Well, the sad reality is that no matter what tax scheme you come up with, the rich will find ways around it.
My tax scheme is thus:
Everyone pays 10% of their income in taxes.
You can't get around that. It's the loopholes that rich congressmen put in the tax code that allows rich people to not pay taxes. Bush used that exact same logic in his 2004 campaign (that you can't tax the rich). I mean it's not the government could change the law or anything.
DSL has actually just been reclassified as an information service as well. It's still in the courts right now, but if the ruling is sustained AT&T, Qwest, and Verizon won't have to open up their lines to CLECs (Covad, Speakeasy, your local DSL company) if they don't feel like it. Right now, the phone monopolies are required to do so under certain rules. That won't be the case in the near future.
I can back you up. I'm 6 months out of college, and I'm still unemployed (BS Mathematics, 8 years experience tech support). I live in an economically depressed area of an economically depressed state, but anything up to and including an hour's drive away simply isn't hiring.
The government effectively owned the phone lines until the early 80s and you could still shout obscenities into the phone at will. They were common carriers then (and should be today).
You can argue that the government won't do what I suggest once they own the lines. That's a valid criticism.
All I'm looking for is for the government to own the physical lines and maybe the central office building. All they need to do is make sure the lines are in good working order and allow equal access to those lines on non-discriminatory terms. ISPs and citizens will lobby Congress as needed for upgrades when the time comes.
In Fairborn, Ohio, Time Warner has a non-exclusive right to use the city's rights-of-way for their lines. That means Comcast, Adelphia, or Joe's Cable Co-op can sign the same contract that TWC gets (or even negotiate a better deal). Why then is there only one cable provider in Fairborn? Because it's unprofitable for any cable company to try to offer service to a city that already has an entrenched provider. The costs of laying the cable and sniping customers isn't worth it.
If last mile connectivity isn't a natural monopoly, then why don't I have several options for POTS, DSL, and cable? The only reason you can use Covad, Speakeasy, and other CLECs for DSL is because the government mandates it*. Do you really think AT&T wants to give the competition access to it's lines? Earthlink gets to use TWC's lines as part of a merger agreement, again a government mandate. What little competition we have has been forced by government mandate.
*DSL has been also classified as an information service, so based on the court outcome of that decision, the CLECs might be going the way of the dinosaur sooner than you think.
Well Net Neutrality has the right goals but goes about it in the wrong way. Instead of trying to control what the monopolies do, we should attempt to foster competition so that the user can choose which ISP they want. Enough competition will eliminate stunts like what Comcast is pulling. Government intervention is required in either case since we are in oligopoly territory right now. I like the one that will offer more choices down the road.
You miss the point of those of us who are for government regulation. I'm willing to go with a totally free market where ISPs compete on service and price. The problem is that we need the government to step in and create a free market. Last mile connectivity is a natural monopoly (which is why you can't get POTS from anyone you want, nor can you get cable television service from anyone you want). The government should own all the pipes and allow anyone access to it at non-discriminatory rates. That is the only way you're going to have meaningful competition.
This "hands off" talk assumes there is a free market already. There isn't, and the market will continue to devolve into an oligopoly until the government does something about it.
You do realize that would be a lot of government intervention, right? In fact, the reason why our state of affairs wrt broadband is because the government hasn't meddled enough. With the new ruling that DSL is an information service, you can say goodbye to Speakeasy, Covad, and all the other CLECs. It'll be DSL through your phone monopoly or cable Internet service through your cable monopoly. So long as the owners of the infrastructure sell services on that infrastructure, there will be no real competition.
CS->Math was the path of least resistance to get me finished with my degree in a reasonable amount of time (5 years was enough). Too bad that it took me 3 years to figure out CS wasn't for me.
If I had to start all over again, I'd probably have went with political science. Meh, time to start paying off the student loans.
Is there one out there that is reletively sleaze-free?
LOL! Hell no. Sleaze is what makes these guys money. The least objectionable is probably Alltel, but I haven't a clue if they're available in your area. I have Verizon but only because they (and Alltel) are the only carriers that cover my hometown. I'd switch to Alltel if I didn't have to pay a termination fee.
Of the big 4, I don't think any of them are any better than the rest. You're really getting into Hitler > Stalin > Castro > Mao type situation here. And before I get trolled, those aren't my actual preferences. I don't have preferences wrt those guys.
That was the reason I got out of CS and moved to math. I regularly got A's on my CS exams that tested your ability to explain a program's steps and the logic behind it. I barely ever got anything better than C or D on programming assignments, no matter how much effort I put in to it or help I got from TAs or professors.
