I bet next you're going to tell us how we are all born into a "social contract" that we never agreed to and have no recourse against, right?
You can always emigrate. Read Plato's Crito for a classical argument about recourse to the social contract (one the American founding fathers were well aware of).
freedom is a gift benevolently bestowed upon us by society and not self-evident, right?
Natural rights theory traditionally relies on a belief in a higher power who endows human beings with some rights regardless of what the community says. Theism isn't too popular these days, especially on Slashdot. Once you recognize there's no convincing proof of God for the people around you, the only defensible forms of political theory are the various brands of utilitarianism: you have these freedoms, because the community in general gets on better if you have them, not because they are somehow innate.
I'd recommend reading the debates around the writing of the Constitution (Signet Classics has published many of the relevant texts). Free commerce between states is vital for keeping the nation unified.
It's only when they find their way into the hands of an end user that they are liable to the sales tax, or the equivalent state use tax.
Use taxes are a fairly recent innovation that seeks to get around the longstanding tradition of no taxes on out-of-state purchases. They are a perversion of the law.
Just as important, it's not interstate commerce when you have a business presence in-state. The affiliates ARE that presence
I don't dispute that. But usually when the question of Amazon and taxes comes up, some on Slashdot post as if, regardless of presence, Amazon is doing wrong. They are doing nothing different from the long, accepted mail order tradition.
Competition between out-of-state retailers and local business is not some new thing that arose with the internet. The Sears catalogue did the same thing in the 19th century and local businesses still survived. That there shall not be tariffs on commerce between states is a cornerstone of our nation. Do you want to junk it?
Because of the closing of many neighbourhood book and CD shops, and the shrinking selection at those locations that remain open, you often can't "buy it at the store today" and online is the only way to go anyway.
Come on, even Stallman and the FSF called off their Amazon boycott years ago after being satisfied that the accumulation of patents was for defensive purposes only.
The thing I find most baffling with the WP7 switch is that I do not see what they plan to sell to replace their low-end phones...
Nokia figures have voiced their doubt that the company had any future in the low-end market anyway because of rising competition from Chinese makers who can undercut them.
But I guess the marketing mentality somehow, somewhere, has taken over./looks at Gnome 3.0
Gnome 3.0 deserved the update of the major version number because the libraries it depends on have been extensively revised (GTK+ went to version 3.0, for example).
The Estonian police don't bully anyone for speaking Russian. I usually speak Russian with older people when visiting Estonia -- which I do several times a year -- and never has anyone batted an eye (and they don't usually notice that I'm not a native Russian).
...up to forbidding to speak the Russian language in public places.
Even when tensions were highest in Estonia, half of the public conversations one heard on the street where in Russian. While there may be cause for concern with the way that the Baltic governments treated their Russian minorities, this kind of hyperbole is not helpful.
The UN in general, and certainly UNESCO in specific, is not important to the real world in any way, shape or form.
A lot of local economies would beg to differ. All kinds of communities around the globe have wanted their local sites to be recognized by UNESCO, because it increases tourism remarkably. Also, UNESCO has done good work empowering some indigenous communities and helping them challenge exploitation and discrimination, especially in the Americas.
My university library has placed some (and only some) books in a closed stack while larger facilities are being built, and it's apologizing profusely for the inconvenience. Closed stacks are not seen a desirable longterm situation in these parts.
Look, even if you see this as a sign of technology, you can still commiserate a bit with people who have dedicated years to study only to find job opportunities are no longer there. You can also ponder if technological progress has meant there are less and less job opportunities. People have ever fewer jobs to retrain for. At some point robots might be doing the bulk of the work, and what's left is outsourced.
Becoming a librarian has been a pretty crappy career path for some time, involving long education to the M.Sc level only to receive poverty-level wages in many places. Now with mechanical systems, there's ever fewer job opportunities. The workforce at my university library has been heavily reduced in recent years.
Amazon need to add a rating system for service/delivery etc for the morons who don't understand the purpose of the rating system that exists but who also need an outlet to complain about their experience.
There's already such a system but you can only rate service and delivery of items ordered from third-party sellers, not Amazon itself.
after the development of academic philosophies, instead of just adopting these codes because they make for better societies
Academic philosophies are divided between utilitarianism and various forms of natural rights theory. They are so gridlocked that choosing one as the best is essentially a religious choice and not much different than just accepting whatever some religious body teaches as the best way to go.
At first I thought "Wow, the 50 Cent Army got their post in here really quickly", but then I was thrilled to see that the Ladyboy Hermaphrodite troll is back. We've missed you, sir.
There are plenty of people in the Western world who have the dedication to save energy in their daily lives.
There are not enough such people to compensate for those who are wasting energy. No wide-scale environmental problem has been solved by individuals deciding to live in an environmentally friendly fashion. They have been solved through large policy changes involving carrots and sticks on society at large.
The torrentfreak crowd have often noted that measures designed to crack down on filesharing also have serious ramifications for privacy and free speech. While their goals may be somewhat selfish, they are also looking out for all internet users, even those who don't pirate.
They care about the distribution method because presently it's the distribution method that is paying for it: television, with obligatory fees. If you foresee everything moving to the internet, then the taxes that produce these programmes will have to move from television ownership to internet subscription.
And hopefully we'll see the end of "TV networks" and regional restrictions as we know it.
