I sourced mine directly from the aggregate tax data on IRS.gov (as I suspect that individual did as well - it's fascinating information in a way)
Both sides like to slant that information to their own perspective, usually by mixing percentages and hard numbers inappropriately -- making the data say whatever they want. The same information could just as easily say that the richest Americans pay tax at only 10% (or whatever) -- by ignoring the actual dollar contributions, they paint "The Rich" as getting off easy.
The slant on that blog post is a bit misleading in the other direction in saying the bottom 50% pay almost no taxes though -- 2-3% of the national tax bill isn't the same as saying 2-3% income tax rate; if you're paying 15% of 40k a year, that's not "almost nothing" to you.
Here's a hint, unless you make $100 million a year or so, you are.
This is what happens when you let talking heads let you confuse tax percentage rates with actual tax dollars paid.
Fact is that the top earners of the country pay the vast majority of all income tax dollars I thought I did a post last week where I showed the math and sourced appropriate irs.gov docs, but I can't find it.
The gist: The numbers showed that the top 1% of earners paid something like 30% of ALL tax dollars received (as of 2008 - when things were supposed to be best for "the rich" due to Bush); the top 5% paid over 50%; and the top 10% paid something like 70%.
In other words, those in the remaining 90% of income earners pay ~30% of all tax dollars. And those who fall under to top 50% of income earners pay something like 3% of all tax dollars.
Those numbers aren't as much fun to report as "Bill passed to extend tax breaks for THE RICH", but that's our media for you.
Here's a hint, unless you make $100 million a year or so, you are.
To clarify - in the situation we have today, the collective political power of the corporation's employees (which can number in the tens or hundreds of thousands) and to an extent its customers (in that the customers are ultimately funding the exercise) is wielded by the relatively few people who own the corporation. This not only gives them disproportionate political power, but in influencing the political decisions of its employees it effectively reduces the political influence of those same employees.
The Supreme Court said that corporations and unions must be treated as individuals. This is a radical extension of corporate power that is almost unknown in the rest of the world, and certainly something our Founders would be shocked to find.
Just because people chose to exercise their right to assemble into a group, does not mean they have to give up their other rights. The Corporation only has the powers of the individuals that own it.
The individuals who own it are not the only members of the assembled groups - thus giving the Corporation significantly more power than its owners could have independently. By extension, this gives its owners more power than they could otherwise enjoy as citizens as well.
If we had the answer to how bees can do this so much better than computers, we'd have the answer to making self-aware machines - I suspect it has much to do with not being able to effectively program biology, physics, chemistry and a few million years of evolution (the understanding of which we are still far from grasping ourselves) at the microcosmic scale. The bees are not thinking about this, or running a computation. (Have you seen their brains? Me neither. Probably only hobbyists and biologists have seen their brains. That's my point. They're awfully small, and not well suited to algorithms.) They're adapting to their environment in a way we don't -- and can't -- understand; in the same way a computer can't understand the reasons for the rules we program into it. It's too far outside of our frame of reference.
Gasp! You mean it links directly to the available factual information, instead of a blog article that's three sources removed from the original data? The horror...
For when we have faced down increasing attacks on our credibility; when we've been told that we're not a valid source, or that we shouldn't even try to be the be all and end all, or that we can't, thousands upon thousands of Wikipedia authors have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a free and liberated people.
That is bad news for Google, which has been heavily investing in developing online versions of similar applications that Microsoft offers.
I think you got something mixed up - perhaps you meant to say "Microsoft, which has been heavily investing in catching up to the online product offering of Google"?
I like Windows and Visual Studio as well does that make me a shill too?
Yes. At least, according to some - I can't find it now, but I recall a thread with one person who basically insisted that if you're speaking favorably of "M$", you are a shill. By itself this is not unexpected - there are zealots everywhere - but a disturbingly large number of people spoke up to agree with him (in addition to the +5 insightful mod).
Lets face it, Facebook users have the same view of privacy Zuckerberg has: they don't value it and they don't understand why anyone would (unless, of course, they had something to hide).
And they're 100% right -- for if they do not see value in their privacy, then their privacy has no value.
For those whose privacy does have value - they'll do as you do, and avoid Facebook et al entirely.
