"In fact, wiretaps could probably be rendered useless if"
keyword: PROBABLY
If we keep strengthening the encryption between the two endpoints, eventually wiretapping will become useless....and the feds will figure out how to tap the endpoints.
...you jolt awake at 4 AM. You listen, look around, and hear nothing through bedroom window you left open at bedtime on that hot summer night. As a matter of fact, you don't even hear the man packing up his endpoint-wiretapping-dart sniper rifle on the adjoining rooftop. You simply rub your temples to try and rid yourself of the sudden, slight headache you've developed...and fall back to sleep.
If you have a server on the net you could set up your own OpenID provider that uses GPGauth rather than a password. That would allow you to use GPGauth for all sites that accept OpenID authentication.
That's a good idea. Of course nobody supports OpenID either...;)
it appears vulnerable to MITM attacks (if I just follow what's on the http://gpgauth.com/#what_how page) and philosophically it seems to duplicate what is available with HTTP certificates and OpenID.
Maybe it's not clear on that page, but it's not a replacement for SSL. SSL makes sure your data is encrypted during transport. GPGAuth takes care of authenticating both the user/browser and the server. Your username is (I believe) send in clear text, along with a GPG-encrypted blob of random data which is used to validate you. The validation takes place both ways. The server is verified by the user/browser and the user is verified by the server.
If you correctly access mybank.com (for example) and setup your account using GPGAuth, the system will verify next time that mybank.com is not being MITM'd.
The only weakness would be the initial access. GPGAuth only makes sure the site you are authenticating to is the same one you were accessing before. But technically, that's what SSL certs\0 are for.
What about those of us who need to use different accounts on the same site? I manage the retirement accounts for myself and my wife; I need to log in periodically either as myself, or as her, to move money around and make sure we're on track for our goals. Does GPGAuth allow this kind of flexibility?
Short answer: Yes
Long answer: With GPG/PGP you can have multiple keys, so with gpgauth you can have multiple accounts. The site still asks for a username or email address and then uses that to authenticate you with your key.
The main problem is that GPGauth seems to require the site to support it. Which is reasonable in the future, but it doesn't really solve this problem now.
I agree--I just wish more sites would start supporting it. I also wish more developers would check the code out and make it more {stable,secure}
I think the idea is great though. Sites verify you by sending you a chunk of random data which gets signed and returned. They don't even store passwords anymore. Plus you have mutual authentication to make sure you really aren't accessing a phishing site, etc...
Do you realize how much of a pain in the ass it is to subscribe to the mailing list?
WeHateKDawson-request@list.DidKDAWSONRapeAndMurderAYoungGirlIn1990.com
I really wish Verizon read slashdot.
Here's what I'd tell them:
Hey retards: Last week I was so excited you were getting a droid phone that I actually stopped by one of your run-down looking stores in my town. I talked to a sales chick who looked like she was on meth and asked her about the phone. She was completely clueless.
Your website said you had an unlimited plan for $100/mo. It included everything except tethering. Your price was better than AT&T, and the phone was better than an iPhone. Now you're adding all sorts of stupid extra charges, caps, and limitations? Screw that. If I want to get fucked by a cell phone company, I'll stick with AT&T who constantly drops my calls, bills me incorrectly, says my 2-year contract was renewed because I called in and talked with a customer service rep, and has horrible devices and plans....but I'll pick the devil I know.
I'll bet it costs less money to beam data to the space shuttle than it does between two phones on your damn network.
Thanks for stopping me from becoming a Verizon customer.
You say "general Welfare" is defined in the preamble, and then resort to defining the words on your own?
Nowhere did I say it was *defined* in the preamble.
The legislation does benefit just the uninsured, it is supposed to benefit everyone.
Really? How does it benefit me? I am insured through work. Now work will pay less directly to healthcare companies, but more in taxes. I will also pay more in taxes. Not to mention Medicare/Medicade are horrible *existing* government systems. Instead of having a choice to avoid those government systems, I am going to be forced and/or fined into joining them.
Fuck that. I'll make my own choices thank you. I don't need a government doing it.
