You think that's bad? Try adjusting those numbers to account for the actual percentage of people who actually pay taxes (and how much). If you make an IT-ish salary, my guess is you owe more like $400k-$600k. Averaging it out equally across every person makes it sound almost downright reasonable.
Also, it's all kind of meaningless. Most of our debt is owed to OURSELVES.
I don't think they understand what a "vaccine" is. Can we (especially the media) stop throwing that word around for everything? A vaccine immunizes you against a disease, by getting the body to produce antibodies.
Well, gosh, I know that I'm TOTALLY going to pay $60 for an "office" application on a device that I can only type a couple dozen words per minute on, rather than at a desktop or laptop, where I can type 100wpm.
I think a lot of people would simply view anything you need a full blown $60 office application for as something you need more than a small screen with a touch-screen-keyboard that takes up 50% of the screen for, too.
Actually, the comment doesn't make any sense: "Small businesses and states alike are suffering from the inability to collect due -- not new -- taxes from purchases made online,"
How are small businesses suffering? It's not their job to pay your taxes. Its your job. It's only small businesses job to collect sales tax for purchases made within their state.
Because local sales taxes, property taxes, state and federal income taxes, capital gains taxes, and all of the additional fees that people forget are actually just taxes isn't enough, apparently. And of course, the justification is always "well, but when you buy a video game that is shipped from another state, it has to travel over our roads -- so our state incurs an expense, even if the business you did business with is 2,000 miles away".
Of course, they conveniently ignore the fact that the companies doing the delivery of your product (UPS, FEDEX, DHL, etc) already pay taxes for doing business in that state for transporting your good. And buy gas, with included gas taxes for road usage. So, really, what individual states are demanding is additional revenue for incurring absolutely no cost or wear and tear. It's a money grab by a bunch of irresponsible pigs who can't handle what they're already given to budget with.
The big box stores go right along with it, because they're tired of the online competition. That's their only motivation. Somehow, they have this idea that if I have to pay taxes to Amazon for a product they'll deliver to my doorstep in 24-48hrs that I'll change my mind and drive a few miles to go buy the same thing for at least as much and for the same amount of sales tax in their store. Pretty shitty logic. It's less hassle to just go the online route, even with taxes. In fact, I'm more likely to do it just to spite the big box brick and mortar stores.
Anyway, it's a lost cause. It'll be taxed, because the pigs want it taxed. And it won't help anything, because the more money they get, the more they spend. It's just really depressing when you consider how much money you're handing over every April and how little will be done with it, compared to how much of an impact it could make to you. For the taxes I just paid this time around, I could have put a kid through four years of a good state college and had enough left over for them to buy a car. Or I could have helped my mother with her retirement after decades of working in a thankless and harrowing job with no real retirement opportunities or benefits. I could have covered her salary for three and a half years, making retirement a possibility for her. Instead, it'll probably go toward 20% of a drone purchase or installing two speed bumps. And that sort of waste is why people are so disgruntled with paying taxes. If they felt the work and money they are just handing over was being respected and used wisely, they'd feel that sense of "hey, it's my civic duty". When it's just being used as a free pot of money by a bunch of irresponsible pigs, you just feel like you're getting fucked.
Then give us the statistics. And where are these websites that this is occurring at? Are you telling me that legitimate porn businesses and websites are kidnapping people to make porn? Do you realize how absurd that sounds? There are more than enough people throwing themselves happily into the porn industry. There are no shortages of men or women eagerly wanting to be in porn. So, what, Bang Bus is filled with kidnapped women? Brazzers? Are all those chicks Rocco Siffredi has been banging for a decade or two secretly kidnap victims?
Or are you talking about the shady illegal sites doing shady illegal shit that almost nobody will ever stumble across on the internet that are doing things like that? In which case, they're already breaking the law. What does banning content that your Vivid entertainments and random amateurs online are making have to do with that other stuff? It's a poor justification and silly excuse.
I mean, seriously, who is alleging this stuff? People who think that every scary internet hacker movie they've ever seen is real? That there's really some secret bogeyman on the internet that has live cameras running to film some kidnap victim that is tied to a chair with a bag over their head that is going to be murdered by the internet as soon as the hit-counter reaches a million?!