For instance, I can tell you when a linked list is a good data structure, when it isn't, how it "looks" in code, etc. Ask me to code an implementation up in any language I know and it'll take me an hour.
Are you kidding? I think my grandma can get A+ certified. And even then it still has items on it about some seriously obsolete technology. Memory ranges for serial ports? Come on!
Now I won't disagree that HR departments seem to think being certified means something. I interviewed for a job where they seemed a bit dismayed that I didn't have A+ certification. They thought that was somehow important for someone who had been doing tech support work for 8 years. At this point we should recall that an A+ cert is equivalent to 6 months experience in the field.
Cert organizations make money by exploiting clueless HR departments. That is the only reason they exist.
If there are 755,000 terrorists in the USA, we're already dead.
What do you want to bet the false positive rate on that is? 99%? That's still 7,000. 99.9%? That still seems a bit high. If your false positive rate is that high, then why even have a list at all?
Exactly. I'm on a 1.5/128 plan (I swear Buckeye Cable allocates just enough upstream for the ACKs), and I'd much rather have a 768/768 connection.
The only problem with a symmetrical connection is that it breaks the paradigm that the Internet is for delivering content to their subscribers. The Internet had the ability to make everyone equals, where anyone could create content and put it out for everyone to see. It had that ability until the ISPs decided that anything more than a 8:1 down/up ratio qualified as a business account.
No shit. My dad gets mail just about weekly from Verizon asking him to try their DSL. The only problem is that they don't offer DSL to his neighborhood.
Debian won't ever go under, no matter if it becomes illegal to run a Linux distro. They'd just pull all their US servers, and I'd change a few lines in sources.lst. Problem solved. I assume Slackware would do something similar.
Red Hat might have problems if Ballmer makes good on his threats as they are based in the US.
And if worse comes to worse, then you always have a *BSD as you noted. There is really nothing to worry about as far as home users are concerned.
Yes, it's quite good and is especially needed as fglrx doesn't support R200 chips anymore.
The bad thing for us R3xx owners is now that all the specs are open for R5xx and R6xx, I don't think there will be much more work on the older cards. I wouldn't want to do a bunch of reverse engineering for an old card when I could get docs for the new ones.
No, he should be paid for writing the book. The entire thread was about not being paid per recording/book/etc., but about being paid per performance. JK Rowling probably makes about as much on interviews and book signings as she does on the actual books.
The actual work that the musician did is the recording. He resells that recording (that work) over and over again. The work I do I cannot resell over and over again.
You seem to think copyright protection should be a given. Why shouldn't there be some sort of legal protection to allow me to at least try to make money off of filing bug reports? I'm sure you know that most musicians don't make money off of copyright, but from performances. Most musicians really don't need copyright to make money. Radiohead's recent album might as well be public domain for all intents and purposes since they are giving it away to anyone who asks for it, and they've made about $6,000,000. They've got a better than 0% chance. I hope that dada21 is reading this so that he can put his word in. I believe he is working on music production for artists that don't utilize copyright. AFAIK, his artist partners are making money w/o the benefit of copyright.
A copyright holder can't demand cash keep flowing to him, he can only demand that for a limited number of years he have a monopoly on publishing his work as granted by the Constitution. Piracy is, funnily enough, unconstitutional.
Which...the only reason why he'd want the monopoly is to keep cash flowing to him.
Piracy is not unconstiutional. Piracy is spelled out in Article 1, Section 8:
To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations; So congress can define and punish piracy, but it doesn't have to. Getting back on topic:
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
Congress has the power to establish copyrights and patents, but it is not commanded to do so. Famously, Thomas Jefferson was very much against copyrights. In any case, the Constitution restricts the government, not people, so the Constitution cannot declare the actions of a private citizen to be repugnant to itself. What you mean to say copyright infringement is illegal under current law.
Because the constitution says it is, and we as a society also say it is. It is believed that the amount of quality creative works developed would decrease dramatically without copyright. This is one belief I believe in.
The constitution singles out only authors and inventors. I am an author of this post, but I have no possibility of making any money from it even if it was copyrighted*. Copyright as a means to try to make profit off of one's works isn't as important as you think it is. And judging from the amount of people my age (early-to-mid 20s) who download music illegally, your argument that society supports copyright is suspect.
When all is said and done you believe that people who make creative works should be allowed to try to make a profit from them. That is fine, but you believe they are entitled to special rights to that effect which allow them to be paid again and again for work they've already done. No other profession I'm aware of allows for such special rights. I don't get royalty checks for my previous consulting gig, even though they are still using the systems I set up for them. Why authors and inventors should get a special pass, I don't know.
*All my posts are public domain. ** I support a limited copyright as intended by the founders. A copyright that has the goal of enriching the public domain. I believe a term of approximately 10 years with an optional 5 year extension to be optimal.
