This WAS about Fraud, NOT about Free Speech. Yes, FCC does not have responsibility to prevent fraud, but as common carrier, they are under the jurisdiction of the FCC who havwe the right to fine the ISPs for anything.
How to get away with any illegal action. Step 1) Claim it did not break law A even if they did break law B.
2) Claim that since you did not break law A you should get off scott free.
Just because some moron at the VOIP made a ridiculous claim about it being Free Speech does not make it legal. The ISP engaged in fraudlent behavior that violated their common carrier agreement. As such, the FCC fined them. It had nothing to do with Free Speech because Free Speech is a GOVERNMENT censure issue, not a corporate censure issue.
The anti-violoence people always ASSUMES causality. Attempt to prove causality consistently fail. It is NOT hard to prove causalit. Look, to prove the concept all you have to do the following:
Take a random selection of at least 100 people, divide it into two groups of at least 50.
Force, and I do mean FORCE one group to play violent video games for a period of however long you think is neccesary to make them violent. 1 year, at 1 hour a day seems reasonable to me. If they don't enjoy playing the game, tough. They have to do it.
Prevent, and I do mean PREVENT one group from playing violent games for the same period.
Compare both groups violent tendencies, IQs, etc. etc. with the people deciding who is "violent" etc. having no idea which group the subjects belong to.
Such studies have been done before. They found ZERO, NADA, NO increase in violent tendencies.
So of course the fools claim "you got the age wrong" or "You didn't force them to play enough" etc. etc. etc.
Not a single study has demonstrated causality. I personally think this is because there is NO causality. People that like violent games grow up to be violent. People that watch violent games think violent thoughts for a short period after (24 hours is the max I have seen tested). But neither of those things means that watching the games makes you act violently.
That study, like all the others ASSUMES causality. No attempt was made to prove it. at all.
Look, to prove the concept you have to do the following:
One take a random selection of at least 100 people, divide it into two groups of at least 50.
Force, and I do mean FORCE one group to play violent video games for a period of however long you think is neccesary to make them violent. 1 year, at 1 hour a day seems reasonable to me. If they don't enjoy playing the game, tough. They have to do it.
Prevent, and I do mean PREVENT one group from playing violent games for the same period.
Compare both groups violent tendencies, IQs, etc. etc. with the people deciding who is "violent" etc. having no idea which group the subjects belong to.
Such studies have been done before. They found ZERO, NADA, NO increase in violent tendencies.
So of course the fools claim "you got the age wrong" or "You didn't force them to play enough" etc. etc. etc.
Not a single study has demonstrated causality. I personally think this is because there is NO causality. People that like violent games grow up to be violent. People that watch violent games think violent thoughts for a short period after (24 hours is the max tested). But neither of those things means that watching the games makes you act violently.
You made the causality error. The question you have to ask yourself is which came first - the violent tendencies or the games. It is without question that people that enjoy violent games usually grow up to be more aggressive/violent than people that do not enjoy violent games. It is even without question that people that like those games act more violent within an hour after playing them. But despite MULTIPLE attempts, not a single study has ever conclusively demonstrated that if you expose a person to violent games/tv, they will become a more aggressive/violent person.
You are right that violence is like porn, but both porn and violence are also like dancing. When you see someone dancing in a movie, you think about dancing for a couple of minutes, maybe try out a few steps. But the movie will NOT turn you into a dancer, nor will it make someone that does not really like dancing start to like it.
There is no reason to outlaw or regulate violent games, anymore than there is to regulate porn - only the people that dislike these things try to stop others from enjoying them.
P.S. I don't play ANY video games. My porn colletion is none of your business.
As other have stated here, you have fallen victim to the false belief in statistics.
The studies you mentioned rely on self reporting, allow the individual countries to include/exclude anyone they want and set variable standard.
A typical example would be Saudia Arabia, who give statistics excluding women, and only refer to children in school. As the poor don't go to school, they are not counted. But YES, the male Saudi Arabians that go to school have a 99% literacry rate.
America has it's fair share of problems, but it has one MAJOR benefit: we count everybody we can, so we try to make the entire country better off, not just those who are already middle class. In general it is a far better place to live than the majority of other places in the world, assuming you include a full urban/rural average and don't "forget" to include included citizens.
No. Despite the foolish rhetoric, this is a FRAUD issue not a censorship issue.
The ISP, like all of them, advertised full internet access. They then proceeded to negate a service that is customarily thought of as "retail internet service", WITHOUT informing their customers.
