No that's stupid. Kids being in the same room as their mom and dad while their mom and dad get it on with mom and dad is nothing like kids being the focal point of sex. Mom and dad were having sex with mom and dad, not mom having sex with son and dad having sex with daughter. Or did you think child pornography is defined as children seeing pornography?
It makes absolutely no sense to say that children seeing their parents have sex is the same as an adult having sex with a child.
both of which were much more common in the past than today
I'm not so sure child pornography or sex with children was as common in the past as you are trying to make it appear. Sure it happened, but I wonder if a lot of what we think happened was really just a moving of the goal posts as it were. My great grandmother was married at 14, which was not uncommon for her time. Fast forward 100 years and people think it's ridiculous for someone younger than 20 to get married. There has been a real problem for the last century or so in delaying adulthood. Parents are encouraging their children to remain children far longer than is usual. I don't doubt that most 18 year olds are not mentally and socially capable of handling what most 30 year olds can, not because it's not possible for them, but because we as a society don't let them grow up. Mostly I blame the "education" system, but others can be blamed as well. Anyway, that's a bit of a tangent.
I'm the same way. More often than not, when websites do that, I stop reading and try never to come back to their site again. Other times I'll add what ever bit of javascript or whatever it is from the site. It's one reason why I hate snopes.com. You can't highlight their text. Who goes to the trouble of making text unhighlightable? I'll often highlight words or phrases right click and select 'Search Google for "$highlighted_words"'. Snopes makes that difficult. But the other day I was on a site (I can't remember which one right now) and tried highlighting some text to search more about it in Google and they actually had a pop up dialog box that said their content was copyrighted and they didn't allow copying. Out of spite I hit Ctrl-U, got the source for the page and the copied what I wanted while yelling out "Stop me from copying now!" My wife looked at me weird.
Ridiculous. With that kind of weak fortitude, you'd never get any where. I built my house on a swamp. It eventually sank. So I built it again. Even though it sank again, I built it a third time. Somehow, the third one burned down, fell over, and then sank, but I built it again. And that one stayed; it is the one my kids will inherit. They called me daft, but I showed them.
As to where people live, there are natural hazards EVERYWHERE. You are going to force people out of earthquake country, or tornado country, etc, or how about wildfires, icestorms, etc?
Did you read what the GP said? No, he's not advocating forcing anyone to move. He just wants them to take responsibility for choosing to live where there are dangers. I completely agree. I live where there are earthquakes and a potential for volcanic action, but I fully understood that before I moved to the area, and fully realize that it could be a problem. I buy my insurance, I have an emergency plan, and fully understand that someday an Mt Rainier might blow and I'll be dead. I could choose to live in a safer place, or pick a different danger. But that's my choice, and the GP rightfully observes that since it is my choice, I take full responsibility for it and shouldn't expect others to be held responsible.
I need some more clarification because I don't understand. You said you deal with the whole of the USA so you and Amazon are in exactly the same position, then go on to say ~100 countries matter to Amazon. Which is it? I know Amazon deals with more than the US. So are you saying that you deal with about 100 countries? If so, is that $2 million making a dent in your profits. If you're going to make Amazon pay it, then you need to make every one do so, not just the big guys. That's why I pointed out coolstuffinc.com earlier. I've shopped there a couple of times, but I doubt they could afford to pay $20,000 just for tax software and stay in business. And they are not unique in that position.
I kind of figured there would be someone out there that would start up a business like this. However, $20,000 per year seems a bit high for for these people. Probably a bit on the high side for any small business. The cost of talking to a local tax accountant or lawyer is comparatively pocket change.
According to here there are 500 cities/towns in NJ. California has over 1000 cities. North Dakota only has a few large towns/cities, but over 180 smaller ones. That's a lot of cities.
But wait, there's more. Each county will sometimes have it's own tax rate to add. Here we find that there are over 3,000 counties in the US.
But wait, there's more. Sometimes sales taxes can come from other places. For example "service authorities, and various special districts (such as the Bay Area Rapid Transit district)."
But wait, there's more. Each one of those sales tax codes isn't just a number, it can also include certain items that are exempt, or have different rates.
You're one phone call is now several, and each time they have to tell the tax guy what you are buying so they can determine the rate.
Or just ignore it, and when you get a tax bill, just pay the damned thing.