Why isn't it 6.x? Does this mean in 6 weeks they'll give us 8.0? Whatever happened to using the numbers AFTER the decimal point, especially for releases that concentrate mostly on bug-fixes?
Did you ever wonder at how arbitrary such numbering schemes are? To the end user, a new version is a new version. They either have to download an update or they don't. (Mac or Ubuntu take the version numbering to extremes by giving new versions get fancy animal names. Not a bad idea, really...)
In other projects, the same release might have gone "1.1.1, 1.1.2., 1.1.3" (or if it's an independent OSS project "0.010, 0.011, 0.012";) - or 10, 15, 20, 25 30.
I see the appeal of google's choice though - it keeps things simple. "What version are you on?" "3.6.10"... ? Isn't easier to just call it 5?
The only people who really care about the significance of "dot" releases as opposed to major releases are us developers - and perhaps marketing types. End users are usually happy to know that there's a "new version" available that they can download.
I'm guilty of ridiculously arbitrary numbering myself (see sig - 1.1.80? WTF?) -- though with the upcoming release I'm making an improvement by just going all out and calling it "1.2";)
Not if they visit using a Live CD based OS. Ooops, sorry, just broke your new thing there.:) I'm not above using a Live CD to do things, and to collect stuff, which is stored on other things. IPs won't even help that now. Looks pretty broken. Hope the evercookie is chocolate.
Sooo... what's your point again? What percent of the population uses a LIveCD installation? And of that percentage, what further subset does so without any persistent storage (flash drive, etc) for user settings? (And if one person replies to me "I do, so there" [or its equivalent] , consider yourself virtually smacked for missing the point.)
I'd say it's not broken until there's a less drastic means of evading it. If the only way to do so means - a) clearing history after every page and b) disabling cookies and c) disabling javascript OR d) running a Live CD OS... well, I think it's pretty safe to say this is gonna be around for a while.
Also use Links2. (Links is crap, of course. ANd only losers use lynx...)
Back in the real world, some of us do actually want to use the web for doing more than viewing static HTML pages. One or two of us even appreciate those awful persistent logins that cookies enable...
And I echo your complaints about the shitty quality of iTunes, which slows any system it gets on to a crawl.
One day, the developers of iTunes will catch on to this fabulous new concept -- it's called "multi-threading". It can be used to separate resource-intensive tasks from your UI, so that your UI doesn't slow to a crawl (or hang completely)!
His views on life and the Internet have no bearing on his talent (or lack thereof, depending on your opinion). If I let personal politics enter into things, I couldn't enjoy more than half of the movies and music that I do.
There's a surprising number of people who will classify entire genres of music as crap
You mean like Hip Hop?
On a more serious note: What's wrong with Pop? It's just short for "popular", isn't it. And there's loads of great Pop music (as well as the usual loads of crap, of course).
True. And many that we consider "classics" were considered pop in their time - the Beatles among them.
Slashdot Mirror
Both sides like to slant that information to their own perspective, usually by mixing percentages and hard numbers inappropriately -- making the data say whatever they want. The same information could just as easily say that the richest Americans pay tax at only 10% (or whatever) -- by ignoring the actual dollar contributions, they paint "The Rich" as getting off easy.
The slant on that blog post is a bit misleading in the other direction in saying the bottom 50% pay almost no taxes though -- 2-3% of the national tax bill isn't the same as saying 2-3% income tax rate; if you're paying 15% of 40k a year, that's not "almost nothing" to you.
Here's a hint, unless you make $100 million a year or so, you are.
This is what happens when you let talking heads let you confuse tax percentage rates with actual tax dollars paid.
Fact is that the top earners of the country pay the vast majority of all income tax dollars I thought I did a post last week where I showed the math and sourced appropriate irs.gov docs, but I can't find it.
The gist: The numbers showed that the top 1% of earners paid something like 30% of ALL tax dollars received (as of 2008 - when things were supposed to be best for "the rich" due to Bush); the top 5% paid over 50%; and the top 10% paid something like 70%.
In other words, those in the remaining 90% of income earners pay ~30% of all tax dollars. And those who fall under to top 50% of income earners pay something like 3% of all tax dollars.
