The current sales tax should really be called a "usage tax", because you're taxed based on the state in which you use the item, not the state from which you buy it. If I live in New York and mail-order an item from Vermont, the vendor won't charge me Vermont sales tax. Yet, I'm supposed to figure out how much New York sales tax I would pay, and then send a check to the state government. Of course, no one does that.
It would make a whole lot more sense if companies charged sales tax from the state the items were sold. It shouldn't matter where the items are being used. If we implement this system, then this whole "internet sales tax" problem will just go away. --
Something is wrong here. http://www.freestandards.org/ldps/ says 1.1 was released March 12, 2001 (yesterday). But if you read that announcement, you'll see the headline says March 12, 2000. Not only that, but the announcement text makes references to old distributions, e.g. Red Hat 6.2.
Also, I'm confused as to which distributions actually uses 1.1. --
So you'll buy one car for commuting and another car for everything else (e.g. big trips to the supermarket, driving to the airport with your luggage, taking your kids and their friends to a soccer game, etc)? --
Your logic is flawed. The whole idea is that the big power plants can produce more energy with less polution than the combustion engine in a car. So yes, there is still polution, but on a per-joule basis, there is less polution.
As to the power stations in California producing 4 times the pollutants, that doesn't mean anything. Could it be that these power plants produce more than 4 times as much energy than the cars, trucks, and trains? If so, then they technically pollute less.
Another advantage is that most people will recharge their cars overnight, when electric usage is typically much lower than during the day, so the peak electical usage will not increase that much. --
Well, of course he won't care, because he's not an employee of the cable company. Rather, he's an employee of a contracting company that your cable company hired to do all the installations. --
The hacker crowd may not be as thrilled by this whole development, of course. On the other hand, if they can put aside their initial
horror at InTether's potential for protecting intellectual property, and focus instead on its exciting potential as a tool for enhancing private
and confidential communications, they may reconsider.
All I can say is: hahahahahahaha!!!!!!! He's a moron if he thinks the "hacker crowd" is some unified group of people who all think alike. And he's doubly stupid if he thinks that this aforementioned "hacker crowd" believes that InTether will be used primarily to enhance privacy. Sorry bud, you're not fooling anyone.
Did anyone else get the feeling that this article reads more like an advertisement than an unbiased review? --
Funny, I don't remember ever being promised anything by gracenote.
Perhaps not, but the point everyone else is making is that you, through your own time and effort, provided the data to Gracenote freely. Gracenote then placed restrictions on how you can access the data that you gave them! No matter how you slice it, their policy is unethical. --
I while back, I sent email to the EFF asking for help fighting the UCITA in Texas (I've known about this for a while). Here's the reply I got:
You should be able to track down the author of the bill and the
committee who is responsible for it on:
http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/
I would write the author, the committee members, the governor and any news
groups or interested parties who you can think of in Texas. More voices
are important. There should be some support in the academic
community. As far as legislators are concerned hard copy still means more
to them than electronic. Good luck. --
Forcing students to join a prayer, however, is a bad thing. It's okay if a particular student or group of students wants to voluntarily pray on their own time in their own private space. Unfortunately, many prayers in schools somehow force some students to be involved, whether they want to or not. --
My guess is that they can modify the Napster clients (which are also servers) so that they still publish MP3s, but the MP3s are converted to WMFs (or whatever) during the transfer. People can still publish MP3s, but no one can download one. People can also publish WMFs, but only those that are "Napster approved" - mean that you can't publish a WMF that has no copyprotection. Then, they need to change the Napster protocol so that only people using the new clients will see each other. --
I don't respect authority, and I function quite well in society. So your premise is wrong, and thus your conclusion.
Really? So when you get a speeding ticket, you ignore it? After all, you were "thinking freely" when you decided that you didn't need to drive only 45 mph. The fact that your excessive speed puts others in danger is not important, right?
--
Contrary to popular belief, you cannot hold vendors of closed-source products "liable" for any problems. You can't sue them, and you can't demand that they fix any bugs or add any features. This is especially true with today's EULAs, especially those inspired by the UCITA.
Open-source products typically have no per-use licensing fees. If your organization grows, you won't have to pay more money to install the same software on new employee's computers.