Mass mailing spam is not cusomarilly thought as as "retail internet service"
1) ISP's all advertise them self as full internet access.
2) The ISP did NOT inform the customer they were blocking VoIP.
The problem is actually FRAUD committed byt he ISP, they promissed a service and did not fulfill their promise. But I do agree this is not a "censorship" issue
The ISP did NOT tell their CUSTOMERS they were blocking VOIP.
You can't offer a general service, then go out of your way to not offer a specific service that is customarillly offered with it unless you TELL YOUR CUSTOMER that you are not offering the specific service.
The ISP committed fraud against their customers - they claimed to offer full ISP service but in truth were only offering a limited ISP service.
Companies have the right to forbide personal phone calls of THEIR EMPLOYEES. I do not work for my ISP, they would NOT have the right to do this. A better analogy would be a University allowing charging students for phone service but forbidding them from calling other universities.
Wow. What a complete idiot. Lets start with some basics.
1. I am a software creator. In fact I sell some game software already you arrogant little coward.
2. You are the one helping OTHER people to profit off the work of others, you whiny moron. The creators are GETTING SCREWED here. As in Beatles sell copyrights which they thought were only good for 20 years to other people, Michael Jackson buys them, and HE, not the creator is the one that profits when they get expanded. Think about it, the Beatles got HOSED on that deal - they thought it was only good for 20 years and sold it basing the price on 20 years when it was worth 50 years.
3. I am not profiting at all from the works of others - I made an investment and want it to pay off. To get it to pay off I have to work my ass off - do you know how hard it is to sell 20 year old content?
4. FInally, the most important thing any creative person can know is THAT THERE IS NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN. Those star trek tapes I mentioned - hate to tell you but most of them are "based" (read stolen from) Shakespeare. IP is NOT the amazing thing that non creative morons think it is. Creating IP is just another kind of work. It is valuable, hard work, but NOT infinitely so and the guy that did it should not be allowed to GOUGE the people paying for it, anymore than the Oil companies should be allowed to engage in fake shortages to drive the price up.
That was just one example used to prove that the consumers have rights too.
Look forget about the 20 year number.
Let's say something is 18 years old. Can you reasonably see someone buying a movie based on that fact that in TWO years they can show it for free?
OK, forget about THAT example. There is still the point that retroactively increasing the copyright is not in the public interest. The point of granting a monoploistic copyright is to convince people to create.
Granting you more time will NOT suddenly retroactively cause you to create more art. You created it knowing exactly how much time you got as a monpoly.
If you think that right now we won't get enough IP, then fine, go ahead and increase the time protected for FUTURE IP. But there is NO valid public interest in retroactively increasing the copy right time. The creators have ALREADY been paid for that work. Worse, for anyone with the resources to hunt down copyright violations, they have already been paid INCREDIBALE amounts of cash. So effectively all you are doing is giving cash to the rich, succesfull IP creators at the expense of the rest of the population.
You are missing the main point. Most of us are perfectly happy to grant IP a reasonable amount of protection. Most of us are perfetly happy to grant IP use up until the legal maximum AT THE TIME OF CREATION.
The problem is that scumbags keep retroactively increasing the length of protection, and that is cheating
Why is it cheating? Because the people that BUY your IP do so at a set price with the assumption that after they wait x # of years the stuff they bought today will be theres to do with what they want. That is one of the decisions they made when they bought it.
Example: Lets say that in 1968 I purchased one of the original film reals of star trek, for say $5,000. I get to watch it myself, but I can't charge cash to others to see it... YET. For just myself, it would only be worth $4,500. But I know that in 20 years, it will be a rare commodity and I will be free to charge people to see the film. My $5,000 is an INVESTMENT.
now 10 years later, some scumbag lier has convinced congress to change it from 20 years to 50 years. I just lost my investment.
The real problem is HOW MUCH DO WE WANT TO PAY INVENTORS/CREATORS for their work.
And while they are certainly entilted to a fair price, we - as the PURCHASERS of that work are entitled to negotiate a fair price - and that price includes a limit on how long you hold the rights to it. May be it should be shorter, maybe it should be longer, but once our society sets a reasonable time limit and you "accept that condition" and create the IP, there is NO POSSIBLE, FAIR REASON to change it. That is just thievery by cheating, greedy scumbags. It is no better than if Ford suddenly decides to extend the 5 year rental agreement with an option to buy after 5 years to a 10 years rental agreement, after you already signed the papers.
I work for a Unix house, so I was using my company as standard. Perhaps MSFT crap is easier to fake. Not sure.
