduce compelling arguments and evidence, nothing more.
If we were interested in scooping up major producers, we'd be far better off getting Kuwait (as Iraq did in 1990).
You do not invade and steal from your business partners. You can, however, invade and steal from their enemies.
And multi-hundred billion dollar subsidy? Please back that argument up. Considering the state of Iraqi oil development, it would take vast investments by American oil companies to even begin to project multi-hundred billion dollar paybacks.
It is ovious that my use of the word "subsidy" refers to the cost of conquering Iraq, not necessarily that of developing its oilfields. Nevertheless, it appears that even some of that is being done on our dime.
The oil argument for why US went to Iraq (invaded, in your terms) is bunk.
Your opinion is shared by many people, I am sad to say. Also, supposedly 70% of Americans believe Iraq had something to do with the 9/11 attacks. And yet you claim that I am uneducated and deluded. Oh well...
Become a good conservative and fight the liberals who put big government over freedom.
Under the tutelage of presumably "good conservatives," we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars subsidizing the "defense" industry and using it to conquer a major Third World petroleum producer. The latter not only also a multi-hundred billion dollar subsidy for the energy trading industry, but also one of blood. Nearly 200 American soldiers dead, and over 1500 wounded, to say nothing of the thousands of dead Iraqis and tens of thousands of wounded. How you see this as being against big government eludes me completely.
...the more you realize that the tax code is designed to enslave the middle and lower classes
You are right, but for the wrong reasons. You, like most, have fallen into the trap. It is not about liberals or conservatives, Republicans vs. Democrats, Hawks vs. Doves, Right to Life vs. Freedom of Choice, etc. It is about the actual day to day mechanisms of political action. Who do politicians pay attention to? To whom are they beholden? What segment of society drives political action in our country? Do they represent your interests, or do they consider you an expendable "Human Resource"? Is your employment status of any significance to them, or is it at best figured into some large-scale economic indicator? Wake up, my friend, we are all in the same boat.
Today's stolen sig: The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging.
Keep in mind California has the world's fifth largest economy, and they are planning to enforce the law with fines amounting to $1000 per each piece of spam.
Also keep in mind that we in CA are upwards of $40 billion in the hole, and next year it will be even more. We have a compelling positive incentive to hunt spammers down, skin them alive, and take all their money.
To all the spammers of the world: Watch it fuckbrain, we're from California.
I agree with your point that The Matrix franchise is not chock full of original thought. I do like it as a metaphor for commercial popular culture and information media controlling most people's minds, whether or not that was an intended message.
As a movie experience, though, I thought it beat the shit out of any of the last 10 years of Star Wars films.
...Episode 1 was so disheartening that I didn't even bother seeing Episode 2, and Episode 3 has elicited zero excitement from me.
My feelings exactly. How anybody can get excited over the bullshit Star Wars "philosophy," terrible scripts, poorly directed actors, boring storytelling, and average special effects is a mystery to me.
If Ridley Scott, Spike Lee, or the Wachowski brothers were to do it, with no intervention from George Lucas, that would be another story.
So, with no loss of portability or functionality, you could do the same in C/C++.
Try this:
Write a backend app in Java, and one with the same functionality in C or C++. Make sure they both read and write data to an Oracle database. Now, with stopwatch in hand, make them both run on Win2K, Cygwin, Solaris, and Linux.
Guess which language will allow you to finish first.
Get thing, want send thing to space.
Thing heavy, need fuel and vehicle. Mainly fuel.
Oh no. Vehicle and fuel expensive. Total energy cost to move mass won't listen to my personal bullshit.
Blame on lazy bastards at NASA. Where perpetual motion machine I ask for?
Grunt. Snort. Fart. Belch.
Slashdot Mirror
Har. Way ahead of you there Bob. Guess what the polymers are made of?
Welcome to our Sherwin-Williams Solar Panel Paint overlords.
Welcome to the avegarge bozo with a solar panel spray can overlord.
Welcome to...
Oh fuck it.
What a crock. This guy apparently runs Sam McGees Hot Gourmet, which of course did not benefit from generations of work by the US Department of Agriculture, the Federal Trade Commission, DARPA (for developing the internet), etc. No sir, this guy is his own man. Did it all by himself.