More than that, if a situation exists where some people are denied the right to pursue happiness, then not only can they act, but they are compelled to!
There's a difference between being denied the right to pursue happiness--for example, someone shoots you, and you getting cancer and dying because you chose to smoke.
Rail against the legislation all you want, but don't fucking call it unconstitutional.
You can spout that line all you want, it doesn't make you correct. The constitution is a document that lists a very narrow set of things the federal government is *allowed* to do to you along with a list of rights that can never be taken from you...unless you choose to give them up.
You hide that "general welfare" part behind the Interstate Commerce clause in your sentence so well! It almost makes it seem like it has nothing to do with establishing laws that affect the general welfare of the people.
Sounds like a great catch-all. Government wants to buy everyone a TV? It's for the general welfare. Government wants to take over a car company? It's for the good of the people. 'General Welfare' does not give the government the right to just do whatever the hell it wants while citing that it's good for everyone.
If you actually read the constitution, you will note that the 'general welfare' clause is in the damn preamble.
Try reading the preamble:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The emphasis is mine. They are saying 'in order to do the following, we are establishing this constitution'.
When you talk about Section 8 of the constitution, you should look up the definition of 'general' and 'welfare'.
General: not confined by specialization or careful limitation
Welfare: the state of doing well especially in respect to good fortune, happiness, well-being, or prosperity
In other words, their job is to make sure everyone has a chance to pursue fortune, happiness, well-being, prosperity, etc...
What they don't have a right to do is target a specific groups like the uninsured and force other specific groups to cough up the cash.
I guess what I've never understood about LTS is that if it's broken on release, it won't be fixed so make sure all your hardware works on install before you commit to using it.
I'm annoyed by that too. A lot of bugs sit unfixed, then finally some bug triager (or a bot) comes around and says something like 'have you tried the alpha version of angry alligator to see if this solves your problem?".
Having worked with linux for a long time, I eventually upgrade to an alpha or beta release and find that it's not fixed. Reporting it back to the bug causes it to sit idle until the next release has reached alpha quality.
It's annoying that loads of bugs are "upgrade to the alpha and see if it's fixed".
But on the other hand, I wouldn't want to take time away from releasing the next version...because they are already so far behind with bugs.
But the question remains, were you elite enough to simply listen to the tones, or did you hold it up to a VoIP phone and look at the Asterisk console output?
Pick one or more of the passwords from the output, mash them together and paste them into gedit.
Spend 3 minutes repeatedly retyping the password into gedit.
Lock your screen, go to bed, and the next morning retype the password for another three minutes.
Change your password.
When you do this every few weeks, replace a different password group. For example:
Week 1 - Change root password on all home machines
Week 2 - Change root password on all machines for client x
Week 3 - Change eBay and bank password
Week 4 - Change 'throwaway' password for sites like slashdot, mailman mailing lists (Why the f*ck are these sent in plain text every month. Dumbass admins.)
Week 5 - If you haven't gotten the point by now, providing a week 5 example is useless.
etc...
Oh man I miss... uhh imagined the modem noise in my head. I seriously wish modems sounded like scatman john larkin.
The scatman's ok--but in my book nothing beats the sound of an old USR Sportster connecting at 56k....err..52k...or whatever the heck the feds limited it to.
I'll send a bottle of Guiness to the first person to figure out the phone number my modem dialed...
The day that I go to the library and every book that I check out has a flyer for the local Viagra dealer between every page, then you better be damned sure I'm going to start complaining.
What did you just sa....ohcrap MODS, DESTROY THAT COMMENT, QUICKLY!!!
Damnit. Don't give the marketing droids any more ideas. You just *know* some drone is reading your comment and saying "You know...that's a pretty good idea..."
With any luck the mods will delete your comment before anyone else has a chance to read it or Google caches it.
Total control of the government and still blaming Republicans for not passing more socialist and fascist agenda... priceless.
2010 can't come soon enough.
