It's probably licensed out to an external agency to manage.
At least this is how Windows logo certification is handled. Microsoft determined the criteria that had to be satisfied in order to obtain the logo certification and it is managed by an external company. Microsoft products have to work just as hard and comply just as much as any other ones in order to obtain certification.
The networks putting Florida in the win column for Gore was not based on complete exit poll results. My understanding of Dan Rather's explanation was that they got some bad data from one or two precincts which threw their models off.
Jebb Bush has even less control over the electoral process in Florida than the Secretary of State - who happens to be a Democrat. Note that the Secretary of State doesn't have much control to speak of - but Jebb Bush has even less.
working towards 100% standards compliance, in favor of something that supports 0% standards?
Umm.. where did you get your figures from? Did you pull them out of your ass? Maybe IE is just released every time because they need to get a new browser out to get Market Share? (I like how you capitalized that)
IE has never asked me to install any cursors. Stop surfing those porn sites from work.
IE playing awful music? Blame it on the websites you go to - Mozilla is not superior just because it doesn't have the feature. And really, if you're functionally literate you should be able to turn it off. Have you ever tried to read that thing called "Help"?
I hope you're not trolling. These are passive RF tags which have no power or activity of their own. They react to magnetic fields, though - kinda like the magnetic door passes most companies have in the employee badges.
Technology steals jobs. We should get rid of evil things like bulldozers, cranes, machinery, farm equipment and employ people to perform all of those tasks. Let's get rid of computers too. If we are truly successful, we'll generate a lot of employment and maybe the US will become a perfect place to live in where the people are happy and there's plenty of employment. Kinda like Somalia, I guess.
Asking one roommate to pay the rent for everyone in the house is NOT fair. Stop pretending it is. It's practical, but not fair. Exactly like taxing income based on wealth.
Go back to your mental exercise. If 99 people out of a 100 voted the last one dead for no good reason, that would not be considered fair. Democracy is the best practical form of government that anyone can come up with - it's not the holy grail, though. Democracy is a pretty crappy form of government which has several serious pitfalls. Democracy, as implemented in the US is an even crappier form of government with interest groups, lobbying, electoral colleges, pandering to vote banks, etc. Decisions made by the government, even though in theory they are the will of the people are not sacred to me. A tax is not voluntary if 99 people vote to tax the hundredth. That's called bullying. Democracy is simply institutionalized bullying.
I guess asking some of you to think qualifies as Flamebait. I should have included a disclaimer: Don't think too hard - you'll hurt yourself if you're not used to it.
Vote for who you want to vote for. Don't pretend there is a conspiracy by corporations to tell you who to vote for. Corporations are simply collections of people who decide to do things as a unit. Stop smoking that pot and learn to think beyond what Uncle Ralph tells you is happening.
Oh my God! Have you ever BEEN outside the US? There are plenty of rich people in third-world countries. There are VERY RICH people in India. Goo look it up somewhere.
You must be smoking the same crack as Nader to think that taxing individuals for their income is somehow related to wealthy corporations and the DMCA. Different topic. Enough said.
What do you mean by "taxable wealth"? Do you define that as the wealth which we the majority decide we have a right to tax? Go back to my roommate analogy. You couldn't ask one of your roommates to foot most of the rent, gas and cable bills just because he made more money than you. Of course, you could argue that it was living in the house with all the facilities that allowed him to make his wealth too.
It's sad to see how many people are victims of years of brainwashing by the same rhetoric that tells them that a country somehow has a right to tax people on their income and wealth and can't seem to THINK of questioning that.
The number I quoted was something GW Bush said in a debate. Gore seemed to nod in agreement with the number. I've also read a similar figure elsewhere but can't find a reference right now.
the tax system is in trouble due to thinking such as yours
The tax system is ridiculous and morally indefensible. The purpose of taxation is to pay for the services the State provides to its citizenry. Taxing people income and wealth for this purpose is one of those "because we can" things. A really fair tax system would require people to pay for their fair share of the burden, rather than as a proportion of what they earn. This is impossible to implement, and won't work, of course - but don't pretend taxing people for what they make is somehow fair.
The tax system is in trouble because of people who think like me just like a lot of beliefs were in trouble because of people who thought like Newton and Copernicus several years ago.
