Its a little disheartening to see so many people (even techies) who dismissed it out of hand given how much better it was (with no disadvantages that I can discern). I understand why, sort of, since it really wasnt explained at all, and it took me several hours of screwing with to figure out just what it was, and could do. But one would hope the prevailing attitude on slashdot would be "that looks interesting, lets test it and find out if its any good" rather than "that looks complicated, im going to stick with what I know because this scares me".
Accusing people of being scared of it seems a little insulting, IMHO. There are a lot of things asking for our attention these days. Wave asked for it in big ways, and frankly, most of us just didn't have the time to bother to figure out what the hell we're supposed to do with it.
Wave was a victim of it's own complexity. People couldn't figure out (quickly) what to do with it, so they didn't bother.
Talk about appealing to false causality. Was Katrina caused by GW? Who knows. One point of data trend does not make. Is the Arctic Melting caused by the fact that it's getting warmer, along with the rest of the planet on average? That's a pretty hard thing to disprove with millions of points of data all pointing to the same thing "The earth is warming."
Why is the burden of proof on the side of skepticism? If someone wants to claim that arctic melting is caused by man-made global warming, it is up to them to make their case, not the other way around.
FWIW, shipping lanes through the north pole have been possible several times in the past, and never previously have they been considered a sign of global warming.
Ok, so change my question to: So tell me again how it is that people in the middle paid more tax than they did?
By the way there is only one standard deduction that everyone gets: themselves.
I think you are confusing deductions with exemptions. Every taxpayer gets a standard deduction based on their filing status. For 2006 the standard deduction for a taxpayer filing single is $5,150. In addition, every taxpayer gets a $3,300 exemption per dependent, including themselves. Granted, some taxpayers are someone else's dependent and cannot claim any exemptions.
You have to make within a certain range to qualify for the earned income tax credit - if you make too little money you can't get it. WTF?
I'm not sure why you're even bringing up the EIC, but there is no minimum income level to qualify for it that I am aware of. Earned Income thresholds to qualify for the EIC in 2006 are $36,348 if you have 2 qualifying children, $32,001 if you have 1, and $12,120 if you have none. (If you are married filing jointly add $2,000 to each of those.) If your Earned Income is below those levels, you qualify for the EIC. See http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040.pdf, page 46 for documentation.
Consequently what we need to do is close tax loopholes for the very rich. I did a little research on this a while back and in the year 2000, the top ten taxpayers were only paying taxes on only 50% of their income! Meanwhile, I pay taxes on 100% of my income. What is this shit all about? The people making the least money barely pay taxes, the people making the median incomes pay the most, and the people at the very top pay less than the people in the middle. The people most able to pay aren't paying even THEIR share.
Let's say that the top 10 taxpayers had $10 million income each. Let's say that you had $200,000 income. So, if they have paid tax on half their income, they paid tax on $5 million. If you paid tax on 100% of your income, you paid tax on $200,000. So tell me again how it is that you paid more tax than they did?
Besides, you don't pay tax on 100% of your income anyway. There are standard deductions and exemptions that *everyone* gets, so nobody pays tax on 100% of their income.
Perhaps you should follow the parent poster's advice and take the word 'superstar' out of your job description. It doesn't matter how you define the word 'superstar', it matters how the person reading your job posting interprets the word 'superstar'. I agree with the other comments that seeing that in a job posting makes me less likely to apply for the position. You might think you are making applicants feel good about themselves by calling them superstars, but in reality you are weeding out everyone except for those with big egos.
It's strange how much we detest government-imposed taxes, but suddenly we're begging to allow corporations to impose their own private tax burdens on people who don't even do business with them.
But they are doing business with the backbone provider by asking for their packets to be delivered. The backbone provider has a right to ask someone using their property to pay for that use. Everyone else has a right to choose not to pay and stay off the provider's property. There is no tax since everything is voluntary. If backbones start charging for access, other companies will just get more creative and innovative with their packet routing to avoid the tolls. If mandatory net neutrality is passed, that is effectively a tax (i.e. a coerced payment where the payer has no choice) on the backbone provider.
Their expenses will be related to building out their online services infrastructure and shifting their business strategy to it. There was a good article in Fortune recently about this shift.
Roads are not free. They are paid for with taxes. That is consistent with his statement that muni-wifi is not free. It doesn't matter whether or not you think roads are good or not, what matters is whether or not you recognize how they are paid for.
The point is that the word 'free' is misleading. Of course "free wireless" would be nice. The problem is that it is not free when it is paid for by the government with tax dollars. Let's accept that fact, then we can have a discussion on whether or not taxpayer-funded wifi is a good idea.