I know you just cited a ton of issues you have with the current administration, but I'm going to ignore all of them and say that you must be a racist.;)
Every time you pay your health insurance premium or pay a hospital bill directly you are "shelling money out of your own pocket to pay for those without health care"
...and there's also my tax dollars that go to the existing government option Medicare/Medicaid.
As to why I want to compel you to pay for some elses health care it's the same reason I'd be happy to pay for your health care if some drunk hits your car and you become a quadriplegic which bankrupts you and you are unable to personally pay for the care you need.
First off, I pay for insurance that covers me if I get hit by a drunk. I also have life insurance that covers my family if I were to die. While I appreciate your concern, I don't need your money.
But I do have a wonderful idea. If you are so compassionate that you want to help others in need, feel free to donate to a charity, or flat-out give money to someone who needs it.
Remember the saying 'Change comes from within'? It seems like most social liberals are more than happy to use everyone's money--but they don't start by giving their own. Think about what George Clooney makes per movie. He could easily pay for the healthcare of thousands of people. Take the salary of everyone in Hollywood, professional sports, and congress. They could each give 50% of their salary and every person without insurance would be covered. And since they're only giving 50% of their salary, they'd still live like kings.
But they don't want to do that with their money. They have a wonderful idea and they want everyone to pay for it.
If you could deny care at ER's based on ability to pay then maybe your way would work but that's not a morality I subscribe to.
So you want the government to legislate your morality? You want to force doctors to work without getting paid? Hospitals to provide supplies and treatment without reimbursement?
That's a novel idea. Maybe I can get the government to legislate my morality. If you've ever driven with more than 0% alcohol in your system, be prepared for the death penalty. If you've cheated on your wife, be prepared to be castrated.
Wait--that's extreme? Who cares. I like making my personal beliefs law.
Hell--I should totally be for socialized medicine.
I smoke a pack every two days currently. Because of my dumb choice, I will probably get cancer. I think you and everyone else should pay for me being a retard.
If you're just gonna cover my healthcare costs, maybe I'll start eating Big Macs every day for lunch, drink heavily on the weekend, and maybe do something dangerous like ride motorcycles at unsafe speeds. After all, there really aren't any consequences to me--you're volunteering to pay for them.
That's what I'm saying. If you don't like seattle taxes, go live in nevada.
Are you saying that if your accountant came to you and said "I found a legal way to save you $1,000 on your personal taxes next year" you wouldn't take it? That's all Microsoft is doing.
Well, I agree with that in part, but the flip side is that schools are crappy here because they can't get the money they need.
No, it's not about the money. Who do you think will get a better education: Someone like me who was kid number 32 in a room with 35 kids or my children who are currently being home schooled where they are 2-5 kids with one teacher.
I suppose money could come in to play when a teacher whines that $80k is too little for them to educate 35 children 9 months out of the year. Well--$80k, good retirement, great benefits, etc... (Most of my extended family are grade and high school teachers.)
Nothing I learned in school prepared me for the work force in any way
You learned how to deal with morons, right?
LMAO!
First, so what? Second, no. A business is designed for profit by offering value for money spent, but it also has a social obligation.
What is this social obligation? No one seems able to define it for me. It's this vague, nebulous thing that appears to translate to "whatever my cause is at the moment, that's what businesses need to do".
I no more have a 'social obligation' to you or anyone else that they do of me. Just because you were born, doesn't mean I am required to help you in any way. I am not obligated to give you food, medical care, a roof over your head, or a bed to sleep in. And that's not required of businesses either.
Keep in mind that I am talking about governments and laws at the moment. On the flip side is *personal* beliefs like religion. In my case, my religion says I should take care of widows, orphans, the sick, the elderly, etc... But I'll be damned if the government is going to force me to do that.
When you give out of the kindness of your own heart, that's charity. When you are compelled to give by force of law, that's slavery.
In my humble opinion, the best way to deal with this is have the state tax money spent on goods and services.
What's this got to do with evading licensing taxes? You're talking about what the spend is on.
If everyone were required to pay a sales tax on purchased goods and services with no loopholes for corporations like Microsoft, that would 'ease' the tax burden on everyone. And that sounds good--but on the flip-side, I'm betting Nevada and their low tax rate and tax breaks for large companies brings them in *tons* of revenue.