It's political Darwinism. Anyone who's stupid enough to waste his vote on Nader is stupid enough that eliminating their vote from the political process is a good thing!
If you look at our current tax structure, taking into account sales/property/income/excise taxes, we tax the poor, not the rich. In Washington state, the poorest 20% of the population pays 17% of their income in ALL taxes (federal, state, local). The highest 20% pays 3%. And before you start talking about the mathematical simplicity of smaller totals necessarily giving larger percentages, why don't you imagine earning under half the median income. And then paying 17% of that. Now imagine a seven-figure salary. And imagine paying an extra 1% of that. Which hurts more?
How about we look at some different figures instead? The richest 1% in this country pay 62% of all income taxes collected. Do the rich use roads much more than the "poor"? Do the rich use medicare and social security so much more than the poor? Is it the rich who require the defense systems so much more than the poor? Is it the rich who require all the things that government provides so much more than the poor? Why then should the rich be paying for most of it?
If you were renting an apartment with other people, that would be like saying that one of your roommates paid most of the gas, cable and electricity bills because he had more money. Try making that work. Yes, it probably would hurt that person less to pay for that but don't PRETEND IT'S FAIR, because it's not!
Obligatory disclaimer: I'm not rich or even close to it.
Read the details. You have to buy the hardware and software recommended by Oracle. In addition, you have to let Oracle Consultants tune it for up to 90 days. The cost of just that runs easily into the millions of dollars.
In addition, if Oracle were to fail and your website didn't run 3 times as fast, they would pay you the million dollars but you wouldn't be able to tell anyone about it. That's right, the only stories you will ever hear are about sites which get the improvement. The contract specifically requires that any site which wins the million dollars can't talk about it.
Katz is a humongous public-money-sponsored AI project. Katz-bot works by scanning the news media looking for random sentences which seem to be on the same subject. The algorithm tends to give preference to statements made by the lunatic fringe over mainstream discourse. It then picks these sentences and arranges them together along with a whole bunch of other garbage to create a compelling illusion that the last paragraph can somehow be inferred from the previous paragraphs.
The aim of the Katz project is to elicit the most extreme reactions possible - mainly from people who know it's wrong but can't say how and from kids who believe it to be the gospel truth.
Because tech workers get paid well I already am in the highest tax bracket
That, sir, is the definition of the word "rich". Btw, those statistics were talking about percentages of money paid as income tax - which does not include capital gains tax. So the richest 1% pay 64% of all income tax.
The only point I was trying to make (badly) with the roommate analogy was that it's not 'fair' that people pay according to what they make and it's not a 'right'. It's the only practical solution though and I'm all for practical solutions that work.
You start with the assumption that it is 'fair' to pay proportional to your income. If you and I were roommates - you made $100,000 and I made $10,000 - would we pay for the trash takeout and the phone bill in proportion of our incomes? No. It's not as if the government is the reason for the income. From a strictly moral perspective, the government has no _right_ to tax income. It makes a lot of practical sense but don't pretend it's 'fair'. The rich are paying MORE money for defense, roads, education than other people who reap precisely the same (arguably) benefits from those things.
Corporations are an entirely different animal in this picture. Personally, I don't have a problem with corporations not paying any taxes at all because the shareholders are taxed for their personal share of any profits, anyway. However, corporations don't pay income tax - they are not among the top 1% or bottom 99% or any of the other parts of the discussion on income taxes. Corporate taxation is an entirely separate issue from this one.
Tax shelters are a very stupid concept imho. They are like the government telling you "We want you to have a wife, 2 cars and 2.5 kids and we'll reward you for being the model citizen we want you to be and tax the fuck out of you if you don't do that". I hate the concept. A flat tax would fix that. It would also make it more fair in the sense that those who couldn't afford expensive tax consultants would get precisely the same results and those who could.
How the hell is the tax code related to your Bill of Rights? You have to be smoking some of the stuff Nader is to believe there is any correlation. The reason why the rich are able to control the government is because of the way lobbying and campaign finance works in this country. THAT is the problem you need to fix, not the tax code.
the rich are making out like bandits, upwards of 10-15% numbers (IIRC), with the middle class and poor only getting 2-3%.