If you compare that to $40/month, you are saving about $30/month, but you paid $742 up front. It will take you 742 / 30 = 24 months to make up the initial cost. My guess is that within 24 months, one of the following will be true:
1) New technology will exist that vastly improves speed and coverage, but it will take another significant outlay to upgrade the muni-wifi
2) The operating costs will have ballooned (as most government expenditures do) to the point where it is well over $40/month per user
3) The lack of upgrade compared to the latest technology will make the muni-wifi pitifully slow in comparison and not worth even the $9.50/month.
How about third: Is global warming actually a bad thing? Or are there benefits as well? I think we should stop wasting our time trying to stop global warming and instead learn how to adapt to it.
The problem with employers providing health care is that it takes the health care choice away from the consumer. I can't choose who I get health insurance from -- it's provided for me by my employer. This stifles competition because it makes it difficult, if not impossible, to shop around. Unhappy with how my insurance co processed my claim? Too bad, I'm stuck with them.
Bring the choice of health insurance back to the end user and you will be taking a HUGE step toward fixing most of what is wrong with health insurance in the US.
There are many things you tax dollars are spent on that you dislike
This is true, and it is a sad situation that such a high percentage of people's paychecks is confiscated to support programs that they do not agree with. Let me keep the money I earned and decide for myself what to spend it on, thankyouverymuch.
paying to put all candidates on a level playing field is protectionary of your first ammendment rights.
It violates the rights of those candidates by essentially prohibiting them from all speech outside of some government-regulated fund. Those candidates are entitled to free speech as much as I am.
The biggest problem with your proposal is that it just won't work. Prohibit spending money on candidates and money will be spent on issue ads instead. And everyone will know which side of the issue each candidate is on anyway, so what difference does it make?
By your last sentence I suppose you are telling me there your solution is the only possible one?
So where does the $100m come from? Tax dollars? What if I don't want my tax dollars going to support Candidate B's campaign because I don't like Candidate B? Also, how does someone become eligible to receive a share of this money? What is to prevent 100 or 1000 people from applying for their share?
Umm, the job sites do 'stay afloat' with just ad revenue. Every job posting you view on their site is an ad. No donations necessary -- I assure you the job sites do well on ads alone.
I find it amazing that this article about a new use of technology has not a single positive comment on it. Why is everyone on Slashdot so against the use of technology to make our lives easier? Reading through the comments I see all these far fetched ideas of how the technology is going to be abused.
Yes, anytime something new is developed or implemented, someone is going to try to find a way to use it to commit fraud or do some bad thing. Believe it or not, everything has risks.
If you folks had been around when they invented the car you would have hated it.
"Oh great, now someone is going to use this thing to run me over while I am walking down the street." "Gee, with one of these things, a bank robber could get away really fast!"
First of all, people are not going to cut your finger off to pay for stuff. How are they going to use your severed finger at a public place like the grocery store? Don't you think that would raise some eyebrows?
Second of all, if you are so concerned about germs, bring a clorox wipe with you and wipe the thing off before you use it.
And if you are saying "You can't change your fingerprints!" -- well gee, I guess you *could* just cancel your Pay By Touch account, couldn't you? No surgery required...
If you still think the technology is too scary or too risky or whatever, don't use it.
Personally, I would love to be able to pay by just scanning my fingerprint. It's a convenience, the likelihood of fraud seems to be about the same or less than a credit card, and the merchant saves money in lower transaction fees.
Local calling isn't where Vonage is making an impact on the market.
Actually, it is. Skype is about being able to reach people around the globe without paying anything for it. Vonage is about replacing your local phone service with something essentially as good but less than half the price.
Except the Skype isn't the same at all. Skype requires me to install software on my PC and use my PC to make phone calls. Vonage lets me use my existing land-line phones without having to even turn my computer on. And, in my case, since Skype couldn't seem to detect the microphone on my computer, it didn't even work at all.
Slashdot Mirror
Its a little disheartening to see so many people (even techies) who dismissed it out of hand given how much better it was (with no disadvantages that I can discern). I understand why, sort of, since it really wasnt explained at all, and it took me several hours of screwing with to figure out just what it was, and could do. But one would hope the prevailing attitude on slashdot would be "that looks interesting, lets test it and find out if its any good" rather than "that looks complicated, im going to stick with what I know because this scares me".
Accusing people of being scared of it seems a little insulting, IMHO. There are a lot of things asking for our attention these days. Wave asked for it in big ways, and frankly, most of us just didn't have the time to bother to figure out what the hell we're supposed to do with it.