In other words, would you rather have Microsoft in Washington State paying $x in taxes here and $y in taxes in Nevada--or would you like to close the loophole and have Microsoft say "Screw it, let's just move *everything* to Nevada."?
Even worse, some companies say "Screw paying millions of billions in taxes to the US, we'll pay hundreds of thousands to $THIRD_WORLD_COUNTRY". The company pays less in taxes, and the third world country gets a decent chunk of change.
Maybe we should have some sort of trust system where programs can be 'signed'. And to make sure the verification software hasn't been compromised, we could have a hardware module that verifies the boot loader, etc... Some sort of Trusted Platform hardware module...
Slashdot Mirror
actually, it's not even an answer.
"In fact, wiretaps could probably be rendered useless if"
keyword: PROBABLY
If we keep strengthening the encryption between the two endpoints, eventually wiretapping will become useless. ...and the feds will figure out how to tap the endpoints.
...you jolt awake at 4 AM. You listen, look around, and hear nothing through bedroom window you left open at bedtime on that hot summer night. As a matter of fact, you don't even hear the man packing up his endpoint-wiretapping-dart sniper rifle on the adjoining rooftop. You simply rub your temples to try and rid yourself of the sudden, slight headache you've developed...and fall back to sleep.
computer viruses, malware, adware
Viruses? Malware? Adware?
What are those?
Can you explain them to me? Pretend you are explaining them to someone who has no clue what they are.
(I run linux)
If you have a server on the net you could set up your own OpenID provider that uses GPGauth rather than a password. That would allow you to use GPGauth for all sites that accept OpenID authentication.
That's a good idea. Of course nobody supports OpenID either... ;)
your recommended http://gpgauth.com/ seems to be a complete failure.
it appears vulnerable to MITM attacks (if I just follow what's on the http://gpgauth.com/#what_how page) and philosophically it seems to duplicate what is available with HTTP certificates and OpenID.
Maybe it's not clear on that page, but it's not a replacement for SSL. SSL makes sure your data is encrypted during transport. GPGAuth takes care of authenticating both the user/browser and the server. Your username is (I believe) send in clear text, along with a GPG-encrypted blob of random data which is used to validate you. The validation takes place both ways. The server is verified by the user/browser and the user is verified by the server.
If you correctly access mybank.com (for example) and setup your account using GPGAuth, the system will verify next time that mybank.com is not being MITM'd.
The only weakness would be the initial access. GPGAuth only makes sure the site you are authenticating to is the same one you were accessing before. But technically, that's what SSL certs\0 are for.
What about those of us who need to use different accounts on the same site? I manage the retirement accounts for myself and my wife; I need to log in periodically either as myself, or as her, to move money around and make sure we're on track for our goals. Does GPGAuth allow this kind of flexibility?
Short answer: Yes
Long answer: With GPG/PGP you can have multiple keys, so with gpgauth you can have multiple accounts. The site still asks for a username or email address and then uses that to authenticate you with your key.
The main problem is that GPGauth seems to require the site to support it. Which is reasonable in the future, but it doesn't really solve this problem now.
I agree--I just wish more sites would start supporting it. I also wish more developers would check the code out and make it more {stable,secure}
I think the idea is great though. Sites verify you by sending you a chunk of random data which gets signed and returned. They don't even store passwords anymore. Plus you have mutual authentication to make sure you really aren't accessing a phishing site, etc...
DidKDAWSONRapeAndMurderAYoungGirlIn1990.com
Do you realize how much of a pain in the ass it is to subscribe to the mailing list?
WeHateKDawson-request@list.DidKDAWSONRapeAndMurderAYoungGirlIn1990.com
71 characters...
Screw the mailing list.
Do what I set up for my father, Truecrypt installed to a USB key, passwords in a plaintext file inside the arcive.
Why bother with passwords?
Start authenticating with your GPG key. (http://gpgauth.com)
Your GPG key logs you in, compromised sites don't hurt you.