Generally you do not need to prove which is the fake and which is the copy. The existence of both demonstrates that an attempt was made to forge a document. That combined with the location of the "anomolos copy" generally defeats the purpose of forging a document.
For example - say a company is accused of discriminating against blacks. Two copies of a memo are found - one of which says "no N!@@3#$ will be hired by this company", the other leaves out that line. One is false and the other is real.
If the N!@@3#$ line is only found in several of the oldest back ups. Obviously, they are the valid copies that were missed by the company. It does not matter that the lawyers can't prove it, we don't need proof beyond a reasonable doubt for that issue.
If the N!@@3#$ line is only found on one a copy accessible from the internet, then hey, most likely it was planted.
You send an email at any company that is networked and everything is back up.
At my law firm, if my PC blows up, I can get the following:
[li]a restore from the daily back up. We keep 30 days back up available, via our emergencey servers in another city. Should be able to do this in minutes.
[li]A restore from the weekly back up on raids. Takes about one hour to access. We keep 50 of these (one year's worth).
[li]A restore from the monthly tape backups. We keep these forever.
For us, that is not just the email, it is everything we did not save on our actual C drive, which definitely includes our email.
This kind of set up is typical for large companies.
Look. I send an email from my computer at IBM to your computer at MSFT.
One month later there exists:
a copy on your computer, assuming you have not deleted it.
a copy on on my computer, assuming I have not deleted it.
a copy on each of our daily back ups.
a copy on all 4 of our weekly back ups, and another copy on all 4 of your weekly back ups.
Assuming that they keep one month of daily back ups available, that is 70 copies. I repeat, 70 copies.
In general, discovering, which is the REAL one, is IRRELEVANT. The fact that they were altered is such a huge red flag in the first place, it is enough to convict the guilty party. But if it DOES matter, most likely there are 66 copies of the real one and only 4 fake copies.
Yes, it is possible to carefully create a document so that it's identity can not be proven 'false' - such a document would however not be considered evidence.
It would be the equivelent of saying:
"Look, I have proof that you insisted on me having sex with you - here is a letter where you blatantly requested sex, typed on generic white paper, using a generic laser print font and ink, that has your name printed on the bottom. Yes, I know you did not sign it, but I SAW you print it out and give it me, while you were wearing white gloves to prevent finger prints."
That kind of stuff simply is not treated as real evidence by a judge, and the electronic documents that had no reasonable evidence trail, would also not be as real evidence.
By looking at back up copies of HIS email, and the email servers. They would not show anything being sent from his computer, and quite likely show them originating on your computer.
It is easy to give your sister an altered document.
But in any major company, there are SO many back up copies, dated copies, tarred files, that it would be incredibally dificult to alter ALL the copies.
Hm Your Honor Judge, we have 23 copies of this document. The three copies from their main document state "I fired Joe because he was late on 7 occasains". But the other 20 copies say "I fired Joe's black but cause his sister wouldn't put out".
While it is true that anything can be forged, in any major company it is INCREDIBALLY easy to detect forgery of electronic documents. Yes it can be done, but it would be FAR more expensive than forging paper documents.
Why?
COPIES. BACKUP. EMAIL SERVERS
Emails for example are incredibally dificult to convincing forge. When I send an email to you, it does NOT just go to your computer. It goes all over the company network, getting backed up, tarred, zipped, etc.
In order to convincingly forge an email from IBM to say Microsoft, I would have to:
1. Find all those files in IBM's computer. Good luck. Hope you don't miss one.
2. Edit all those files, being sure to use correct permissions and reset things like Last modified date.
3. See steps 1 and 2? Repeat for Microsoft's computers.
In general, it is FAR easier to forge a hand letter to Microsoft from IBM than an electronic email
Electronic data, such as email, gets routinely copied multiple times.
I work in thie field. One of our MAJOR expenses is eliminating duplicates.
If a document was suspect of being "forged", we would just have to see how many duplicates were created.
If something was dated last year, it would start to show up in all the back up tapes we got (which we had to get to make sure they did not get incriminating evidence and then delete it immediately).
In general, most electronic documents are EXTREMELY dificult to convincingly fake. Way too many extra copies that would have to have been made.
Oh I see. So when I lower Taxes and someone else raises taxes I didn't really lower taxes?
Only a fool believes this.
Bush did lower Tax. Other taxes had to go up because we could not AFFORD to lower governement payments.
But even if you are talking about total taxes, (which you clearly did NOT refer to originally), you are VERY wrong. Governments have in the past lowered net taxes. MANY times. It just takes a lowering of services to go with it.