That might bodes ill for local Nordic productions. The only reason that the Nordic countries can produce such high-quality programming (I loved your Uti vaar hage!) for such a small population and keep a healthy amount of fine arts on the air is because of the license fees. There's talk in Finland of just taxing everyone a certain amount regardless of whether they declare ownership of a television or not, but without state ministries exercising some benevolent control of broadcasting, you can expect most people to have access only to the lowest common denominator from the US.
Slashdot Mirror
You can always emigrate. Read Plato's Crito for a classical argument about recourse to the social contract (one the American founding fathers were well aware of).
Natural rights theory traditionally relies on a belief in a higher power who endows human beings with some rights regardless of what the community says. Theism isn't too popular these days, especially on Slashdot. Once you recognize there's no convincing proof of God for the people around you, the only defensible forms of political theory are the various brands of utilitarianism: you have these freedoms, because the community in general gets on better if you have them, not because they are somehow innate.
I'd recommend reading the debates around the writing of the Constitution (Signet Classics has published many of the relevant texts). Free commerce between states is vital for keeping the nation unified.
Use taxes are a fairly recent innovation that seeks to get around the longstanding tradition of no taxes on out-of-state purchases. They are a perversion of the law.
I don't dispute that. But usually when the question of Amazon and taxes comes up, some on Slashdot post as if, regardless of presence, Amazon is doing wrong. They are doing nothing different from the long, accepted mail order tradition.
Competition between out-of-state retailers and local business is not some new thing that arose with the internet. The Sears catalogue did the same thing in the 19th century and local businesses still survived. That there shall not be tariffs on commerce between states is a cornerstone of our nation. Do you want to junk it?
Because of the closing of many neighbourhood book and CD shops, and the shrinking selection at those locations that remain open, you often can't "buy it at the store today" and online is the only way to go anyway.
Come on, even Stallman and the FSF called off their Amazon boycott years ago after being satisfied that the accumulation of patents was for defensive purposes only.
"Yurt" is the term in certain Turkic languages, and "ger" in certain Mongolic languages. Neither term is more "proper" than the other.
Why the fuck do oranges have to be coloured? Are oranges not sufficiently orange?
Nokia figures have voiced their doubt that the company had any future in the low-end market anyway because of rising competition from Chinese makers who can undercut them.
It's hard to be a smartphone without a cellular stack.
They weren't smartphones, they were internet tablets.
Gnome 3.0 deserved the update of the major version number because the libraries it depends on have been extensively revised (GTK+ went to version 3.0, for example).
The Estonian police don't bully anyone for speaking Russian. I usually speak Russian with older people when visiting Estonia -- which I do several times a year -- and never has anyone batted an eye (and they don't usually notice that I'm not a native Russian).
A lot of local economies would beg to differ. All kinds of communities around the globe have wanted their local sites to be recognized by UNESCO, because it increases tourism remarkably. Also, UNESCO has done good work empowering some indigenous communities and helping them challenge exploitation and discrimination, especially in the Americas.
My university library has placed some (and only some) books in a closed stack while larger facilities are being built, and it's apologizing profusely for the inconvenience. Closed stacks are not seen a desirable longterm situation in these parts.
I knew someone was going to post this.
Look, even if you see this as a sign of technology, you can still commiserate a bit with people who have dedicated years to study only to find job opportunities are no longer there. You can also ponder if technological progress has meant there are less and less job opportunities. People have ever fewer jobs to retrain for. At some point robots might be doing the bulk of the work, and what's left is outsourced.
Becoming a librarian has been a pretty crappy career path for some time, involving long education to the M.Sc level only to receive poverty-level wages in many places. Now with mechanical systems, there's ever fewer job opportunities. The workforce at my university library has been heavily reduced in recent years.
There's already such a system but you can only rate service and delivery of items ordered from third-party sellers, not Amazon itself.
Academic philosophies are divided between utilitarianism and various forms of natural rights theory. They are so gridlocked that choosing one as the best is essentially a religious choice and not much different than just accepting whatever some religious body teaches as the best way to go.
At first I thought "Wow, the 50 Cent Army got their post in here really quickly", but then I was thrilled to see that the Ladyboy Hermaphrodite troll is back. We've missed you, sir.
There are not enough such people to compensate for those who are wasting energy. No wide-scale environmental problem has been solved by individuals deciding to live in an environmentally friendly fashion. They have been solved through large policy changes involving carrots and sticks on society at large.
Did they pay for the externalities of environmental pollution? When it comes to dumping carbon, you can't say that it's a private matter.
The torrentfreak crowd have often noted that measures designed to crack down on filesharing also have serious ramifications for privacy and free speech. While their goals may be somewhat selfish, they are also looking out for all internet users, even those who don't pirate.
They care about the distribution method because presently it's the distribution method that is paying for it: television, with obligatory fees. If you foresee everything moving to the internet, then the taxes that produce these programmes will have to move from television ownership to internet subscription.
That might bodes ill for local Nordic productions. The only reason that the Nordic countries can produce such high-quality programming (I loved your Uti vaar hage!) for such a small population and keep a healthy amount of fine arts on the air is because of the license fees. There's talk in Finland of just taxing everyone a certain amount regardless of whether they declare ownership of a television or not, but without state ministries exercising some benevolent control of broadcasting, you can expect most people to have access only to the lowest common denominator from the US.