I really wish Verizon read slashdot. Here's what I'd tell them:
...but I'll pick the devil I know.
Hey retards: Last week I was so excited you were getting a droid phone that I actually stopped by one of your run-down looking stores in my town. I talked to a sales chick who looked like she was on meth and asked her about the phone. She was completely clueless.
Your website said you had an unlimited plan for $100/mo. It included everything except tethering. Your price was better than AT&T, and the phone was better than an iPhone. Now you're adding all sorts of stupid extra charges, caps, and limitations? Screw that. If I want to get fucked by a cell phone company, I'll stick with AT&T who constantly drops my calls, bills me incorrectly, says my 2-year contract was renewed because I called in and talked with a customer service rep, and has horrible devices and plans.
I'll bet it costs less money to beam data to the space shuttle than it does between two phones on your damn network.
Thanks for stopping me from becoming a Verizon customer.
Spoken like someone who has never read past the Preamble. Article 1, Section 8:
Spoken like someone who didn't read my whole comment...you know...like the part where I addressed section 8.
You say "general Welfare" is defined in the preamble, and then resort to defining the words on your own?
Nowhere did I say it was *defined* in the preamble.
The legislation does benefit just the uninsured, it is supposed to benefit everyone.
Really? How does it benefit me? I am insured through work. Now work will pay less directly to healthcare companies, but more in taxes. I will also pay more in taxes. Not to mention Medicare/Medicade are horrible *existing* government systems. Instead of having a choice to avoid those government systems, I am going to be forced and/or fined into joining them.
Fuck that. I'll make my own choices thank you. I don't need a government doing it.
More than that, if a situation exists where some people are denied the right to pursue happiness, then not only can they act, but they are compelled to!
There's a difference between being denied the right to pursue happiness--for example, someone shoots you, and you getting cancer and dying because you chose to smoke.
Rail against the legislation all you want, but don't fucking call it unconstitutional.
You can spout that line all you want, it doesn't make you correct. The constitution is a document that lists a very narrow set of things the federal government is *allowed* to do to you along with a list of rights that can never be taken from you...unless you choose to give them up.
CNS news link? I never posted a link.
You hide that "general welfare" part behind the Interstate Commerce clause in your sentence so well! It almost makes it seem like it has nothing to do with establishing laws that affect the general welfare of the people.
Sounds like a great catch-all. Government wants to buy everyone a TV? It's for the general welfare. Government wants to take over a car company? It's for the good of the people. 'General Welfare' does not give the government the right to just do whatever the hell it wants while citing that it's good for everyone.
If you actually read the constitution, you will note that the 'general welfare' clause is in the damn preamble.
Try reading the preamble:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The emphasis is mine. They are saying 'in order to do the following, we are establishing this constitution'.
When you talk about Section 8 of the constitution, you should look up the definition of 'general' and 'welfare'.
General: not confined by specialization or careful limitation
Welfare: the state of doing well especially in respect to good fortune, happiness, well-being, or prosperity
In other words, their job is to make sure everyone has a chance to pursue fortune, happiness, well-being, prosperity, etc...
What they don't have a right to do is target a specific groups like the uninsured and force other specific groups to cough up the cash.
Firefox has now finally surpassed IE6, which is easily the most hated version of Microsoft's browser
Maybe you forgot about IE5...and IE4. Remember IE3?
And have you been in a deep freeze for the last few years? Remember IE7? I hear we're up to IE8 now.
Feel the hate. There's enough for every version.
I guess what I've never understood about LTS is that if it's broken on release, it won't be fixed so make sure all your hardware works on install before you commit to using it.
I'm annoyed by that too. A lot of bugs sit unfixed, then finally some bug triager (or a bot) comes around and says something like 'have you tried the alpha version of angry alligator to see if this solves your problem?".
Having worked with linux for a long time, I eventually upgrade to an alpha or beta release and find that it's not fixed. Reporting it back to the bug causes it to sit idle until the next release has reached alpha quality.
It's annoying that loads of bugs are "upgrade to the alpha and see if it's fixed".