Why don't you look at it as a percentage of the income they pay in taxes? The rich pay a much higher percentage of their income in taxes while the poor only pay a much smaller percentage. Who's making out like bandits now? Yes, they're making out like bandits compared to where they are now, but by your own argument, they're being fleeced and robbed where they stand now and will continue to be so in the future. The top 1% of the population currently pays 62% of all taxes. With Bush's plan, they will pay 64% of all taxes paid. Hardly seems unfair to the poor the way I see it. Not only do they pay MORE in value than the poor, but also they pay a HIGHER PERCENTAGE of their income - that's almost a double crime. Do the rich get that much more advantage from government than the poor do? Why should they have to pay that much more to support it, then? No, I'm not suggesting things be changed - it's practical expediency where it makes sense for the rich to pay more than the poor. It's just annoying that everyone considers it the DUTY of the rich to do so!
Obligatory disclaimer: I'm not rich - far from it. I just think it is unfair for the vast majority of people who are not rich to use that to try to screw the minority who are. That's what the communists did in Russia.
I don't know about you but I'm rather sick of having the government meddle in my affairs as it is. Unfortunately he also seems to support MORE H1-B visas, which doesn't necessarily agree with another point of his to raise education in order to allow US citizens to meet the demand.
I think the point should be to raise the level of education to the point where there is no need to bring in foreign labour to fulfill the demand - not by creating a protectionist system where inferiorly qualified people are hired because foreigners can't be hired. The restriction on foreign nationals being able to work in the US is something imposed by the government. MORE H1-B visas == less intervention.
I think I need to also correct a common misconception, which is that H1-B visa holders are underpaid. According to the law, one of the criteria for being granted an H1-B visa is where your sponsor states that the person being hired is paid the normal salary for that position.
Slashdot Mirror
It's probably licensed out to an external agency to manage.
At least this is how Windows logo certification is handled. Microsoft determined the criteria that had to be satisfied in order to obtain the logo certification and it is managed by an external company. Microsoft products have to work just as hard and comply just as much as any other ones in order to obtain certification.
I seriously doubt this will be any different.
The networks putting Florida in the win column for Gore was not based on complete exit poll results. My understanding of Dan Rather's explanation was that they got some bad data from one or two precincts which threw their models off.
Jebb Bush has even less control over the electoral process in Florida than the Secretary of State - who happens to be a Democrat. Note that the Secretary of State doesn't have much control to speak of - but Jebb Bush has even less.
working towards 100% standards compliance, in favor of something that supports 0% standards?
Umm.. where did you get your figures from? Did you pull them out of your ass? Maybe IE is just released every time because they need to get a new browser out to get Market Share? (I like how you capitalized that)
IE has never asked me to install any cursors. Stop surfing those porn sites from work.
IE playing awful music? Blame it on the websites you go to - Mozilla is not superior just because it doesn't have the feature. And really, if you're functionally literate you should be able to turn it off. Have you ever tried to read that thing called "Help"?
Can't turn off Java or JScript??
Seriously, go RTFM!
I hope you're not trolling. These are passive RF tags which have no power or activity of their own. They react to magnetic fields, though - kinda like the magnetic door passes most companies have in the employee badges.
Technology steals jobs. We should get rid of evil things like bulldozers, cranes, machinery, farm equipment and employ people to perform all of those tasks. Let's get rid of computers too. If we are truly successful, we'll generate a lot of employment and maybe the US will become a perfect place to live in where the people are happy and there's plenty of employment. Kinda like Somalia, I guess.
Pi has been proven to be irrational. You can't perform this exercise hoping to find a sequence because you never will.
I believe it completely. Everything it says is true. I'm sure Bill wrote it himself.
The only thing that bothers me is the line just below the forwarded message where it says:
- Note: This article is a piece of
satire meant to brighten your day
I wonder what they meant by saying that?Asking one roommate to pay the rent for everyone in the house is NOT fair. Stop pretending it is. It's practical, but not fair. Exactly like taxing income based on wealth.
