I believe you're thinking of a charitable organization, to which donations are tax exempt. But you can be a nonprofit without being a charitable organization.
It seems like they want to have an entity around to sell their products for revenue, and they can do that now.
They could even under a nonprofit corporation. Depending on whether they can justify the business as directly relating to the mission of the nonprofit, they may or may not have to pay taxes on the income. As a for-profit, they would pay the taxes for sure.
That would be a conundrum. But if there's a corporation, it is much less messy because they can just hang on to the money while MozFoundation figures out what to do with it.
Don't think that just because a corporation is "non-profit" means that the corporation can't run a positive balance sheet. It can, and in fact a nonprofit corporation can build up huge reserves of assets, there's nothing wrong with that, so long as it's the corporation that holds those assets. In this context, "non-profit" means that the profit generated by the corporation doesn't flow to the private parties, namely, owners and shareholders. So the scenario you describe really is not necessary; in fact, I think there would be more net taxes paid doing it that way.
Just a guess, but you're maybe thinking of the Unrelated Business Income Tax. This makes it so that when a nonprofit engages in a trade or business not directly related to its mission, the proceeds from those operations are subject to tax as though they were a for-profit corporation. But if they become a for-profit corporation, they pay the taxes anyways. So this seems like a weak reason for the switch.
There's no reason that that a non-profit corporation can't have revenues. In fact, they can have massive revenues. The profits just can't accrue to private profits. So there's really only two reasons I can think of for this change: (1) the folks at Mozilla want to start getting rich, and/or (2) they want to attract private investment (which neccessarily entails revenues accruing to the investors).
Good lord, have you paid no attention to effective advertising at all?
How about an approach that doesn't center around the badness/evilness/wrongness of IE. Take a cue from other advertisements. Spend 90% of your time saying why your product is good (and for the love of jeebus, don't use anything technical OR ideological!) Spend 10% of the time bashing the competition. Example:
You know, just thinking about that for a second...that is actually a staggeringly good UI solution to this problem. Confirm, yes - and have half or more of the dialog be a huge iconic depiction of whatever code was entered. Require a 2 second delay to play it really safe. Even if the operator habitually ignored the dialog text, the huge picture that is almost instantly recognizable by the fantastic human brain as "WRONG" and should register with even the most seasoned keystroke-memorizers.
How about the micropay model? If you have a closed community, you can use the awesome power of supply-demand curves and free markets. A fractional transaction tax on the community members can pay for the community infrastructure.
Having a "receipt" is pointless, except for extortion uses; it isn't a reliable indicator of the machine tabulation and can't be used for manual recounting. Since Wisconsin already uses optical scanning ballots, a far simpler solution that will work with existing equipment is to use optical scanners for all electronic tabulation, but (where appropriate) use electronic voting systems to print the optical ballot. The voter checks in as usual and waits for the next available balloting station, which instead of a pen and paper is an electronic interface. When the voter is done making selections, the balloting station prints out an optically scannable (but still human-readable) ballot. Once the voter has the printed ballot in their grubby little hands, they can visually verify that the marks were made correctly, then walk it over to the scanner and insert it as they currently do with the hand-marked ballots. This system has the following advantages:
Can be implemented using standard off-the-shelf electronic components.
Utilizes existing equipment, reducing the cost.
Can peacefully co-exist with partial implementations.
Can gracefully fail-over to hand-marked ballots in the case of malfunction.
Does not require network or internet infrastructure.
While the tactile feedback of those old things is nice, the keyboard is deafeningly loud.
Yeah, they're loud. BFD, I say. Type hard or go home. I type loudly either way, anyways. I like to play my computer keyboard like a piano, and when I'm enthusiastic about what I'm typing (e.g., "make install [ENTER]", or "./rc.httpd restart [ENTER]"), I pound that sucker like I'm hammering out the final chords of a Tchaikovsky piano concerto.
Personally, I'm fine with minimal feedback, and would love the fact that this mouse seems to be quiet. I want one.
Then the MM seems like the worst of both worlds. Minimal tactile feedback, but with a speaker to make additional noise!
Audio feedback is not an acceptable substitute for tactile feedback. Heaven forbid you might want to work in a noisy environment, or with headphones on, or you're old and you can't hear well. Devices manipulated by your fingers should provide feedback to those fingers, not to your ears. It is not clever, it is a kludge.