What you are talking about are -- if existent at all in porn -- extreme fringes and should be dealt with specifically -- not used to justify a more broad and open-to-interpretation "violent porn" (which, to some people, could simply mean any sort of sex, frankly).
And, finally, this isn't talking about "involuntary sex workers" anyway. It's talking about "violent porn". Whatever that is. It doesn't say "porn is only illegal if it shows a depiction of rough sex AND has a kidnap victim in it". That the focus in the coverage of this is all about "depictions of violent sex" rather than "sex trafficking human beings to make porn" sort of makes it clear that it has nothing to do with that. It's just an excuse to excuse the pushing of an agenda. Sex trafficking is already illegal.
But seriously. Give us some status. Better yet, if it is so rampant, give us some notable examples. Lots of them. There are a jillion people making porn, so it must be easy to trip over these people.
What are the actual stats on people being trafficked to make porn? There have been a LOT of documentaries about sex trafficking in the last decade and they all exclusively talk about trafficking being for prostitution or slavery. Who are these people supposedly kidnapping and trafficking people to produce porn? And where are these websites the porn is being sold on? And why would you even ever bother kidnapping someone to force them to make porn when the world is fucking filled to the brim with people wanting to do porn for a living, willingly, as a career?!
In other words, short of people being kidnapped and trafficked to create the sort of hideous pornography that is already illegal (you know, kids or snuff or other sick stuff) where is all of this porn-industry trafficking that is allegedly happening?
It's the Iceland that recently drafted their own new Constitution from scratch. And that is home to the awesome EVE-Online developer, CCP. And that had a total economic collapse a few years ago, to the point that tiny little CCP was actually the biggest economic force in Iceland.
And who determines what is "violent"? And why should the depiction of violence in porn be any different than the depiction of violence in any other context? And who are you (or Dines) to determine that for other people? Short of someone being forced into doing porn and forced into doing actual violence in the violent porn, who cares? Some people have weird foot fetishes and other crap. I find that pretty gross. However, as long as everyone involved is willing, what business is it of mine to determine that someone else can't make, perform, or enjoy that kind of stuff?
The only reasonable element here is about kidnap and rape, which is pretty irrelevant. No matter what your job is, you shouldn't be kidnapped or raped and while there is probably some of that sick crap going on in some super dark scary underground somewhere, pretty much nobody in porn is being kidnapped and raped. I'm pretty sure, for example, that as rough as the stuff Joanna Angel and her production company does can get -- she's never kidnapped or raped anyone. As long as kidnap and rape remains illegal and enforced, then I don't see why doing porn, being a librarian, or being a janitor should be an issue.
My circle of closest friends and exes contain lots of strippers and more than a handful of people who have done porn either amateur (ie, online) or "professionally". Some are really messed up (by life, which perhaps led them into the profession -- not by the profession itself). Others are very happy and have enjoyed their work and are rather ambitious and in control of themselves and their careers. Of everyone I know, only one ultimately seems to have regretted their choice (that's a far better ratio of satisfaction than anyone I know in any other career, including my own).
Absolutely none of them were forced into it. Nor were *any* of them even coerced (at least, certainly not more than the attempt to persuade during any average date). For every Shelly Lubben nutjob out there proselytizing to/harassing women in the porn industry and going around telling everyone that they're forced into the trade by vile threatening men and then kept there by abuse and drugs, there are dozens who are or were in the industry and are grateful for the opportunities it presented. The people I know who truly hate their jobs and feel exploited are as far away from the sex industry as possible, in other shitty jobs that just happen to be more socially acceptable.
Unfortunately, the only thing really surprising to me about all of this is that it is from Iceland, which is a land I've come to know as being more progressive and enlightened than most.
Oh, and that one person who states they do regret it afterward? We saw each other for awhile. Lost touch for a few months. Next thing we know, she's part of Shelly Lubben's crew, pimping Jesus to girls at trade shows as they try to convince the girls that they're victims and need to come join the Pink Cross. She was always the sort of person who threw herself into one thing completely and had to have something be "that thing" at all times. When porn didn't work out for her (she did it for about a decade, but never really had a "break through"), she eventually decided to go to the other end of the spectrum and you couldn't talk with her for more than two seconds before Pink Cross or Jesus took over the whole conversation.
