I think we should replace the entire system with Philocracy. With myself, Phil, as dictator, corruption will be avoided entirely (or at least minimized, in the rare case that I'm corrupt).
You know, it's funny to see Marxist Hacker 42 of all people schooling someone on the history of the Republicans. Although, to be fair, Democrats were historically more likely to protect civil liberties than Republicans (until Bill Clinton got all anti-civil-liberties on us--strangely enough supporting free trade, too).
Save that crap for when AppleTV supports 1080p, and when all the movies and TV shows I download from iTunes are in 1080p too. Apple skated straight into a body check on this one.
I think the comment was made either ironically, idealistically, or both. Apple likes to think of itself as pushing the world past "what is" and towards "what can and should be", and when Jobs makes remarks like that, he's just trying to subtly tell everyone that using physical media to move videos around is a very 20th century idea and we should be past it by now. That said, they're still supporting DVD, which means they aren't forcing the issue so much as putting a subtle "Apple way of doing things" subtext to their presentation.
During the iPhone presentation, he made a similar remark about how the iPhone lets you tap people to call them, but there's still a keypad for people who want to do things the old-fashioned way. Of course, keypads weren't really old-fashioned yet, but the point is that the iPhone is so advanced that even the keypad is a silly anachronism.
I should note that, while I do agree with some of Apple's (and Jobs') vision on these things, my point isn't that "Apple is a visionary company that lives in a better future and wants to bring us along" so much as "Jobs is an expert salesman who likes to position Apple as a visionary company that lives in a better future and wants to bring us along".
Well, first, Apple isn't a monopoly. They have viable competitors in every market in which they compete, and insofar as that is the case, the behaviors you describe (which are called "vertical integration", or "anti-competitive practices" if and only if you already have a monopoly) aren't "brutal" so much as "a business and design choice".
They destroyed the Mac clone market and reseller market because those things were destroying Apple. At that time (the late 90's), Linux wasn't nearly as mature or widely-adopted as it is today and the destruction of Apple would have, as far as almost everyone could predict, led to a total Microsoft monopoly. Microsoft was already starting to displace commercial UNIX in some segments. Other companies had licenses to manufacture Apple hardware designs with Apple software, including the Apple ROM that (at the time) was necessary for the OS to run. Those license payments weren't enough to allow Apple to continue existing and developing their OS, so Apple refused to extend those licenses to future technology (the CHRP common hardware platform, Mac OS 8) and purchased back the licenses it had already granted.
The real question is whether it's acceptable to sell integrated systems that are capable of working together above and beyond the interoperability offered by open standards. When I look across the fence at the hardware support issues Linux and Windows are struggling with, I'm pretty happy with how green the grass is over here. And if I wasn't, I'm still perfectly able to get a new OS and new hardware. That's the difference between a monopoly and a competitor who offers a significantly different solution.
Square meters, cubic meters, etc. are all measurements of physical space. It just depends on how many dimensions you care about. Storage is measured in the capacity of what you're storing--in this case, data.
No, it most certainly is not. Someone who is rich enough to only spend 10% of their income on spending would only pay 30% of 10-20%, or 3-6%. We both know those people would pay more than 3-6% income tax. Hell, you're probably one of them, and that's why you're foisting this crap off on the rest of us. (I was enamored with national sales taxes when I was in high school, until I learned what a stupid idea it was. What's your excuse?)
You must be very popular at parties, eh? Of course you refuse to admit they look like men. My point is they do look like men, despite what your pathetic, trolling ass has to say about the issue, and by denying it you're just exposing yourself as a moron. It's something called a fact, and your continued denial of reality has been the entire point this whole time.
Los Angeles County raises its entire revenue through sales tax, or at least most of it. Canada's federal government also has income taxes, tariffs, duties...