This is exactly what they are doing. However, no one is sending them a bill, because they don't know what is being purchased by whom, for the which I am glad. They don't need to know. Unless you are advocating that Amazon should be sending each tax district an itemized list of everything you bought.
Keep in mind, that Amazon might be able to afford to keep up with all of this, but there are lots of people who sell online who can't.
t would be as much an "undue burden" for me to open a bar
No, when opening a bar, you only need to know the laws relating to your bar in that locale. If you open up a bar in Seattle, you don't need to worry about the laws regarding bars in Ocala, FL.
There are only 50
Yes, there are only 50 states. However, each city might have it's own tax rate. There are a lot more than 50 cities. You would have to have some schmoe look it up for every location, and keep on top of any changes that might happen. Whereas, with your bar example, you only need to keep on top of what the tax rate is for your one location.
By-product and cause are not necessarily different. The American Civil War most certainly caused the ending of slavery. However, ending slavery was also a by-product of the war. That is, the war's original purpose did not involve ending slavery, (so thus it was a by-product), but it did cause slavery to end.
But even without the cause/by-product argument, the sig in question never said that the wars had to be started for the purpose of solving those problems, it only stated that war did solve those problems.
Was the quote from the GP you included in your post there because you didn't understand what it said? If so, I'll help you answer your question. The GP said (and you quoted this):
I spend most of my disposable income on media of various sorts
"My disposable income" can be termed a pile of cash. From this we know that he has a pile of cash, though admittedly it is unclear if it is a large or small pile. However, we can ascertain that it is at least a small pile.
"Media of various sorts" can be described as anything that you watch/listen/read.
Replacing the GP's terminology with your own (hopefully you understand your own terminology) we get:
I spend most of my pile of cash on anything that you watch/listen/read.
"Spend" in this case is used to indicate that the GP is buying something with his "pile of cash", specifically, he is buying "anything that you watch/listen/read". So we can further translate the GP as follows:
I buy [with] my pile of cashanything that you watch/listen/read
We can see that there are still some words not yet replaced. However, it is out of my power to further translate. Perhaps your question will never be answered.
If we're going to be pedantic, the American Civil War had been under way for some time before the Emancipation Proclamation. The Civil War was started for other reasons. Freeing the slaves eventually became an additional objective which gave Lincoln popular support from foreign powers, most importantly France and the UK.
No, that is exactly what I am saying. There should be a law that says you can either use copyrights or you can use DRM. In other words, you can either make your stuff available without any kind of copy protection AND get the government to enforce your exclusive rights to publish and distribute (fair use rights would still exist) OR you can try to keep the exclusive publishing and distribution rights by using copy protection measures but in doing so you forfeit any government enforcement of your copyright. We could even add a provision similar to industrial espionage where creators who choose the DRM option can go after people who obtain their content using industrial espionage type practices (such as cracking into their network, spies in the workplace, etc.) but they couldn't go after people who obtain it through cracking the DRM since that would be like reverse engineering.
If the laws were like that I doubt we'd see anyone choosing the DRM path because they'd realize really quickly that DRM doesn't stop pirates, the analog hole is unstoppable, etc and that DRM only makes legitimate uses more difficult.
If we're going to go the law route, I say there oughtta be a law that says if you use DRM then you don't get copyright protection. With patents, you either keep your stuff locked up, or you publish it and get the government to enforce exclusivity for you. Same should be true with copyrights. You can have the government enforce exclusive rights to copy, or you can use DRM and try locking it up yourself.
And since you didn't pass on your rain-check-please genes, but the other guy passed on his she-gives-head-she-gets-head genes, what do you think future males are going to be like? It may be harmful to you, but evolution isn't about the individual, it's about which genes get passed on.
That, as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously.
If copyright is going to be considered property that is inheritable, then it needs to be taxed just like any other inheritance. Let's assume the inheritance tax rate is 10%. That means you lop off 10% of the time left on the copyright, and you also tax any income from copyright royalties at 10% as well. Note that as far as Inheritance taxes go, 10% is really low.
Seems to me you are barking up the wrong tree. The drivers on this tell Windows that it is one monitor. Not 6 different monitors. As far as Windows is concerned, with this it thinks there is only one really high resolution monitor attached to the computer. That wouldn't do anything for a simultaneous multiple user environment.
No. In America you have the right to bear arms for one reason: 2nd amendment. If you want to get into why the 2nd amendment was added, you can talk about rebelling native tyranny. I don't ever remember any of the founding fathers mentioning anything about criminals or hunting when it came to guns, but if you have a citation, I'd be more than happy to read it.
