This is how I feel about anything that starts with a 'K' or spawned from it. Not a big fan of the "Let's copy Microsoft's really bad interface, and not use established standards by requiring our own huge set of daemons to run for IPC instead" crowd.
Versus whom else's huge set of daemons to run? Gnome's?
1. I do understand the cost of upkeep being built into the price. However, even if the manufacturer didn't, doesn't mean they don't need to keep the product up. Microsoft, being one of the wealthiest companies in the world would find it difficult to argue that it cannot afford to keep XP up. Win 98 and prior cannot really participate on the internet, so the threat from them is pretty limited. XP on the other hand is still widely used and if left unsecured poses a big threat.
2. I just had the truck serviced. I don't know if it was recalled or just a service bulletin. I do know the truck is long out of warranty and there was no charge to me.
3. The EULA prevents me from going after Microsoft if Windows damages my data or loses it, etc. However, if my unsecured machine is hacked because Microsoft no longer provides security patches and that machine takes down Bank of America, I'm not sure my EULA with Microsoft protects them from Bank of America.
4. This is similar to item 3. Again, I'm not saying Microsoft should have to keep patching errors in the OS that are purely functional, but those that can lead to exploits that can lead to the compromise of the intranet and/or other infrastructure and systems, then yes, I would say it is their responsibility. Let's not forget that Microsoft made billions of dollars from XP sales. If they made a business decision to not set aside reserves because of the overwhelming success of the their os far exceeded their expectations, that is their problem. Ford made a business decision to not add a $1 shield to the Pinto because of the cost and they paid dearly for it in lawsuits (but not as much as the lives destroyed).
As for stolen cars and the manufacturers liability if a crime is committed, they are not related. I purchase and own my car. I do not own my own copy of Windows, Microsoft makes it quite clear in their EULA that they do.
For a $100 software package with no recurring costs 14 years is pretty good. Besides, XP is safe in the sense that cars are safe. Recalls and replacements are issued if a problem is found that causes the thing to physically injure/kill people during what is considered normal use. If a malicious 3rd party breaks into your 20 year old car, there is no recall.
While those cars from the 80's and 90's still run, they are less safe and easier to steal than new cars. The only updates that have to be released for them are if they find a way to injure their owners. XP updates are security updates. Did they give your 80's car a free update to a transponder key to make it more secure? Did they install new airbags or traction control system to keep it safe?
I'm sure if your XP version finds a way to jump out of the box and injure you that it will be dealt with.
No, but they did give my 1992 pickup truck a new software upgrade because of a problem with the ignition -- which had nothing to do with my safety, but did improve emissions. So, Mazda provided a software upgrade to a 14 year old truck to benefit others. That is different than Microsoft continuing to provide security updates to XP to protect others on the internet, how?
Whether Microsoft sold XP for $100 or $1000 doesn't matter. I didn't even buy my truck new, and yet I got the software update. If there are all of these XP computers out there in two years that are basically no longer secured, would they not be the prime target of a group wanting to inflict cyber-harm? I'm not talking about harm to the users of those machines, but to the rest of the net. I do understand that operating systems are complex, but Microsoft made certain design choices for various business and marketing reasons. Why should they not be held to the same product liability as any other manufacturer?
Even more so, because the user does not own the software, they have purchased a license to use it. Therefore, shouldn't Microsoft, as the owner of their own software be responsible for maintaining it as long as it is licensed to be used? Could they be held liable if there were some kind of cyber attack that exploited XP once they drop support? Maybe who ever thought up those EULAs wasn't as smart as they thought.
In other words, your assumption was valid for a specific timeframe but no longer holds.
Actually, a circa 2001 computer that came with XP still runs current linux distributions quite well, not necessarily fast, though. That same computer won't run Vista or Win 7, so I think the assumption still holds.
I agree, the 14 years was pretty generous. When XP was originally released, I was running some SuSE 7.x version. The first 7.x version was released in september 2000. The last 7.x version went end-of-life in december 2003, meaning a support span of 3 years and 3 months. Fedora has something like a thirteen month support span, depending on the release date of version x+2. Only RHEL appears to be supported for 10 years.
There is one big difference: all Linux distros release a new version every 1-2 years. The next windows release took 6 years, but the next windows release that was really usable in companies took a few years more.
The other difference is that the next version of Linux usually runs quite well on the previous hardware. That is not the case with Windows. So very often, it's not even an option to upgrade an older machine to the latest release.