No, actually it wouldn't. First, the rich already pay more in income tax anyway--things like interest are already taxable income, so you can't "live off investments or inheritance" without paying income tax. Secondly, even not counting "necessities", poor and middle class people still pay disproportionately more for "non-essential goods" than the rich. The rich might save like 80% of their income, spend 10% on essentials, and 10% on non-essentials. The poor, if they're lucky, save 10%, spend 60% on essentials, and spend 30% on non-essentials. (If you look at any sales tax's definition of "non-essential", things like lamps and clock radios and computers and beer and take-out and so forth are taxed--I would like to see anyone actually live without paying sales tax). Poor people would pretty much be shafted--a national sales tax would be a way of saying, "Ha ha! You don't get to have DVD's and clock radios anymore!" (imagine a handlebar mustache, monocle, and gold figurine-headed cane for full effect).
No one's denying that the current income tax is fucked up. The code is full of cruft and it's far too inefficient to figure out (and optimize) your tax liabilities. But that's no reason to abandon it entirely in favor of an inherently more regressive system.
Yeah, I read up on it. Wikipedia informs me that a VAT differs from a sales tax in a very stupid way which affects no one but accountants, so let's not worry too much about it, eh? Although I must say Canada is double-dipping, since you have to pay income tax too.
Like Europe? (I think there is a difference between VAT and sales tax--VAT is incorporated into the posted price, sales tax is calculated and added onto the bill later. VAT is more convenient, sales tax is more transparent.)
Am I? Maybe, I don't have my tax returns handy so I can't say. But I would be paying even more if it was a sales tax. They were example numbers, anyway--I wouldn't exchange a 20% income tax for a 50% sales tax, either. I didn't really want to spend the time working out a rigorous mathematical relation, and if I did, it would probably obscure my point more than illustrate it.
The point is, if you take the same tax burden (doesn't matter what size it is) and distribute it among sales taxes, you're going to get a significantly higher rate that will disproportionately impact poorer people, whereas among income taxes, you get a significantly lower rate that doesn't do that.
Why? Well, there's a certain minimum amount of spending that's necessary to make a living, even if you're poor. If you're extremely poor, any more money that you do have will have to be spent--for instance, if you're at the point of skipping meals, increased income goes to buy yourself another meal before you put it in your non-existent 401(k). Alright, you talk about exemptions for food and stuff. That's fair. Let's imagine someone in the middle class. Lower middle class. They can afford all the food and housing and medical care they need--you know, all the neat things that are exempted from sales tax. Now, are they going to go see a movie, or go out to eat, or maybe buy themselves a computer or a lamp or a gun. Who knows what they're gonna buy, right? Well, if you compare *that* person even to your average, say, $100,000-a-year-salaryman, who spends a higher proportion of their income on spending as compared to savings? And what about multimillionaires?
I'm all about getting by with less, and I'm not even suggesting that the lower middle class go out and buy an HDTV or a Mac or take exotic vacations to Hawaii. I'm just saying, even if you take a cheap road trip to the next state every year and buy a cheap Dell laptop to download music from, you're going to pay your ridiculously huge sales tax on it, and you're gonna get screwed over compared even to the guy who has to pay 30% more for his Learjet, because the Learjet guy is still getting scads of tax-free income that he promptly invests. (Now, you might say investment is good for the economy, but so is spending, and you are certainly not economist enough to pull out of your ass which mixture of the two is optimal.)
No, quite far from it. I'm just a guy who would rather have a 10% smaller paycheck than pay 30% sales tax on everything I buy. And, honestly, unless you're at the point where you're saving or investing most of your income, switching to a national sales tax will only hurt you.
To me, the only benefit to Obama would be ushering in a brighter and more optimistic era in terms of the public attitude and public discourse. Now Obama and Hillary have gotten into the business of making their positions almost in arbitrary opposition to each other--Hillary announces one position, Obama announces the opposite, Obama announces a position, Hillary announces the opposite. Rather silly, and the positions we're getting out of Obama are at best naive. I liked him a lot better last year, as you might imagine.
Anyone who thinks Giuliani or Romney can win the general election are entirely delusional, as both those are positioning themselves as Bush 2.0 to win the primary.