Perhaps people like her who regret their career is more common in porn than that. I only have anecdotal information. I just have an overwhelmingly positive sense about the whole thing, directly from those who have been doing it for various lengths of time. Perhaps there are some people who are in it due to unscrupulous manipulation by managers or other persons in the industry. Then we address those persons and those parts of the industry. What you don't do is invalidate an entire industry and everyone in it who benefits from it, because of a few jackholes. If that *is* what we do, then we might as well get started with the banking industry, first.
PS: Prof. Gail Dines (photo here), advocating against porn in this submission, is an American who is an aforementioned Shelly Lubben buddy and has tended to be consistently controversial (which I'm sure doesn't harm the sales of her several books). According to Wikipedia, the following is her general position -- she strongly tries to associate porn with sex trafficking. Because, you know, all those Vivid girls are obviously part of the white-slave trade or whatever. Ugh. Repulsive.
Dines's view is that pornography distorts the user's view of sexuality and makes more difficult the establishment of real-life intimate relationships with women. Dines maintains that modern pornography is cruel and violent, unlike earlier forms of pornography with which the general public may be familiar, and has the effect of tending to generally degrade the position of women in society. She also advances the position that the prevalence of hardcore pornography is a contributing factor in increasing "demand" for sex trafficking.
It's disappointing. The women I know already have to deal with the whole "
You put too much effort into giving a shit about it. Ignorant politicians and news persons use the word "cyber" the same way my grandmother used to refer to every gaming machine as "a nintendo". I didn't write a twelve hundred word article about *that*, either.
How is justifying mythological beliefs as a part of science by saying "well, this one guy who is pretty famous for discovering an important piece of scientific knowledge was religious or whatever!" any different than justifying slavery, by saying "well, this one really insightful man who helped found our entire nation also owned slaves"?
The new generation of consoles may end up being doomed *for gaming*. That isn't for certain, but it's possible. They've found a better market to sell the devices to (less than half of time spent on the 360 is spent playing video games). Gaming consoles used to be marketed toward gamers. Now they'll be catering and marketing to people who just want to watch Hulu and download the latest "music" video from the retarded flavor of the month.
As someone who enjoys gaming, across the board, I'd be disappointed in that. As someone who prefers PC gaming, I welcome it. Ditch your gaming fans and watch them flock to the PC.
Most mobile gaming is the same shitty game created 500 times with different titles, filled with stupid time-gates to encourage you to spend money on the bullshit "coin duplicators" and other crap that they are constantly peddling to you. Mobile games are, for the most part, of the same quality and mindset as Facebook games. Nothing more.
I hope I'm proven wrong, but I suspect that this entire coming generation of consoles is going to be about catering to soccer-moms and your elderly dad rather than improving your gaming experience and providing more power. Based on hinting over the last three years, I'm concerned that the view from the console manufacturers is that these are now home media and social devices that just happen to play games.
I wonder what Slashdot really truly does need revenue for, anymore, to keep running? Its audience is smaller than it has been in many years, so the amount of hardware to maintain it is surely limited. It's not like it's undergoing massive UI redesign or anything. The submissions are from the community. The editing consists of clicking a button and saying "what the fuck, here goes" with minimal "editing" of any kind.
I mean, functionally, Slashdot should be a pretty minimally demanding site. The only need to generate revenue anymore is likely more "because we paid so much to buy the site!" than "because it costs so much to operate it!".
The eventualities of telling people "please go away and use native apps" are people saying "fuck you" and not using your site or service at all. I enjoy my iPad, but when a web service/site tries to funnel me into having to use an app to access on a device what I should be able to access with a browser.
And, even if everyone did go along with it, so what? The solution isn't to say "well, garsh, whatever corporations want, that's what we'll decide to include!".
I feel bad that the guy -- who certainly has far more important things to spend his time on -- had to sit around for a chunk of his day replying to a bunch of teenage morons who didn't even know who he was when he was still heading MS, in threads filled with reddit circle-jerking and idiotic massive pseudo-meme images in every post.
Slashdot Mirror
You think that's bad? Try adjusting those numbers to account for the actual percentage of people who actually pay taxes (and how much). If you make an IT-ish salary, my guess is you owe more like $400k-$600k. Averaging it out equally across every person makes it sound almost downright reasonable.
Also, it's all kind of meaningless. Most of our debt is owed to OURSELVES.