14 years isn't generous if you still use the device. There are still cars on the road from the 80s and 90s and they are still subject to safety recalls, even though they are 20 years old. If the computer running Windows XP had a power supply that was found to cause electric shock, don't you think that Dell or whoever made it would have to replace it? Why would the operating system not be any different? The support that is being dropped are security patches which impact the rest of the computing world.
Microsoft (or Apple or anyone else) has an obligation, since it released the software in the first place, to either make it safe for use or to replace it -- just like any other manufacturer. They need to continue security software updates, to keep the rest of us safe, or they need to open source XP so somebody else can do it.
Microsoft had publicized these deadlines ever since the product was released. This is not the news here: the news is that a lot of people are still using the system. Serious companies that rely on Windows XP for their business have always known that support would end in 2014, and so have factored that into account.
There are a lot more XP computers running in people's homes that cannot run newer operating systems and function quite well for the tasks they are being used for. The problem is that with Microsoft discontinuing support, including security updates, those computers become a threat to any other computer on the internet, even the latest and greatest.
Local sales have declined by more then 50%, mainly due to internet sales. That is one tax base that has declined. Business moving operations overseas impacts both corporate income tax. That is another tax base that won't return. People employed at those firms taht are no longer employed and move away reduce both personal income tax revenues and further erode the local sales tax revenues.
Fuel taxes do not rise with the cost of fuel, as they are fixed and set by congress. It was 9 cents in 1983 and is now 18.4 cents, a 100% increase. However, the costof highway contruction and maintenance has trippled over the same period, so those taxes still don't cover all of the new construction. In addition, with very few exceptions, the federal fuel tax cannot be used for maintenance, only constructing new roads. This means the states have to raise additional revenue to maintain the existing roads and as they keep increasing, more and more money is needed (it is approximately $477K to resurface one mile of road: ftp://ftp.dot.state.fl.us/LTS/CO/Estimates/CPM/summary.pdf) Not only has the cost of materials gone up three-fold, but the amount of road surface has doubled also since the federal fuel tax was 9 cents.
By the way, fuel tax/roads were just an example of many things that we take for granted that have been a burden on tax revenues. Everybody thinks of entitlement programs, but infrastructure maintenance plays a big part of it, too. Then, to top all of that off, Congress keeps enacting regulations that shift costs to the staes and local municipalities.
The point of all of this is that it is logical that as tax bases decline, tax rates need to increase just to maintain the status quo. They need to increase even more, if the state or local municipality wants to add additional services. In a perfect world, tax revenues would rise with inflation (at least for those based on a percentage of sales or income). However, with the explosion of internet sales, this has not been the case as they are exempt from sales tax unless they have a presence in the state (Nexus). Amazon doesn't, so its sales are tax free.
Amazon's call for a federal sales tax is a recognition that eventually they are going to have to remit sales tax (stores don't pay sales tax, consumers do). They are lobbying for a federal tax, because it is simpler and cheaper for them than to build a system for each state and municipality (even though Walmart and every other retailer with both store fronts ande internet sales has done). An additional issue is that the federal government will then have to allocate that money back to the states. As with the federal fuel excise tax, it is not allocated proportionately to where the money comes from, but instead where the goverment wants it to go. It then becomes a club to beat the states into submisison to "voluntarily" follow new regs or lose the funding. However, that is a whole different topic.
As sales shifted from instate storefronts, to out of state internet, sales tax revenue declined. Granted, inflation increased sales tax revenue proportionately, but the outflow from the internet was far greater than the inflation increase causing real sales tax revenues to decline. Likewise as businesses moved overseas, property tax and corporate income tax decreased, too. States are forced to increase the tax rates to just maintain the status quo from the lost tax revenues.
Since a tax is based on percentages, it will naturally scale with inflation. If 3% was enough way back when, it's still enough when inflation roughly doubles the price of everything (as long as the state supports employees enough that their wages keep up).
That assumes that 3% was enough back then. Of course income tax rates were significantly higher then than they are today. One needs to look at the entire tax base and not just one tax to determine if it is proportional. In addition, populations and their needs change. 40 years ago, the southern border states spent next to nothing on illegal immigrants. Where does that money come from today? 40 years ago, most roads were not paved (except in cities), and those that were were usually 2 lanes.
Those are just a few examples of what has changed.
Like gasoline, the price of asphalt has gone up since the 70s, too.