If we're going to be pedantic, then let's be pedantic. The Lord of the Rings is SIX books typically published in three volumes, but that was only due to post-war paper shortages and to help keep the price down. It has not always been sold in three volumes, however.
Slashdot Mirror
It makes absolutely no sense to say that children seeing their parents have sex is the same as an adult having sex with a child.
I'm not so sure child pornography or sex with children was as common in the past as you are trying to make it appear. Sure it happened, but I wonder if a lot of what we think happened was really just a moving of the goal posts as it were. My great grandmother was married at 14, which was not uncommon for her time. Fast forward 100 years and people think it's ridiculous for someone younger than 20 to get married. There has been a real problem for the last century or so in delaying adulthood. Parents are encouraging their children to remain children far longer than is usual. I don't doubt that most 18 year olds are not mentally and socially capable of handling what most 30 year olds can, not because it's not possible for them, but because we as a society don't let them grow up. Mostly I blame the "education" system, but others can be blamed as well. Anyway, that's a bit of a tangent.
I'm the same way. More often than not, when websites do that, I stop reading and try never to come back to their site again. Other times I'll add what ever bit of javascript or whatever it is from the site. It's one reason why I hate snopes.com. You can't highlight their text. Who goes to the trouble of making text unhighlightable? I'll often highlight words or phrases right click and select 'Search Google for "$highlighted_words"'. Snopes makes that difficult. But the other day I was on a site (I can't remember which one right now) and tried highlighting some text to search more about it in Google and they actually had a pop up dialog box that said their content was copyrighted and they didn't allow copying. Out of spite I hit Ctrl-U, got the source for the page and the copied what I wanted while yelling out "Stop me from copying now!" My wife looked at me weird.
If you live in the Seattle area: Amazon Fresh
Ridiculous. With that kind of weak fortitude, you'd never get any where. I built my house on a swamp. It eventually sank. So I built it again. Even though it sank again, I built it a third time. Somehow, the third one burned down, fell over, and then sank, but I built it again. And that one stayed; it is the one my kids will inherit. They called me daft, but I showed them.
Did you read what the GP said? No, he's not advocating forcing anyone to move. He just wants them to take responsibility for choosing to live where there are dangers. I completely agree. I live where there are earthquakes and a potential for volcanic action, but I fully understood that before I moved to the area, and fully realize that it could be a problem. I buy my insurance, I have an emergency plan, and fully understand that someday an Mt Rainier might blow and I'll be dead. I could choose to live in a safer place, or pick a different danger. But that's my choice, and the GP rightfully observes that since it is my choice, I take full responsibility for it and shouldn't expect others to be held responsible.
I need some more clarification because I don't understand. You said you deal with the whole of the USA so you and Amazon are in exactly the same position, then go on to say ~100 countries matter to Amazon. Which is it? I know Amazon deals with more than the US. So are you saying that you deal with about 100 countries? If so, is that $2 million making a dent in your profits. If you're going to make Amazon pay it, then you need to make every one do so, not just the big guys. That's why I pointed out coolstuffinc.com earlier. I've shopped there a couple of times, but I doubt they could afford to pay $20,000 just for tax software and stay in business. And they are not unique in that position.
I kind of figured there would be someone out there that would start up a business like this. However, $20,000 per year seems a bit high for for these people. Probably a bit on the high side for any small business. The cost of talking to a local tax accountant or lawyer is comparatively pocket change.
But wait, there's more. Each county will sometimes have it's own tax rate to add. Here we find that there are over 3,000 counties in the US.
But wait, there's more. Sometimes sales taxes can come from other places. For example "service authorities, and various special districts (such as the Bay Area Rapid Transit district)."
But wait, there's more. Each one of those sales tax codes isn't just a number, it can also include certain items that are exempt, or have different rates.
You're one phone call is now several, and each time they have to tell the tax guy what you are buying so they can determine the rate.
This is exactly what they are doing. However, no one is sending them a bill, because they don't know what is being purchased by whom, for the which I am glad. They don't need to know. Unless you are advocating that Amazon should be sending each tax district an itemized list of everything you bought.
Keep in mind, that Amazon might be able to afford to keep up with all of this, but there are lots of people who sell online who can't.
No, when opening a bar, you only need to know the laws relating to your bar in that locale. If you open up a bar in Seattle, you don't need to worry about the laws regarding bars in Ocala, FL.