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Everyone pays 10% of their income in taxes.
You can't get around that. It's the loopholes that rich congressmen put in the tax code that allows rich people to not pay taxes. Bush used that exact same logic in his 2004 campaign (that you can't tax the rich). I mean it's not the government could change the law or anything.
DSL has actually just been reclassified as an information service as well. It's still in the courts right now, but if the ruling is sustained AT&T, Qwest, and Verizon won't have to open up their lines to CLECs (Covad, Speakeasy, your local DSL company) if they don't feel like it. Right now, the phone monopolies are required to do so under certain rules. That won't be the case in the near future.
Doesn't "evil" mean "decisions I don't personally agree with"?
I can back you up. I'm 6 months out of college, and I'm still unemployed (BS Mathematics, 8 years experience tech support). I live in an economically depressed area of an economically depressed state, but anything up to and including an hour's drive away simply isn't hiring.
As the AC commented, that's bloody unlikely. I might be able to get by. I could switch to Alltel for cellphone service. Grandma? Don't think so.
The government effectively owned the phone lines until the early 80s and you could still shout obscenities into the phone at will. They were common carriers then (and should be today).
You can argue that the government won't do what I suggest once they own the lines. That's a valid criticism.
All I'm looking for is for the government to own the physical lines and maybe the central office building. All they need to do is make sure the lines are in good working order and allow equal access to those lines on non-discriminatory terms. ISPs and citizens will lobby Congress as needed for upgrades when the time comes.
Way to cite a source. Totally got me there.
In Fairborn, Ohio, Time Warner has a non-exclusive right to use the city's rights-of-way for their lines. That means Comcast, Adelphia, or Joe's Cable Co-op can sign the same contract that TWC gets (or even negotiate a better deal). Why then is there only one cable provider in Fairborn? Because it's unprofitable for any cable company to try to offer service to a city that already has an entrenched provider. The costs of laying the cable and sniping customers isn't worth it.
If last mile connectivity isn't a natural monopoly, then why don't I have several options for POTS, DSL, and cable? The only reason you can use Covad, Speakeasy, and other CLECs for DSL is because the government mandates it*. Do you really think AT&T wants to give the competition access to it's lines? Earthlink gets to use TWC's lines as part of a merger agreement, again a government mandate. What little competition we have has been forced by government mandate.
*DSL has been also classified as an information service, so based on the court outcome of that decision, the CLECs might be going the way of the dinosaur sooner than you think.
Well Net Neutrality has the right goals but goes about it in the wrong way. Instead of trying to control what the monopolies do, we should attempt to foster competition so that the user can choose which ISP they want. Enough competition will eliminate stunts like what Comcast is pulling. Government intervention is required in either case since we are in oligopoly territory right now. I like the one that will offer more choices down the road.
You miss the point of those of us who are for government regulation. I'm willing to go with a totally free market where ISPs compete on service and price. The problem is that we need the government to step in and create a free market. Last mile connectivity is a natural monopoly (which is why you can't get POTS from anyone you want, nor can you get cable television service from anyone you want). The government should own all the pipes and allow anyone access to it at non-discriminatory rates. That is the only way you're going to have meaningful competition.
This "hands off" talk assumes there is a free market already. There isn't, and the market will continue to devolve into an oligopoly until the government does something about it.
4. ????
You do realize that would be a lot of government intervention, right? In fact, the reason why our state of affairs wrt broadband is because the government hasn't meddled enough. With the new ruling that DSL is an information service, you can say goodbye to Speakeasy, Covad, and all the other CLECs. It'll be DSL through your phone monopoly or cable Internet service through your cable monopoly. So long as the owners of the infrastructure sell services on that infrastructure, there will be no real competition.
CS->Math was the path of least resistance to get me finished with my degree in a reasonable amount of time (5 years was enough). Too bad that it took me 3 years to figure out CS wasn't for me.
If I had to start all over again, I'd probably have went with political science. Meh, time to start paying off the student loans.
Of the big 4, I don't think any of them are any better than the rest. You're really getting into Hitler > Stalin > Castro > Mao type situation here. And before I get trolled, those aren't my actual preferences. I don't have preferences wrt those guys.
Once again, a +5 funny where the intent was a +5 insightful.
You, too?
That was the reason I got out of CS and moved to math. I regularly got A's on my CS exams that tested your ability to explain a program's steps and the logic behind it. I barely ever got anything better than C or D on programming assignments, no matter how much effort I put in to it or help I got from TAs or professors.
For instance, I can tell you when a linked list is a good data structure, when it isn't, how it "looks" in code, etc. Ask me to code an implementation up in any language I know and it'll take me an hour.
