....because they reckon it is cheaper to reimburse people for the actions of fraudsters after the fact...
It is probably true that at least so far, the losses are smaller than the costs of better security would be. A customer who lost or misplaced their token would soon find out that his neighbors bank did not have such a hassle and switch to that bank that only had a simple password. People do lose their keys to cars and houses and will resist to having to carry another key they could lose. There always will be a trade-off between convenience and security. Most people will gamble on the side of convenience and easy usability.
...the Blu-ray format should become much more attractive and take off with consumers.....
only if the price of the players and the disks are sold for no more than present DVDs. Most consumers cannot tell the difference in the sound of mp3 files and of a CD disk. But mp3s are much more convenient. Unless shown on a TV 50"+ the quality blu-ray over normal, especially up-converted DVDs, is not all the noticeable. The rapid transition from VHS to DVD was driven mostly by convenience, not that DVDs picture on the then existing analog TV sets was that much better. Other than an increase in quality, blu-ray has no huge advantage over regular DVDs. The computer business has got the principle, especially Apple, of giving better performance for the same price, not necessarily greatly reducing the price. Hollywood apparently has not grasped that yet. In their eyes the higher data content of HD blu-ray should cost proportionately more.
....the old ways that have been proven to not work....
Incidentally, you did not read the last part of my post. If you had you would know that I am not advocating returning to the old ways of doing things. That used to work when people were are less selfish, and above all did pay at least lip service to God's commandment to love one another. Unfortunately, it seems today, people have to be forced to do by the government what they used to do freely, without government involvement. This was especially true for sons and daughters who would see to it that their aged parents were properly cared for. Today the younger generation relegates their parents to an old folks home and expects the government to pay for it.
Fathers have to be hunted down by the police and forced to pay for the illegitimate children they are responsible for or their wives and children they abandoned. That was not much of an issue back when most people still believed in the what today is widely labeled "myth" of God and His judgement awaiting wrongdoers. Today, the "enlightened" people no longer believe in God and being responsible to Him someday. So now they have to be held responsible by the government. Some get hauled kicking and screaming into court, have their wages garnisheed, threatened with jail, their drivers license suspended and other forcible measures taken against them. They old ways DID work just fine for centuries simply because the majority of people were not yet "enlightened" as most believe themselves to be today. The forced social systems are necessary today, but are we doing things really better than how our forebears did them?
... Other costs like administrative overhead (particularly from dealing with multiple insurance carriers) and malpractice costs (particularly compensatory damages) could be greatly reduced in a public system in a way that charity-driven operations could not....
Public health care does sound very good on paper and in speeches. What if it is looked at in how it works out in practice for societies that have such a system in place?
In Canada, as in most such countries, everybody can get healthcare EVENTUALLY. A person has to be willing or able to wait long enough. For those Canadians who don't want to wait, those who can afford it, travel to the US to see a doctor right away. Here in the US at least those who can afford health care don't have to travel to a foreign country to obtain it in a reasonable time frame. This was also true for my mother in Germany, until she finally became deathly ill, whereupon she did get treatment from their public health care system.
Public healthcare sounds good in theory, but in practice there are significant problems. Even with the HMO Kaiser I used to belong to, as paid by my employer, it took a long time to get and appointment unless it was medically urgent or an emergency.
(...we don't get to choose favorites...)
God's admonition to love one another doesn't have strings attached. Here is what Jesus said on the subject:
Matthew 5:43 "You have heard that it was said, "You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy." 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who despitefully use you and persecute you, 45 so that you may become sons of your Father in Heaven. For He makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax-collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet your brothers only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax-collectors do so? 48 Therefore be perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect."
As an aside -- it seems that tax collectors were not highly though of in those days either.:-)
(...And if they were doing such a great job of it, we wouldn't have Social Security today. Can you deny this?...)
As time went on people ignored God's word more and more, making it finally necessary to institute a secular mechanism to take the place of voluntary caring, based on love for God as expressed by love for one another. So yes, forced Social Security and redistributive taxation had to become a second rate substitute for personal loving care freely given. Such as it is, that is therefore better than nothing.
Still, when the sheriff shows up to evict you, nuance is not going to make a difference to you or him. Also, unless you paid that $130,000 in cash or paid off any loan in full, you might have had on that property, the sheriff may come on behalf of the mortgage holder, rather than the tax collector. The bottom line is that nobody but the king "owns" real estate. The king rents it to you for a certain amount each year and will evict you in the same way that a renter of an apartment is evicted by the landlord if the rent is not paid.