I am one of those holdouts who use 20-year-old buckling spring keyboards. I find good tactile feedback to be one of the most important - and most overlooked! - aspects of human-machine interface design. I'll tentatively withold judgement on the Apple mouse until I try it, but I am irritated by the trend to remove or minimize tactile feedback.
As to the other reply about the click sound...think about what you said. Sound. In what way is a sound tactile feedback? Maybe if they put a little force feedback device in there or something...but give me microswitches any day of the week, and twice on Sunday.
we may be seeing the first *real* practical limits
Nah, it would still be an artificial limit. Let people go without power long enough, and they'll have no problem with a couple of new nuke plants. Problem solved.
why don't we switch to metric already and stop worrying about leap seconds.
Switching how we measure time does not cause the Earth to behave more predictably. The cause of the need for leap seconds is variability in the rotation time of the Earth. It really doesn't give a crap how we measure it. We wouldn't need leap seconds if the definition of the second itself was a function of the rotation time, but that would make the second a variable quantity of time, which would be a nightmare for scientific purposes (currently, it is based off the radioactice oscillations of cesium, which does not appear to change.)
Some feminists believe that it leads to objectification of women that while not criminal or even evidenced by a particular act, indelibly colors a persons attitudes and treatment of women and increases the likelihood of prejudice or violence against women. The upshot is that even while you know it's just a game, and still believe that murder is bad, etc., it has a subconscious effect.
So you sign a contract saying you'll work for the rest of your life without renumeration. Three weeks later, you're starving and want to quit the job. Should you be forced to work until you die? (Hint: No.)
That has nothing to do with the Constitution or civil rights. It is because a contract that does not have some some mutual benefits is no contract at all. In this example, there is no benefit whatsoever gained by contracting for what you could do voluntarily; thus, it is not a real contract. This would be the case whether or not you were starving.
We can think of a lot of examples where an inferior choice became the default, due to a combination of lots of different things *cough*Windows*cough*. It just pains me to see it potentially happening again, and the media so eager to help make it happen.
What makes you a fanboy is that you assume (wrongly) that what you like and enjoy is generalizable to other people. You need to understand that it is not. The vast majority of non-Japanese are not avid consumers of Japanese culture or gameplay styles, and nothing you say or show them will ever change their minds about that. Your blind prejudice in assuming that what other people prefer is "inferior" because it doesn't align with what you like is why fanboys like you are hated and loathed.
For the love of all that is not crap, please do not post comments on a subject (contract law) that you know nothing about. Almost everything you said is wrong. You most certainly CAN contract away your "civil liberties" because they are privileges against the government, not other people. Most of the examples you give, however, are still invalid, but not for the reason you think they are. A contract requires three things: an offer, consideration (something of benefit to the offeree), and acceptance. Your examples generally contain no consideration, making them no contract at all. It has (almost) nothing to do with the existence of civil liberties.
You may as well say the right to be a slave is a valuable part of our "spirit of freedom".
And indeed it is. Are you suggesting that if I undertake to voluntarily obey and work for another person without compensation, that it is illegal for me to do so? It may not be something that most people choose. But the choice is there. That is freedom.
Well, one possibility is to use the POS logs to see what time the printer was sold and check their surveillance video. Another is to interview the clerks to see if they remember descriptions of people who bought said printer. Typical police investigation stuff, it's no "magic bullet." Where it will really be useful, though, is in court. If the markings exist, that gives them damn good physical evidence to tie you to every single bill you forged. Otherwise, differentiating forgeries that are deliberately intended to be exact copies and proving that they came from one person and not another is very difficult. That's why they often needed the raw supplies, dies, or witnesses for a conviction; that or catch you with the bogus bills in your possession. This would enable a conviction based only on the recovered bills themselves (and the printer to tie them too, I suppose.)
but in practice probably totally destroyed by simply making a low-res photocopy of the document in question.
I'd just like to point out that if it forces you to make a low-res photocopy of your counterfeit currency, you either aren't going to be able to use it successfully or will be easily caught. Therefore, the system will have worked as it was intended, and you will have destroyed nothing.
so when your biggest client says " no we will not use IE as it is a security risk."
will you tell them to go away as you do not want their money?
Don't you undertand business? If that ever happens, then of course it becomes a worthwhile investment to pay for compatibility. But so long as it costs more for compatibility than you gain in sales, it's foolish to sink money into an investment with no returns! Especially in such a rapidly evolving area.
Or did the US already claim the Moon as their own so other countries cannot trespass?
The plaque left on the moon (affixed to the first LEM) reads as follows:
HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON JULY 1969, A.D. WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND
Interestingly, however, the United States (along with most spacefaring countries) has not ratified the 1979 Moon Treaty, which would basically prohibit any property rights on the moon (or other celestial bodies). So the door is still open for future ownership of lunar surface.
Well, you know how it is...a lawyer can defend anyone. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law and the facts are both against you...change the subject.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe you're thinking of a charitable organization, to which donations are tax exempt. But you can be a nonprofit without being a charitable organization.
They could even under a nonprofit corporation. Depending on whether they can justify the business as directly relating to the mission of the nonprofit, they may or may not have to pay taxes on the income. As a for-profit, they would pay the taxes for sure.
That would be a conundrum. But if there's a corporation, it is much less messy because they can just hang on to the money while MozFoundation figures out what to do with it.
Don't think that just because a corporation is "non-profit" means that the corporation can't run a positive balance sheet. It can, and in fact a nonprofit corporation can build up huge reserves of assets, there's nothing wrong with that, so long as it's the corporation that holds those assets. In this context, "non-profit" means that the profit generated by the corporation doesn't flow to the private parties, namely, owners and shareholders. So the scenario you describe really is not necessary; in fact, I think there would be more net taxes paid doing it that way.
Just a guess, but you're maybe thinking of the Unrelated Business Income Tax. This makes it so that when a nonprofit engages in a trade or business not directly related to its mission, the proceeds from those operations are subject to tax as though they were a for-profit corporation. But if they become a for-profit corporation, they pay the taxes anyways. So this seems like a weak reason for the switch.
There's no reason that that a non-profit corporation can't have revenues. In fact, they can have massive revenues. The profits just can't accrue to private profits. So there's really only two reasons I can think of for this change: (1) the folks at Mozilla want to start getting rich, and/or (2) they want to attract private investment (which neccessarily entails revenues accruing to the investors).
Why are you still running a beta version of Windows 3.0? I think the release version without the error code has been out for, oh, some time now.
How about an approach that doesn't center around the badness/evilness/wrongness of IE. Take a cue from other advertisements. Spend 90% of your time saying why your product is good (and for the love of jeebus, don't use anything technical OR ideological!) Spend 10% of the time bashing the competition. Example:
Extra shiny icons!
Super-secure!
Tabs to reduce clutter!
Super fast!
Smiling people!
All the cool kids are doing it!
...more...
Only clueless people still use IE!
You know, just thinking about that for a second...that is actually a staggeringly good UI solution to this problem. Confirm, yes - and have half or more of the dialog be a huge iconic depiction of whatever code was entered. Require a 2 second delay to play it really safe. Even if the operator habitually ignored the dialog text, the huge picture that is almost instantly recognizable by the fantastic human brain as "WRONG" and should register with even the most seasoned keystroke-memorizers.
How about the micropay model? If you have a closed community, you can use the awesome power of supply-demand curves and free markets. A fractional transaction tax on the community members can pay for the community infrastructure.
Can be implemented using standard off-the-shelf electronic components.
Utilizes existing equipment, reducing the cost.
Can peacefully co-exist with partial implementations.
Can gracefully fail-over to hand-marked ballots in the case of malfunction.
Does not require network or internet infrastructure.
Allows for voter verification.
Most importantly, allows for manual recounting.
Yeah, they're loud. BFD, I say. Type hard or go home. I type loudly either way, anyways. I like to play my computer keyboard like a piano, and when I'm enthusiastic about what I'm typing (e.g., "make install [ENTER]", or "./rc.httpd restart [ENTER]"), I pound that sucker like I'm hammering out the final chords of a Tchaikovsky piano concerto.
Personally, I'm fine with minimal feedback, and would love the fact that this mouse seems to be quiet. I want one.
Then the MM seems like the worst of both worlds. Minimal tactile feedback, but with a speaker to make additional noise!
Audio feedback is not an acceptable substitute for tactile feedback. Heaven forbid you might want to work in a noisy environment, or with headphones on, or you're old and you can't hear well. Devices manipulated by your fingers should provide feedback to those fingers, not to your ears. It is not clever, it is a kludge.
I am one of those holdouts who use 20-year-old buckling spring keyboards. I find good tactile feedback to be one of the most important - and most overlooked! - aspects of human-machine interface design. I'll tentatively withold judgement on the Apple mouse until I try it, but I am irritated by the trend to remove or minimize tactile feedback.
As to the other reply about the click sound...think about what you said. Sound. In what way is a sound tactile feedback? Maybe if they put a little force feedback device in there or something...but give me microswitches any day of the week, and twice on Sunday.
Nah, it would still be an artificial limit. Let people go without power long enough, and they'll have no problem with a couple of new nuke plants. Problem solved.
Switching how we measure time does not cause the Earth to behave more predictably. The cause of the need for leap seconds is variability in the rotation time of the Earth. It really doesn't give a crap how we measure it. We wouldn't need leap seconds if the definition of the second itself was a function of the rotation time, but that would make the second a variable quantity of time, which would be a nightmare for scientific purposes (currently, it is based off the radioactice oscillations of cesium, which does not appear to change.)
Some feminists believe that it leads to objectification of women that while not criminal or even evidenced by a particular act, indelibly colors a persons attitudes and treatment of women and increases the likelihood of prejudice or violence against women. The upshot is that even while you know it's just a game, and still believe that murder is bad, etc., it has a subconscious effect.
Just as an example.
That has nothing to do with the Constitution or civil rights. It is because a contract that does not have some some mutual benefits is no contract at all. In this example, there is no benefit whatsoever gained by contracting for what you could do voluntarily; thus, it is not a real contract. This would be the case whether or not you were starving.
What makes you a fanboy is that you assume (wrongly) that what you like and enjoy is generalizable to other people. You need to understand that it is not. The vast majority of non-Japanese are not avid consumers of Japanese culture or gameplay styles, and nothing you say or show them will ever change their minds about that. Your blind prejudice in assuming that what other people prefer is "inferior" because it doesn't align with what you like is why fanboys like you are hated and loathed.
You are incorrect. IAAL.
For the love of all that is not crap, please do not post comments on a subject (contract law) that you know nothing about. Almost everything you said is wrong. You most certainly CAN contract away your "civil liberties" because they are privileges against the government, not other people. Most of the examples you give, however, are still invalid, but not for the reason you think they are. A contract requires three things: an offer, consideration (something of benefit to the offeree), and acceptance. Your examples generally contain no consideration, making them no contract at all. It has (almost) nothing to do with the existence of civil liberties.
And indeed it is. Are you suggesting that if I undertake to voluntarily obey and work for another person without compensation, that it is illegal for me to do so? It may not be something that most people choose. But the choice is there. That is freedom.
Well, one possibility is to use the POS logs to see what time the printer was sold and check their surveillance video. Another is to interview the clerks to see if they remember descriptions of people who bought said printer. Typical police investigation stuff, it's no "magic bullet." Where it will really be useful, though, is in court. If the markings exist, that gives them damn good physical evidence to tie you to every single bill you forged. Otherwise, differentiating forgeries that are deliberately intended to be exact copies and proving that they came from one person and not another is very difficult. That's why they often needed the raw supplies, dies, or witnesses for a conviction; that or catch you with the bogus bills in your possession. This would enable a conviction based only on the recovered bills themselves (and the printer to tie them too, I suppose.)
I'd just like to point out that if it forces you to make a low-res photocopy of your counterfeit currency, you either aren't going to be able to use it successfully or will be easily caught. Therefore, the system will have worked as it was intended, and you will have destroyed nothing.
Don't you undertand business? If that ever happens, then of course it becomes a worthwhile investment to pay for compatibility. But so long as it costs more for compatibility than you gain in sales, it's foolish to sink money into an investment with no returns! Especially in such a rapidly evolving area.
The plaque left on the moon (affixed to the first LEM) reads as follows:
Interestingly, however, the United States (along with most spacefaring countries) has not ratified the 1979 Moon Treaty, which would basically prohibit any property rights on the moon (or other celestial bodies). So the door is still open for future ownership of lunar surface.
Well, you know how it is...a lawyer can defend anyone. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law and the facts are both against you...change the subject.