I don't think they understand what a "vaccine" is. Can we (especially the media) stop throwing that word around for everything? A vaccine immunizes you against a disease, by getting the body to produce antibodies.
Well, gosh, I know that I'm TOTALLY going to pay $60 for an "office" application on a device that I can only type a couple dozen words per minute on, rather than at a desktop or laptop, where I can type 100wpm.
I think a lot of people would simply view anything you need a full blown $60 office application for as something you need more than a small screen with a touch-screen-keyboard that takes up 50% of the screen for, too.
Actually, the comment doesn't make any sense: "Small businesses and states alike are suffering from the inability to collect due -- not new -- taxes from purchases made online,"
How are small businesses suffering? It's not their job to pay your taxes. Its your job. It's only small businesses job to collect sales tax for purchases made within their state.
Because local sales taxes, property taxes, state and federal income taxes, capital gains taxes, and all of the additional fees that people forget are actually just taxes isn't enough, apparently. And of course, the justification is always "well, but when you buy a video game that is shipped from another state, it has to travel over our roads -- so our state incurs an expense, even if the business you did business with is 2,000 miles away".
Of course, they conveniently ignore the fact that the companies doing the delivery of your product (UPS, FEDEX, DHL, etc) already pay taxes for doing business in that state for transporting your good. And buy gas, with included gas taxes for road usage. So, really, what individual states are demanding is additional revenue for incurring absolutely no cost or wear and tear. It's a money grab by a bunch of irresponsible pigs who can't handle what they're already given to budget with.
The big box stores go right along with it, because they're tired of the online competition. That's their only motivation. Somehow, they have this idea that if I have to pay taxes to Amazon for a product they'll deliver to my doorstep in 24-48hrs that I'll change my mind and drive a few miles to go buy the same thing for at least as much and for the same amount of sales tax in their store. Pretty shitty logic. It's less hassle to just go the online route, even with taxes. In fact, I'm more likely to do it just to spite the big box brick and mortar stores.
Anyway, it's a lost cause. It'll be taxed, because the pigs want it taxed. And it won't help anything, because the more money they get, the more they spend. It's just really depressing when you consider how much money you're handing over every April and how little will be done with it, compared to how much of an impact it could make to you. For the taxes I just paid this time around, I could have put a kid through four years of a good state college and had enough left over for them to buy a car. Or I could have helped my mother with her retirement after decades of working in a thankless and harrowing job with no real retirement opportunities or benefits. I could have covered her salary for three and a half years, making retirement a possibility for her. Instead, it'll probably go toward 20% of a drone purchase or installing two speed bumps. And that sort of waste is why people are so disgruntled with paying taxes. If they felt the work and money they are just handing over was being respected and used wisely, they'd feel that sense of "hey, it's my civic duty". When it's just being used as a free pot of money by a bunch of irresponsible pigs, you just feel like you're getting fucked.
Then give us the statistics. And where are these websites that this is occurring at? Are you telling me that legitimate porn businesses and websites are kidnapping people to make porn? Do you realize how absurd that sounds? There are more than enough people throwing themselves happily into the porn industry. There are no shortages of men or women eagerly wanting to be in porn. So, what, Bang Bus is filled with kidnapped women? Brazzers? Are all those chicks Rocco Siffredi has been banging for a decade or two secretly kidnap victims?
Or are you talking about the shady illegal sites doing shady illegal shit that almost nobody will ever stumble across on the internet that are doing things like that? In which case, they're already breaking the law. What does banning content that your Vivid entertainments and random amateurs online are making have to do with that other stuff? It's a poor justification and silly excuse.
I mean, seriously, who is alleging this stuff? People who think that every scary internet hacker movie they've ever seen is real? That there's really some secret bogeyman on the internet that has live cameras running to film some kidnap victim that is tied to a chair with a bag over their head that is going to be murdered by the internet as soon as the hit-counter reaches a million?!
What you are talking about are -- if existent at all in porn -- extreme fringes and should be dealt with specifically -- not used to justify a more broad and open-to-interpretation "violent porn" (which, to some people, could simply mean any sort of sex, frankly).