Wave was a victim of it's own complexity. People couldn't figure out (quickly) what to do with it, so they didn't bother.
Talk about appealing to false causality. Was Katrina caused by GW? Who knows. One point of data trend does not make. Is the Arctic Melting caused by the fact that it's getting warmer, along with the rest of the planet on average? That's a pretty hard thing to disprove with millions of points of data all pointing to the same thing "The earth is warming."
Why is the burden of proof on the side of skepticism? If someone wants to claim that arctic melting is caused by man-made global warming, it is up to them to make their case, not the other way around.
FWIW, shipping lanes through the north pole have been possible several times in the past, and never previously have they been considered a sign of global warming.
Interestingly, I never actually said that.[...]
Ok, so change my question to: So tell me again how it is that people in the middle paid more tax than they did?
By the way there is only one standard deduction that everyone gets: themselves.
I think you are confusing deductions with exemptions. Every taxpayer gets a standard deduction based on their filing status. For 2006 the standard deduction for a taxpayer filing single is $5,150. In addition, every taxpayer gets a $3,300 exemption per dependent, including themselves. Granted, some taxpayers are someone else's dependent and cannot claim any exemptions.
You have to make within a certain range to qualify for the earned income tax credit - if you make too little money you can't get it. WTF?
I'm not sure why you're even bringing up the EIC, but there is no minimum income level to qualify for it that I am aware of. Earned Income thresholds to qualify for the EIC in 2006 are $36,348 if you have 2 qualifying children, $32,001 if you have 1, and $12,120 if you have none. (If you are married filing jointly add $2,000 to each of those.) If your Earned Income is below those levels, you qualify for the EIC. See http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040.pdf, page 46 for documentation.
Consequently what we need to do is close tax loopholes for the very rich. I did a little research on this a while back and in the year 2000, the top ten taxpayers were only paying taxes on only 50% of their income! Meanwhile, I pay taxes on 100% of my income. What is this shit all about? The people making the least money barely pay taxes, the people making the median incomes pay the most, and the people at the very top pay less than the people in the middle. The people most able to pay aren't paying even THEIR share.
Let's say that the top 10 taxpayers had $10 million income each. Let's say that you had $200,000 income. So, if they have paid tax on half their income, they paid tax on $5 million. If you paid tax on 100% of your income, you paid tax on $200,000. So tell me again how it is that you paid more tax than they did?
Besides, you don't pay tax on 100% of your income anyway. There are standard deductions and exemptions that *everyone* gets, so nobody pays tax on 100% of their income.
Perhaps you should follow the parent poster's advice and take the word 'superstar' out of your job description. It doesn't matter how you define the word 'superstar', it matters how the person reading your job posting interprets the word 'superstar'. I agree with the other comments that seeing that in a job posting makes me less likely to apply for the position. You might think you are making applicants feel good about themselves by calling them superstars, but in reality you are weeding out everyone except for those with big egos.
It's strange how much we detest government-imposed taxes, but suddenly we're begging to allow corporations to impose their own private tax burdens on people who don't even do business with them.
But they are doing business with the backbone provider by asking for their packets to be delivered. The backbone provider has a right to ask someone using their property to pay for that use. Everyone else has a right to choose not to pay and stay off the provider's property. There is no tax since everything is voluntary. If backbones start charging for access, other companies will just get more creative and innovative with their packet routing to avoid the tolls. If mandatory net neutrality is passed, that is effectively a tax (i.e. a coerced payment where the payer has no choice) on the backbone provider.
Ok, I asked for that. But Netscape was a free *legal* download. It was right on their website.
Netscape was always a free download to anyone who knew where to look.
Their expenses will be related to building out their online services infrastructure and shifting their business strategy to it. There was a good article in Fortune recently about this shift.
Roads are not free. They are paid for with taxes. That is consistent with his statement that muni-wifi is not free. It doesn't matter whether or not you think roads are good or not, what matters is whether or not you recognize how they are paid for.
The point is that the word 'free' is misleading. Of course "free wireless" would be nice. The problem is that it is not free when it is paid for by the government with tax dollars. Let's accept that fact, then we can have a discussion on whether or not taxpayer-funded wifi is a good idea.