By having the source code, the customer has control over the software he uses. If there are any bugs to fix or features to add, those changes can be made without any third party. How many times have you wished that a particular software you use had a new feature or a bug fix, and you didn't want to wait for the vendor to make the change for you? And in many cases, you have to purchase the upgrade in order to get the bug fix or new feature.
Because public money is being used to fund any development or deployment of government-created software, unless there are national security reasons against it, the public has the right to expect the source code for that software. If my tax dollars are being used to pay for some software that is being developed, then I expect to be able to obtain that software and the source code for free (since I've already paid for it). If the software is not based on open-source technologies, then it may not be legal for the government programmers to give me that source code.
If the government is using software for sensitive technologies, like ballot counting, then it must demand access to the source code, and it must allow that source code to be viewable to the public. This allows the government and the public to inspect the source code to make sure that no illegal or unethical code exists. For instance, let's say that some military equipment was designed with software from Boeing, and that software had an error in it that resulted in the death of some Marines who used that equipment? If the government had access to the source code, then the government could audit the code to look for such bugs.
Tech support for closed-source products is not necessary any better than for open-source products, even if you pay more for that support. See http://www.bmug.org/news/articles/MSvsPF.html for an example.
There is never a conflict between showing respect and thinking for yourself. Having respect for authority simply means that you understand what that authority is for. If I tell my son that he needs to clean his room, and he decides not to, that does not mean that he is thinking freely.
People who don't respect authority can't function in a society. Your comment implies that no one who lives in a society is a free thinker, which is absurd.
I think your problem is that you're confusing "respecting authority" with "blindly following authority figures". --
The "competition" was supposed to expand the Mac market as a whole, by giving customers what they kept bitching about: more choice in systems. But the Mac market didn't grow - all that happened was that Apple's customers bought non-Apple machines instead of Apple machines. The end result was that Apple's marketshare shrunk.
Don't blame Apple - they did what people asked them to do, but the people didn't "hold up their end of the bargin" (the people who said they'd buy a Mac if it weren't from Apple either lied or were way too few in number to count). --
If they install Debian (note I say install, not try to install) then they will already
have learnt a lot about a computer and the relationship it has with its software and they will be far
more knowledgable for the result.
True, but why do so many people think that you need to learn how a computer works internally in order to use it? The whole idea behind "consumer electronics" (which includes PCs to a degree) is that the end-user does not NEED to know how the product's technology works.
The majority of computer users I know will NEVER understand how a computer really works. And if you try to get them to figure it out so that they can use the computer, they will NOT use the computer! It's that simple. You're making the assumption that the average computer user will take the time to learn the computer's innards in order to use it, and that, my friend, is a false assumption. Nothing could be further from the truth.
And by the way, the mbr and partition table are concepts that are extremely difficult for a computer illiterate person to understand. --
Mod this up! It's amazing how many people think that conservative, "Republican", "old-world" thinking is limited to stuffy 50+ year-old men who still think we're in the Cold War. The truth is that there are lots of young people who:
are anti-abortion
don't care about the environment
are pissed about how high taxes are
think everyone should be a conservative Christian
and other "traditionally Republican" viewpoints. Notice I'm using a lot of quoation marks - I'm trying to avoid stereotyping as best I can, but I doubt I'm doing a good job. I hope everyone can get the gist of what I'm saying.
Don't get me wrong - I voted for Nader for all the reasons other people voted for him. But the truth is that the philosophies of the "older generation" of people in charge of our government and corporations are NOT dying out. --
Programmers' salaries are not artifically inflated. Granted, most programmers aren't very good, but there are plenty who are. These people are dyed-in-wool professional engineers with years of education and experience, and they do things that 95% of the population can't even comprehend, let alone reproduce, including you. It's obvious you're not a programmer, so you'll never be able to do my job as well as I do. For many of these people, a six-figure salary is not inflated.
People have been developing software for 40 years, and it isn't any easier now than it was back then. If anything, it's more difficult.
In fact, I don't even know why I'm responding to these absurd posts. Open source is not going to take over the world, so I'm not even worried. Besides, I write device drivers, so hardware sales drive the income of the companies I work for anyway. --
You've got to be kidding me. This is a really bad business model. Charging money just to compile a piece of software?!?!!? You're basically contradicting yourself with this:
Sure, somebody will post the binary
somewhere, but a large number of users will simply not find the WAREZ version and pay for the
binary version.