The classic example of this happens just after a war, when the services lowered is national Defense. After WW II there was a significant tax lowerage, which lasted until the Korean war.
Instead of pulling crap out of thin air, try doing some research first. Start at this web site for more information about real tax cuts.
Slashdot Mirror
How to get away with any illegal action. Step 1) Claim it did not break law A even if they did break law B. 2) Claim that since you did not break law A you should get off scott free.
Just because some moron at the VOIP made a ridiculous claim about it being Free Speech does not make it legal. The ISP engaged in fraudlent behavior that violated their common carrier agreement. As such, the FCC fined them. It had nothing to do with Free Speech because Free Speech is a GOVERNMENT censure issue, not a corporate censure issue.
Take a random selection of at least 100 people, divide it into two groups of at least 50. Force, and I do mean FORCE one group to play violent video games for a period of however long you think is neccesary to make them violent. 1 year, at 1 hour a day seems reasonable to me. If they don't enjoy playing the game, tough. They have to do it.
Prevent, and I do mean PREVENT one group from playing violent games for the same period.
Compare both groups violent tendencies, IQs, etc. etc. with the people deciding who is "violent" etc. having no idea which group the subjects belong to.
Such studies have been done before. They found ZERO, NADA, NO increase in violent tendencies.
So of course the fools claim "you got the age wrong" or "You didn't force them to play enough" etc. etc. etc.
Not a single study has demonstrated causality. I personally think this is because there is NO causality. People that like violent games grow up to be violent. People that watch violent games think violent thoughts for a short period after (24 hours is the max I have seen tested). But neither of those things means that watching the games makes you act violently.
Look, to prove the concept you have to do the following:
One take a random selection of at least 100 people, divide it into two groups of at least 50.
Force, and I do mean FORCE one group to play violent video games for a period of however long you think is neccesary to make them violent. 1 year, at 1 hour a day seems reasonable to me. If they don't enjoy playing the game, tough. They have to do it.
Prevent, and I do mean PREVENT one group from playing violent games for the same period.
Compare both groups violent tendencies, IQs, etc. etc. with the people deciding who is "violent" etc. having no idea which group the subjects belong to.
Such studies have been done before. They found ZERO, NADA, NO increase in violent tendencies.
So of course the fools claim "you got the age wrong" or "You didn't force them to play enough" etc. etc. etc.
Not a single study has demonstrated causality. I personally think this is because there is NO causality. People that like violent games grow up to be violent. People that watch violent games think violent thoughts for a short period after (24 hours is the max tested). But neither of those things means that watching the games makes you act violently.
You made the causality error. The question you have to ask yourself is which came first - the violent tendencies or the games. It is without question that people that enjoy violent games usually grow up to be more aggressive/violent than people that do not enjoy violent games. It is even without question that people that like those games act more violent within an hour after playing them. But despite MULTIPLE attempts, not a single study has ever conclusively demonstrated that if you expose a person to violent games/tv, they will become a more aggressive/violent person.
You are right that violence is like porn, but both porn and violence are also like dancing. When you see someone dancing in a movie, you think about dancing for a couple of minutes, maybe try out a few steps. But the movie will NOT turn you into a dancer, nor will it make someone that does not really like dancing start to like it.
There is no reason to outlaw or regulate violent games, anymore than there is to regulate porn - only the people that dislike these things try to stop others from enjoying them.
P.S. I don't play ANY video games. My porn colletion is none of your business.
To use your analogy:
Measuring height as 6'2" rules out 95% of the population.
Measuring height as 6'2.34" rules out 99.99% of the population.
Measuring height as 6'2.34034529123112319038" rules out all but 1 person on the planet.
So what matters is how accurate their current timeskew detection is. If it is far enough out there, they can narrow it down to your specific computer.
The FCC basically claims that Full Interenet access has been deteremined to include VoIP, so Madison was committing fraud.
A typical example would be Saudia Arabia, who give statistics excluding women, and only refer to children in school. As the poor don't go to school, they are not counted. But YES, the male Saudi Arabians that go to school have a 99% literacry rate.
America has it's fair share of problems, but it has one MAJOR benefit: we count everybody we can, so we try to make the entire country better off, not just those who are already middle class. In general it is a far better place to live than the majority of other places in the world, assuming you include a full urban/rural average and don't "forget" to include included citizens.
The ISP, like all of them, advertised full internet access. They then proceeded to negate a service that is customarily thought of as "retail internet service", WITHOUT informing their customers.