That alone is kind of laughable considering that both Giuliani and Romney were quite liberal as Mayor and Governor, respectively. Not that Bush is much of a conservative, but Giuliani is pro-gay, pro-choice, and what we used to call a "liberal Republican" while Romney was more of the same until he had a sudden epiphany and became anti-abortion. OF course, Giuliani has the credibility to be a jack-booted thug when it comes to terrorism, since that's what he did about crime in New York City.
But you know you're not standing on Mars, so it doesn't feel the same. Just like watching a video of a rock concert isn't the same as really being there, even if you play it really loud and get a bunch of strangers to stand around you cheering. Of course, I never really expected you to get the point anyway.
Some things are more efficient to run in software--example, the fan system on the old G5 Power Macs. Although in that case, without supporting hardware all the fans just run at full speed all the time.
And my point is that a Mac is designed and sold as an integrated system, and if you replace parts of that integrated system, you do so at your own risk. The integrated system is designed so that the laptop does not run with the lid closed unless it is capable of safely doing so. Systems that can safely do so are designed to wake up with the lid closed provided a certain stimulus (plugging in a display or keyboard) is provided. This is probably a combination of firmware and OS support. Also, all systems are designed to enter sleep mode when the lid is closed, absent a connected display or keyboard. This is certainly done by the OS, because the OS activates the sleep mode. For a number of reasons, it's the best possible design choice (for an integrated system) for the OS to handle this function, so if you replace the OS, you had either better replace it with an OS that also handles the same function, or be cautious to manually enter sleep mode before closing the lid as a workaround.
You are still making the fallacy of treating a Mac as a series of unrelated components that interface together. If you want a system like that, buy or build a PC and load Linux on it. If you want to use Mac hardware with Linux, do so keeping in mind that the Mac hardware is intended to be used as an integrated system with Mac OS X, and that design decisions are made with this in mind, not with the intention of making things easier for people who want to run Linux on their Macs. You are faulting Apple for poor design without understanding the full rationale behind their design decisions and the difference between their design goals and a PC's design goals.
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I think we should replace the entire system with Philocracy. With myself, Phil, as dictator, corruption will be avoided entirely (or at least minimized, in the rare case that I'm corrupt).
You know, it's funny to see Marxist Hacker 42 of all people schooling someone on the history of the Republicans. Although, to be fair, Democrats were historically more likely to protect civil liberties than Republicans (until Bill Clinton got all anti-civil-liberties on us--strangely enough supporting free trade, too).
Save that crap for when AppleTV supports 1080p, and when all the movies and TV shows I download from iTunes are in 1080p too. Apple skated straight into a body check on this one.
I think the comment was made either ironically, idealistically, or both. Apple likes to think of itself as pushing the world past "what is" and towards "what can and should be", and when Jobs makes remarks like that, he's just trying to subtly tell everyone that using physical media to move videos around is a very 20th century idea and we should be past it by now. That said, they're still supporting DVD, which means they aren't forcing the issue so much as putting a subtle "Apple way of doing things" subtext to their presentation.
During the iPhone presentation, he made a similar remark about how the iPhone lets you tap people to call them, but there's still a keypad for people who want to do things the old-fashioned way. Of course, keypads weren't really old-fashioned yet, but the point is that the iPhone is so advanced that even the keypad is a silly anachronism.
I should note that, while I do agree with some of Apple's (and Jobs') vision on these things, my point isn't that "Apple is a visionary company that lives in a better future and wants to bring us along" so much as "Jobs is an expert salesman who likes to position Apple as a visionary company that lives in a better future and wants to bring us along".
Well, first, Apple isn't a monopoly. They have viable competitors in every market in which they compete, and insofar as that is the case, the behaviors you describe (which are called "vertical integration", or "anti-competitive practices" if and only if you already have a monopoly) aren't "brutal" so much as "a business and design choice".