But on the other hand, I wouldn't want to take time away from releasing the next version...because they are already so far behind with bugs.
4271200 :)
Nice...where do I send the Guiness?
But the question remains, were you elite enough to simply listen to the tones, or did you hold it up to a VoIP phone and look at the Asterisk console output?
In fact most books already DO have advertising (in the back)
Readers Digest is not a book... ;)
TLotRitGSER&1b!7d
Seriously secure password, and you're going to remember the hell out of it. Of course, it helps if you use something memorable to you.
Lame
/>
Every few weeks I do the following:
aaron@hoth:~$ pwgen -cny
Ui:jae5i She9tah) ki3Ou;p3 phah`Gh8 aiR&aeW2 Aif2ye%i Ae0ieT?i ieng0Ep~
paa%qu6A ahCaa^l7 gai3Mai+ Egh\ee1u eg$eeM4l Joo4Oh[e Ve"o1Ain suX|ae3c
Qua;c6Vo Ohng^iL5 Yie,m5Wu Ezee'sh7 eek]aiT1 Ahch*ei3 fe9AiT'i dae(M3ee
ei2Wei^j uY$eiv2o Eip:ee6c Beiy*oo8 aRieg-u7 eeg#ae6O ik3Bu:o6 au8Pa[i4
<snip
Us`e5Aed OhB@oa9A Theeng7 thee^D3u ANa/ng5o bo_Feo5m Cha#a0ee Aiv+aa3J
aaron@hoth:~$
Pick one or more of the passwords from the output, mash them together and paste them into gedit.
Spend 3 minutes repeatedly retyping the password into gedit.
Lock your screen, go to bed, and the next morning retype the password for another three minutes.
Change your password.
When you do this every few weeks, replace a different password group. For example:
Week 1 - Change root password on all home machines
Week 2 - Change root password on all machines for client x
Week 3 - Change eBay and bank password
Week 4 - Change 'throwaway' password for sites like slashdot, mailman mailing lists (Why the f*ck are these sent in plain text every month. Dumbass admins.)
Week 5 - If you haven't gotten the point by now, providing a week 5 example is useless.
etc...
Assigning arbitrary dates to mark an amorphous event?
Yeah--I hear daylight savings time is this Sunday...
Oh man I miss... uhh imagined the modem noise in my head. I seriously wish modems sounded like scatman john larkin.
The scatman's ok--but in my book nothing beats the sound of an old USR Sportster connecting at 56k....err..52k...or whatever the heck the feds limited it to.
I'll send a bottle of Guiness to the first person to figure out the phone number my modem dialed...
The day that I go to the library and every book that I check out has a flyer for the local Viagra dealer between every page, then you better be damned sure I'm going to start complaining.
What did you just sa....ohcrap MODS, DESTROY THAT COMMENT, QUICKLY!!!
Damnit. Don't give the marketing droids any more ideas. You just *know* some drone is reading your comment and saying "You know...that's a pretty good idea..."
With any luck the mods will delete your comment before anyone else has a chance to read it or Google caches it.
shouldn't that just be "Very Stable" condition? I mean, it's unlikely to change....
Ultimately stable.
Total control of the government and still blaming Republicans for not passing more socialist and fascist agenda... priceless.
2010 can't come soon enough.
I know you just cited a ton of issues you have with the current administration, but I'm going to ignore all of them and say that you must be a racist. ;)
Every time you pay your health insurance premium or pay a hospital bill directly you are "shelling money out of your own pocket to pay for those without health care"
As to why I want to compel you to pay for some elses health care it's the same reason I'd be happy to pay for your health care if some drunk hits your car and you become a quadriplegic which bankrupts you and you are unable to personally pay for the care you need.
First off, I pay for insurance that covers me if I get hit by a drunk. I also have life insurance that covers my family if I were to die. While I appreciate your concern, I don't need your money.
But I do have a wonderful idea. If you are so compassionate that you want to help others in need, feel free to donate to a charity, or flat-out give money to someone who needs it.
Remember the saying 'Change comes from within'? It seems like most social liberals are more than happy to use everyone's money--but they don't start by giving their own. Think about what George Clooney makes per movie. He could easily pay for the healthcare of thousands of people. Take the salary of everyone in Hollywood, professional sports, and congress. They could each give 50% of their salary and every person without insurance would be covered. And since they're only giving 50% of their salary, they'd still live like kings.
But they don't want to do that with their money. They have a wonderful idea and they want everyone to pay for it.
If you could deny care at ER's based on ability to pay then maybe your way would work but that's not a morality I subscribe to.
So you want the government to legislate your morality? You want to force doctors to work without getting paid? Hospitals to provide supplies and treatment without reimbursement?
That's a novel idea. Maybe I can get the government to legislate my morality. If you've ever driven with more than 0% alcohol in your system, be prepared for the death penalty. If you've cheated on your wife, be prepared to be castrated.
Wait--that's extreme? Who cares. I like making my personal beliefs law.
Hell--I should totally be for socialized medicine.
I smoke a pack every two days currently. Because of my dumb choice, I will probably get cancer. I think you and everyone else should pay for me being a retard.
If you're just gonna cover my healthcare costs, maybe I'll start eating Big Macs every day for lunch, drink heavily on the weekend, and maybe do something dangerous like ride motorcycles at unsafe speeds. After all, there really aren't any consequences to me--you're volunteering to pay for them.
That's what I'm saying. If you don't like seattle taxes, go live in nevada.
Are you saying that if your accountant came to you and said "I found a legal way to save you $1,000 on your personal taxes next year" you wouldn't take it? That's all Microsoft is doing.
Well, I agree with that in part, but the flip side is that schools are crappy here because they can't get the money they need.
No, it's not about the money. Who do you think will get a better education: Someone like me who was kid number 32 in a room with 35 kids or my children who are currently being home schooled where they are 2-5 kids with one teacher.
I suppose money could come in to play when a teacher whines that $80k is too little for them to educate 35 children 9 months out of the year. Well--$80k, good retirement, great benefits, etc... (Most of my extended family are grade and high school teachers.)
Nothing I learned in school prepared me for the work force in any way
You learned how to deal with morons, right?
LMAO!
First, so what? Second, no. A business is designed for profit by offering value for money spent, but it also has a social obligation.
What is this social obligation? No one seems able to define it for me. It's this vague, nebulous thing that appears to translate to "whatever my cause is at the moment, that's what businesses need to do".
I no more have a 'social obligation' to you or anyone else that they do of me. Just because you were born, doesn't mean I am required to help you in any way. I am not obligated to give you food, medical care, a roof over your head, or a bed to sleep in. And that's not required of businesses either.
Keep in mind that I am talking about governments and laws at the moment. On the flip side is *personal* beliefs like religion. In my case, my religion says I should take care of widows, orphans, the sick, the elderly, etc... But I'll be damned if the government is going to force me to do that.
When you give out of the kindness of your own heart, that's charity. When you are compelled to give by force of law, that's slavery.
In my humble opinion, the best way to deal with this is have the state tax money spent on goods and services.
What's this got to do with evading licensing taxes? You're talking about what the spend is on.
If everyone were required to pay a sales tax on purchased goods and services with no loopholes for corporations like Microsoft, that would 'ease' the tax burden on everyone. And that sounds good--but on the flip-side, I'm betting Nevada and their low tax rate and tax breaks for large companies brings them in *tons* of revenue.
In other words, would you rather have Microsoft in Washington State paying $x in taxes here and $y in taxes in Nevada--or would you like to close the loophole and have Microsoft say "Screw it, let's just move *everything* to Nevada."?
Even worse, some companies say "Screw paying millions of billions in taxes to the US, we'll pay hundreds of thousands to $THIRD_WORLD_COUNTRY". The company pays less in taxes, and the third world country gets a decent chunk of change.
How many programs on your system do you *fully* understand? How certain are you about that?
Maybe we should have some sort of trust system where programs can be 'signed'. And to make sure the verification software hasn't been compromised, we could have a hardware module that verifies the boot loader, etc... Some sort of Trusted Platform hardware module...