I seriously don't think a large number of users will not find the "warez" version. After all, why would it be the warez version? The only way it can be warez if it the source code license prohibits the distribution of binaries, which is absurd. And even if that were the license, anyone could create an "installation package" that included the compiler, and the installation would actually compile the source and copy it to the hard drive. Technically, the binary would not be distributed, but the end-user wouldn't notice. To him, the only difference is that it would take a long time to install. --
How about every LUG sends their representitives as complete a copy as possible of the free debian.
Bad idea. According to an article in the latest Linux Journal, "Installing Debian your first time is, to put it bluntly, sys admin hell." In other words, Debian is very difficult to install for newbies, so it would be a very bad choice. Corel Linux is probably a lot better.
Besides, the whole idea of a Representative switching to Linux in his office is silly. What I'm trying to do is to convince our government as a whole that being open-source is a good thing for any software solution. It needs to be a checkmark on the list of things to have. --
And what are my Senators going to do with a Linux desktop? Look at it? They're certainly not going to use it! You need to read my original post more carefully: I don't expect my elected officials to replace their functioning computers with Red Hat and Star Office. Linux maybe ready for your desktop, but it's certainly not ready for theirs. --
In the future people will assume that any educated person can type
faster than she can write by hand.
That's ridiculous. There are lots of educated people who don't type and have no need to. What has typing got to do with being educated?
In the future every high school graduate will have to have some basic programming skills.
Hahahahaha!!! Most high school students don't even have basic math and English skills. Do you really expect every high school student to become a part-time programmer!?!?!? You're insane!! There's no way that's going to happen. 95% of the population just isn't smart enough to understand programming.
Are you
going to pay every high school student a six figure salary?
So you're advocating a world where people like me will make significantly less money? It sounds like you're a non-programmer who has a problem with programmers making lots of money
Will programmers get paid less in the future? Some may. But others will get paid more than they do
now. Hopefully, you are right to say that some applications will become so advanced they do not
require a lot of support. But at the same time there will always be new programs to write. Voice
recognition, and image recognition are exciting areas for the desktop right now...
Geez, everyone keeps bringing up the same B.S. but no one can answer my question: if the software is available for free, and it's so good that support is not needed, then where will the money for the programmers come from? --
Come on, as long as people want to play great games and making great games is difficult or possible
only for a talented few.... then those talented few will be paid to produce great games!!!
But WHO will pay them? The people downloading the game for free aren't paying. So who is? And forget about game consoles - I'm talking about PC games, where the user has a PC already.
Look, I'm not advocating MS's position. I think Allchin is a moron. But I still don't see how a company can make money if it gives its product away for free. Charging for support only works if the customer NEEDS support. If the product is good enough that support is not needed, then the customer will not buy the support. --
I know plenty of programmers who get six-figure salaries. And I agree with him that when people pay less money for softare, then the companies who make software will get less money, and that means that programmers will be paid less. I've read all the responses to his post, and I still think that programmers will make less money if open source becomes the norm.
Think about this: if software becomes truly first-class, then why would you need to pay anyone for support? If the software is already robust, easy-to-use, full-featured, and bug-free, then why would you need support for it? --
Slashdot Mirror
The current sales tax should really be called a "usage tax", because you're taxed based on the state in which you use the item, not the state from which you buy it. If I live in New York and mail-order an item from Vermont, the vendor won't charge me Vermont sales tax. Yet, I'm supposed to figure out how much New York sales tax I would pay, and then send a check to the state government. Of course, no one does that.
It would make a whole lot more sense if companies charged sales tax from the state the items were sold. It shouldn't matter where the items are being used. If we implement this system, then this whole "internet sales tax" problem will just go away.
--
Also, I'm confused as to which distributions actually uses 1.1.
--
So you'll buy one car for commuting and another car for everything else (e.g. big trips to the supermarket, driving to the airport with your luggage, taking your kids and their friends to a soccer game, etc)?
--
Don't forget safety features and storage capacity comparable with a mid-sized sedan today.