And, finally, this isn't talking about "involuntary sex workers" anyway. It's talking about "violent porn". Whatever that is. It doesn't say "porn is only illegal if it shows a depiction of rough sex AND has a kidnap victim in it". That the focus in the coverage of this is all about "depictions of violent sex" rather than "sex trafficking human beings to make porn" sort of makes it clear that it has nothing to do with that. It's just an excuse to excuse the pushing of an agenda. Sex trafficking is already illegal.
But seriously. Give us some status. Better yet, if it is so rampant, give us some notable examples. Lots of them. There are a jillion people making porn, so it must be easy to trip over these people.
What are the actual stats on people being trafficked to make porn? There have been a LOT of documentaries about sex trafficking in the last decade and they all exclusively talk about trafficking being for prostitution or slavery. Who are these people supposedly kidnapping and trafficking people to produce porn? And where are these websites the porn is being sold on? And why would you even ever bother kidnapping someone to force them to make porn when the world is fucking filled to the brim with people wanting to do porn for a living, willingly, as a career?!
In other words, short of people being kidnapped and trafficked to create the sort of hideous pornography that is already illegal (you know, kids or snuff or other sick stuff) where is all of this porn-industry trafficking that is allegedly happening?
Iceland is tiny. Just over 300k.
It's the Iceland that recently drafted their own new Constitution from scratch. And that is home to the awesome EVE-Online developer, CCP. And that had a total economic collapse a few years ago, to the point that tiny little CCP was actually the biggest economic force in Iceland.
And who determines what is "violent"? And why should the depiction of violence in porn be any different than the depiction of violence in any other context? And who are you (or Dines) to determine that for other people? Short of someone being forced into doing porn and forced into doing actual violence in the violent porn, who cares? Some people have weird foot fetishes and other crap. I find that pretty gross. However, as long as everyone involved is willing, what business is it of mine to determine that someone else can't make, perform, or enjoy that kind of stuff?
The only reasonable element here is about kidnap and rape, which is pretty irrelevant. No matter what your job is, you shouldn't be kidnapped or raped and while there is probably some of that sick crap going on in some super dark scary underground somewhere, pretty much nobody in porn is being kidnapped and raped. I'm pretty sure, for example, that as rough as the stuff Joanna Angel and her production company does can get -- she's never kidnapped or raped anyone. As long as kidnap and rape remains illegal and enforced, then I don't see why doing porn, being a librarian, or being a janitor should be an issue.
My circle of closest friends and exes contain lots of strippers and more than a handful of people who have done porn either amateur (ie, online) or "professionally". Some are really messed up (by life, which perhaps led them into the profession -- not by the profession itself). Others are very happy and have enjoyed their work and are rather ambitious and in control of themselves and their careers. Of everyone I know, only one ultimately seems to have regretted their choice (that's a far better ratio of satisfaction than anyone I know in any other career, including my own).
Absolutely none of them were forced into it. Nor were *any* of them even coerced (at least, certainly not more than the attempt to persuade during any average date). For every Shelly Lubben nutjob out there proselytizing to/harassing women in the porn industry and going around telling everyone that they're forced into the trade by vile threatening men and then kept there by abuse and drugs, there are dozens who are or were in the industry and are grateful for the opportunities it presented. The people I know who truly hate their jobs and feel exploited are as far away from the sex industry as possible, in other shitty jobs that just happen to be more socially acceptable.
Unfortunately, the only thing really surprising to me about all of this is that it is from Iceland, which is a land I've come to know as being more progressive and enlightened than most.
Oh, and that one person who states they do regret it afterward? We saw each other for awhile. Lost touch for a few months. Next thing we know, she's part of Shelly Lubben's crew, pimping Jesus to girls at trade shows as they try to convince the girls that they're victims and need to come join the Pink Cross. She was always the sort of person who threw herself into one thing completely and had to have something be "that thing" at all times. When porn didn't work out for her (she did it for about a decade, but never really had a "break through"), she eventually decided to go to the other end of the spectrum and you couldn't talk with her for more than two seconds before Pink Cross or Jesus took over the whole conversation.
Perhaps people like her who regret their career is more common in porn than that. I only have anecdotal information. I just have an overwhelmingly positive sense about the whole thing, directly from those who have been doing it for various lengths of time. Perhaps there are some people who are in it due to unscrupulous manipulation by managers or other persons in the industry. Then we address those persons and those parts of the industry. What you don't do is invalidate an entire industry and everyone in it who benefits from it, because of a few jackholes. If that *is* what we do, then we might as well get started with the banking industry, first.