As have wages and the dollar amount of taxes collected. In 1960 the minimum wage was $1.60 per hour, so someone earning the minimum wage is paying five times in taxes what he was then.
And the roads are financed by motor fuel tax, not sales tax. Motor fuel taxes now cost more per gallon than a gallon of gas did in 1970.
Federal fuel tax can only be used for new construction, not maintenance of existing roads. The federal fuel tax is a fixed amount, not a percentage and it has not significanlty increased since the time gas was $0.59/gallon.
Even if asphalt is more costly, it doesn't vary from state-to-state. We only pay 5% in my state (which is in the north where roads suffer ice/salt destruction). Why should Arkansas residents have to pay twice as much tax? The road maintenance should actually be cheaper than my state.
Well, it depends on how much federal fuel tax your state gets compared to Arkansas. It dependes on how large a geographical area your state is to Arkansas. It depends on the other taxes, like income, that your state charges versus Arkansas. It depends on the corporate tax base and number of people in the state. The list goes on and on.
Why in Arkansas can you buy a nice 3000 square foot house for $175,000 but in New York, the same thing costs 10 times more?
Like gasoline, the price of asphalt has gone up since the 70s, too.
You seem to have a lack of understanding about percentages. That's ok, the government likes people who don't understand percentages. That way, they can claim that they need to raise the tax rate to make more money, when in fact, mathematics says that if 3% tax on 1970's income was enough to get by, then 3% tax on 2012 income (about 5.4 times as high) should also be plenty.
What you say would be true if income since the seventies kept up with the inflation rate since the seventies, which it has not. I believe in the 70s, Arkansas was ranked 50th interms of education. So, if you know away to improve upon something like that without increasing taxes, you should run for office.
Face it, in the 70s, almost 100% of goods were purchased and taxed locally. Today, it is less than 70%. Not only have incomes not kept up with inflation, but the tax revenues from sales tax are spread over a smaller and smaller base.
But then maybe you are one of those people who like to complain about having to pay too much in taxes while exempting billions of dollars in sales from the local tax base. It's crazy that if I order something from Sears online, I have to pay sales tax, even though the closes storefront to me is 100 miles away and yet, ordering the same thing from Amazon is tax free. All because of 100 year old mail order catalog rules.
Good for the court. Good for Amazon. I pay 10% on anything I buy in Arkansas (including food) and they scream that it's not enough. Funny, I paid 3% sales tax here in the 70's and the roads weren't any worse than they are today. Screw any state that attempts to cash in on internet sales.
Like gasoline, the price of asphalt has gone up since the 70s, too. Maybe if 30% of all Arkansas sales were not internet sales, then there would be higher employment, more tax revenues and better roads in Arkansas. Just a thought.
I was going to ask "Doesn't Amazon pay interchange fees, too?"
But then I realized that of course Amazon has the power to negotiate the fees that they pay, while my local coffee shop almost certainly cannot. So, consider this a "+1 Insightful," instead of a "-1 What?"
While it is true that Amazon must pay interchange fees, it is almost a certainty that it is figured into their pricing structure (since you cannot pay with cash). Besides, most business find that paying CC fees is less costly than processing bad checks.
Sure, if you want to just make shit up and blindly ignore the facts. Amazon has consistently lobbied for a federal internet sales tax.
That is true, but only because they don't the burden of maintaining a sales tax for every state and municipality. They see the handwriting on the wall that eventually internet sales will be taxed. Having one taxing authority is much better than tens of thousands.
This benefits customers, because they get items cheaper. Amazon has no presence in the state, so why should they have to pay sales tax? Gas tax already covers any usage of the roads etc by shipping and delivery companies. And it's not a big hit for local businesses because for the extra $0.50 a customer gets to have the product now.
In short, the only ones who "lose" are Colorado politicians. And if there was a federal sales tax, Colorado wouldn't get a cut, anyway.
Amazon would not be paying state sales taxes. They would be collecting state sales taxes, like any other company doing business located in the state and remitting those taxes to the state on behalf of the purchaser. It is the purchaser, who benefits from the state sales tax as it is used to fund state services.
Where Colorado messed up is that they tried to levy sales tax on out of state purchases from a company that did not have a presence int he state. This has long ago been decided. What Colorado should have done is passed a bill that out of state companies, doing more than $X business in the state, must collect use tax on behalf of the state. Since use taxes are already deemed constitutional, having the vendor collecting them should not be a problem.
