In some cases, wealthy people can get around this, such as buying their yacht in a different country and sailing it in, which apparenly happened one time when luxury taxes were increased.
I have thought about that, and I guess my response would be, where do they keep this ship berthed? How about a nice hefty "foreign owned" berthing fee for ships? If they go buy a luxury car outside of the US and drive it in, they would have to register it out of country as well (think hefty registration tax on luxury cars too) or else pay some kind of import duty on it. I wonder how countries with a national sales tax handle things like this?
Encouraging people to keep their money under their mattress, rather than buy needed products, would provide a stiff kick to the economy's figurative balls.
Maybe the govt. should start issuing low interest credit cards to everyone to help stimulate spending? What you say is interesting, but how would our economy be doing if people had more money in their pocket from each paycheck (even if things cost more, though hopefully the sliding scale on necessary vs luxury items would put more money in the average joe's pocket in general each month). Seriously, how many people would save that "extra money" instead of spending it?
What if I just buy used items? Sure they'll get me on food, a house, car, etc.. But everything else? I'll buy my computer used, my TV, DVD player, etc. How would they collect any tax on that?Actually people already do that, since buying things at a yard sale is free of sales tax (it isn't supposed to be, but does anyone charge sales tax when they hold a yard sale?) Personally I think this would be great, since it would probably help keep useful stuff out of the landfill too (until all the used DVD players break, and everyone has to buy new ones).
I figure if the little suckers could survive the trip across millions of miles of frozen vacuum, they could certainly survive on Europa, a garden of eden by comparison.
It would be nice if you could easily upgrade the video/ram/cpu/etc without having to rip the whole laptop apart. Memory has certainly gotten easier, but you are stuck with whatever video card (at least I have never seen one that is upgradeable) which means when the new games come out in 6 months you are wishing you had an upgradeable desktop instead of a laptop.
Which of course leads to my other rant: I wish they would design PCs so the average joe could upgrade them without having to open the case. Aside from taking away business from companys that upgrade PCs, is there any reason why CPUs, video cards/network cards/etc (except the motherboard of course) couldn't just be encased in plastic modules so that Joe Schmo could just plug them right in (something along the lines of the old video game cartridge)? (Something like the slot1 pentium cpus) This would require drastic changes to the ATX layoug, but it seems like it would be a good thing in the long run.
My friend said this case is just what he needs, as long as his pet python can fit through all the bends to chase the hamster/mouse/gerbil. Should make for a pretty active rodent too.
The worst one has to be clip of him rolling around naked in a big pile of money and laughing. I mean my god, I will never touch money with my bare hands again.
Now I have to go find, install, and remember how to use 'trn', not to mention install a newserver, etc. etc.
On a more serious note, I remember working at "the U" back in the days (late 80s). I remember the news server disks had to be replaced on a regular basis, since they would wear out due to being constantly hammered. Considering how much crap floated around on newsgroups back then, I can only imagine how bad they are now.
The dinosaurs died out because they didn't have a space program.
Thank you for posting this, I think I found my new sig! Interestingly I can't tell for sure if this is a Niven or Clarke quote, since the all-knowing-ever-lying internet lists both authors as the creator of it.
Or a third option: maybe are decontamination of the landers wasn't as great as we thought it was, or they picked up hitchhikers on the way through our atmosphere.
According to Assistant Attorney General Hewitt Pate, the fine 'may send the wrong message about antitrust enforcement priorities'. You mean something like the EU pursues antitrust violators while the US doesn't?
Well, if I understand this right, they are going to follow the trail to the actual person collecting money, so Jim Bob with his hijacked PC should be safe (until his connection gets unplugged, see earliers Comcast article). I can understand the ISPs being pissed at this, I mean imagine if they didn't have to handle piles of spam all day? It must be fun upgrading your mail servers all the time just to handle the 80% increase in spam.
Hellooooo, this is a computer geek we are talking about. I mean think about it, boardroom full of engineers trying to figure out the best way for geeks to power devices, when one mentions "hand powered" I mean c'mon it is obvious.......
There's something about trusting the mechanics to tell me when my car's broken that I don't really like...
But how else would we know what our boss feels like when we say the harddrive just died on the RAID attached to the mailserver, and even though the machine is chugging along just fine, we really do need a new disk?
Slashdot Mirror
Also, apparently the author doesn't get enough spam, because he included his email address at the end of the article.
I have thought about that, and I guess my response would be, where do they keep this ship berthed? How about a nice hefty "foreign owned" berthing fee for ships? If they go buy a luxury car outside of the US and drive it in, they would have to register it out of country as well (think hefty registration tax on luxury cars too) or else pay some kind of import duty on it. I wonder how countries with a national sales tax handle things like this?