--
As to the power stations in California producing 4 times the pollutants, that doesn't mean anything. Could it be that these power plants produce more than 4 times as much energy than the cars, trucks, and trains? If so, then they technically pollute less.
Another advantage is that most people will recharge their cars overnight, when electric usage is typically much lower than during the day, so the peak electical usage will not increase that much.
--
Well, of course he won't care, because he's not an employee of the cable company. Rather, he's an employee of a contracting company that your cable company hired to do all the installations.
--
All I can say is: hahahahahahaha!!!!!!! He's a moron if he thinks the "hacker crowd" is some unified group of people who all think alike. And he's doubly stupid if he thinks that this aforementioned "hacker crowd" believes that InTether will be used primarily to enhance privacy. Sorry bud, you're not fooling anyone.
Did anyone else get the feeling that this article reads more like an advertisement than an unbiased review?
--
Perhaps not, but the point everyone else is making is that you, through your own time and effort, provided the data to Gracenote freely. Gracenote then placed restrictions on how you can access the data that you gave them! No matter how you slice it, their policy is unethical.
--
Would you please post a copy of your letter?
--
You should be able to track down the author of the bill and the committee who is responsible for it on: http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/ I would write the author, the committee members, the governor and any news groups or interested parties who you can think of in Texas. More voices are important. There should be some support in the academic community. As far as legislators are concerned hard copy still means more to them than electronic. Good luck.
--
Forcing students to join a prayer, however, is a bad thing. It's okay if a particular student or group of students wants to voluntarily pray on their own time in their own private space. Unfortunately, many prayers in schools somehow force some students to be involved, whether they want to or not.
--
My guess is that they can modify the Napster clients (which are also servers) so that they still publish MP3s, but the MP3s are converted to WMFs (or whatever) during the transfer. People can still publish MP3s, but no one can download one. People can also publish WMFs, but only those that are "Napster approved" - mean that you can't publish a WMF that has no copyprotection. Then, they need to change the Napster protocol so that only people using the new clients will see each other.
--
Really? So when you get a speeding ticket, you ignore it? After all, you were "thinking freely" when you decided that you didn't need to drive only 45 mph. The fact that your excessive speed puts others in danger is not important, right?
--
- Contrary to popular belief, you cannot hold vendors of closed-source products "liable" for any problems. You can't sue them, and you can't demand that they fix any bugs or add any features. This is especially true with today's EULAs, especially those inspired by the UCITA.
- Open-source products typically have no per-use licensing fees. If your organization grows, you won't have to pay more money to install the same software on new employee's computers.
- By having the source code, the customer has control over the software he uses. If there are any bugs to fix or features to add, those changes can be made without any third party. How many times have you wished that a particular software you use had a new feature or a bug fix, and you didn't want to wait for the vendor to make the change for you? And in many cases, you have to purchase the upgrade in order to get the bug fix or new feature.
- Because public money is being used to fund any development or deployment of government-created software, unless there are national security reasons against it, the public has the right to expect the source code for that software. If my tax dollars are being used to pay for some software that is being developed, then I expect to be able to obtain that software and the source code for free (since I've already paid for it). If the software is not based on open-source technologies, then it may not be legal for the government programmers to give me that source code.
- If the government is using software for sensitive technologies, like ballot counting, then it must demand access to the source code, and it must allow that source code to be viewable to the public. This allows the government and the public to inspect the source code to make sure that no illegal or unethical code exists. For instance, let's say that some military equipment was designed with software from Boeing, and that software had an error in it that resulted in the death of some Marines who used that equipment? If the government had access to the source code, then the government could audit the code to look for such bugs.
- Tech support for closed-source products is not necessary any better than for open-source products, even if you pay more for that support. See http://www.bmug.org/news/articles/MSvsPF.html for an example.
Any more ideas?--
People who don't respect authority can't function in a society. Your comment implies that no one who lives in a society is a free thinker, which is absurd.
I think your problem is that you're confusing "respecting authority" with "blindly following authority figures".
--
Don't blame Apple - they did what people asked them to do, but the people didn't "hold up their end of the bargin" (the people who said they'd buy a Mac if it weren't from Apple either lied or were way too few in number to count).