They destroyed the Mac clone market and reseller market because those things were destroying Apple. At that time (the late 90's), Linux wasn't nearly as mature or widely-adopted as it is today and the destruction of Apple would have, as far as almost everyone could predict, led to a total Microsoft monopoly. Microsoft was already starting to displace commercial UNIX in some segments. Other companies had licenses to manufacture Apple hardware designs with Apple software, including the Apple ROM that (at the time) was necessary for the OS to run. Those license payments weren't enough to allow Apple to continue existing and developing their OS, so Apple refused to extend those licenses to future technology (the CHRP common hardware platform, Mac OS 8) and purchased back the licenses it had already granted.
The real question is whether it's acceptable to sell integrated systems that are capable of working together above and beyond the interoperability offered by open standards. When I look across the fence at the hardware support issues Linux and Windows are struggling with, I'm pretty happy with how green the grass is over here. And if I wasn't, I'm still perfectly able to get a new OS and new hardware. That's the difference between a monopoly and a competitor who offers a significantly different solution.
Square meters, cubic meters, etc. are all measurements of physical space. It just depends on how many dimensions you care about. Storage is measured in the capacity of what you're storing--in this case, data.
No, because space is measured in metres. 20 more gigs of storage would be nice.
No, it most certainly is not. Someone who is rich enough to only spend 10% of their income on spending would only pay 30% of 10-20%, or 3-6%. We both know those people would pay more than 3-6% income tax. Hell, you're probably one of them, and that's why you're foisting this crap off on the rest of us. (I was enamored with national sales taxes when I was in high school, until I learned what a stupid idea it was. What's your excuse?)
They may not pay the nominal rate, but they still pay more than they would with a national sales tax.
You must be very popular at parties, eh? Of course you refuse to admit they look like men. My point is they do look like men, despite what your pathetic, trolling ass has to say about the issue, and by denying it you're just exposing yourself as a moron. It's something called a fact, and your continued denial of reality has been the entire point this whole time.
Los Angeles County raises its entire revenue through sales tax, or at least most of it. Canada's federal government also has income taxes, tariffs, duties...
No, actually it wouldn't. First, the rich already pay more in income tax anyway--things like interest are already taxable income, so you can't "live off investments or inheritance" without paying income tax. Secondly, even not counting "necessities", poor and middle class people still pay disproportionately more for "non-essential goods" than the rich. The rich might save like 80% of their income, spend 10% on essentials, and 10% on non-essentials. The poor, if they're lucky, save 10%, spend 60% on essentials, and spend 30% on non-essentials. (If you look at any sales tax's definition of "non-essential", things like lamps and clock radios and computers and beer and take-out and so forth are taxed--I would like to see anyone actually live without paying sales tax). Poor people would pretty much be shafted--a national sales tax would be a way of saying, "Ha ha! You don't get to have DVD's and clock radios anymore!" (imagine a handlebar mustache, monocle, and gold figurine-headed cane for full effect).
No one's denying that the current income tax is fucked up. The code is full of cruft and it's far too inefficient to figure out (and optimize) your tax liabilities. But that's no reason to abandon it entirely in favor of an inherently more regressive system.
Yeah, I read up on it. Wikipedia informs me that a VAT differs from a sales tax in a very stupid way which affects no one but accountants, so let's not worry too much about it, eh? Although I must say Canada is double-dipping, since you have to pay income tax too.
Like Europe? (I think there is a difference between VAT and sales tax--VAT is incorporated into the posted price, sales tax is calculated and added onto the bill later. VAT is more convenient, sales tax is more transparent.)
Am I? Maybe, I don't have my tax returns handy so I can't say. But I would be paying even more if it was a sales tax. They were example numbers, anyway--I wouldn't exchange a 20% income tax for a 50% sales tax, either. I didn't really want to spend the time working out a rigorous mathematical relation, and if I did, it would probably obscure my point more than illustrate it.
The point is, if you take the same tax burden (doesn't matter what size it is) and distribute it among sales taxes, you're going to get a significantly higher rate that will disproportionately impact poorer people, whereas among income taxes, you get a significantly lower rate that doesn't do that.