Yes, there are only 50 states. However, each city might have it's own tax rate. There are a lot more than 50 cities. You would have to have some schmoe look it up for every location, and keep on top of any changes that might happen. Whereas, with your bar example, you only need to keep on top of what the tax rate is for your one location.
By-product and cause are not necessarily different. The American Civil War most certainly caused the ending of slavery. However, ending slavery was also a by-product of the war. That is, the war's original purpose did not involve ending slavery, (so thus it was a by-product), but it did cause slavery to end.
But even without the cause/by-product argument, the sig in question never said that the wars had to be started for the purpose of solving those problems, it only stated that war did solve those problems.
"My disposable income" can be termed a pile of cash. From this we know that he has a pile of cash, though admittedly it is unclear if it is a large or small pile. However, we can ascertain that it is at least a small pile.
"Media of various sorts" can be described as anything that you watch/listen/read.
Replacing the GP's terminology with your own (hopefully you understand your own terminology) we get:
"Spend" in this case is used to indicate that the GP is buying something with his "pile of cash", specifically, he is buying "anything that you watch/listen/read". So we can further translate the GP as follows:
We can see that there are still some words not yet replaced. However, it is out of my power to further translate. Perhaps your question will never be answered.
If we're going to be pedantic, the American Civil War had been under way for some time before the Emancipation Proclamation. The Civil War was started for other reasons. Freeing the slaves eventually became an additional objective which gave Lincoln popular support from foreign powers, most importantly France and the UK.
No, that is exactly what I am saying. There should be a law that says you can either use copyrights or you can use DRM. In other words, you can either make your stuff available without any kind of copy protection AND get the government to enforce your exclusive rights to publish and distribute (fair use rights would still exist) OR you can try to keep the exclusive publishing and distribution rights by using copy protection measures but in doing so you forfeit any government enforcement of your copyright. We could even add a provision similar to industrial espionage where creators who choose the DRM option can go after people who obtain their content using industrial espionage type practices (such as cracking into their network, spies in the workplace, etc.) but they couldn't go after people who obtain it through cracking the DRM since that would be like reverse engineering.
If the laws were like that I doubt we'd see anyone choosing the DRM path because they'd realize really quickly that DRM doesn't stop pirates, the analog hole is unstoppable, etc and that DRM only makes legitimate uses more difficult.
If we're going to go the law route, I say there oughtta be a law that says if you use DRM then you don't get copyright protection. With patents, you either keep your stuff locked up, or you publish it and get the government to enforce exclusivity for you. Same should be true with copyrights. You can have the government enforce exclusive rights to copy, or you can use DRM and try locking it up yourself.
And since you didn't pass on your rain-check-please genes, but the other guy passed on his she-gives-head-she-gets-head genes, what do you think future males are going to be like? It may be harmful to you, but evolution isn't about the individual, it's about which genes get passed on.
That, as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously.
--Benjamin Franklin
If copyright is going to be considered property that is inheritable, then it needs to be taxed just like any other inheritance. Let's assume the inheritance tax rate is 10%. That means you lop off 10% of the time left on the copyright, and you also tax any income from copyright royalties at 10% as well. Note that as far as Inheritance taxes go, 10% is really low.
Precisely. It's just like when I die my employer will pay my wife and kids my salary!
Wait, I just talked to my HR rep. Apparently when I die, they'll stop paying out my salary.
I'll second that. It really does look weird.
Not that long ago actually
Yeah, I stand around the water cooler at work a lot, too.
Seems to me you are barking up the wrong tree. The drivers on this tell Windows that it is one monitor. Not 6 different monitors. As far as Windows is concerned, with this it thinks there is only one really high resolution monitor attached to the computer. That wouldn't do anything for a simultaneous multiple user environment.
No. In America you have the right to bear arms for one reason: 2nd amendment. If you want to get into why the 2nd amendment was added, you can talk about rebelling native tyranny. I don't ever remember any of the founding fathers mentioning anything about criminals or hunting when it came to guns, but if you have a citation, I'd be more than happy to read it.
If we're going to be pedantic, then let's be pedantic. The Lord of the Rings is SIX books typically published in three volumes, but that was only due to post-war paper shortages and to help keep the price down. It has not always been sold in three volumes, however.
You don't need to get that esoteric. Just listen to a lot of English speakers try to say one of the more common surnames in the world; Nguyen.