--
True, but why do so many people think that you need to learn how a computer works internally in order to use it? The whole idea behind "consumer electronics" (which includes PCs to a degree) is that the end-user does not NEED to know how the product's technology works.
The majority of computer users I know will NEVER understand how a computer really works. And if you try to get them to figure it out so that they can use the computer, they will NOT use the computer! It's that simple. You're making the assumption that the average computer user will take the time to learn the computer's innards in order to use it, and that, my friend, is a false assumption. Nothing could be further from the truth.
And by the way, the mbr and partition table are concepts that are extremely difficult for a computer illiterate person to understand.
--
- are anti-abortion
- don't care about the environment
- are pissed about how high taxes are
- think everyone should be a conservative Christian
and other "traditionally Republican" viewpoints. Notice I'm using a lot of quoation marks - I'm trying to avoid stereotyping as best I can, but I doubt I'm doing a good job. I hope everyone can get the gist of what I'm saying.Don't get me wrong - I voted for Nader for all the reasons other people voted for him. But the truth is that the philosophies of the "older generation" of people in charge of our government and corporations are NOT dying out.
--
People have been developing software for 40 years, and it isn't any easier now than it was back then. If anything, it's more difficult.
In fact, I don't even know why I'm responding to these absurd posts. Open source is not going to take over the world, so I'm not even worried. Besides, I write device drivers, so hardware sales drive the income of the companies I work for anyway.
--
Sure, somebody will post the binary somewhere, but a large number of users will simply not find the WAREZ version and pay for the binary version.
I seriously don't think a large number of users will not find the "warez" version. After all, why would it be the warez version? The only way it can be warez if it the source code license prohibits the distribution of binaries, which is absurd. And even if that were the license, anyone could create an "installation package" that included the compiler, and the installation would actually compile the source and copy it to the hard drive. Technically, the binary would not be distributed, but the end-user wouldn't notice. To him, the only difference is that it would take a long time to install.
--
Bad idea. According to an article in the latest Linux Journal, "Installing Debian your first time is, to put it bluntly, sys admin hell." In other words, Debian is very difficult to install for newbies, so it would be a very bad choice. Corel Linux is probably a lot better.
Besides, the whole idea of a Representative switching to Linux in his office is silly. What I'm trying to do is to convince our government as a whole that being open-source is a good thing for any software solution. It needs to be a checkmark on the list of things to have.
--
And what are my Senators going to do with a Linux desktop? Look at it? They're certainly not going to use it! You need to read my original post more carefully: I don't expect my elected officials to replace their functioning computers with Red Hat and Star Office. Linux maybe ready for your desktop, but it's certainly not ready for theirs.
--
That's ridiculous. There are lots of educated people who don't type and have no need to. What has typing got to do with being educated?
In the future every high school graduate will have to have some basic programming skills.
Hahahahaha!!! Most high school students don't even have basic math and English skills. Do you really expect every high school student to become a part-time programmer!?!?!? You're insane!! There's no way that's going to happen. 95% of the population just isn't smart enough to understand programming.
Are you going to pay every high school student a six figure salary?
So you're advocating a world where people like me will make significantly less money? It sounds like you're a non-programmer who has a problem with programmers making lots of money
Will programmers get paid less in the future? Some may. But others will get paid more than they do now. Hopefully, you are right to say that some applications will become so advanced they do not require a lot of support. But at the same time there will always be new programs to write. Voice recognition, and image recognition are exciting areas for the desktop right now...
Geez, everyone keeps bringing up the same B.S. but no one can answer my question: if the software is available for free, and it's so good that support is not needed, then where will the money for the programmers come from?
--
But WHO will pay them? The people downloading the game for free aren't paying. So who is? And forget about game consoles - I'm talking about PC games, where the user has a PC already.
Look, I'm not advocating MS's position. I think Allchin is a moron. But I still don't see how a company can make money if it gives its product away for free. Charging for support only works if the customer NEEDS support. If the product is good enough that support is not needed, then the customer will not buy the support.
--
Think about this: if software becomes truly first-class, then why would you need to pay anyone for support? If the software is already robust, easy-to-use, full-featured, and bug-free, then why would you need support for it?
--