Go back to your mental exercise. If 99 people out of a 100 voted the last one dead for no good reason, that would not be considered fair. Democracy is the best practical form of government that anyone can come up with - it's not the holy grail, though. Democracy is a pretty crappy form of government which has several serious pitfalls. Democracy, as implemented in the US is an even crappier form of government with interest groups, lobbying, electoral colleges, pandering to vote banks, etc. Decisions made by the government, even though in theory they are the will of the people are not sacred to me. A tax is not voluntary if 99 people vote to tax the hundredth. That's called bullying. Democracy is simply institutionalized bullying.
I guess asking some of you to think qualifies as Flamebait. I should have included a disclaimer: Don't think too hard - you'll hurt yourself if you're not used to it.
Vote for who you want to vote for. Don't pretend there is a conspiracy by corporations to tell you who to vote for. Corporations are simply collections of people who decide to do things as a unit. Stop smoking that pot and learn to think beyond what Uncle Ralph tells you is happening.
Oh my God! Have you ever BEEN outside the US? There are plenty of rich people in third-world countries. There are VERY RICH people in India. Goo look it up somewhere.
You must be smoking the same crack as Nader to think that taxing individuals for their income is somehow related to wealthy corporations and the DMCA. Different topic. Enough said.
country's taxable wealth,
What do you mean by "taxable wealth"? Do you define that as the wealth which we the majority decide we have a right to tax? Go back to my roommate analogy. You couldn't ask one of your roommates to foot most of the rent, gas and cable bills just because he made more money than you. Of course, you could argue that it was living in the house with all the facilities that allowed him to make his wealth too.
It's sad to see how many people are victims of years of brainwashing by the same rhetoric that tells them that a country somehow has a right to tax people on their income and wealth and can't seem to THINK of questioning that.
The number I quoted was something GW Bush said in a debate. Gore seemed to nod in agreement with the number. I've also read a similar figure elsewhere but can't find a reference right now.
the tax system is in trouble due to thinking such as yours
The tax system is ridiculous and morally indefensible. The purpose of taxation is to pay for the services the State provides to its citizenry. Taxing people income and wealth for this purpose is one of those "because we can" things. A really fair tax system would require people to pay for their fair share of the burden, rather than as a proportion of what they earn. This is impossible to implement, and won't work, of course - but don't pretend taxing people for what they make is somehow fair.
The tax system is in trouble because of people who think like me just like a lot of beliefs were in trouble because of people who thought like Newton and Copernicus several years ago.
It's political Darwinism. Anyone who's stupid enough to waste his vote on Nader is stupid enough that eliminating their vote from the political process is a good thing!
If you look at our current tax structure, taking into account sales/property/income/excise taxes, we tax the poor, not the rich. In Washington state, the poorest 20% of the population pays 17% of their income in ALL taxes (federal, state, local). The highest 20% pays 3%. And before you start talking about the mathematical simplicity of smaller totals necessarily giving larger percentages, why don't you imagine earning under half the median income. And then paying 17% of that. Now imagine a seven-figure salary. And imagine paying an extra 1% of that. Which hurts more?
How about we look at some different figures instead? The richest 1% in this country pay 62% of all income taxes collected. Do the rich use roads much more than the "poor"? Do the rich use medicare and social security so much more than the poor? Is it the rich who require the defense systems so much more than the poor? Is it the rich who require all the things that government provides so much more than the poor? Why then should the rich be paying for most of it?
If you were renting an apartment with other people, that would be like saying that one of your roommates paid most of the gas, cable and electricity bills because he had more money. Try making that work. Yes, it probably would hurt that person less to pay for that but don't PRETEND IT'S FAIR, because it's not!
Obligatory disclaimer: I'm not rich or even close to it.
Read the details. You have to buy the hardware and software recommended by Oracle. In addition, you have to let Oracle Consultants tune it for up to 90 days. The cost of just that runs easily into the millions of dollars.
In addition, if Oracle were to fail and your website didn't run 3 times as fast, they would pay you the million dollars but you wouldn't be able to tell anyone about it. That's right, the only stories you will ever hear are about sites which get the improvement. The contract specifically requires that any site which wins the million dollars can't talk about it.
That's because Katz is a troll.