Or, as Joyent's Howard Wu puts it, 'It's kind of like buying couches. If you buy one, you go to a retail store. If you buy 10,000 couches, you go straight to the factory
Of course what Mr. Wu leaves out is that they are going straight to a factory in Asia instead of the American manufacturers (stalwarts, I beleive the summary called them).
Googe, Amazon, Microsoft are all mega-companies and strive to maximize their profits. However, at record unemployment levels in the tech industry, they claim they can't find US workers and have to bring in foreign workers. Now, it appears that US equipment manufactures can't produce enough equipment and they have to again go offshore.
Again, they can do business wherever they want, but the time has come to for them and their shareholders to either decide they want to be an American company with a world wide presence or a foreign company with a US operation.
If Microsoft can block Pirate Bay, for whatever reason, then what is to stop them from block Apple or Redhat or any other site that they determine is "harmful" to their users? Censorship is censorship. It is a very slippery slope when anyone in power claims censorship is for the good of the people.
Nothing is stopping them. It's their own private servers and they can do whatever they want. Ever been to a forum that censored certain words or banned users for inappropriate behavior? The first amendment only applies to the government. It is perfectly legal for private organizations to control what data people send through their servers. As for whether it's moral or not -- if you don't like it, take your business elsewhere. There's no slope at all here.
Actually, it's not. It is my message to you that they are scanning and then determining to send through or not. In other words, in a public venue, the internet, they are acting to censor my speech. Microsoft is free to limit or expand their own content, but do they for somebody else's content? That is the question.
If I am a MSN Messenger user, I have a contractual agreement with Microsoft regarding my messages. Now, I am sure that Microsoft has a policy, as do most providers, regarding content (must not be used for illegal purposes, etc.). I also, imagine that they have policies to protect their users from malware, again as many providers do. But, there is a big difference from blocking addresses from known spammers, etc. and actually scanning your email for links that could very well be legit. It also begs the question of what else does Microsoft scan messages for?
I agree, though, that if people don't like it, they should take their business elsewhere. Which as far as MSN Messenger is concerned, that is exactly what has happened.
The gay's tend not to have kids. That means that they have more discretionary income. More discretionary income equates to more readily purchasing more expensive toys more often than the guy that supports a family. It's why you see shiny things like the latest Itoy so often in the hands of gay people, they can afford them. It's just math and the logic is sound.
The second part though, the idea that someone would go to all the trouble to use something like this to track down a bunch of gays is absurd. Why bother doing that when if your a nutter you just go to your local gay bar instead? You know the one that advertises to attract all of those gays?
A single person (gay or otherwise) tends to spend the same as a married person with kids. The difference is what the spending is used for.
I believe there was a story within the past year where a team of researchers found that they could determine with ~85% (if I recall) accuracy the sexual orientation of a facebook member simply by analyzing who they are friends with.
You don't have to declare yourself to come out -- someone else can do it for you. People who don't want to announce their sexuality (for whatever reason) are exposed every day -- not in the way stated above, maybe, but it certainly happens.
Depending on whose numbers you use the gay population is as low as 3% to as much as 10%. So, I would think, in a random sample, that you could hit 85% accuracy without analyzing anything about the facebook user just by saying heterosexual.
I'm not hip to them censoring anything, but, malware barfing torrent sites don't particularly raise my eye brow. IFF, of course, they're not blocking other torrent sites.
If Microsoft can block Pirate Bay, for whatever reason, then what is to stop them from block Apple or Redhat or any other site that they determine is "harmful" to their users? Censorship is censorship. It is a very slippery slope when anyone in power claims censorship is for the good of the people.
They're not stopping the treatment. They're going to make megabucks off it.
>> Conflict of interest statement: S.J., M.P.C., R. Majeti, and I.L.W. filed U.S. Patent Application Serial No. 12/321,215 entitled “Methods for Manipulating Phagocytosis Mediated by CD47."
They've already applied for the patent for treating cancers in this way. If granted, 17 years of income for a cancer cure which they control the market on would make them a trillion dollars. Each. Although, they could just be patenting it to prevent anyone else patenting it, although naturally whomever funded the study is going to want a sizeable return on their investment and it's fair enough they get it.
Most likely the study was funded through the government, as is most medical research these days. I don't have a problem with that, but since the government gets its funds from the people, then the people should get the benefit of the research without having to choose between eating or dying from cancer.