Why? Well, there's a certain minimum amount of spending that's necessary to make a living, even if you're poor. If you're extremely poor, any more money that you do have will have to be spent--for instance, if you're at the point of skipping meals, increased income goes to buy yourself another meal before you put it in your non-existent 401(k). Alright, you talk about exemptions for food and stuff. That's fair. Let's imagine someone in the middle class. Lower middle class. They can afford all the food and housing and medical care they need--you know, all the neat things that are exempted from sales tax. Now, are they going to go see a movie, or go out to eat, or maybe buy themselves a computer or a lamp or a gun. Who knows what they're gonna buy, right? Well, if you compare *that* person even to your average, say, $100,000-a-year-salaryman, who spends a higher proportion of their income on spending as compared to savings? And what about multimillionaires?
I'm all about getting by with less, and I'm not even suggesting that the lower middle class go out and buy an HDTV or a Mac or take exotic vacations to Hawaii. I'm just saying, even if you take a cheap road trip to the next state every year and buy a cheap Dell laptop to download music from, you're going to pay your ridiculously huge sales tax on it, and you're gonna get screwed over compared even to the guy who has to pay 30% more for his Learjet, because the Learjet guy is still getting scads of tax-free income that he promptly invests. (Now, you might say investment is good for the economy, but so is spending, and you are certainly not economist enough to pull out of your ass which mixture of the two is optimal.)
No, quite far from it. I'm just a guy who would rather have a 10% smaller paycheck than pay 30% sales tax on everything I buy. And, honestly, unless you're at the point where you're saving or investing most of your income, switching to a national sales tax will only hurt you.
You misspelled "worse way", "more damage", and "I don't know anything about economics".
To me, the only benefit to Obama would be ushering in a brighter and more optimistic era in terms of the public attitude and public discourse. Now Obama and Hillary have gotten into the business of making their positions almost in arbitrary opposition to each other--Hillary announces one position, Obama announces the opposite, Obama announces a position, Hillary announces the opposite. Rather silly, and the positions we're getting out of Obama are at best naive. I liked him a lot better last year, as you might imagine.
That alone is kind of laughable considering that both Giuliani and Romney were quite liberal as Mayor and Governor, respectively. Not that Bush is much of a conservative, but Giuliani is pro-gay, pro-choice, and what we used to call a "liberal Republican" while Romney was more of the same until he had a sudden epiphany and became anti-abortion. OF course, Giuliani has the credibility to be a jack-booted thug when it comes to terrorism, since that's what he did about crime in New York City.
He's the Republican Obama, circa 2006!
But you know you're not standing on Mars, so it doesn't feel the same. Just like watching a video of a rock concert isn't the same as really being there, even if you play it really loud and get a bunch of strangers to stand around you cheering. Of course, I never really expected you to get the point anyway.
Some things are more efficient to run in software--example, the fan system on the old G5 Power Macs. Although in that case, without supporting hardware all the fans just run at full speed all the time.
What it feels like to stand on Mars, you unromantic nerd.
And my point is that a Mac is designed and sold as an integrated system, and if you replace parts of that integrated system, you do so at your own risk. The integrated system is designed so that the laptop does not run with the lid closed unless it is capable of safely doing so. Systems that can safely do so are designed to wake up with the lid closed provided a certain stimulus (plugging in a display or keyboard) is provided. This is probably a combination of firmware and OS support. Also, all systems are designed to enter sleep mode when the lid is closed, absent a connected display or keyboard. This is certainly done by the OS, because the OS activates the sleep mode. For a number of reasons, it's the best possible design choice (for an integrated system) for the OS to handle this function, so if you replace the OS, you had either better replace it with an OS that also handles the same function, or be cautious to manually enter sleep mode before closing the lid as a workaround.
You are still making the fallacy of treating a Mac as a series of unrelated components that interface together. If you want a system like that, buy or build a PC and load Linux on it. If you want to use Mac hardware with Linux, do so keeping in mind that the Mac hardware is intended to be used as an integrated system with Mac OS X, and that design decisions are made with this in mind, not with the intention of making things easier for people who want to run Linux on their Macs. You are faulting Apple for poor design without understanding the full rationale behind their design decisions and the difference between their design goals and a PC's design goals.