The article states the outlay is $2.6 million, not $2 million. And it states there are 3500 registered users, so the initial outlay was:
$2.6 million / 3500 = $742 / user
And the monthly expense is:
$400,000 / 12 / 3500 = $9.50 / month / user ($114/year)
If you compare that to $40/month, you are saving about $30/month, but you paid $742 up front. It will take you 742 / 30 = 24 months to make up the initial cost. My guess is that within 24 months, one of the following will be true:
1) New technology will exist that vastly improves speed and coverage, but it will take another significant outlay to upgrade the muni-wifi
2) The operating costs will have ballooned (as most government expenditures do) to the point where it is well over $40/month per user
3) The lack of upgrade compared to the latest technology will make the muni-wifi pitifully slow in comparison and not worth even the $9.50/month.
Remember the name of the company is "Netflix". When VOD becomes common and affordable, Netflix will be a VOD provider.
Here's a counterpoint worth reading for anyone thinking about global warming:
l er_but_poor.html
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2006/01/coo
Personally, if global warming is happening, we need to prepare for it, and not waste our energy trying to change it.
How about third: Is global warming actually a bad thing? Or are there benefits as well? I think we should stop wasting our time trying to stop global warming and instead learn how to adapt to it.
Government health care is not in any way free.
The problem with employers providing health care is that it takes the health care choice away from the consumer. I can't choose who I get health insurance from -- it's provided for me by my employer. This stifles competition because it makes it difficult, if not impossible, to shop around. Unhappy with how my insurance co processed my claim? Too bad, I'm stuck with them.
Bring the choice of health insurance back to the end user and you will be taking a HUGE step toward fixing most of what is wrong with health insurance in the US.
There are many things you tax dollars are spent on that you dislike
This is true, and it is a sad situation that such a high percentage of people's paychecks is confiscated to support programs that they do not agree with. Let me keep the money I earned and decide for myself what to spend it on, thankyouverymuch.
paying to put all candidates on a level playing field is protectionary of your first ammendment rights.
It violates the rights of those candidates by essentially prohibiting them from all speech outside of some government-regulated fund. Those candidates are entitled to free speech as much as I am.
The biggest problem with your proposal is that it just won't work. Prohibit spending money on candidates and money will be spent on issue ads instead. And everyone will know which side of the issue each candidate is on anyway, so what difference does it make?
By your last sentence I suppose you are telling me there your solution is the only possible one?
What if I don't want my tax dollars going to support Candidate B's campaign because I don't like Candidate B?
tough shit - money from people who don't like your candidate is going to pay for your candidate too.
So you are forcing me to pay for speech that I don't agree with. That seems to fundamentally violate the spirit of free speech.
Equal representation is provided in the form of voting. Speech != representation.
So where does the $100m come from? Tax dollars? What if I don't want my tax dollars going to support Candidate B's campaign because I don't like Candidate B? Also, how does someone become eligible to receive a share of this money? What is to prevent 100 or 1000 people from applying for their share?
Umm, the job sites do 'stay afloat' with just ad revenue. Every job posting you view on their site is an ad. No donations necessary -- I assure you the job sites do well on ads alone.
I find it amazing that this article about a new use of technology has not a single positive comment on it. Why is everyone on Slashdot so against the use of technology to make our lives easier? Reading through the comments I see all these far fetched ideas of how the technology is going to be abused.
Yes, anytime something new is developed or implemented, someone is going to try to find a way to use it to commit fraud or do some bad thing. Believe it or not, everything has risks.
If you folks had been around when they invented the car you would have hated it.
"Oh great, now someone is going to use this thing to run me over while I am walking down the street." "Gee, with one of these things, a bank robber could get away really fast!"
First of all, people are not going to cut your finger off to pay for stuff. How are they going to use your severed finger at a public place like the grocery store? Don't you think that would raise some eyebrows?
Second of all, if you are so concerned about germs, bring a clorox wipe with you and wipe the thing off before you use it.
And if you are saying "You can't change your fingerprints!" -- well gee, I guess you *could* just cancel your Pay By Touch account, couldn't you? No surgery required...
If you still think the technology is too scary or too risky or whatever, don't use it.
Personally, I would love to be able to pay by just scanning my fingerprint. It's a convenience, the likelihood of fraud seems to be about the same or less than a credit card, and the merchant saves money in lower transaction fees.
I have it in Bethesda.
Local calling isn't where Vonage is making an impact on the market.
Actually, it is. Skype is about being able to reach people around the globe without paying anything for it. Vonage is about replacing your local phone service with something essentially as good but less than half the price.
Except the Skype isn't the same at all. Skype requires me to install software on my PC and use my PC to make phone calls. Vonage lets me use my existing land-line phones without having to even turn my computer on. And, in my case, since Skype couldn't seem to detect the microphone on my computer, it didn't even work at all.