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This is how I feel about anything that starts with a 'K' or spawned from it. Not a big fan of the "Let's copy Microsoft's really bad interface, and not use established standards by requiring our own huge set of daemons to run for IPC instead" crowd.
Versus whom else's huge set of daemons to run? Gnome's?
1. I do understand the cost of upkeep being built into the price. However, even if the manufacturer didn't, doesn't mean they don't need to keep the product up. Microsoft, being one of the wealthiest companies in the world would find it difficult to argue that it cannot afford to keep XP up. Win 98 and prior cannot really participate on the internet, so the threat from them is pretty limited. XP on the other hand is still widely used and if left unsecured poses a big threat.
2. I just had the truck serviced. I don't know if it was recalled or just a service bulletin. I do know the truck is long out of warranty and there was no charge to me.
3. The EULA prevents me from going after Microsoft if Windows damages my data or loses it, etc. However, if my unsecured machine is hacked because Microsoft no longer provides security patches and that machine takes down Bank of America, I'm not sure my EULA with Microsoft protects them from Bank of America.
4. This is similar to item 3. Again, I'm not saying Microsoft should have to keep patching errors in the OS that are purely functional, but those that can lead to exploits that can lead to the compromise of the intranet and/or other infrastructure and systems, then yes, I would say it is their responsibility. Let's not forget that Microsoft made billions of dollars from XP sales. If they made a business decision to not set aside reserves because of the overwhelming success of the their os far exceeded their expectations, that is their problem. Ford made a business decision to not add a $1 shield to the Pinto because of the cost and they paid dearly for it in lawsuits (but not as much as the lives destroyed).
As for stolen cars and the manufacturers liability if a crime is committed, they are not related. I purchase and own my car. I do not own my own copy of Windows, Microsoft makes it quite clear in their EULA that they do.
Schrodinger's Cat?
For a $100 software package with no recurring costs 14 years is pretty good. Besides, XP is safe in the sense that cars are safe. Recalls and replacements are issued if a problem is found that causes the thing to physically injure/kill people during what is considered normal use. If a malicious 3rd party breaks into your 20 year old car, there is no recall.
While those cars from the 80's and 90's still run, they are less safe and easier to steal than new cars. The only updates that have to be released for them are if they find a way to injure their owners. XP updates are security updates. Did they give your 80's car a free update to a transponder key to make it more secure? Did they install new airbags or traction control system to keep it safe?
I'm sure if your XP version finds a way to jump out of the box and injure you that it will be dealt with.
No, but they did give my 1992 pickup truck a new software upgrade because of a problem with the ignition -- which had nothing to do with my safety, but did improve emissions. So, Mazda provided a software upgrade to a 14 year old truck to benefit others. That is different than Microsoft continuing to provide security updates to XP to protect others on the internet, how?
Whether Microsoft sold XP for $100 or $1000 doesn't matter. I didn't even buy my truck new, and yet I got the software update. If there are all of these XP computers out there in two years that are basically no longer secured, would they not be the prime target of a group wanting to inflict cyber-harm? I'm not talking about harm to the users of those machines, but to the rest of the net. I do understand that operating systems are complex, but Microsoft made certain design choices for various business and marketing reasons. Why should they not be held to the same product liability as any other manufacturer?
Even more so, because the user does not own the software, they have purchased a license to use it. Therefore, shouldn't Microsoft, as the owner of their own software be responsible for maintaining it as long as it is licensed to be used? Could they be held liable if there were some kind of cyber attack that exploited XP once they drop support? Maybe who ever thought up those EULAs wasn't as smart as they thought.
In other words, your assumption was valid for a specific timeframe but no longer holds.
Actually, a circa 2001 computer that came with XP still runs current linux distributions quite well, not necessarily fast, though. That same computer won't run Vista or Win 7, so I think the assumption still holds.
I agree, the 14 years was pretty generous.
When XP was originally released, I was running some SuSE 7.x version. The first 7.x version was released in september 2000. The last 7.x version went end-of-life in december 2003, meaning a support span of 3 years and 3 months. Fedora has something like a thirteen month support span, depending on the release date of version x+2. Only RHEL appears to be supported for 10 years.
There is one big difference: all Linux distros release a new version every 1-2 years. The next windows release took 6 years, but the next windows release that was really usable in companies took a few years more.
The other difference is that the next version of Linux usually runs quite well on the previous hardware. That is not the case with Windows. So very often, it's not even an option to upgrade an older machine to the latest release.