PS: Prof. Gail Dines (photo here), advocating against porn in this submission, is an American who is an aforementioned Shelly Lubben buddy and has tended to be consistently controversial (which I'm sure doesn't harm the sales of her several books). According to Wikipedia, the following is her general position -- she strongly tries to associate porn with sex trafficking. Because, you know, all those Vivid girls are obviously part of the white-slave trade or whatever. Ugh. Repulsive.
Dines's view is that pornography distorts the user's view of sexuality and makes more difficult the establishment of real-life intimate relationships with women. Dines maintains that modern pornography is cruel and violent, unlike earlier forms of pornography with which the general public may be familiar, and has the effect of tending to generally degrade the position of women in society. She also advances the position that the prevalence of hardcore pornography is a contributing factor in increasing "demand" for sex trafficking.
It's disappointing. The women I know already have to deal with the whole "
A lot of people have shitty jobs, because they can't find anything better that is legal. *shrug*
You put too much effort into giving a shit about it. Ignorant politicians and news persons use the word "cyber" the same way my grandmother used to refer to every gaming machine as "a nintendo". I didn't write a twelve hundred word article about *that*, either.
How is justifying mythological beliefs as a part of science by saying "well, this one guy who is pretty famous for discovering an important piece of scientific knowledge was religious or whatever!" any different than justifying slavery, by saying "well, this one really insightful man who helped found our entire nation also owned slaves"?
The new generation of consoles may end up being doomed *for gaming*. That isn't for certain, but it's possible. They've found a better market to sell the devices to (less than half of time spent on the 360 is spent playing video games). Gaming consoles used to be marketed toward gamers. Now they'll be catering and marketing to people who just want to watch Hulu and download the latest "music" video from the retarded flavor of the month.
As someone who enjoys gaming, across the board, I'd be disappointed in that. As someone who prefers PC gaming, I welcome it. Ditch your gaming fans and watch them flock to the PC.
Most mobile gaming is the same shitty game created 500 times with different titles, filled with stupid time-gates to encourage you to spend money on the bullshit "coin duplicators" and other crap that they are constantly peddling to you. Mobile games are, for the most part, of the same quality and mindset as Facebook games. Nothing more.
I hope I'm proven wrong, but I suspect that this entire coming generation of consoles is going to be about catering to soccer-moms and your elderly dad rather than improving your gaming experience and providing more power. Based on hinting over the last three years, I'm concerned that the view from the console manufacturers is that these are now home media and social devices that just happen to play games.
What I really learned from this submission is that:
1) Salon still exists and, apparently, people read it?
2) This "Lind" guy was desperate for something to write an article about, at the last minute.
Where are you getting the idea that nobody has ever heard of them before?
That's like throwing out "Hey, why hasn't anyone ever heard of AMD or Veritas before?!"
Hope is a poor substitute for income.
I wonder what Slashdot really truly does need revenue for, anymore, to keep running? Its audience is smaller than it has been in many years, so the amount of hardware to maintain it is surely limited. It's not like it's undergoing massive UI redesign or anything. The submissions are from the community. The editing consists of clicking a button and saying "what the fuck, here goes" with minimal "editing" of any kind.
I mean, functionally, Slashdot should be a pretty minimally demanding site. The only need to generate revenue anymore is likely more "because we paid so much to buy the site!" than "because it costs so much to operate it!".
Looks like one per day or every other day is what we can expect. And, of course, no option to block them.
The eventualities of telling people "please go away and use native apps" are people saying "fuck you" and not using your site or service at all. I enjoy my iPad, but when a web service/site tries to funnel me into having to use an app to access on a device what I should be able to access with a browser.
And, even if everyone did go along with it, so what? The solution isn't to say "well, garsh, whatever corporations want, that's what we'll decide to include!".
I feel bad that the guy -- who certainly has far more important things to spend his time on -- had to sit around for a chunk of his day replying to a bunch of teenage morons who didn't even know who he was when he was still heading MS, in threads filled with reddit circle-jerking and idiotic massive pseudo-meme images in every post.
Half the population believes in creationism and alien abductions.
I'll pass on putting any stock in their predictions or beliefs.