...Government is bailing out the *capitalists*, with the workers' money...
Exactly right! Any kind of redistribution of wealth is not and has not been the job of any government until the ideas of Marx and others became popular. But then we must ensure that the bankers who screwed up by their greed can still drive their BMWs and Hummers. As long as money is involved in any way in determining who gets to run for and then finally gets elected into office, that is how long that system will remain in place.
Of course, the wealthy have always exploited and oppressed the poor. In a democratically elected government the mechanism is a little different by the holding of elections, but the end result is still the same. Eventually the masses of the poor may rise up, but that has at times been a rather bloody affair.
Historically mankind has amply demonstrated that human selfishness cannot be overcome very long by governments and laws they make.
....The Federal government is limited in its actions by the 14th Amendment's requirement to provide equal protection under the law...
So you are equating "protection under law" with handouts and forced wealth redistribution? That idea was foreign to most, if not all societies until Carl Marx and those of like mind came along. Before then, charity for the less fortunate was an individual choice rather than a societal coercion. The second commandment God gave was to love your neighbor as yourself. In the early days of our country, most people, even if they did not believe in the Bible personally, gave at least some lip service to that by freely giving to the needy either directly, individually, or through the churches or other faith based organizations.
As for taking care of the old folks, that has for millennia been the responsibility of the next of kin, usually the children. Nowadays we have to send the police after selfish men, just so they will take care of their own children and their mothers, not to mention their aging parents. Human selfishness is a social cost no government can wholly counteract.
Before health insurance was invented, doctors were less money hungry and were interested foremost in the health of their patients, not whether a given patient was able to pay. Many of the old country doctors would treat indigent people for nothing, because in those days people became doctors in order to serve their fellow human beings, rather than having a way to make a big income. Their hippocratic oath still was paid attention to. Therein it says something about not doing harm. Does that harm include taking a person to the cleaners financially?
.... I paid $130,000 for it, and it belongs to me,...
No, all land belongs to the King (government) even still today. It has been that way for centuries. Just stop paying your property tax and see what happens to your property. Eventually the King's sheriff will come and throw you off "your" land.
...The reason I support a government that looks out for it's citizens...
The top job of any government is to keep its subjects (citizens) from taking unfair advantage of one another by instituting fair laws, and providing a defense against outside agreeors. The collecting taxes to was only for these purposes.. The job of taking care of your fellow man is YOUR job, not the government's. That is how it was in this and other countries, until Marx and others of that philosophy came along. People who had a heart for the poor and other unfortunates freely gave of their substance either directly or through various charities organized for that purpose. The key here is people FREELY gave, out of love and caring, not out of governmental compulsion.
The category "fellow man" includes corporations which of course are nothing but an artificial construct instituted by governments.
Therefore, give your voluntary extra money directly to some community need you deem important, rather than having the government waste a large fraction of it in its bureaucratic apparatus and giving your money to some deadbeat drug user.
....Its purpose is not to raid your neighbors paychecks...
Maybe, but any government, including the US. that has a different tax RATE for different people is doing, and has been doing exactly that for a long time. It is part and parcel of the Marx philosophy which is at the core of most tax systems today. When this country started, taxes were ONLY used for the actual costs of governing. Never did any governmental entity take money form some people and then turn around and simply GIVE all or some of it to other people. Taxes should ONLY be used to pay for the costs of government, not for social engineering purposes.
That is the operative word for Linux. With that operating system it is the same as the working fusion power reactor. It has been and still is about 25 years in the future.
....In fact, the mechanism for doing so by gravitational means is what is described in this fine article...
No, it is an interpretation how such radiation MIGHT be produced by gravitational mens. However, here on earth, by actual EXPERIMENTS we do this daily using electricity. Nobody has EVER created even a single high energy photon by any means other than moving electrical charges. The same is true of magnetic fields.
(...Are you suggesting that it is magnetism that keeps the planets in their orbits?...)
No, of course not, but then planet are mostly electrically neutral. This is not true of the sun or stars. They are electrically active, as well as massive gravitationally. Gravity and electricity have to considered together.
(....when they are not necessary or sufficient to explain observations...)
That is the big problem, explaining the observations WITHOUT taking the electrical interaction into account as well, leads to some of the "exotic" constructs, such as black holes, quasars, dark matter and dark energy. If electricity and its accompanying magnetic fields are ALSO considered, the need for such exotica disappears and the universe, even very far away becomes just as ordinary as it is here around earth and our solar system.
(..It is not outrageous to consider that an object may be massive enough so that light cannot escape it...)