14 years isn't generous if you still use the device. There are still cars on the road from the 80s and 90s and they are still subject to safety recalls, even though they are 20 years old. If the computer running Windows XP had a power supply that was found to cause electric shock, don't you think that Dell or whoever made it would have to replace it? Why would the operating system not be any different? The support that is being dropped are security patches which impact the rest of the computing world.
Microsoft (or Apple or anyone else) has an obligation, since it released the software in the first place, to either make it safe for use or to replace it -- just like any other manufacturer. They need to continue security software updates, to keep the rest of us safe, or they need to open source XP so somebody else can do it.
Microsoft had publicized these deadlines ever since the product was released. This is not the news here: the news is that a lot of people are still using the system. Serious companies that rely on Windows XP for their business have always known that support would end in 2014, and so have factored that into account.
There are a lot more XP computers running in people's homes that cannot run newer operating systems and function quite well for the tasks they are being used for. The problem is that with Microsoft discontinuing support, including security updates, those computers become a threat to any other computer on the internet, even the latest and greatest.
Local sales have declined by more then 50%, mainly due to internet sales. That is one tax base that has declined. Business moving operations overseas impacts both corporate income tax. That is another tax base that won't return. People employed at those firms taht are no longer employed and move away reduce both personal income tax revenues and further erode the local sales tax revenues.
Fuel taxes do not rise with the cost of fuel, as they are fixed and set by congress. It was 9 cents in 1983 and is now 18.4 cents, a 100% increase. However, the costof highway contruction and maintenance has trippled over the same period, so those taxes still don't cover all of the new construction. In addition, with very few exceptions, the federal fuel tax cannot be used for maintenance, only constructing new roads. This means the states have to raise additional revenue to maintain the existing roads and as they keep increasing, more and more money is needed (it is approximately $477K to resurface one mile of road: ftp://ftp.dot.state.fl.us/LTS/CO/Estimates/CPM/summary.pdf) Not only has the cost of materials gone up three-fold, but the amount of road surface has doubled also since the federal fuel tax was 9 cents.
By the way, fuel tax/roads were just an example of many things that we take for granted that have been a burden on tax revenues. Everybody thinks of entitlement programs, but infrastructure maintenance plays a big part of it, too. Then, to top all of that off, Congress keeps enacting regulations that shift costs to the staes and local municipalities.
The point of all of this is that it is logical that as tax bases decline, tax rates need to increase just to maintain the status quo. They need to increase even more, if the state or local municipality wants to add additional services. In a perfect world, tax revenues would rise with inflation (at least for those based on a percentage of sales or income). However, with the explosion of internet sales, this has not been the case as they are exempt from sales tax unless they have a presence in the state (Nexus). Amazon doesn't, so its sales are tax free.
Amazon's call for a federal sales tax is a recognition that eventually they are going to have to remit sales tax (stores don't pay sales tax, consumers do). They are lobbying for a federal tax, because it is simpler and cheaper for them than to build a system for each state and municipality (even though Walmart and every other retailer with both store fronts ande internet sales has done). An additional issue is that the federal government will then have to allocate that money back to the states. As with the federal fuel excise tax, it is not allocated proportionately to where the money comes from, but instead where the goverment wants it to go. It then becomes a club to beat the states into submisison to "voluntarily" follow new regs or lose the funding. However, that is a whole different topic.
About 50% of all roads in the US were unpaved in 1975. That amount dropped to 1/3 as of 2008.
http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_01_04.html
As sales shifted from instate storefronts, to out of state internet, sales tax revenue declined. Granted, inflation increased sales tax revenue proportionately, but the outflow from the internet was far greater than the inflation increase causing real sales tax revenues to decline. Likewise as businesses moved overseas, property tax and corporate income tax decreased, too. States are forced to increase the tax rates to just maintain the status quo from the lost tax revenues.
Since a tax is based on percentages, it will naturally scale with inflation. If 3% was enough way back when, it's still enough when inflation roughly doubles the price of everything (as long as the state supports employees enough that their wages keep up).
That assumes that 3% was enough back then. Of course income tax rates were significantly higher then than they are today. One needs to look at the entire tax base and not just one tax to determine if it is proportional. In addition, populations and their needs change. 40 years ago, the southern border states spent next to nothing on illegal immigrants. Where does that money come from today? 40 years ago, most roads were not paved (except in cities), and those that were were usually 2 lanes.
Those are just a few examples of what has changed.
Like gasoline, the price of asphalt has gone up since the 70s, too.