Katz is a humongous public-money-sponsored AI project. Katz-bot works by scanning the news media looking for random sentences which seem to be on the same subject. The algorithm tends to give preference to statements made by the lunatic fringe over mainstream discourse. It then picks these sentences and arranges them together along with a whole bunch of other garbage to create a compelling illusion that the last paragraph can somehow be inferred from the previous paragraphs.
The aim of the Katz project is to elicit the most extreme reactions possible - mainly from people who know it's wrong but can't say how and from kids who believe it to be the gospel truth.
Because tech workers get paid well I already am in the highest tax bracket
That, sir, is the definition of the word "rich". Btw, those statistics were talking about percentages of money paid as income tax - which does not include capital gains tax. So the richest 1% pay 64% of all income tax.
The only point I was trying to make (badly) with the roommate analogy was that it's not 'fair' that people pay according to what they make and it's not a 'right'. It's the only practical solution though and I'm all for practical solutions that work.
You start with the assumption that it is 'fair' to pay proportional to your income. If you and I were roommates - you made $100,000 and I made $10,000 - would we pay for the trash takeout and the phone bill in proportion of our incomes? No. It's not as if the government is the reason for the income. From a strictly moral perspective, the government has no _right_ to tax income. It makes a lot of practical sense but don't pretend it's 'fair'. The rich are paying MORE money for defense, roads, education than other people who reap precisely the same (arguably) benefits from those things.
Corporations are an entirely different animal in this picture. Personally, I don't have a problem with corporations not paying any taxes at all because the shareholders are taxed for their personal share of any profits, anyway. However, corporations don't pay income tax - they are not among the top 1% or bottom 99% or any of the other parts of the discussion on income taxes. Corporate taxation is an entirely separate issue from this one.
Tax shelters are a very stupid concept imho. They are like the government telling you "We want you to have a wife, 2 cars and 2.5 kids and we'll reward you for being the model citizen we want you to be and tax the fuck out of you if you don't do that". I hate the concept. A flat tax would fix that. It would also make it more fair in the sense that those who couldn't afford expensive tax consultants would get precisely the same results and those who could.
How the hell is the tax code related to your Bill of Rights? You have to be smoking some of the stuff Nader is to believe there is any correlation. The reason why the rich are able to control the government is because of the way lobbying and campaign finance works in this country. THAT is the problem you need to fix, not the tax code.
the rich are making out like bandits, upwards of 10-15% numbers (IIRC), with the middle class and poor only getting 2-3%.
Why don't you look at it as a percentage of the income they pay in taxes? The rich pay a much higher percentage of their income in taxes while the poor only pay a much smaller percentage. Who's making out like bandits now? Yes, they're making out like bandits compared to where they are now, but by your own argument, they're being fleeced and robbed where they stand now and will continue to be so in the future. The top 1% of the population currently pays 62% of all taxes. With Bush's plan, they will pay 64% of all taxes paid. Hardly seems unfair to the poor the way I see it. Not only do they pay MORE in value than the poor, but also they pay a HIGHER PERCENTAGE of their income - that's almost a double crime. Do the rich get that much more advantage from government than the poor do? Why should they have to pay that much more to support it, then? No, I'm not suggesting things be changed - it's practical expediency where it makes sense for the rich to pay more than the poor. It's just annoying that everyone considers it the DUTY of the rich to do so!
Obligatory disclaimer: I'm not rich - far from it. I just think it is unfair for the vast majority of people who are not rich to use that to try to screw the minority who are. That's what the communists did in Russia.
I wish I'd read this post before making my other one on the article so I could mod it up.
I don't know about you but I'm rather sick of having the government meddle in my affairs as it is. Unfortunately he also seems to support MORE H1-B visas, which doesn't necessarily agree with another point of his to raise education in order to allow US citizens to meet the demand.
I think the point should be to raise the level of education to the point where there is no need to bring in foreign labour to fulfill the demand - not by creating a protectionist system where inferiorly qualified people are hired because foreigners can't be hired. The restriction on foreign nationals being able to work in the US is something imposed by the government. MORE H1-B visas == less intervention.
I think I need to also correct a common misconception, which is that H1-B visa holders are underpaid. According to the law, one of the criteria for being granted an H1-B visa is where your sponsor states that the person being hired is paid the normal salary for that position.