Even if you are outside of the US, your own agricultural, commerce, and communications ministries (or equivalents) have a large inheritance from their US equivalents. Taxation in the US is and has been vast, and without a doubt corruption of various kinds has been also. The payoff, of course, is a huge body of information, regulations, and services that most people seem to take for granted just as they simultaneously take maximum advantage of it.
If this is truly unconstitutional, then support a lawsuit, and count me on your side. This is not taxation without representation, slavery, or an irreversible abuse of power. Your dreaming if you think our bankrupt (in more ways than one) state governments are going to overlook the taxation of online sales.
If you really want to be a dick about it, assuming you are an ecommerce merchant, perhaps you could ensure that you only had a physical presence in the least populated state in the continental (to minimize shipping costs) US. That way, only people in that state would have to pay sales tax. Since it is the least populated, the majority of your customers would probably be out of state, and thus would avoid it.
Read the posts, dude. Dozens (hundreds? thousands? millions?) of eCommerce sites charge sales tax. It is a fact of life. There is nothing fundamental about the net that precludes the paying of sales tax. If the buyer and the seller are in the same state, sales tax is charged. That's it. No rocket science. No abstract mathematical concepts. No need to invoke spiritual entities or evil demons. This shit has been going on for millenia, nothing new here.
Sheezis...
Read it. Memorize it. Quit whining. To claim that sales tax is the death knell for eCommerce is pure, complete, and utter bullshit. Just pay your fucking taxes, you goddamn moochers.
Wrong. This is sales tax for intra-state transactions, or those with retailers that are in the buyer's state of purchase:
As a result, a state may only require the remittance of sales taxes from such merchants if the merchant has a physical presence in the state.
You are mistaken, it pains me to say. Hold on to your jaw. You ain't seen nothin' yet. 20 years from now you will look back on how free our world is from advertising, manipulation, and exploitation of consumers.
So when the industry won't listen and won't learn and won't even attempt to come to the level of the consumer then what choice does the consumer have? Government regulation! Yes it's sad but true.
No, no, no! There are quite a few posts on this thread from people who have stopped or drastically diminished their consumption of content that is heavily laden with advertising. That is our best strategy, and it is a powerful weapon.
Dropping out doesn't seem to have made TV any better. Most people I know watch maybe a hour or two a week and TV continues to get worse. Movies are crap with few exceptions, music is garbage, I can't pick up a magazine or a newspaper without being frustrated by the amount of ads.
Dropping out isn't for fixing TV or commercial pop music, it's for fixing us! Once you are able to entertain yourself, choose among all of the stuff that is only lightly laden with advertising or even entirely free of it (and believe me, there are a lot of things you can do with your free time), you will have been born again! You will be Neo, escaped from the Matrix!
Turn off, tune out, wake up.
If very few people spent much time watching content filled with commercials, what would happen? What would advertisers do?
{ capitalism | socialism synonym } {sucks | is the greatest thing since sliced bread }. If we would only stick with my favorite system and completely eliminate the other one, { all would be well | vast wealth production for all would ensue }.
None of the possible readings of the above is true, nor is it false. It doesn't matter whether you are in a capitalist, socialist, or "mixed" system. You will have to constantly tweak it and evolve it, and after twenty or thirty years you will be so far away from the original that you will be in onbe of the following states:
- A social/political/economic crisis occurs, so you freak out and promote a drastic change that will take you back to your ideological roots. The starting conditions are completely different, however, so this just fucks everything up even more.
- A social/political/economic crisis occurs, so you ensure that most visible government officials promote the idea that the crisis only affects a minority of citizens, and that recovery has been in progress for about 18 months. It's just that jobs and salaries have been a bit slow to catch up. You also
- Make sure people have lots of TV shows and pop music to consume.
- Have a big flashy war every year and a half or so. Make sure the press has lots of cool graphics and other content showing how advanced our weapons are, and lots of feel-good images of our happy troops going about their noble business. Conceal human damage to both our own people and those of the the enemy as much as possible. Pretend none of our troops are deserting, committing suicide, etc.
- Make sure word gets out among, um, your major political supporters that they'd better cash out as much as possible, 'cuz pretty soon the shit is really gonna hit it.