Just because it is mathematically possible to conceive of and calculate the possible properties of such an object, doesn't mean automatically that such a thing must actually exist in reality. The same can be said for the other exotica cosmologists mathematically theorize. Mathematics and science are NOT one and the same.
(..Relativity at this point is one of the most well-tested theories in the history of science...)
True, as I experienced first hand when we first switched on the Stanford Linear Accelerator back in 1967. IF, and that is an unproven IF, black holes, if they existed not only in mathematical interpretations of observations, but could be directly observed, should be subject to relativity. Indeed, IF an object really existed that were as massive as black holes are theorized to be, it should "absorb" light. My point is, that well known and tested electrical laws can equally well, in a much simpler fashion explain the observations we actually make.
(...You keep linking these factoids together as if they mean something...)
Are you disputing that plasma is NOT the form in which most matter in the universe occurs? The cosmic background radiation is an ELECTRICAL fact we actually measure. The whole Universe is pervaded by electrical activity. Plasma is definitely NOT electrically neutral neither here on earth in real experiments, nor in the reaches of distant galaxies.
(...I for one experience gravity on a daily basis..)
So does everybody else. We also experience time and yet there also, nobody really knows what and why there is this thing we call time and why it seems to only go in one direction. Just because something can be measured and experienced, doesn't tell us its intrinsic nature.
(...Start with disproving relativity...)
Why? If the conjectured, exotic entities in space were real, they definitely would be affected by relativity. The existence of relativity doesn't affect whether these things exist in reality, rather than only in mathematical theories.
(...Hopefully this will also explain what we observe as gravitational lensing...)
What we actually observe is the fact that star light passing near an object, such as a our sun is slightly displaced or bent. This has been INTERPRETED to be due to the gravity of the sun. Since light is an electrical activity, it will respond to any electric fields in the neighborhood of the sun 36 orders of magnitude more readily than gravity. So what has been attributed to gravity can also be caused by an electric or magnetic field, including the high radiation from the sun and the solar wind.
Most interpretation of cosmological observations, including black holes are based on the operation of the gravitational force alone. That is an interpretive assumption, not an observation. We know about other interactions besides the gravitational one, most notably the electrical force. Objects that have been interpreted to be black holes and other exotic constructs are observed to be giving off large amounts of highly energetic radiation. The only way known to science how to generate such radiation is by electrical means. It is also observed that there are large magnetic fields in space and on the Sun. Again, the only way we know of to generate a magnetic field is by the movement of electrical charges. In most currently accepted mainstream cosmological interpretations, the electrical force is largely ignored. For this reason it has become necessary to propose objects such as black holes with immense gravitational fields, to explain the energetic outbursts we observe in certain places of the universe.
Because the electrical force is 39 orders of magnitude greater than gravity, it would certainly dominate in any environment that is not largely electrically neutral, such as we have it here on earth. The most common form of matter in the universe is not gas, liquid or solid such as we are familiar with, but a highly charged, electrically active plasma, such as on the Sun, in the solar wind which envelops the earth and most of the solar system. Of the known fundamental forces of nature, gravity is actually the least understood, whereas we know and experience the electrical interaction every day. In the standard model of particle physics, gravity seems to stand out like a sore thumb that nobody really knows how to integrate with the other forces. It is hoped that experiments with the new LHC in Europe some observational light can be shed on this mystery.
In short, black holes, quasars and other "exotic" objects are mathematical fictions that are constructed to explain the observation of high energy phenomena by the action of gravity alone.
...without saying what the proposed red-shift origination really is which can support the observed red-shift...
The red shift as measured, does not occur continuously, but in little jumps. That is, it is observed to be quantized. That observation tells us only one sure thing and that is the red shift cannot be due to doppler motion. It is inconceivable that stars and galaxies should move only in discrete velocities.
Since atomic phenomena are quantized, the observed quantization of the red shift must be in some way connected to atomic behavior. There is also evidence that certain constants, which govern atomic behavior, such as Planck's constant h and its inverse the speed of light c have not necessarily had the same value as we measure them today.
There is no law of physics that mandates that these "constants" should be invariant over overlarge spans of time. We also know from measurements, that the speed of light is greatly affected by the medium through which it travels. As the universe expanded from the beginning, possibly from what scientists have labeled a singularity, its density and therefore the properties of space itself has changed greatly. This would cause a continuous shift upward in Planck's constant h and a downward shift in c. Atomic orbits would not be able to shift continuously, but only in discrete quantized energy levels. This would affect mandate that the wavelengths of light radiated by stars and other celestial light sources also be quantized. This is what we indeed observe as we look back into the past of the universe.
If you are interested in researching this further, just google for "quantized red shift"/
...Once this reaches a critical point it overpowers the gravity...
Any time a gas gets very very hot, it becomes a highly active plasma subject to electrical forces 36 orders of magnitude higher than gravity. Fast-moving charges, being accelerated by electrical fields of enormous intensity can produce incredible amounts of high-energy radiation. There is no known way to generate such radiation other than by accelerating charges. In addition to gravity, there must be considerable electrical activity in the neighborhood of any black hole if indeed there is even such a thing.
....I'm not sure I buy that as setting an upper limit on the size of a black hole...
I am not sure that I buy existence of a black hole, since nobody has ever actually observed one. There are certain observations made which has been interpreted to be evidence of black holes. There are however other possible interpretations of that which is observed. Everything about black holes is based on mathematics which is in turn based on interpretations of certain observations.
....but when he discovered that the expansion is accelerating...
That was not a discovery, but an interpretation based on the assumption (belief) that the observed red-shift is due to the doppler effect. There is increasing evidence, that the red shift cannot be due to any large-scale motion or expansion of the universe.
...I doubt anybody will be argument for a VAT or GST type tax in the United States anytime soon...
That is because these taxes as they are implemented ARE only a tax on the consumption of little consumers. The big speculators in stocks, currency, commodities, real estate and other "markets" shuffle billions around each day, none of which is taxed. When a company like Microsoft buys some other company for billions, that transaction is not taxed in any way either. A 1%-2% tax on such wealth shuffling exchanges should not be too burdensome. Someone shuffling their wealth from one investment to another would pay the tax. Only those who keep their money in a mattress would escape such a tax.
The small total transaction tax would levied on the buyer ANY TIME value is exchanged, no matter what the value represents. The key is the tax would have to be small, (not more than 2%) for each transaction. With modern computers such a tax would be easy to collect.
Since those that have and/or control huge amounts of wealth also control the governments and all laws, such a system would never come into being unless the common people wrested such control back to themselves. That is sometimes called a revolution.
....may be enough to reduce my gross income so that I have to choose between food and fuel....
A solution might be to tax OUTgo rather than INcome and get rid of all other taxes. That tax would have to include ALL spending, not just necessities. A rich person or company buying stock or another company or anything else would be taxed on that also, not only the consumers buying bread and gasoline they buy, as it is with sales tax today. In short have a flat TRANSACTION or MONEYFLOW tax. All the incessant speculative trading in all "markets" could be taxed. This tax might only have to be a percent or two. However it would work only if NO transaction was exempt and all transactions were taxed the same. One big company buying another for $10 billion would pay $100-200 million in taxes.
A normal working person might only have to pay $1 or $2 when buying a $1000 item. A $200,000 house purchase might cost $2000 to $4000 in tax.
The big problem would be not in collecting the tax, but in distributing the collected taxes equitably among the various levels of government.
....they might discover information to be used to ruin that guy's life...
Unless a person really DOES live in a clean way, so that his/her life CAN be examined closely and still there really IS nothing bad there. The question is: Are there still people like this? Have there ever been?
....Macintosh has the advantage of being a sole-source system, where the design is strictly regulated by Apple....
Which is the main reason why Apple computers will always be better. The more freedom and control a designer has, of a computer an automobile, the better the end product can be. Is that so hard to understand?
But it is precisely for that reason that Apple computers are superior. Apple is not interested in building rock bottom computer hardware or rock bottom anything else. There are cheaper phones and music players also than the ones you can buy from Apple.
Apple is not a charity, but a for profit corporation. It will always be possible for them to build a complete computer that works better than all the other companies who only build a partial computer. The heart of the computer is not the hardware, but the software. It is possible to load Windows onto a Apple Computer. Once that is done however, that Apple Computer is just as susceptible to all the viruses worms and other computer varmints and will function just fine in any bot-net, spewing forth spam as expeditiously any Dell system would. It might also occasionally entertain the user with a BSOD. In fact, some organizations have tested Apple laptops with Windows and found them to be as good or in some cases better than other name=brand systems of about the same price.
....How many binary file formats can you search that way....
How many grandmas do you know or think you might know or imagine, who want to search a binary file? How many would even know what a binary file is for? OK, this is/. and how many grandmas visit here? You're excused!
Slashdot Mirror
...How can big business buy votes if they don't know who voted for what?...
Simply promise the political critter that he/she will get the money only when the bill the monied sponsor wants becomes law.
....because they reckon it is cheaper to reimburse people for the actions of fraudsters after the fact...
It is probably true that at least so far, the losses are smaller than the costs of better security would be. A customer who lost or misplaced their token would soon find out that his neighbors bank did not have such a hassle and switch to that bank that only had a simple password. People do lose their keys to cars and houses and will resist to having to carry another key they could lose. There always will be a trade-off between convenience and security. Most people will gamble on the side of convenience and easy usability.
...the Blu-ray format should become much more attractive and take off with consumers.....
only if the price of the players and the disks are sold for no more than present DVDs. Most consumers cannot tell the difference in the sound of mp3 files and of a CD disk. But mp3s are much more convenient. Unless shown on a TV 50"+ the quality blu-ray over normal, especially up-converted DVDs, is not all the noticeable. The rapid transition from VHS to DVD was driven mostly by convenience, not that DVDs picture on the then existing analog TV sets was that much better. Other than an increase in quality, blu-ray has no huge advantage over regular DVDs. The computer business has got the principle, especially Apple, of giving better performance for the same price, not necessarily greatly reducing the price. Hollywood apparently has not grasped that yet. In their eyes the higher data content of HD blu-ray should cost proportionately more.
....the old ways that have been proven to not work....
Incidentally, you did not read the last part of my post. If you had you would know that I am not advocating returning to the old ways of doing things. That used to work when people were are less selfish, and above all did pay at least lip service to God's commandment to love one another. Unfortunately, it seems today, people have to be forced to do by the government what they used to do freely, without government involvement. This was especially true for sons and daughters who would see to it that their aged parents were properly cared for. Today the younger generation relegates their parents to an old folks home and expects the government to pay for it.
Fathers have to be hunted down by the police and forced to pay for the illegitimate children they are responsible for or their wives and children they abandoned. That was not much of an issue back when most people still believed in the what today is widely labeled "myth" of God and His judgement awaiting wrongdoers. Today, the "enlightened" people no longer believe in God and being responsible to Him someday. So now they have to be held responsible by the government. Some get hauled kicking and screaming into court, have their wages garnisheed, threatened with jail, their drivers license suspended and other forcible measures taken against them. They old ways DID work just fine for centuries simply because the majority of people were not yet "enlightened" as most believe themselves to be today. The forced social systems are necessary today, but are we doing things really better than how our forebears did them?
...then encrypted data is safe ....
Unless the rubber hose decryption algorithm is applied to the suspect. Only if the suspect dies first, will the message not be decrypted.
... Other costs like administrative overhead (particularly from dealing with multiple insurance carriers) and malpractice costs (particularly compensatory damages) could be greatly reduced in a public system in a way that charity-driven operations could not....
Public health care does sound very good on paper and in speeches. What if it is looked at in how it works out in practice for societies that have such a system in place?
In Canada, as in most such countries, everybody can get healthcare EVENTUALLY. A person has to be willing or able to wait long enough. For those Canadians who don't want to wait, those who can afford it, travel to the US to see a doctor right away. Here in the US at least those who can afford health care don't have to travel to a foreign country to obtain it in a reasonable time frame. This was also true for my mother in Germany, until she finally became deathly ill, whereupon she did get treatment from their public health care system.
Public healthcare sounds good in theory, but in practice there are significant problems. Even with the HMO Kaiser I used to belong to, as paid by my employer, it took a long time to get and appointment unless it was medically urgent or an emergency.
(...we don't get to choose favorites...)
God's admonition to love one another doesn't have strings attached. Here is what Jesus said on the subject:
Matthew 5:43 "You have heard that it was said, "You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy." 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who despitefully use you and persecute you, 45 so that you may become sons of your Father in Heaven. For He makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax-collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet your brothers only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax-collectors do so? 48 Therefore be perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect."
As an aside -- it seems that tax collectors were not highly though of in those days either. :-)
(...And if they were doing such a great job of it, we wouldn't have Social Security today. Can you deny this?...)
As time went on people ignored God's word more and more, making it finally necessary to institute a secular mechanism to take the place of voluntary caring, based on love for God as expressed by love for one another. So yes, forced Social Security and redistributive taxation had to become a second rate substitute for personal loving care freely given. Such as it is, that is therefore better than nothing.
...to capture the nuance..
Still, when the sheriff shows up to evict you, nuance is not going to make a difference to you or him. Also, unless you paid that $130,000 in cash or paid off any loan in full, you might have had on that property, the sheriff may come on behalf of the mortgage holder, rather than the tax collector. The bottom line is that nobody but the king "owns" real estate. The king rents it to you for a certain amount each year and will evict you in the same way that a renter of an apartment is evicted by the landlord if the rent is not paid.
...Government is bailing out the *capitalists*, with the workers' money...
Exactly right! Any kind of redistribution of wealth is not and has not been the job of any government until the ideas of Marx and others became popular. But then we must ensure that the bankers who screwed up by their greed can still drive their BMWs and Hummers. As long as money is involved in any way in determining who gets to run for and then finally gets elected into office, that is how long that system will remain in place.
Of course, the wealthy have always exploited and oppressed the poor. In a democratically elected government the mechanism is a little different by the holding of elections, but the end result is still the same. Eventually the masses of the poor may rise up, but that has at times been a rather bloody affair.
Historically mankind has amply demonstrated that human selfishness cannot be overcome very long by governments and laws they make.
....The Federal government is limited in its actions by the 14th Amendment's requirement to provide equal protection under the law...
So you are equating "protection under law" with handouts and forced wealth redistribution? That idea was foreign to most, if not all societies until Carl Marx and those of like mind came along. Before then, charity for the less fortunate was an individual choice rather than a societal coercion. The second commandment God gave was to love your neighbor as yourself. In the early days of our country, most people, even if they did not believe in the Bible personally, gave at least some lip service to that by freely giving to the needy either directly, individually, or through the churches or other faith based organizations.
As for taking care of the old folks, that has for millennia been the responsibility of the next of kin, usually the children. Nowadays we have to send the police after selfish men, just so they will take care of their own children and their mothers, not to mention their aging parents. Human selfishness is a social cost no government can wholly counteract.
Before health insurance was invented, doctors were less money hungry and were interested foremost in the health of their patients, not whether a given patient was able to pay. Many of the old country doctors would treat indigent people for nothing, because in those days people became doctors in order to serve their fellow human beings, rather than having a way to make a big income. Their hippocratic oath still was paid attention to. Therein it says something about not doing harm. Does that harm include taking a person to the cleaners financially?
.... I paid $130,000 for it, and it belongs to me,...
No, all land belongs to the King (government) even still today. It has been that way for centuries. Just stop paying your property tax and see what happens to your property. Eventually the King's sheriff will come and throw you off "your" land.
...The reason I support a government that looks out for it's citizens...
The top job of any government is to keep its subjects (citizens) from taking unfair advantage of one another by instituting fair laws, and providing a defense against outside agreeors. The collecting taxes to was only for these purposes.. The job of taking care of your fellow man is YOUR job, not the government's. That is how it was in this and other countries, until Marx and others of that philosophy came along. People who had a heart for the poor and other unfortunates freely gave of their substance either directly or through various charities organized for that purpose. The key here is people FREELY gave, out of love and caring, not out of governmental compulsion.
The category "fellow man" includes corporations which of course are nothing but an artificial construct instituted by governments.
Therefore, give your voluntary extra money directly to some community need you deem important, rather than having the government waste a large fraction of it in its bureaucratic apparatus and giving your money to some deadbeat drug user.
....Its purpose is not to raid your neighbors paychecks...
Maybe, but any government, including the US. that has a different tax RATE for different people is doing, and has been doing exactly that for a long time. It is part and parcel of the Marx philosophy which is at the core of most tax systems today. When this country started, taxes were ONLY used for the actual costs of governing. Never did any governmental entity take money form some people and then turn around and simply GIVE all or some of it to other people. Taxes should ONLY be used to pay for the costs of government, not for social engineering purposes.
....-- eventually -- ....
That is the operative word for Linux. With that operating system it is the same as the working fusion power reactor. It has been and still is about 25 years in the future.
....In fact, the mechanism for doing so by gravitational means is what is described in this fine article...
No, it is an interpretation how such radiation MIGHT be produced by gravitational mens. However, here on earth, by actual EXPERIMENTS we do this daily using electricity. Nobody has EVER created even a single high energy photon by any means other than moving electrical charges. The same is true of magnetic fields.
(...Are you suggesting that it is magnetism that keeps the planets in their orbits?...)
No, of course not, but then planet are mostly electrically neutral. This is not true of the sun or stars. They are electrically active, as well as massive gravitationally. Gravity and electricity have to considered together.
(....when they are not necessary or sufficient to explain observations...)
That is the big problem, explaining the observations WITHOUT taking the electrical interaction into account as well, leads to some of the "exotic" constructs, such as black holes, quasars, dark matter and dark energy. If electricity and its accompanying magnetic fields are ALSO considered, the need for such exotica disappears and the universe, even very far away becomes just as ordinary as it is here around earth and our solar system.