As have wages and the dollar amount of taxes collected. In 1960 the minimum wage was $1.60 per hour, so someone earning the minimum wage is paying five times in taxes what he was then.
And the roads are financed by motor fuel tax, not sales tax. Motor fuel taxes now cost more per gallon than a gallon of gas did in 1970.
Federal fuel tax can only be used for new construction, not maintenance of existing roads. The federal fuel tax is a fixed amount, not a percentage and it has not significanlty increased since the time gas was $0.59/gallon.
Even if asphalt is more costly, it doesn't vary from state-to-state. We only pay 5% in my state (which is in the north where roads suffer ice/salt destruction). Why should Arkansas residents have to pay twice as much tax? The road maintenance should actually be cheaper than my state.
Well, it depends on how much federal fuel tax your state gets compared to Arkansas. It dependes on how large a geographical area your state is to Arkansas. It depends on the other taxes, like income, that your state charges versus Arkansas. It depends on the corporate tax base and number of people in the state. The list goes on and on.
Why in Arkansas can you buy a nice 3000 square foot house for $175,000 but in New York, the same thing costs 10 times more?
Like gasoline, the price of asphalt has gone up since the 70s, too.
You seem to have a lack of understanding about percentages. That's ok, the government likes people who don't understand percentages. That way, they can claim that they need to raise the tax rate to make more money, when in fact, mathematics says that if 3% tax on 1970's income was enough to get by, then 3% tax on 2012 income (about 5.4 times as high) should also be plenty.
What you say would be true if income since the seventies kept up with the inflation rate since the seventies, which it has not. I believe in the 70s, Arkansas was ranked 50th interms of education. So, if you know away to improve upon something like that without increasing taxes, you should run for office.
Face it, in the 70s, almost 100% of goods were purchased and taxed locally. Today, it is less than 70%. Not only have incomes not kept up with inflation, but the tax revenues from sales tax are spread over a smaller and smaller base.
But then maybe you are one of those people who like to complain about having to pay too much in taxes while exempting billions of dollars in sales from the local tax base. It's crazy that if I order something from Sears online, I have to pay sales tax, even though the closes storefront to me is 100 miles away and yet, ordering the same thing from Amazon is tax free. All because of 100 year old mail order catalog rules.
Because if you can't beat them join them.
Good for the court. Good for Amazon. I pay 10% on anything I buy in Arkansas (including food) and they scream that it's not enough. Funny, I paid 3% sales tax here in the 70's and the roads weren't any worse than they are today. Screw any state that attempts to cash in on internet sales.
Like gasoline, the price of asphalt has gone up since the 70s, too. Maybe if 30% of all Arkansas sales were not internet sales, then there would be higher employment, more tax revenues and better roads in Arkansas. Just a thought.
I was going to ask "Doesn't Amazon pay interchange fees, too?"
But then I realized that of course Amazon has the power to negotiate the fees that they pay, while my local coffee shop almost certainly cannot. So, consider this a "+1 Insightful," instead of a "-1 What?"
While it is true that Amazon must pay interchange fees, it is almost a certainty that it is figured into their pricing structure (since you cannot pay with cash). Besides, most business find that paying CC fees is less costly than processing bad checks.
Sure, if you want to just make shit up and blindly ignore the facts. Amazon has consistently lobbied for a federal internet sales tax.
That is true, but only because they don't the burden of maintaining a sales tax for every state and municipality. They see the handwriting on the wall that eventually internet sales will be taxed. Having one taxing authority is much better than tens of thousands.
This benefits customers, because they get items cheaper. Amazon has no presence in the state, so why should they have to pay sales tax? Gas tax already covers any usage of the roads etc by shipping and delivery companies. And it's not a big hit for local businesses because for the extra $0.50 a customer gets to have the product now.
In short, the only ones who "lose" are Colorado politicians. And if there was a federal sales tax, Colorado wouldn't get a cut, anyway.
Amazon would not be paying state sales taxes. They would be collecting state sales taxes, like any other company doing business located in the state and remitting those taxes to the state on behalf of the purchaser. It is the purchaser, who benefits from the state sales tax as it is used to fund state services.
Where Colorado messed up is that they tried to levy sales tax on out of state purchases from a company that did not have a presence int he state. This has long ago been decided. What Colorado should have done is passed a bill that out of state companies, doing more than $X business in the state, must collect use tax on behalf of the state. Since use taxes are already deemed constitutional, having the vendor collecting them should not be a problem.