Are you kidding? I think my grandma can get A+ certified. And even then it still has items on it about some seriously obsolete technology. Memory ranges for serial ports? Come on!
Now I won't disagree that HR departments seem to think being certified means something. I interviewed for a job where they seemed a bit dismayed that I didn't have A+ certification. They thought that was somehow important for someone who had been doing tech support work for 8 years. At this point we should recall that an A+ cert is equivalent to 6 months experience in the field.
Cert organizations make money by exploiting clueless HR departments. That is the only reason they exist.
If there are 755,000 terrorists in the USA, we're already dead.
What do you want to bet the false positive rate on that is? 99%? That's still 7,000. 99.9%? That still seems a bit high.
If your false positive rate is that high, then why even have a list at all?
Exactly. I'm on a 1.5/128 plan (I swear Buckeye Cable allocates just enough upstream for the ACKs), and I'd much rather have a 768/768 connection.
The only problem with a symmetrical connection is that it breaks the paradigm that the Internet is for delivering content to their subscribers. The Internet had the ability to make everyone equals, where anyone could create content and put it out for everyone to see. It had that ability until the ISPs decided that anything more than a 8:1 down/up ratio qualified as a business account.
You gotta remember that with the exchange rate $209 is about 50 Euros.
I kid, I kid (at least for now I do).
No shit. My dad gets mail just about weekly from Verizon asking him to try their DSL. The only problem is that they don't offer DSL to his neighborhood.
The R2xx (8500, 9200) chips had documentation available under NDA. The R3xx, R4xx chips (9500, 9600, 9800) are purely reverse engineered.
Debian won't ever go under, no matter if it becomes illegal to run a Linux distro. They'd just pull all their US servers, and I'd change a few lines in sources.lst. Problem solved. I assume Slackware would do something similar.
Red Hat might have problems if Ballmer makes good on his threats as they are based in the US.
And if worse comes to worse, then you always have a *BSD as you noted. There is really nothing to worry about as far as home users are concerned.
Yes, it's quite good and is especially needed as fglrx doesn't support R200 chips anymore.
The bad thing for us R3xx owners is now that all the specs are open for R5xx and R6xx, I don't think there will be much more work on the older cards. I wouldn't want to do a bunch of reverse engineering for an old card when I could get docs for the new ones.
No, he should be paid for writing the book. The entire thread was about not being paid per recording/book/etc., but about being paid per performance. JK Rowling probably makes about as much on interviews and book signings as she does on the actual books.
The actual work that the musician did is the recording. He resells that recording (that work) over and over again. The work I do I cannot resell over and over again.
Apples and apples, I'm afraid.
You seem to think copyright protection should be a given. Why shouldn't there be some sort of legal protection to allow me to at least try to make money off of filing bug reports? I'm sure you know that most musicians don't make money off of copyright, but from performances. Most musicians really don't need copyright to make money. Radiohead's recent album might as well be public domain for all intents and purposes since they are giving it away to anyone who asks for it, and they've made about $6,000,000. They've got a better than 0% chance. I hope that dada21 is reading this so that he can put his word in. I believe he is working on music production for artists that don't utilize copyright. AFAIK, his artist partners are making money w/o the benefit of copyright.Which...the only reason why he'd want the monopoly is to keep cash flowing to him.
Piracy is not unconstiutional. Piracy is spelled out in Article 1, Section 8:
To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations; So congress can define and punish piracy, but it doesn't have to. Getting back on topic:
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
Congress has the power to establish copyrights and patents, but it is not commanded to do so. Famously, Thomas Jefferson was very much against copyrights. In any case, the Constitution restricts the government, not people, so the Constitution cannot declare the actions of a private citizen to be repugnant to itself. What you mean to say copyright infringement is illegal under current law.The constitution singles out only authors and inventors. I am an author of this post, but I have no possibility of making any money from it even if it was copyrighted*. Copyright as a means to try to make profit off of one's works isn't as important as you think it is. And judging from the amount of people my age (early-to-mid 20s) who download music illegally, your argument that society supports copyright is suspect.
When all is said and done you believe that people who make creative works should be allowed to try to make a profit from them. That is fine, but you believe they are entitled to special rights to that effect which allow them to be paid again and again for work they've already done. No other profession I'm aware of allows for such special rights. I don't get royalty checks for my previous consulting gig, even though they are still using the systems I set up for them. Why authors and inventors should get a special pass, I don't know.
*All my posts are public domain.
** I support a limited copyright as intended by the founders. A copyright that has the goal of enriching the public domain. I believe a term of approximately 10 years with an optional 5 year extension to be optimal.