- You and your wealthy cronies realize that you can really game the system. You and others of your ilk independently influence Federal, State, and Local governments to optimize your profits, ignoring any secondary damages that may result. Eventually, a social/political/economic crisis occurs due to accumulated secondary damage.
- Realize that you were full of shit to begin with, but luckily you now have a system that more or less works. You will formalize the mechanism that you have been using, and refine it continuously as well
I wish the last state would occur more often.Well, Condolezza Rice said Hussein is an evil man. If being an evil man was our primary invasion criterion, by God there are not boots on the earth sufficient to go after all the rat bastard "leaders" out there.
Now, if you can make it worth a few bucks...
You show me that it was anything else. Show proof, not statements by public officials or "thinktanks." You won't be able to, and do you know why? For the same reason I can't show proof, in any mathematical or scientific sense at least, that we are there for the oil. It is not amenable to such proof. All either of us can do is adduce compelling arguments and evidence, nothing more.
You do not invade and steal from your business partners. You can, however, invade and steal from their enemies.
And multi-hundred billion dollar subsidy? Please back that argument up. Considering the state of Iraqi oil development, it would take vast investments by American oil companies to even begin to project multi-hundred billion dollar paybacks.
It is ovious that my use of the word "subsidy" refers to the cost of conquering Iraq, not necessarily that of developing its oilfields. Nevertheless, it appears that even some of that is being done on our dime.
The oil argument for why US went to Iraq (invaded, in your terms) is bunk.
Your opinion is shared by many people, I am sad to say. Also, supposedly 70% of Americans believe Iraq had something to do with the 9/11 attacks. And yet you claim that I am uneducated and deluded. Oh well...
Under the tutelage of presumably "good conservatives," we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars subsidizing the "defense" industry and using it to conquer a major Third World petroleum producer. The latter not only also a multi-hundred billion dollar subsidy for the energy trading industry, but also one of blood. Nearly 200 American soldiers dead, and over 1500 wounded, to say nothing of the thousands of dead Iraqis and tens of thousands of wounded. How you see this as being against big government eludes me completely.
You are right, but for the wrong reasons. You, like most, have fallen into the trap. It is not about liberals or conservatives, Republicans vs. Democrats, Hawks vs. Doves, Right to Life vs. Freedom of Choice, etc. It is about the actual day to day mechanisms of political action. Who do politicians pay attention to? To whom are they beholden? What segment of society drives political action in our country? Do they represent your interests, or do they consider you an expendable "Human Resource"? Is your employment status of any significance to them, or is it at best figured into some large-scale economic indicator? Wake up, my friend, we are all in the same boat.
Today's stolen sig:
The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging.
OMG! Davis must be 50 feet tall!
Also keep in mind that we in CA are upwards of $40 billion in the hole, and next year it will be even more. We have a compelling positive incentive to hunt spammers down, skin them alive, and take all their money.
To all the spammers of the world: Watch it fuckbrain, we're from California.
How anyone could want to use vi or emacs over TextPad is beyond me. Even NEdit doesn't cut it next to TextPad.
Please stand by.
As a movie experience, though, I thought it beat the shit out of any of the last 10 years of Star Wars films.
Amazing? Episode I sure seemed to have been written in a day.
My feelings exactly. How anybody can get excited over the bullshit Star Wars "philosophy," terrible scripts, poorly directed actors, boring storytelling, and average special effects is a mystery to me.
If Ridley Scott, Spike Lee, or the Wachowski brothers were to do it, with no intervention from George Lucas, that would be another story.
Try this:
Write a backend app in Java, and one with the same functionality in C or C++. Make sure they both read and write data to an Oracle database. Now, with stopwatch in hand, make them both run on Win2K, Cygwin, Solaris, and Linux.
Guess which language will allow you to finish first.
Jokes in which the jokers are the joke are no joke.
Get thing, want send thing to space.
Thing heavy, need fuel and vehicle. Mainly fuel.
Oh no. Vehicle and fuel expensive. Total energy cost to move mass won't listen to my personal bullshit.
Blame on lazy bastards at NASA. Where perpetual motion machine I ask for?
Grunt. Snort. Fart. Belch.