Maybe the govt. should start issuing low interest credit cards to everyone to help stimulate spending? What you say is interesting, but how would our economy be doing if people had more money in their pocket from each paycheck (even if things cost more, though hopefully the sliding scale on necessary vs luxury items would put more money in the average joe's pocket in general each month). Seriously, how many people would save that "extra money" instead of spending it?
What if I just buy used items? Sure they'll get me on food, a house, car, etc.. But everything else? I'll buy my computer used, my TV, DVD player, etc. How would they collect any tax on that?Actually people already do that, since buying things at a yard sale is free of sales tax (it isn't supposed to be, but does anyone charge sales tax when they hold a yard sale?) Personally I think this would be great, since it would probably help keep useful stuff out of the landfill too (until all the used DVD players break, and everyone has to buy new ones).
Advantages:
- Never file a tax return again
- Even illegal money (i.e. drug money) is taxed as it is spent
- Americans are encouraged to actually save money, since if they don't spend it, they don't pay taxes on it
- Provide a sliding scale on needed items vs luxury items (food=cheap tax, yachts=expensive tax)
- Get rid of the outmoded IRS and save a whole pile of money right there
Ok, time for me to run and hide, since they probably have the slashdot user database linked to my real name....
I figure if the little suckers could survive the trip across millions of miles of frozen vacuum, they could certainly survive on Europa, a garden of eden by comparison.
Which of course leads to my other rant: I wish they would design PCs so the average joe could upgrade them without having to open the case. Aside from taking away business from companys that upgrade PCs, is there any reason why CPUs, video cards/network cards/etc (except the motherboard of course) couldn't just be encased in plastic modules so that Joe Schmo could just plug them right in (something along the lines of the old video game cartridge)? (Something like the slot1 pentium cpus) This would require drastic changes to the ATX layoug, but it seems like it would be a good thing in the long run.
If it does, and it crashed while the blind person is crossing the street, it could bring a whole new meaning to "blue screen of death".
My friend said this case is just what he needs, as long as his pet python can fit through all the bends to chase the hamster/mouse/gerbil. Should make for a pretty active rodent too.
The worst one has to be clip of him rolling around naked in a big pile of money and laughing. I mean my god, I will never touch money with my bare hands again.
On a more serious note, I remember working at "the U" back in the days (late 80s). I remember the news server disks had to be replaced on a regular basis, since they would wear out due to being constantly hammered. Considering how much crap floated around on newsgroups back then, I can only imagine how bad they are now.
Maybe the scientists in charge just really hated chickens?
Now that we know this our social lives will improve, since getting mugged is better than no social life at all.
Thank you for posting this, I think I found my new sig! Interestingly I can't tell for sure if this is a Niven or Clarke quote, since the all-knowing-ever-lying internet lists both authors as the creator of it.
Or a third option: maybe are decontamination of the landers wasn't as great as we thought it was, or they picked up hitchhikers on the way through our atmosphere.
I want to be the first to say we should hurry and register this person as soon as possible!
According to Assistant Attorney General Hewitt Pate, the fine 'may send the wrong message about antitrust enforcement priorities'.
You mean something like the EU pursues antitrust violators while the US doesn't?
Ahh 3.5 hours, hey that is over 1 hour per book, should be plenty.
how are they going to dance and sing for 9 hours, and who is going to sit through a play that long???
The best part will be when they are pretending to ride horses everywhere, should make any serious scene look totally absurd.
Well, if I understand this right, they are going to follow the trail to the actual person collecting money, so Jim Bob with his hijacked PC should be safe (until his connection gets unplugged, see earliers Comcast article). I can understand the ISPs being pissed at this, I mean imagine if they didn't have to handle piles of spam all day? It must be fun upgrading your mail servers all the time just to handle the 80% increase in spam.
Hopefully when they release the Playstation 3 it will drive down the cost of Playstation 2 + games (hey I can dream can't I?)
If they could make them remove Outlook being installed by default we would have something.
Hellooooo, this is a computer geek we are talking about. I mean think about it, boardroom full of engineers trying to figure out the best way for geeks to power devices, when one mentions "hand powered" I mean c'mon it is obvious.......
But how else would we know what our boss feels like when we say the harddrive just died on the RAID attached to the mailserver, and even though the machine is chugging along just fine, we really do need a new disk?
if (tempnum > 0)
and then they jump up and down saying "look, it is EVERYWHERE in their code".
In fact, this very post may be treading on dangerous ground.