A tax is when the mafia, I mean the government, threatens to kidnap you and throw you in prison if you don't give them X amount of money. The surcharge one must pay for an Apple-branded, if any, is a branding/peace of mind/affinity surcharge, not a tax. You're voluntarily paying more a product that you believe, for concrete or abstract, sentimental reasons, is worth more than another product at a lower price that may be substantially similar. A tax is something that if you don't pay, the government threatens you with violence over. Apple item X being more than Other OEM Y is a pricing differential, one that the consumer voluntarily pays for. Or in my case, I voluntarily choose not to, and Jobs' Mob isn't threatening to throw me in prison for not buying Apple.
Maybe I'm missing something, but how can the x86 architecture itself be subject to copyright? Isn't the protected property not the publicly documented instruction set, but the implementation thereof?
He's the CIO for the Federal government. The Federal government is not America, despite its constant attempts to completely and utterly replace it with itself.
I think there is confusion about the doctrine of "at-will" employment. No law, outside of involuntary servitude to the government, will force someone to remain in another's employ. It simply means that the employer can terminate employment, at any time, with or without cause, barring any reason barred by Federal or State anti-discrimination laws. Even if you had a contract for employment with the employer, you could still leave at any time, although it is likely there would be some form of monetary damages specified in the contract for breach of said contract, by either party. Indeed, if there was damages for only one of the parties, the contract would likely be held to be malformed, and a court would probably create a damages provision for other party, should the contract require legal enforcement by the judiciary.
What about the billions or trillions of dollars of damage done to the taxpayers by Fannie Mae, and its incestuous twin, Freddie Mac? Anyone attempting to take out this job-killing, economically destructive abomination is a patriot.
People want to avoid being stolen from? Who would have thought? That some people are more than willing to steal from others, while hypocritically trying to avoid being stolen from themselves? One of the many unfortunate corruptions of civil society that the government brings.
The IRS only exists in the real world. It should stay there. Otherwise, it could cause a reality breach, and soon find itself the target of thousands of nuclear warheads, tens of thousands of orcs, millions of heavily armed commandos, and a giant green pulsating penis.
That could be calculated in a free-market enterprise, but how do you properly define a budget or amortize costs in government? Calculating opportunity cost should be impossible, you can't even do TVM calculations, as there's no profit-loss function.
How can they tell? Seriously. With no profit or loss function, rationale economic calculation is no longer possible. If they want more money, they steal it. There's no Excel spreadsheet running a scenario if X number of consumers buy Y number of widgets, the President can fly around in a palace for Z number of dollars, and increase sales.
"How important this is to the success of free software depends on how strong your stance is on freedom is."
I'm not anti-open source, but this horrifically mangles the concept of freedom. Freedom is the right to be left alone, and the obligation to leave others alone, unless there is voluntary association between all relevant parties. Being able to have a thing or service for free is nice, but it has nothing to do with freedom.
I can't wait until the lawsuits start coming in for people whose cars abruptly braked of their own accord, spilling steaming hot coffee into their nether regions. I will need employment.
Hatred and bitterness are not tools you should be using, here, or anywhere. You can choose between good or evil, you are responsible for that choice, and you are currently choosing the latter.
Breastfeeding is most certainly obscene to civilized people, and Facebook is striking a small victory for a more polite society in which people don't shove the more private aspects of their lives and bodies in everyone's face. Granted, Facebook in many ways is designed to do just that, but at least they have the sense to remove pure obscenity. If certain people want to show off, they can find a location with a more suitable TOS and/or user agreement. Now if only someone would do something about the boors who nurse in public or enjoy loudly describing their dramatic sex lives into their cellphones...
Why isn't there something in the constitution (no less) that states that when you vote a new law, you need to remove an old one ?
No. There is a course in law schools called "Conflict of Laws," although I think that deals with conflicting State/State and State/Federal laws, not conflicting Federal/Federal laws. I honestly don't think any of the Framers, even Hamilton, ever thought the Federal government would end up what it is today.
Assuming that market forces are going to work all the time is what got us into the current meltdown of both the economy as well as the internet hardware.
This quite simply is a canard. The main impetus of the current state of the economy is the boom and bust cycle created by the Federal Reserve, the central planner of the monetary supply in the US. The Fed greatly inflated the money supply through artificially low interest rates, reserve rates, and the direct creation of new money. Combined with Congressional pressure to lend money to noncredit worthy borrowers, an artificially high demand for goods and services was created, leading to overexpansion and overconsumption based on an illusory increase in real wealth. No illusion can mold reality forever, and the bubble popped.