Mass mailing spam is not cusomarilly thought as as "retail internet service"
1) ISP's all advertise them self as full internet access.
2) The ISP did NOT inform the customer they were blocking VoIP.
The problem is actually FRAUD committed byt he ISP, they promissed a service and did not fulfill their promise. But I do agree this is not a "censorship" issue
The ISP did NOT tell their CUSTOMERS they were blocking VOIP.
You can't offer a general service, then go out of your way to not offer a specific service that is customarillly offered with it unless you TELL YOUR CUSTOMER that you are not offering the specific service.
The ISP committed fraud against their customers - they claimed to offer full ISP service but in truth were only offering a limited ISP service.
Companies have the right to forbide personal phone calls of THEIR EMPLOYEES. I do not work for my ISP, they would NOT have the right to do this. A better analogy would be a University allowing charging students for phone service but forbidding them from calling other universities.
1. I am a software creator. In fact I sell some game software already you arrogant little coward.
2. You are the one helping OTHER people to profit off the work of others, you whiny moron. The creators are GETTING SCREWED here. As in Beatles sell copyrights which they thought were only good for 20 years to other people, Michael Jackson buys them, and HE, not the creator is the one that profits when they get expanded. Think about it, the Beatles got HOSED on that deal - they thought it was only good for 20 years and sold it basing the price on 20 years when it was worth 50 years.
3. I am not profiting at all from the works of others - I made an investment and want it to pay off. To get it to pay off I have to work my ass off - do you know how hard it is to sell 20 year old content?
4. FInally, the most important thing any creative person can know is THAT THERE IS NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN. Those star trek tapes I mentioned - hate to tell you but most of them are "based" (read stolen from) Shakespeare. IP is NOT the amazing thing that non creative morons think it is. Creating IP is just another kind of work. It is valuable, hard work, but NOT infinitely so and the guy that did it should not be allowed to GOUGE the people paying for it, anymore than the Oil companies should be allowed to engage in fake shortages to drive the price up.
Look forget about the 20 year number.
Let's say something is 18 years old. Can you reasonably see someone buying a movie based on that fact that in TWO years they can show it for free?
OK, forget about THAT example. There is still the point that retroactively increasing the copyright is not in the public interest. The point of granting a monoploistic copyright is to convince people to create.
Granting you more time will NOT suddenly retroactively cause you to create more art. You created it knowing exactly how much time you got as a monpoly.
If you think that right now we won't get enough IP, then fine, go ahead and increase the time protected for FUTURE IP. But there is NO valid public interest in retroactively increasing the copy right time. The creators have ALREADY been paid for that work. Worse, for anyone with the resources to hunt down copyright violations, they have already been paid INCREDIBALE amounts of cash. So effectively all you are doing is giving cash to the rich, succesfull IP creators at the expense of the rest of the population.
The problem is that scumbags keep retroactively increasing the length of protection, and that is cheating
Why is it cheating? Because the people that BUY your IP do so at a set price with the assumption that after they wait x # of years the stuff they bought today will be theres to do with what they want. That is one of the decisions they made when they bought it.
Example: Lets say that in 1968 I purchased one of the original film reals of star trek, for say $5,000. I get to watch it myself, but I can't charge cash to others to see it... YET. For just myself, it would only be worth $4,500. But I know that in 20 years, it will be a rare commodity and I will be free to charge people to see the film. My $5,000 is an INVESTMENT.
now 10 years later, some scumbag lier has convinced congress to change it from 20 years to 50 years. I just lost my investment.
The real problem is HOW MUCH DO WE WANT TO PAY INVENTORS/CREATORS for their work.
And while they are certainly entilted to a fair price, we - as the PURCHASERS of that work are entitled to negotiate a fair price - and that price includes a limit on how long you hold the rights to it. May be it should be shorter, maybe it should be longer, but once our society sets a reasonable time limit and you "accept that condition" and create the IP, there is NO POSSIBLE, FAIR REASON to change it. That is just thievery by cheating, greedy scumbags. It is no better than if Ford suddenly decides to extend the 5 year rental agreement with an option to buy after 5 years to a 10 years rental agreement, after you already signed the papers.
But it is also fairly easy to get someone's signature on a blank peice of paper.
Generally you do not need to prove which is the fake and which is the copy. The existence of both demonstrates that an attempt was made to forge a document. That combined with the location of the "anomolos copy" generally defeats the purpose of forging a document.