Or, as Joyent's Howard Wu puts it, 'It's kind of like buying couches. If you buy one, you go to a retail store. If you buy 10,000 couches, you go straight to the factory
Of course what Mr. Wu leaves out is that they are going straight to a factory in Asia instead of the American manufacturers (stalwarts, I beleive the summary called them).
Googe, Amazon, Microsoft are all mega-companies and strive to maximize their profits. However, at record unemployment levels in the tech industry, they claim they can't find US workers and have to bring in foreign workers. Now, it appears that US equipment manufactures can't produce enough equipment and they have to again go offshore.
Again, they can do business wherever they want, but the time has come to for them and their shareholders to either decide they want to be an American company with a world wide presence or a foreign company with a US operation.
If Microsoft can block Pirate Bay, for whatever reason, then what is to stop them from block Apple or Redhat or any other site that they determine is "harmful" to their users? Censorship is censorship. It is a very slippery slope when anyone in power claims censorship is for the good of the people.
Nothing is stopping them. It's their own private servers and they can do whatever they want. Ever been to a forum that censored certain words or banned users for inappropriate behavior? The first amendment only applies to the government. It is perfectly legal for private organizations to control what data people send through their servers. As for whether it's moral or not -- if you don't like it, take your business elsewhere. There's no slope at all here.
Actually, it's not. It is my message to you that they are scanning and then determining to send through or not. In other words, in a public venue, the internet, they are acting to censor my speech. Microsoft is free to limit or expand their own content, but do they for somebody else's content? That is the question.
If I am a MSN Messenger user, I have a contractual agreement with Microsoft regarding my messages. Now, I am sure that Microsoft has a policy, as do most providers, regarding content (must not be used for illegal purposes, etc.). I also, imagine that they have policies to protect their users from malware, again as many providers do. But, there is a big difference from blocking addresses from known spammers, etc. and actually scanning your email for links that could very well be legit. It also begs the question of what else does Microsoft scan messages for?
I agree, though, that if people don't like it, they should take their business elsewhere. Which as far as MSN Messenger is concerned, that is exactly what has happened.
The gay's tend not to have kids. That means that they have more discretionary income. More discretionary income equates to more readily purchasing more expensive toys more often than the guy that supports a family. It's why you see shiny things like the latest Itoy so often in the hands of gay people, they can afford them. It's just math and the logic is sound.
The second part though, the idea that someone would go to all the trouble to use something like this to track down a bunch of gays is absurd. Why bother doing that when if your a nutter you just go to your local gay bar instead? You know the one that advertises to attract all of those gays?
A single person (gay or otherwise) tends to spend the same as a married person with kids. The difference is what the spending is used for.
I believe there was a story within the past year where a team of researchers found that they could determine with ~85% (if I recall) accuracy the sexual orientation of a facebook member simply by analyzing who they are friends with.
You don't have to declare yourself to come out -- someone else can do it for you. People who don't want to announce their sexuality (for whatever reason) are exposed every day -- not in the way stated above, maybe, but it certainly happens.
Depending on whose numbers you use the gay population is as low as 3% to as much as 10%. So, I would think, in a random sample, that you could hit 85% accuracy without analyzing anything about the facebook user just by saying heterosexual.
Their service, their rules.
I'm not hip to them censoring anything, but, malware barfing torrent sites don't particularly raise my eye brow. IFF, of course, they're not blocking other torrent sites.
If Microsoft can block Pirate Bay, for whatever reason, then what is to stop them from block Apple or Redhat or any other site that they determine is "harmful" to their users? Censorship is censorship. It is a very slippery slope when anyone in power claims censorship is for the good of the people.
They're not stopping the treatment. They're going to make megabucks off it.
>> Conflict of interest statement: S.J., M.P.C., R. Majeti, and I.L.W. filed U.S. Patent Application Serial No. 12/321,215 entitled “Methods for Manipulating Phagocytosis Mediated by CD47."
They've already applied for the patent for treating cancers in this way. If granted, 17 years of income for a cancer cure which they control the market on would make them a trillion dollars. Each. Although, they could just be patenting it to prevent anyone else patenting it, although naturally whomever funded the study is going to want a sizeable return on their investment and it's fair enough they get it.
Most likely the study was funded through the government, as is most medical research these days. I don't have a problem with that, but since the government gets its funds from the people, then the people should get the benefit of the research without having to choose between eating or dying from cancer.