Those numbers aren't as much fun to report as "Bill passed to extend tax breaks for THE RICH", but that's our media for you.
Here's a hint, unless you make $100 million a year or so, you are.
To clarify - in the situation we have today, the collective political power of the corporation's employees (which can number in the tens or hundreds of thousands) and to an extent its customers (in that the customers are ultimately funding the exercise) is wielded by the relatively few people who own the corporation. This not only gives them disproportionate political power, but in influencing the political decisions of its employees it effectively reduces the political influence of those same employees.
>
The Supreme Court said that corporations and unions must be treated as individuals. This is a radical extension of corporate power that is almost unknown in the rest of the world, and certainly something our Founders would be shocked to find.
Just because people chose to exercise their right to assemble into a group, does not mean they have to give up their other rights. The Corporation only has the powers of the individuals that own it.
The individuals who own it are not the only members of the assembled groups - thus giving the Corporation significantly more power than its owners could have independently. By extension, this gives its owners more power than they could otherwise enjoy as citizens as well.
If we had the answer to how bees can do this so much better than computers, we'd have the answer to making self-aware machines - I suspect it has much to do with not being able to effectively program biology, physics, chemistry and a few million years of evolution (the understanding of which we are still far from grasping ourselves) at the microcosmic scale. The bees are not thinking about this, or running a computation. (Have you seen their brains? Me neither. Probably only hobbyists and biologists have seen their brains. That's my point. They're awfully small, and not well suited to algorithms.) They're adapting to their environment in a way we don't -- and can't -- understand; in the same way a computer can't understand the reasons for the rules we program into it. It's too far outside of our frame of reference.
Phew - that was a relief. For a moment I thought someone had switched out my bookmarks.
Gasp! You mean it links directly to the available factual information, instead of a blog article that's three sources removed from the original data? The horror...
For when we have faced down increasing attacks on our credibility; when we've been told that we're not a valid source, or that we shouldn't even try to be the be all and end all, or that we can't, thousands upon thousands of Wikipedia authors have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a free and liberated people.
"Edit reverted."
I keep seeing all these large migrations from Office?
You do? ::whiplash-look-around-wildly:: Where?!
That is bad news for Google, which has been heavily investing in developing online versions of similar applications that Microsoft offers.
I think you got something mixed up - perhaps you meant to say "Microsoft, which has been heavily investing in catching up to the online product offering of Google"?
I like Windows and Visual Studio as well does that make me a shill too?
Yes. At least, according to some - I can't find it now, but I recall a thread with one person who basically insisted that if you're speaking favorably of "M$", you are a shill. By itself this is not unexpected - there are zealots everywhere - but a disturbingly large number of people spoke up to agree with him (in addition to the +5 insightful mod).
I thought JAVA was supposed to be crossplatform
Do you think cross platform support is created by the Cross Platform Fairy waving her Cross Platform Support wand?
Lets face it, Facebook users have the same view of privacy Zuckerberg has: they don't value it and they don't understand why anyone would (unless, of course, they had something to hide).
And they're 100% right -- for if they do not see value in their privacy, then their privacy has no value.
For those whose privacy does have value - they'll do as you do, and avoid Facebook et al entirely.
Reference: Does this actually prevent ads from downloading?
Wouldn't the ability to have a proper blocking plugin or two be far more suitable than maintaining a hosts file (* x machines)?
On the other hand, the first time an automatic update breaks something, there'll be hell to pay.
I don't see anymore adds with the default setting with Adblock for chrome than I do for adblock plus for firefox.
Granted, this is just my experience and I am sure that you have many example that you could share but felt that there was no need to.
I don't see any adds on slashdot, fox, cnn, gmail, sourceforge, rapidshare, imdb, etc in chrome.
Rest assured that although you don't see them, you are downloading many of them. And being tracked by them ;)
Why isn't it 6.x? Does this mean in 6 weeks they'll give us 8.0? Whatever happened to using the numbers AFTER the decimal point, especially for releases that concentrate mostly on bug-fixes?
Did you ever wonder at how arbitrary such numbering schemes are? To the end user, a new version is a new version. They either have to download an update or they don't. (Mac or Ubuntu take the version numbering to extremes by giving new versions get fancy animal names. