You obviously have no kids. Women get pretty moody while pregnant and can change lots. But further into that degree, it wasn't Anakin/Vader trying to kill her that caused her to lose the will to live, it was his turn to the dark side and the vicious creature he turned into because he wanted to "save her." She realized the monster he had become and this is why she lost her will to live. It goes much, much deeper then you are even putting into it.
As for acting, has it ever been that good throughout any of the SW movies? The actors in the original trilogy mostly fell into obscurity. The only one who had much of a career post SW was Harrison Ford. They actually used more established actors in the new trilogy, but you still had a lot of poor acting, which I would attribute more to poor direction then I would to poor actors.
Another thing is that a lot of times parts from luxury cars are interchangeable with those of lower models. I remember hearing somewhere that thefts of Acuras was up because people would buy the parts for Honda automobiles. Sometimes this is buying a bigger engine or luxury parts that they do not sell in the lower end cars. I would imagine this sort of interchange can also be done with Toyota and Lexus and pretty much any other car line and its luxury counterpart.
Some cars do make it overseas, but unless you live in or near a port city, odds are your cars are being stolen for parts. I mean why would you ship cars from middle America to a port town when you can just distribute the various parts well enough locally. Besides, most port cities have their own abundance of cars for the taking, especially when you consider the majority of the US population is still situated out towards the coasts.
To qualify for the learned professional employee exemption, all of the following tests must be met:
* The employee must be compensated on a salary or fee basis (as defined in the regulations) at a rate not less than $455 per week
* The employee's primary duty must be the performance of work requiring advanced knowledge, defined as work which is predominantly intellectual in character and which includes work requiring the consistent exercise of discretion and judgment
* The advanced knowledge must be in a field of science or learning
* The advanced knowledge must be customarily acquired by a prolonged course of specialized intellectual instruction.
Straight from the source of US Labor laws. Now some states will have different and varying rules. But that nice broad definition covers almost anyone with a higher degree who is paid on a Salary. This almost certainly covers engineers and computer scientists.
The whole notion about being salaried is that you will not receive overtime pay. If you are an "exempt employee" the notion of overtime means absolutely nothing. People should know this going into jobs and be ready for it. Most jobs I have applied for as an Electrical Engineer make it quite clear that overtime is not given and that you may be required to work 50 or 60 hr weeks.
Many applications for these same jobs often ask how many hours per week you are willing to work; this is presumably used to weed out people who are totally unwilling to work overtime. My father was a salaried employee for the better part of his 20 yrs with his company and never earned OT. He was gone to work before I ever got up at 6am and wasn't home until 5pm. Did he ever complain about the long hours or lack of OT? Nope. The next thing you know these people will be unionizing (if they haven't tried already), and I will not get into my view on unions. This is absurd. The only reason people ever win these suits is because a group of 12 citizens, most of whom are probably hourly, will be like..."I get OT, don't they?" I wonder how many of these complaints are by people in their first or second jobs. It wouldn't surprise me if it was mostly those.
what about PC gamers? I mean there are still a few of us who understand first-person shooters are best played on the PC with keyboard and mouse and some crossover games are just too clunky to play without the array of extra buttons and familiar controls. I know a few people who enjoyed KotoR and Morrowind more on the PC then on the X-Box. I do not know if any of my friends even bothered to try Oblivion outside of the PC world. I do own a PS/2, but my next console is probably a Wii (dear god why) unless the PS3 comes out low enough to make it tempting just for the Blu-Ray player.
Or does the "Head" of the NXT remind others of Johnny 5 from Short Circuit?
In any event, this sort of toy just makes me warm and fuzzy inside. Nothing like some Legos and a microcontroller to make the electrical engineer in me happy.
I will tell you the same thing I told the last guy. You HAVE to sell something in order to make money. We are talking about the idea of being charge taxes on the FMV of your items and characters. These are two different concepts. If I break a EULA and sell my characters on eBay then the government has every right to tax that as income since I did make income on selling goods.
My point is that they cannot assign an FMV to your items if they technically have no FMV. What you are mentioning is from respect to an out-dated law that required stamps for Marijuana, similar to the stamps that many states use in the taxation of tobacco and liquor products today. They use the law as a way to make some extra money, since I am sure the penalty is nothing more then a fine.
This still have nothing to do with assigning FMV to an item. Until one of you points to an instance of this, I will stand by my assertions for now. Until you have made money selling the characters, items, etc. you have not made money (or broken the EULA) making FMV pointless. I am pretty sure the wording of the law is typically used on the taxation of goods earned on game shows like the Price is Right where you rarely receive cash but instead earn TVs, furniture, cars, etc. (I am sure some of you have seen The Price is Right.) This is the kinds of things the law usually uses FMV taxation for.
Yes, but he did sell liquor and did avoid taxes. The idea presented here is taxation without having sold the account. The items have a FMV, so therefore are taxable is what we are debating. If you sell anything legal or not in the US, you are liable for the income made from it. So as you see, your analogy isn't quite right.
I will point the government to the EULA which typically state you are not allowed to sell these assets for money. Granted a large number of people do, but most of the EULAs for MMOs prevent people from selling goods or accounts. So, since you are not allowed to sell your accounts, it seems pretty hard to tax them. Also, this would just add another layer of trouble to tax agencies. They would have to retrieve account information from the companies running MMOs and then calculate how much money the accounts are worth at FMV. This would present issues since this varies by character levels, item levels, amount of virtual currency, class of characters, etc.
I think there are a great many things limiting the taxation of this "income." So, don't worry. This will not happen anytime soon.
I have a little card that shows all the dates of my shots. So luckily, I know I am up-to-date on those. Scary thing is that I have a card. I feel like a pet or something. "Why yes, I do have all my shots, see."
It wasn't too long ago I was applying to school, and only one school to which I applied required medical records to show proof of vaccination. I did not have to provide proof to my eventual school after enrolling either. Though, I am properly vaccinated and even have two non-mandatory vaccinations. Another aside, I think there has also been talk about needing to give another booster shot for MMR.
So based on your wording I am now responding on the assumption that you are serving in the US Armed Forces. How does this affect my opinion you might ask? Well, if you are stationed in Iraq how much US TV and media do you actually see? Are you sure this is the least propagandized war? And just because I do not believe in this fear does not mean they are failing. There are plenty of people who are scared to death in this country of these supposed risk. What is happening in Iraq has absolutely nothing to do with my safety in the US. How am I so sure? Because there were no WMDs in Iraq and Saddam and Al Qaeda were anything but on the same page.
You bring up the idea of military operations. Unfortunately, spying on US phones through the NSA is hardly a military operation. I still have an issue with the NSA listening to phone calls. It is absurd to say foreign communications occuring within the US. Now, if they are only listening to international calls that is different, but monitoring calls within the US s rather pointless. I would like to think terrorists sent to the US to attack us have the intelligence to blend in better and use far less traceable communications, you know, like meeting in person. Sending coded letters or intensely coded phone calls. I would be stupid to think these people our stupid.
Another thing, where do you get your definition of terrorist? Is it defined somewhere in the USC or in another law of the US? Or is it the secret military definition you use to separate the terrorist from someone else? The only one that matters is the one where it is defined in the law and the definition you gave is so nice and vague that it can be interpreted many ways. It doesn't prevent speech from being "terrorism." It can be argued that the act of speech and speaking can be used to cause terror. So, unless you know where your great definition is written into law and strictly forbids it being applied to speech, I think it is a wasted definition.
Hands in the sand? Suicidal? Isn't that what running around in Iraq with a gun is, suicidal? Tell me, since we started this war on terror how many soldiers have died in Iraq or Afghanistan? Now tell me how many US citizens have died within the border of the United States as a result of terrorism? You are not going to when any argument that we are safer having invaded Iraq. I will take arguments for Afghanistan but not Iraq. My "hands in the sand" ideology has kept me in the relative safety of the US, enjoying my freedoms and laughing at that idiot that got elected President of the US. If you seriously believe people should be complacent to their government, then you really were brainwashed in the military. In the real world, you can say No sir!
Cell phone scanning is technically illegal but that doesn't make it impossible. The network sniffing not being illegal is a shitty argument. Like most things the various authorities responsible for law making are behind the times and require large amounts of time to create effective laws for new technologies. The idea of flagging being used for keywords is also a bad idea. I mean I am writing an essay or op-ed on terrorism and happen to say "a terrorist uses bombs to blow stuff up." Oh Shit! Did I just get flagged? And what prevents them from adding things to this list of triggers. If there is NO DISCLOSURE how are we supposed to know that the government isn't abusing its power.
I have a hard time believing there is any risk. It has been almost 5 yrs since we were attacked. There has been no real evidence of any other attacks, except for a crackpot who was going to blow up his feet. We are not safe because of the actions of our government. I think if anything we have pissed off more people and become more of a target in 5 yrs time.
So, it is fine for the government to keep things from its citizens. To openly spy on them without disclosure? No one, sans the NSA and the administration know what this program consists of. And I am not sure GWB cou
such a long time ago was it now. Well, I did graduate in 2000. We had a 3-tier programming class in high school. Let me say, they were sadly deficient, at least for me. The first one taught QBasic, and I really hope they have since changed this and just start out with C. The next two classes were both of the C/C++ variety. I never took AP Programming because I knew I did not want to 'code' for a living. Turns out I might be doing more programming at my new job then I had originally expected.
In the classes, I was usually given free range to work at my own speed, which was typically far ahead of the other students. By the time I took the first programming class, I had already been using QBasic for a few years. The summer between classes, I took a class at summer camp on PASCAL. I believe the problem inherent to these classes, at least at my school, was that they were handled by the Math department.
The teachers had neither an interest or any practical experience in computer programming. The machines we used were also pretty sad at the time. During the class wth QB, we had old IBM PCs with no HDDs. Two floppy drives below a monitor, talk about out of date, even for 1996, when I first took the classes.
The machines for C/C++ were Windows based PCs running Win95. We did most of our work in DOS, a fairly painful experience, though it did not make much of a difference with the simple programs being written. I believe high schools with a large enough size should have a dedicated programming instructor. A teacher who has a degree in Computer Science or Engineering and actually has several years of experience in the area. On a normal block schedule you only need to fill up their course time for 3 blocks per semester, and I have to believe that would not be too hard by teaching classes in Java, C, C++ and, get this, Unix. I would make Unix the first computer course and maybe even get into simple programs in Unix. Then allow studnts to take courses in Java or C/C++.
Sadly, I do not think there are enough high schools that could fill up these types of classes to warrant a dedicated teacher.
I agree, the President should have had the balls to come out and say this is a war against Islamic terrorism.
A war on islamic terrorism? You really believe that stuff they feed you on Fox News don't you? This war was never about terrorism. We went into Afghanistan looking for Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. I know we didn't find Bin Laden, and does anyone have proof that Al Qaeda was there before we were or did they come in after we invaded a sovereign nation? Whether or not Afghanistan is better off post-American intervention is up for debate, but it really has no bearing on the reasons or justness of the war. If we looked back at a war, we could probably come up with a just cause for almost every one.
The one I have a bigger problem with was the war in Iraq. Did we ever find WMDs? But if you listened to the administration they were everywhere. We would find gobs and gobs of them. All we found was the leader of a nation hidden in a hole. The argument about whether or not the war was just is once again debateable. Some would argue the war was about oil; if that were the case it surely isn't reflecting in present prices. If we wanted to invade a country, why not Saudi Arabia? Oh yeah, because that would never fly. (Not like the UN is real pleased with us in Iraq either.)
Why SA you ask? Where did the majority of the 9-11 terrorist come from? They were native Saudis. Bin Laden is a Saudi. I am really seeing a pattern there. But attacking SA is not as feasible as a much less organized nation with less money and internal dissention as well.
Now, you do make a point that two people could be talking of a matter involving foreign intelligence, but if they are wiretapping US Citizens this point is mute. Something else, you say that there is nothing they can do to you unless you are babbling about crimes you committed. I contest this point; any information gathered by these illegal wiretaps that are done without probable cause or following the rules of due process will never hold up in most courts in the US. We have avoided these rights issues thus far by naming these "terrorists", Citizens or not, as enemy combatants. We will then ship them off to Guatanamo Bay or maybe even overseas, if that unconfirmed scandal of sorts actually resulted in these people being transported around the world.
I understand 1984 quite well. Yes, it deals with thought, but not in the completely total way you are making it sound. They use a similar method to what politicians and governments have been using for years: "double speak". The say one thing while meaning another. Confuse as many people as possible and make the other just agree with you. By force feeding propaganda on the war on terrorism and by attempting to create a state of fear, they are trying to control people. Do not tell me those vague wordings of possible terror attacks post-911 was for our safety. It was to create Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. You know something, it worked on a lot of people.
As for e-mail, once again I know things work. This is why I use encryption methods on really important and personal e-mails. It might be a bit paranoid, but I know if anyone is reading my mail then that they are really, really wanting to see what sort of dirty things I have to say. You still say that regular e-mail has no expectation of privacy and I really would be interested to see if the courts agree with you. People send e-mail in confidence, so how is it any different then a phone conversation. The line switching for telephones isn't that hard to intercept, and cell phones and cordless home phones both are susceptible to scanning methods. This does not mean I have some expectation of privacy when talking on the phone.
I do not know where you are getting your ideas, but I think your statements have proven my point. People are willing to accept way too much for their "safety". Have any of these changes in our country made you safer? Probably not. Just like many laws, they only make i
Okay, Go here and tell me that at 60% isn't sad. Look at some of the other countries, only Japan came in lower in recent history. This apathy does occur elsewhere, but you should have a line more like that German one. There is no good excuse for not voting, yet everyone has one.
The need to obtain valid intel to fight a war? If they are tapping the lines of American citizen telephones without the issuance of a warrant and without probably cause, they are breaking the law. This war on terror is total BS, right up there with the war on drugs. The number of pages means nothing, and front page stories means nothing if people aren't reading them.
The key to the quote you provided is "foreign intelligence". If tapping the lines of citizens qualifies as foreign intelligence, then something is wrong. Important question for you: at what point does security cross the lines of liberty? The government taps your phone and has cameras on every street corner. Some would argue the society in 1984 was pretty safe, but look at the freedom given up for that safety. The similar could be said for the society from Brave New World. Both Orwell and Huxley saw dystopian societies where things might have seemed good and everyone believed it was, but in reality the governments of these two societies were controlling its citizens as completely as possible (albeit with different methods).
How important is privacy to you? I expect my phone calls to go unmonitored and my email not to be read by prying eyes. I have a reasonable expectation of privacy when communicating in this method. I have committed no crime, so I should not have to worry about people listening to my conversations. This country was founded in revolution and when the time comes for us to rise up against the government we need a somewhat even playing ground. Many will argue privacy is a part of freedom and if you truly think that each person doesn't decide some degree of privacy, then may I come over and install cameras and listening devices throughout your house? Seriously, without privacy you have no freedom. How can I be free to do anything within the limits of the law if I know that anyone and everyone is watching? People have skeletons in their closets and they have the right to keep them there.
Okay. How about treason? Nah, too high an offense and despite the fact I could write you a very good argument for how his actions against the American people amount to treason, I doubt many people would see it my way. Okay. Try this one. Conspiracy? You ask to commit what offense. AT&T broke wiretap laws in order to help the NSA spy on Americans. Now, the NSA was acting on orders of the commander in chief to do whatever necessary, the law be damned, to spy on people who are "suspected terrorist." What we have is a conspiracy to commit a crime, which is often a crime as well.
This would also break many laws around the idea of Due process, not to mention violating constitutional rights. Trust me, the man has broken the law, the problem is no one is going to do anything about it now. Actually, I am sure the guys in black suits are coming for me now because of that treason remark.
Disclaimer: I am not a paranoid freak as that last statement may make it sound; however, I am a libertarian and firmly believe that the actions of our federal government are far out reaching the powers setup by the Constitution. I also believe that in violating his oath of office and violating the laws on which this nation was build that GWB is capable of being impeached. Anyone interested in my treason arguments can beg and plead with me and I might just write it up.
A political posture by a RINO Senator in an election year.
Specter isn't do for re-election this year, unless I missed something. And I will admit I am a bit lazy today, but why do you think he is a RINO? I seriously do not hope it is solely based on the fact that he is opposing something that our control-everything president started.
As for your second point, I am not a huge fan of the EFF most days, but I really think you are a bit off there too. Since I used up my mod points, can someone please mod the parent Troll or Flamebait please?
Sen. Specter emphasized that he doesn't want the issue to fade into the background, saying that he'd like to see 'public concern and public indignation build up.'
Sadly, like most things in the US, all that will build up is public apathy. This is the same apathy we see every year with laughingly low voter turnouts. Many people in America are perfectly happy not knowing what is going on and sadly enough have no clue the NSA has been spying on Americans. Those who do know are often perfectly happy to say, "They are only listening to the terrorist. They are just trying to keep up safe."
The majority of people in America are too stupid to know what this means or just do not care what it implies. If they feel a bit safer, they are more then glad to hand over every last civil liberty, until we are nothing more then a military state. Our country has come a long way since Ben Franklin said, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Okay, the high price is because some artist are just downright greedy. Big stadium shows have had the best tickets in $150+ ranges for years. The concert is still one of the biggest money makers for artists, who in reality get little from their actual record sales. This is no some evil trend that always occurs either. A few years ago we were hearing about the change to small venue shows with cheaper tickets and smaller crowds. This is still not uncommon in some larger cities where these venues thrive on college and teenage fans.
Also, using Madonna is a poor example. Several artist (and for some odd reason her included) just demand high concert ticket prices. They obviously haven't crossed the point in supply and demand where people are not buying tickets, so if you can make more money, go for it. This is the idea behind capitalism, isn't it? I still know there are cheap tickets available and places, and paying $100 or more was never something I was willing to do for a concert.
There currently is money to be made, if it isn't already, on selling concert recordings online. Some artist due give away select shows for download. I believe this could make some money for people who want to remember the experience or who really like live recordings.
If you have your own license, VirtualPC cost $129. I call that $129, not a couple of hundred bucks. The other versions actually come with Windows Licenses, and are actually cheaper then buying VPC and the OS separately.
2) the availability of Boot Camp removes one standard premise that coporate IT drones routinely use to veto Mac purchases
Well the reason I hear most is cost. Apple cost more to buy, more to repair, and more to upgrade. You have to pay to get more than 90-days of phone support. Forget the fact that even with bootcamp you still need to buy a Windows license. Also Boot Camp is a BETA and there is no guarantee it will be free after the beta end. No responsible IT group will use an unsupported piece of software because then they have no one to look to when the shit hits the fan.
4) it provides a compelling sales advantage against the Dells and the HPs of the world, since they can't offer Mac OS.
I could argue this with you all day, but most people do not need or want the Mac OS. It isn't just a cost issue. This is especially true at most corporations who have a ton of specialty programs that work in Windows and will never work on a Mac. They have no use for the Mac OS, so why do they care if Dell and/or HP cannot offer it to them.
So, cram your stupid conspiracy theories back where they came from.
Please play nice. You don't need to get mad everytime someone shatters your world.
Nice little bit of info. Someone already posted the slightly entertaining Hitachi site that discusses perpendicular writing and it is actually going to make things grow quickly again once everyone is making drives using the writing method. Without looking it up, I want to say theoretical maximums have been discussed in the range of 2+ TB. So hopefully in the next few years we will be able to get more higher capacity drives and cheaper low capacity ones. I am really for the latter as I am a little paranoid about HDD storage after losing two drives at one time (one was part of the RAID-0 in my Desktop, the other was my laptop HDD). I really want to make a RAID-5 array and cheaper drives definitely makes that more possible.
I do think the only thing that may hold prices up a bit on newer HDDs is the cache size. As these drives start getting into the area of a few terabytes, they are going to need more cache. Of course, I do not know how easily I can fill a two or even a on TB drive, but I did say that about my 120GB and later about my 2x200GB.
I lost all interest in Vista the second they dropped the idea of WinFS. You see they were finally going to catch up with everyone else in the world of the file system and instead have proven they couldn't handle it. I think I also got fed up with all those pesky delays. Two years late and really chopped down, Vista is not anything like what is was supposed to be.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually since early 2005 (I think), there has been talk of Disney doing a Tron remake.
You obviously have no kids. Women get pretty moody while pregnant and can change lots. But further into that degree, it wasn't Anakin/Vader trying to kill her that caused her to lose the will to live, it was his turn to the dark side and the vicious creature he turned into because he wanted to "save her." She realized the monster he had become and this is why she lost her will to live. It goes much, much deeper then you are even putting into it.
As for acting, has it ever been that good throughout any of the SW movies? The actors in the original trilogy mostly fell into obscurity. The only one who had much of a career post SW was Harrison Ford. They actually used more established actors in the new trilogy, but you still had a lot of poor acting, which I would attribute more to poor direction then I would to poor actors.
Another thing is that a lot of times parts from luxury cars are interchangeable with those of lower models. I remember hearing somewhere that thefts of Acuras was up because people would buy the parts for Honda automobiles. Sometimes this is buying a bigger engine or luxury parts that they do not sell in the lower end cars. I would imagine this sort of interchange can also be done with Toyota and Lexus and pretty much any other car line and its luxury counterpart.
Some cars do make it overseas, but unless you live in or near a port city, odds are your cars are being stolen for parts. I mean why would you ship cars from middle America to a port town when you can just distribute the various parts well enough locally. Besides, most port cities have their own abundance of cars for the taking, especially when you consider the majority of the US population is still situated out towards the coasts.
To qualify for the learned professional employee exemption, all of the following tests must be met:
* The employee must be compensated on a salary or fee basis (as defined in the regulations) at a rate not less than $455 per week
* The employee's primary duty must be the performance of work requiring advanced knowledge, defined as work which is predominantly intellectual in character and which includes work requiring the consistent exercise of discretion and judgment
* The advanced knowledge must be in a field of science or learning
* The advanced knowledge must be customarily acquired by a prolonged course of specialized intellectual instruction.
Straight from the source of US Labor laws. Now some states will have different and varying rules. But that nice broad definition covers almost anyone with a higher degree who is paid on a Salary. This almost certainly covers engineers and computer scientists.
The whole notion about being salaried is that you will not receive overtime pay. If you are an "exempt employee" the notion of overtime means absolutely nothing. People should know this going into jobs and be ready for it. Most jobs I have applied for as an Electrical Engineer make it quite clear that overtime is not given and that you may be required to work 50 or 60 hr weeks.
Many applications for these same jobs often ask how many hours per week you are willing to work; this is presumably used to weed out people who are totally unwilling to work overtime. My father was a salaried employee for the better part of his 20 yrs with his company and never earned OT. He was gone to work before I ever got up at 6am and wasn't home until 5pm. Did he ever complain about the long hours or lack of OT? Nope. The next thing you know these people will be unionizing (if they haven't tried already), and I will not get into my view on unions. This is absurd. The only reason people ever win these suits is because a group of 12 citizens, most of whom are probably hourly, will be like..."I get OT, don't they?" I wonder how many of these complaints are by people in their first or second jobs. It wouldn't surprise me if it was mostly those.
what about PC gamers? I mean there are still a few of us who understand first-person shooters are best played on the PC with keyboard and mouse and some crossover games are just too clunky to play without the array of extra buttons and familiar controls. I know a few people who enjoyed KotoR and Morrowind more on the PC then on the X-Box. I do not know if any of my friends even bothered to try Oblivion outside of the PC world. I do own a PS/2, but my next console is probably a Wii (dear god why) unless the PS3 comes out low enough to make it tempting just for the Blu-Ray player.
Turning failures into successes since Windows 95. *laugh people*
Or does the "Head" of the NXT remind others of Johnny 5 from Short Circuit?
In any event, this sort of toy just makes me warm and fuzzy inside. Nothing like some Legos and a microcontroller to make the electrical engineer in me happy.
I will tell you the same thing I told the last guy. You HAVE to sell something in order to make money. We are talking about the idea of being charge taxes on the FMV of your items and characters. These are two different concepts. If I break a EULA and sell my characters on eBay then the government has every right to tax that as income since I did make income on selling goods.
My point is that they cannot assign an FMV to your items if they technically have no FMV. What you are mentioning is from respect to an out-dated law that required stamps for Marijuana, similar to the stamps that many states use in the taxation of tobacco and liquor products today. They use the law as a way to make some extra money, since I am sure the penalty is nothing more then a fine.
This still have nothing to do with assigning FMV to an item. Until one of you points to an instance of this, I will stand by my assertions for now. Until you have made money selling the characters, items, etc. you have not made money (or broken the EULA) making FMV pointless. I am pretty sure the wording of the law is typically used on the taxation of goods earned on game shows like the Price is Right where you rarely receive cash but instead earn TVs, furniture, cars, etc. (I am sure some of you have seen The Price is Right.) This is the kinds of things the law usually uses FMV taxation for.
Yes, but he did sell liquor and did avoid taxes. The idea presented here is taxation without having sold the account. The items have a FMV, so therefore are taxable is what we are debating. If you sell anything legal or not in the US, you are liable for the income made from it. So as you see, your analogy isn't quite right.
I will point the government to the EULA which typically state you are not allowed to sell these assets for money. Granted a large number of people do, but most of the EULAs for MMOs prevent people from selling goods or accounts. So, since you are not allowed to sell your accounts, it seems pretty hard to tax them. Also, this would just add another layer of trouble to tax agencies. They would have to retrieve account information from the companies running MMOs and then calculate how much money the accounts are worth at FMV. This would present issues since this varies by character levels, item levels, amount of virtual currency, class of characters, etc.
I think there are a great many things limiting the taxation of this "income." So, don't worry. This will not happen anytime soon.
I have a little card that shows all the dates of my shots. So luckily, I know I am up-to-date on those. Scary thing is that I have a card. I feel like a pet or something. "Why yes, I do have all my shots, see."
The difference with FF defaulting to Google and IE7 defaulting to MSN is simple. Google != FF. M$ == IE7.
It wasn't too long ago I was applying to school, and only one school to which I applied required medical records to show proof of vaccination. I did not have to provide proof to my eventual school after enrolling either. Though, I am properly vaccinated and even have two non-mandatory vaccinations. Another aside, I think there has also been talk about needing to give another booster shot for MMR.
So based on your wording I am now responding on the assumption that you are serving in the US Armed Forces. How does this affect my opinion you might ask? Well, if you are stationed in Iraq how much US TV and media do you actually see? Are you sure this is the least propagandized war? And just because I do not believe in this fear does not mean they are failing. There are plenty of people who are scared to death in this country of these supposed risk. What is happening in Iraq has absolutely nothing to do with my safety in the US. How am I so sure? Because there were no WMDs in Iraq and Saddam and Al Qaeda were anything but on the same page.
You bring up the idea of military operations. Unfortunately, spying on US phones through the NSA is hardly a military operation. I still have an issue with the NSA listening to phone calls. It is absurd to say foreign communications occuring within the US. Now, if they are only listening to international calls that is different, but monitoring calls within the US s rather pointless. I would like to think terrorists sent to the US to attack us have the intelligence to blend in better and use far less traceable communications, you know, like meeting in person. Sending coded letters or intensely coded phone calls. I would be stupid to think these people our stupid.
Another thing, where do you get your definition of terrorist? Is it defined somewhere in the USC or in another law of the US? Or is it the secret military definition you use to separate the terrorist from someone else? The only one that matters is the one where it is defined in the law and the definition you gave is so nice and vague that it can be interpreted many ways. It doesn't prevent speech from being "terrorism." It can be argued that the act of speech and speaking can be used to cause terror. So, unless you know where your great definition is written into law and strictly forbids it being applied to speech, I think it is a wasted definition.
Hands in the sand? Suicidal? Isn't that what running around in Iraq with a gun is, suicidal? Tell me, since we started this war on terror how many soldiers have died in Iraq or Afghanistan? Now tell me how many US citizens have died within the border of the United States as a result of terrorism? You are not going to when any argument that we are safer having invaded Iraq. I will take arguments for Afghanistan but not Iraq. My "hands in the sand" ideology has kept me in the relative safety of the US, enjoying my freedoms and laughing at that idiot that got elected President of the US. If you seriously believe people should be complacent to their government, then you really were brainwashed in the military. In the real world, you can say No sir!
Cell phone scanning is technically illegal but that doesn't make it impossible. The network sniffing not being illegal is a shitty argument. Like most things the various authorities responsible for law making are behind the times and require large amounts of time to create effective laws for new technologies. The idea of flagging being used for keywords is also a bad idea. I mean I am writing an essay or op-ed on terrorism and happen to say "a terrorist uses bombs to blow stuff up." Oh Shit! Did I just get flagged? And what prevents them from adding things to this list of triggers. If there is NO DISCLOSURE how are we supposed to know that the government isn't abusing its power.
I have a hard time believing there is any risk. It has been almost 5 yrs since we were attacked. There has been no real evidence of any other attacks, except for a crackpot who was going to blow up his feet. We are not safe because of the actions of our government. I think if anything we have pissed off more people and become more of a target in 5 yrs time.
So, it is fine for the government to keep things from its citizens. To openly spy on them without disclosure? No one, sans the NSA and the administration know what this program consists of. And I am not sure GWB cou
such a long time ago was it now. Well, I did graduate in 2000. We had a 3-tier programming class in high school. Let me say, they were sadly deficient, at least for me. The first one taught QBasic, and I really hope they have since changed this and just start out with C. The next two classes were both of the C/C++ variety. I never took AP Programming because I knew I did not want to 'code' for a living. Turns out I might be doing more programming at my new job then I had originally expected.
In the classes, I was usually given free range to work at my own speed, which was typically far ahead of the other students. By the time I took the first programming class, I had already been using QBasic for a few years. The summer between classes, I took a class at summer camp on PASCAL. I believe the problem inherent to these classes, at least at my school, was that they were handled by the Math department.
The teachers had neither an interest or any practical experience in computer programming. The machines we used were also pretty sad at the time. During the class wth QB, we had old IBM PCs with no HDDs. Two floppy drives below a monitor, talk about out of date, even for 1996, when I first took the classes.
The machines for C/C++ were Windows based PCs running Win95. We did most of our work in DOS, a fairly painful experience, though it did not make much of a difference with the simple programs being written. I believe high schools with a large enough size should have a dedicated programming instructor. A teacher who has a degree in Computer Science or Engineering and actually has several years of experience in the area. On a normal block schedule you only need to fill up their course time for 3 blocks per semester, and I have to believe that would not be too hard by teaching classes in Java, C, C++ and, get this, Unix. I would make Unix the first computer course and maybe even get into simple programs in Unix. Then allow studnts to take courses in Java or C/C++.
Sadly, I do not think there are enough high schools that could fill up these types of classes to warrant a dedicated teacher.
I agree, the President should have had the balls to come out and say this is a war against Islamic terrorism.
A war on islamic terrorism? You really believe that stuff they feed you on Fox News don't you? This war was never about terrorism. We went into Afghanistan looking for Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. I know we didn't find Bin Laden, and does anyone have proof that Al Qaeda was there before we were or did they come in after we invaded a sovereign nation? Whether or not Afghanistan is better off post-American intervention is up for debate, but it really has no bearing on the reasons or justness of the war. If we looked back at a war, we could probably come up with a just cause for almost every one.
The one I have a bigger problem with was the war in Iraq. Did we ever find WMDs? But if you listened to the administration they were everywhere. We would find gobs and gobs of them. All we found was the leader of a nation hidden in a hole. The argument about whether or not the war was just is once again debateable. Some would argue the war was about oil; if that were the case it surely isn't reflecting in present prices. If we wanted to invade a country, why not Saudi Arabia? Oh yeah, because that would never fly. (Not like the UN is real pleased with us in Iraq either.)
Why SA you ask? Where did the majority of the 9-11 terrorist come from? They were native Saudis. Bin Laden is a Saudi. I am really seeing a pattern there. But attacking SA is not as feasible as a much less organized nation with less money and internal dissention as well.
Now, you do make a point that two people could be talking of a matter involving foreign intelligence, but if they are wiretapping US Citizens this point is mute. Something else, you say that there is nothing they can do to you unless you are babbling about crimes you committed. I contest this point; any information gathered by these illegal wiretaps that are done without probable cause or following the rules of due process will never hold up in most courts in the US. We have avoided these rights issues thus far by naming these "terrorists", Citizens or not, as enemy combatants. We will then ship them off to Guatanamo Bay or maybe even overseas, if that unconfirmed scandal of sorts actually resulted in these people being transported around the world.
I understand 1984 quite well. Yes, it deals with thought, but not in the completely total way you are making it sound. They use a similar method to what politicians and governments have been using for years: "double speak". The say one thing while meaning another. Confuse as many people as possible and make the other just agree with you. By force feeding propaganda on the war on terrorism and by attempting to create a state of fear, they are trying to control people. Do not tell me those vague wordings of possible terror attacks post-911 was for our safety. It was to create Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. You know something, it worked on a lot of people.
As for e-mail, once again I know things work. This is why I use encryption methods on really important and personal e-mails. It might be a bit paranoid, but I know if anyone is reading my mail then that they are really, really wanting to see what sort of dirty things I have to say. You still say that regular e-mail has no expectation of privacy and I really would be interested to see if the courts agree with you. People send e-mail in confidence, so how is it any different then a phone conversation. The line switching for telephones isn't that hard to intercept, and cell phones and cordless home phones both are susceptible to scanning methods. This does not mean I have some expectation of privacy when talking on the phone.
I do not know where you are getting your ideas, but I think your statements have proven my point. People are willing to accept way too much for their "safety". Have any of these changes in our country made you safer? Probably not. Just like many laws, they only make i
Okay, Go here and tell me that at 60% isn't sad. Look at some of the other countries, only Japan came in lower in recent history. This apathy does occur elsewhere, but you should have a line more like that German one. There is no good excuse for not voting, yet everyone has one.
The need to obtain valid intel to fight a war? If they are tapping the lines of American citizen telephones without the issuance of a warrant and without probably cause, they are breaking the law. This war on terror is total BS, right up there with the war on drugs. The number of pages means nothing, and front page stories means nothing if people aren't reading them.
The key to the quote you provided is "foreign intelligence". If tapping the lines of citizens qualifies as foreign intelligence, then something is wrong. Important question for you: at what point does security cross the lines of liberty? The government taps your phone and has cameras on every street corner. Some would argue the society in 1984 was pretty safe, but look at the freedom given up for that safety. The similar could be said for the society from Brave New World. Both Orwell and Huxley saw dystopian societies where things might have seemed good and everyone believed it was, but in reality the governments of these two societies were controlling its citizens as completely as possible (albeit with different methods).
How important is privacy to you? I expect my phone calls to go unmonitored and my email not to be read by prying eyes. I have a reasonable expectation of privacy when communicating in this method. I have committed no crime, so I should not have to worry about people listening to my conversations. This country was founded in revolution and when the time comes for us to rise up against the government we need a somewhat even playing ground. Many will argue privacy is a part of freedom and if you truly think that each person doesn't decide some degree of privacy, then may I come over and install cameras and listening devices throughout your house? Seriously, without privacy you have no freedom. How can I be free to do anything within the limits of the law if I know that anyone and everyone is watching? People have skeletons in their closets and they have the right to keep them there.
Okay. How about treason? Nah, too high an offense and despite the fact I could write you a very good argument for how his actions against the American people amount to treason, I doubt many people would see it my way. Okay. Try this one. Conspiracy? You ask to commit what offense. AT&T broke wiretap laws in order to help the NSA spy on Americans. Now, the NSA was acting on orders of the commander in chief to do whatever necessary, the law be damned, to spy on people who are "suspected terrorist." What we have is a conspiracy to commit a crime, which is often a crime as well.
This would also break many laws around the idea of Due process, not to mention violating constitutional rights. Trust me, the man has broken the law, the problem is no one is going to do anything about it now. Actually, I am sure the guys in black suits are coming for me now because of that treason remark.
Disclaimer: I am not a paranoid freak as that last statement may make it sound; however, I am a libertarian and firmly believe that the actions of our federal government are far out reaching the powers setup by the Constitution. I also believe that in violating his oath of office and violating the laws on which this nation was build that GWB is capable of being impeached. Anyone interested in my treason arguments can beg and plead with me and I might just write it up.
A political posture by a RINO Senator in an election year.
Specter isn't do for re-election this year, unless I missed something. And I will admit I am a bit lazy today, but why do you think he is a RINO? I seriously do not hope it is solely based on the fact that he is opposing something that our control-everything president started.
As for your second point, I am not a huge fan of the EFF most days, but I really think you are a bit off there too. Since I used up my mod points, can someone please mod the parent Troll or Flamebait please?
Sen. Specter emphasized that he doesn't want the issue to fade into the background, saying that he'd like to see 'public concern and public indignation build up.'
Sadly, like most things in the US, all that will build up is public apathy. This is the same apathy we see every year with laughingly low voter turnouts. Many people in America are perfectly happy not knowing what is going on and sadly enough have no clue the NSA has been spying on Americans. Those who do know are often perfectly happy to say, "They are only listening to the terrorist. They are just trying to keep up safe."
The majority of people in America are too stupid to know what this means or just do not care what it implies. If they feel a bit safer, they are more then glad to hand over every last civil liberty, until we are nothing more then a military state. Our country has come a long way since Ben Franklin said, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Okay, the high price is because some artist are just downright greedy. Big stadium shows have had the best tickets in $150+ ranges for years. The concert is still one of the biggest money makers for artists, who in reality get little from their actual record sales. This is no some evil trend that always occurs either. A few years ago we were hearing about the change to small venue shows with cheaper tickets and smaller crowds. This is still not uncommon in some larger cities where these venues thrive on college and teenage fans.
Also, using Madonna is a poor example. Several artist (and for some odd reason her included) just demand high concert ticket prices. They obviously haven't crossed the point in supply and demand where people are not buying tickets, so if you can make more money, go for it. This is the idea behind capitalism, isn't it? I still know there are cheap tickets available and places, and paying $100 or more was never something I was willing to do for a concert.
There currently is money to be made, if it isn't already, on selling concert recordings online. Some artist due give away select shows for download. I believe this could make some money for people who want to remember the experience or who really like live recordings.
Virtual PC costs a couple hundred bucks
If you have your own license, VirtualPC cost $129. I call that $129, not a couple of hundred bucks. The other versions actually come with Windows Licenses, and are actually cheaper then buying VPC and the OS separately.
2) the availability of Boot Camp removes one standard premise that coporate IT drones routinely use to veto Mac purchases
Well the reason I hear most is cost. Apple cost more to buy, more to repair, and more to upgrade. You have to pay to get more than 90-days of phone support. Forget the fact that even with bootcamp you still need to buy a Windows license. Also Boot Camp is a BETA and there is no guarantee it will be free after the beta end. No responsible IT group will use an unsupported piece of software because then they have no one to look to when the shit hits the fan.
4) it provides a compelling sales advantage against the Dells and the HPs of the world, since they can't offer Mac OS.
I could argue this with you all day, but most people do not need or want the Mac OS. It isn't just a cost issue. This is especially true at most corporations who have a ton of specialty programs that work in Windows and will never work on a Mac. They have no use for the Mac OS, so why do they care if Dell and/or HP cannot offer it to them.
So, cram your stupid conspiracy theories back where they came from.
Please play nice. You don't need to get mad everytime someone shatters your world.
Nice little bit of info. Someone already posted the slightly entertaining Hitachi site that discusses perpendicular writing and it is actually going to make things grow quickly again once everyone is making drives using the writing method. Without looking it up, I want to say theoretical maximums have been discussed in the range of 2+ TB. So hopefully in the next few years we will be able to get more higher capacity drives and cheaper low capacity ones. I am really for the latter as I am a little paranoid about HDD storage after losing two drives at one time (one was part of the RAID-0 in my Desktop, the other was my laptop HDD). I really want to make a RAID-5 array and cheaper drives definitely makes that more possible.
I do think the only thing that may hold prices up a bit on newer HDDs is the cache size. As these drives start getting into the area of a few terabytes, they are going to need more cache. Of course, I do not know how easily I can fill a two or even a on TB drive, but I did say that about my 120GB and later about my 2x200GB.
I lost all interest in Vista the second they dropped the idea of WinFS. You see they were finally going to catch up with everyone else in the world of the file system and instead have proven they couldn't handle it. I think I also got fed up with all those pesky delays. Two years late and really chopped down, Vista is not anything like what is was supposed to be.