For example - say a company is accused of discriminating against blacks. Two copies of a memo are found - one of which says "no N!@@3#$ will be hired by this company", the other leaves out that line. One is false and the other is real.
If the N!@@3#$ line is only found in several of the oldest back ups. Obviously, they are the valid copies that were missed by the company. It does not matter that the lawyers can't prove it, we don't need proof beyond a reasonable doubt for that issue.
If the N!@@3#$ line is only found on one a copy accessible from the internet, then hey, most likely it was planted.
At my law firm, if my PC blows up, I can get the following: [li]a restore from the daily back up. We keep 30 days back up available, via our emergencey servers in another city. Should be able to do this in minutes. [li]A restore from the weekly back up on raids. Takes about one hour to access. We keep 50 of these (one year's worth). [li]A restore from the monthly tape backups. We keep these forever.
For us, that is not just the email, it is everything we did not save on our actual C drive, which definitely includes our email.
This kind of set up is typical for large companies.
It is more like HUNDREDS.
Look. I send an email from my computer at IBM to your computer at MSFT.
One month later there exists:
a copy on your computer, assuming you have not deleted it.
a copy on on my computer, assuming I have not deleted it.
a copy on each of our daily back ups.
a copy on all 4 of our weekly back ups, and another copy on all 4 of your weekly back ups.
Assuming that they keep one month of daily back ups available, that is 70 copies. I repeat, 70 copies.
In general, discovering, which is the REAL one, is IRRELEVANT. The fact that they were altered is such a huge red flag in the first place, it is enough to convict the guilty party. But if it DOES matter, most likely there are 66 copies of the real one and only 4 fake copies.
It would be the equivelent of saying:
"Look, I have proof that you insisted on me having sex with you - here is a letter where you blatantly requested sex, typed on generic white paper, using a generic laser print font and ink, that has your name printed on the bottom. Yes, I know you did not sign it, but I SAW you print it out and give it me, while you were wearing white gloves to prevent finger prints."
That kind of stuff simply is not treated as real evidence by a judge, and the electronic documents that had no reasonable evidence trail, would also not be as real evidence.
By looking at back up copies of HIS email, and the email servers. They would not show anything being sent from his computer, and quite likely show them originating on your computer.
It is easy to fake a digital document for your brother/sister/family.
But IBIS or RVM (companies that process documents for law firms), will find an origianl, unaltered copy of the document without even trying.
It is easy to give your sister an altered document.
But in any major company, there are SO many back up copies, dated copies, tarred files, that it would be incredibally dificult to alter ALL the copies.
Hm Your Honor Judge, we have 23 copies of this document. The three copies from their main document state "I fired Joe because he was late on 7 occasains". But the other 20 copies say "I fired Joe's black but cause his sister wouldn't put out".
I work in this field.
While it is true that anything can be forged, in any major company it is INCREDIBALLY easy to detect forgery of electronic documents. Yes it can be done, but it would be FAR more expensive than forging paper documents.
Why? COPIES. BACKUP. EMAIL SERVERS Emails for example are incredibally dificult to convincing forge. When I send an email to you, it does NOT just go to your computer. It goes all over the company network, getting backed up, tarred, zipped, etc. In order to convincingly forge an email from IBM to say Microsoft, I would have to:
1. Find all those files in IBM's computer. Good luck. Hope you don't miss one.
2. Edit all those files, being sure to use correct permissions and reset things like Last modified date.
3. See steps 1 and 2? Repeat for Microsoft's computers.
In general, it is FAR easier to forge a hand letter to Microsoft from IBM than an electronic email
Electronic data, such as email, gets routinely copied multiple times.
I work in thie field. One of our MAJOR expenses is eliminating duplicates.
If a document was suspect of being "forged", we would just have to see how many duplicates were created.
If something was dated last year, it would start to show up in all the back up tapes we got (which we had to get to make sure they did not get incriminating evidence and then delete it immediately).
In general, most electronic documents are EXTREMELY dificult to convincingly fake. Way too many extra copies that would have to have been made.
Only a fool believes this.
Bush did lower Tax. Other taxes had to go up because we could not AFFORD to lower governement payments.
But even if you are talking about total taxes, (which you clearly did NOT refer to originally), you are VERY wrong. Governments have in the past lowered net taxes. MANY times. It just takes a lowering of services to go with it.
The classic example of this happens just after a war, when the services lowered is national Defense. After WW II there was a significant tax lowerage, which lasted until the Korean war.
Instead of pulling crap out of thin air, try doing some research first. Start at this web site for more information about real tax cuts.