(..It is not outrageous to consider that an object may be massive enough so that light cannot escape it...)
Just because it is mathematically possible to conceive of and calculate the possible properties of such an object, doesn't mean automatically that such a thing must actually exist in reality. The same can be said for the other exotica cosmologists mathematically theorize. Mathematics and science are NOT one and the same.
(..Relativity at this point is one of the most well-tested theories in the history of science...)
True, as I experienced first hand when we first switched on the Stanford Linear Accelerator back in 1967. IF, and that is an unproven IF, black holes, if they existed not only in mathematical interpretations of observations, but could be directly observed, should be subject to relativity. Indeed, IF an object really existed that were as massive as black holes are theorized to be, it should "absorb" light. My point is, that well known and tested electrical laws can equally well, in a much simpler fashion explain the observations we actually make.
(...You keep linking these factoids together as if they mean something...)
Are you disputing that plasma is NOT the form in which most matter in the universe occurs? The cosmic background radiation is an ELECTRICAL fact we actually measure. The whole Universe is pervaded by electrical activity. Plasma is definitely NOT electrically neutral neither here on earth in real experiments, nor in the reaches of distant galaxies.
(...I for one experience gravity on a daily basis..)
So does everybody else. We also experience time and yet there also, nobody really knows what and why there is this thing we call time and why it seems to only go in one direction. Just because something can be measured and experienced, doesn't tell us its intrinsic nature.
(...Start with disproving relativity...)
Why? If the conjectured, exotic entities in space were real, they definitely would be affected by relativity. The existence of relativity doesn't affect whether these things exist in reality, rather than only in mathematical theories.
(...Hopefully this will also explain what we observe as gravitational lensing...)
What we actually observe is the fact that star light passing near an object, such as a our sun is slightly displaced or bent. This has been INTERPRETED to be due to the gravity of the sun. Since light is an electrical activity, it will respond to any electric fields in the neighborhood of the sun 36 orders of magnitude more readily than gravity. So what has been attributed to gravity can also be caused by an electric or magnetic field, including the high radiation from the sun and the solar wind.
I cannot understand WHY the present cosmo
....And your alternate explanation is...?...
Most interpretation of cosmological observations, including black holes are based on the operation of the gravitational force alone. That is an interpretive assumption, not an observation. We know about other interactions besides the gravitational one, most notably the electrical force. Objects that have been interpreted to be black holes and other exotic constructs are observed to be giving off large amounts of highly energetic radiation. The only way known to science how to generate such radiation is by electrical means. It is also observed that there are large magnetic fields in space and on the Sun. Again, the only way we know of to generate a magnetic field is by the movement of electrical charges. In most currently accepted mainstream cosmological interpretations, the electrical force is largely ignored. For this reason it has become necessary to propose objects such as black holes with immense gravitational fields, to explain the energetic outbursts we observe in certain places of the universe.
Because the electrical force is 39 orders of magnitude greater than gravity, it would certainly dominate in any environment that is not largely electrically neutral, such as we have it here on earth. The most common form of matter in the universe is not gas, liquid or solid such as we are familiar with, but a highly charged, electrically active plasma, such as on the Sun, in the solar wind which envelops the earth and most of the solar system. Of the known fundamental forces of nature, gravity is actually the least understood, whereas we know and experience the electrical interaction every day. In the standard model of particle physics, gravity seems to stand out like a sore thumb that nobody really knows how to integrate with the other forces. It is hoped that experiments with the new LHC in Europe some observational light can be shed on this mystery.
In short, black holes, quasars and other "exotic" objects are mathematical fictions that are constructed to explain the observation of high energy phenomena by the action of gravity alone.
...without saying what the proposed red-shift origination really is which can support the observed red-shift...
The red shift as measured, does not occur continuously, but in little jumps. That is, it is observed to be quantized. That observation tells us only one sure thing and that is the red shift cannot be due to doppler motion. It is inconceivable that stars and galaxies should move only in discrete velocities.
Since atomic phenomena are quantized, the observed quantization of the red shift must be in some way connected to atomic behavior. There is also evidence that certain constants, which govern atomic behavior, such as Planck's constant h and its inverse the speed of light c have not necessarily had the same value as we measure them today.
There is no law of physics that mandates that these "constants" should be invariant over overlarge spans of time. We also know from measurements, that the speed of light is greatly affected by the medium through which it travels. As the universe expanded from the beginning, possibly from what scientists have labeled a singularity, its density and therefore the properties of space itself has changed greatly. This would cause a continuous shift upward in Planck's constant h and a downward shift in c. Atomic orbits would not be able to shift continuously, but only in discrete quantized energy levels. This would affect mandate that the wavelengths of light radiated by stars and other celestial light sources also be quantized. This is what we indeed observe as we look back into the past of the universe.