There is also a popular misunderstanding that the alleged propensity of the Bush administration is somehow to blame for the current situation. Since 2001, there has been a 70% increase in new regulations that are "economically significant" (compliance costs per rule will cost at least $100 million per year), and the number of pages in the Federal Register listing all new regulations reached an all-time high of 78,090 in 2007, from 64,438 in 2001. From 2002 to fiscal year 2009, the federal regulatory budget increased 65% in real terms, to ~$17.2 billion. More recently, the inept SEC was unable to detect Madoff's ponzi scheme until it had collapsed, once again showing that the SEC gives investors a false sense of security, and while fully capable of distorting securities markets, is incapable of policing them. More regulation is not the answer, it is the problem.
Seriously though it really depends greatly upon the situation. Central planning is very important when the service needs to work coherently across myriad municipalities providing that it is done in a sane way.
The rise and existence of de facto standards, which are brought about by voluntary cooperation and individual choice, belie the need for any such central planning. There are many examples of such attempts to bring a service that works coherently "coherently across myriad municipalities," but as the general topic at hand is the internet, that of Minitel is sufficient. As most no doubt are aware, Minitel was an effort by the French government to create a standard and build a networking infrastructure for the use of all French citizens. Unfortunately for it, the internet then came along, and the increasing abilities of personal computers and networking hardware and software in the closer to free-market economy of the US made Minitels dumb terminal network look, well, rather dumb. One may attempt to argue that the internet was created by the US government, which is true, but it existed for decades as a small, mostly closed research network until commercialization began in the 1980s. What is being proposed by the uber-parent is taking the internet, and applying the Minitel doctrine to it. This is a very bad idea, and can do nothing but supply corporate welfare to entrenched constituencies while bleeding resources from the functioning private sector, leading to a damaged networking infrastructure being applied to the current network, and greatly retarding the emergence of newer and better networking technologies.
Central planning will always lead to ditches to nowhere. Without an ability to perform rationale economic calculations, an economy cannot function. Any effort by the State to manipulate or direct economic planning will lead to increasing economic irrationality and inefficiency. The only way to maximize the efficient use of resources is to remove government coercion from the marketplace, and let voluntary cooperation and aggregate individual choices locate the closet to optimally possible solution to any problem.
This sounds like rambling Keynesianism mixed with dirigisme to me. Do you really want to combine the two most discredited (and overlapping) economic theories in an attempt to minimize a depression caused by the colluding ghosts of both?
Israel has not "prevented deliveries of cooking gas to Gaza." If you look at a map of the Gaza Strip, you will see its entire length is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea. Shipments can and do enter the Gaza Strip from this route.
Slashdot Mirror
A tax is when the mafia, I mean the government, threatens to kidnap you and throw you in prison if you don't give them X amount of money. The surcharge one must pay for an Apple-branded, if any, is a branding/peace of mind/affinity surcharge, not a tax. You're voluntarily paying more a product that you believe, for concrete or abstract, sentimental reasons, is worth more than another product at a lower price that may be substantially similar. A tax is something that if you don't pay, the government threatens you with violence over. Apple item X being more than Other OEM Y is a pricing differential, one that the consumer voluntarily pays for. Or in my case, I voluntarily choose not to, and Jobs' Mob isn't threatening to throw me in prison for not buying Apple.
Hermit crabs !crabs.
Is it just me, or does the video indicate this was recorded January 17th, 1994?
Maybe I'm missing something, but how can the x86 architecture itself be subject to copyright? Isn't the protected property not the publicly documented instruction set, but the implementation thereof?
He's the CIO for the Federal government. The Federal government is not America, despite its constant attempts to completely and utterly replace it with itself.
I think there is confusion about the doctrine of "at-will" employment. No law, outside of involuntary servitude to the government, will force someone to remain in another's employ. It simply means that the employer can terminate employment, at any time, with or without cause, barring any reason barred by Federal or State anti-discrimination laws. Even if you had a contract for employment with the employer, you could still leave at any time, although it is likely there would be some form of monetary damages specified in the contract for breach of said contract, by either party. Indeed, if there was damages for only one of the parties, the contract would likely be held to be malformed, and a court would probably create a damages provision for other party, should the contract require legal enforcement by the judiciary.
Why is a picture of Ron Paul being used? He's not gone, and we're not finished with what he started.
What about the billions or trillions of dollars of damage done to the taxpayers by Fannie Mae, and its incestuous twin, Freddie Mac? Anyone attempting to take out this job-killing, economically destructive abomination is a patriot.
People want to avoid being stolen from? Who would have thought? That some people are more than willing to steal from others, while hypocritically trying to avoid being stolen from themselves? One of the many unfortunate corruptions of civil society that the government brings.
Sponsors: Senator Ford
Senator Ford: http://www.scstatehouse.gov/members/bios/0606818109.html
Democrat!
Well, yes, the IRS should be abolished, but for roll-back, you need containment.
The IRS only exists in the real world. It should stay there. Otherwise, it could cause a reality breach, and soon find itself the target of thousands of nuclear warheads, tens of thousands of orcs, millions of heavily armed commandos, and a giant green pulsating penis.
That could be calculated in a free-market enterprise, but how do you properly define a budget or amortize costs in government? Calculating opportunity cost should be impossible, you can't even do TVM calculations, as there's no profit-loss function.
How can they tell? Seriously. With no profit or loss function, rationale economic calculation is no longer possible. If they want more money, they steal it. There's no Excel spreadsheet running a scenario if X number of consumers buy Y number of widgets, the President can fly around in a palace for Z number of dollars, and increase sales.
I'm not anti-open source, but this horrifically mangles the concept of freedom. Freedom is the right to be left alone, and the obligation to leave others alone, unless there is voluntary association between all relevant parties. Being able to have a thing or service for free is nice, but it has nothing to do with freedom.
Not sure what YAAL means, but by then, I'll be a licensed lawyer.
I can't wait until the lawsuits start coming in for people whose cars abruptly braked of their own accord, spilling steaming hot coffee into their nether regions. I will need employment.
Hatred and bitterness are not tools you should be using, here, or anywhere. You can choose between good or evil, you are responsible for that choice, and you are currently choosing the latter.
Breastfeeding is most certainly obscene to civilized people, and Facebook is striking a small victory for a more polite society in which people don't shove the more private aspects of their lives and bodies in everyone's face. Granted, Facebook in many ways is designed to do just that, but at least they have the sense to remove pure obscenity. If certain people want to show off, they can find a location with a more suitable TOS and/or user agreement. Now if only someone would do something about the boors who nurse in public or enjoy loudly describing their dramatic sex lives into their cellphones...
Oh, oops, thought that read "isn't there something..." not "why isn't there something..."
No. There is a course in law schools called "Conflict of Laws," although I think that deals with conflicting State/State and State/Federal laws, not conflicting Federal/Federal laws. I honestly don't think any of the Framers, even Hamilton, ever thought the Federal government would end up what it is today.
This quite simply is a canard. The main impetus of the current state of the economy is the boom and bust cycle created by the Federal Reserve, the central planner of the monetary supply in the US. The Fed greatly inflated the money supply through artificially low interest rates, reserve rates, and the direct creation of new money. Combined with Congressional pressure to lend money to noncredit worthy borrowers, an artificially high demand for goods and services was created, leading to overexpansion and overconsumption based on an illusory increase in real wealth. No illusion can mold reality forever, and the bubble popped.
There is also a popular misunderstanding that the alleged propensity of the Bush administration is somehow to blame for the current situation. Since 2001, there has been a 70% increase in new regulations that are "economically significant" (compliance costs per rule will cost at least $100 million per year), and the number of pages in the Federal Register listing all new regulations reached an all-time high of 78,090 in 2007, from 64,438 in 2001. From 2002 to fiscal year 2009, the federal regulatory budget increased 65% in real terms, to ~$17.2 billion. More recently, the inept SEC was unable to detect Madoff's ponzi scheme until it had collapsed, once again showing that the SEC gives investors a false sense of security, and while fully capable of distorting securities markets, is incapable of policing them. More regulation is not the answer, it is the problem.
The rise and existence of de facto standards, which are brought about by voluntary cooperation and individual choice, belie the need for any such central planning. There are many examples of such attempts to bring a service that works coherently "coherently across myriad municipalities," but as the general topic at hand is the internet, that of Minitel is sufficient. As most no doubt are aware, Minitel was an effort by the French government to create a standard and build a networking infrastructure for the use of all French citizens. Unfortunately for it, the internet then came along, and the increasing abilities of personal computers and networking hardware and software in the closer to free-market economy of the US made Minitels dumb terminal network look, well, rather dumb. One may attempt to argue that the internet was created by the US government, which is true, but it existed for decades as a small, mostly closed research network until commercialization began in the 1980s. What is being proposed by the uber-parent is taking the internet, and applying the Minitel doctrine to it. This is a very bad idea, and can do nothing but supply corporate welfare to entrenched constituencies while bleeding resources from the functioning private sector, leading to a damaged networking infrastructure being applied to the current network, and greatly retarding the emergence of newer and better networking technologies.
Central planning will always lead to ditches to nowhere. Without an ability to perform rationale economic calculations, an economy cannot function. Any effort by the State to manipulate or direct economic planning will lead to increasing economic irrationality and inefficiency. The only way to maximize the efficient use of resources is to remove government coercion from the marketplace, and let voluntary cooperation and aggregate individual choices locate the closet to optimally possible solution to any problem.
This sounds like rambling Keynesianism mixed with dirigisme to me. Do you really want to combine the two most discredited (and overlapping) economic theories in an attempt to minimize a depression caused by the colluding ghosts of both?
Israel has not "prevented deliveries of cooking gas to Gaza." If you look at a map of the Gaza Strip, you will see its entire length is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea. Shipments can and do enter the Gaza Strip from this route.