If you are interested in researching this further, just google for "quantized red shift"/
...Once this reaches a critical point it overpowers the gravity...
Any time a gas gets very very hot, it becomes a highly active plasma subject to electrical forces 36 orders of magnitude higher than gravity. Fast-moving charges, being accelerated by electrical fields of enormous intensity can produce incredible amounts of high-energy radiation. There is no known way to generate such radiation other than by accelerating charges. In addition to gravity, there must be considerable electrical activity in the neighborhood of any black hole if indeed there is even such a thing.
....I'm not sure I buy that as setting an upper limit on the size of a black hole...
I am not sure that I buy existence of a black hole, since nobody has ever actually observed one. There are certain observations made which has been interpreted to be evidence of black holes. There are however other possible interpretations of that which is observed. Everything about black holes is based on mathematics which is in turn based on interpretations of certain observations.
....but when he discovered that the expansion is accelerating ...
That was not a discovery, but an interpretation based on the assumption (belief) that the observed red-shift is due to the doppler effect. There is increasing evidence, that the red shift cannot be due to any large-scale motion or expansion of the universe.
...I doubt anybody will be argument for a VAT or GST type tax in the United States anytime soon...
That is because these taxes as they are implemented ARE only a tax on the consumption of little consumers. The big speculators in stocks, currency, commodities, real estate and other "markets" shuffle billions around each day, none of which is taxed. When a company like Microsoft buys some other company for billions, that transaction is not taxed in any way either. A 1%-2% tax on such wealth shuffling exchanges should not be too burdensome. Someone shuffling their wealth from one investment to another would pay the tax. Only those who keep their money in a mattress would escape such a tax.
The small total transaction tax would levied on the buyer ANY TIME value is exchanged, no matter what the value represents. The key is the tax would have to be small, (not more than 2%) for each transaction. With modern computers such a tax would be easy to collect.
Since those that have and/or control huge amounts of wealth also control the governments and all laws, such a system would never come into being unless the common people wrested such control back to themselves. That is sometimes called a revolution.
....may be enough to reduce my gross income so that I have to choose between food and fuel....
A solution might be to tax OUTgo rather than INcome and get rid of all other taxes. That tax would have to include ALL spending, not just necessities. A rich person or company buying stock or another company or anything else would be taxed on that also, not only the consumers buying bread and gasoline they buy, as it is with sales tax today. In short have a flat TRANSACTION or MONEYFLOW tax. All the incessant speculative trading in all "markets" could be taxed. This tax might only have to be a percent or two. However it would work only if NO transaction was exempt and all transactions were taxed the same. One big company buying another for $10 billion would pay $100-200 million in taxes.
A normal working person might only have to pay $1 or $2 when buying a $1000 item. A $200,000 house purchase might cost $2000 to $4000 in tax.
The big problem would be not in collecting the tax, but in distributing the collected taxes equitably among the various levels of government.
....they might discover information to be used to ruin that guy's life...
Unless a person really DOES live in a clean way, so that his/her life CAN be examined closely and still there really IS nothing bad there. The question is: Are there still people like this? Have there ever been?
....Macintosh has the advantage of being a sole-source system, where the design is strictly regulated by Apple....
Which is the main reason why Apple computers will always be better. The more freedom and control a designer has, of a computer an automobile, the better the end product can be. Is that so hard to understand?
....provider for both OS and hardware...
But it is precisely for that reason that Apple computers are superior. Apple is not interested in building rock bottom computer hardware or rock bottom anything else. There are cheaper phones and music players also than the ones you can buy from Apple.
Apple is not a charity, but a for profit corporation. It will always be possible for them to build a complete computer that works better than all the other companies who only build a partial computer. The heart of the computer is not the hardware, but the software. It is possible to load Windows onto a Apple Computer. Once that is done however, that Apple Computer is just as susceptible to all the viruses worms and other computer varmints and will function just fine in any bot-net, spewing forth spam as expeditiously any Dell system would. It might also occasionally entertain the user with a BSOD. In fact, some organizations have tested Apple laptops with Windows and found them to be as good or in some cases better than other name=brand systems of about the same price.
....How many binary file formats can you search that way....
How many grandmas do you know or think you might know or imagine, who want to search a binary file? How many would even know what a binary file is for? OK, this is /. and how many grandmas visit here? You're excused!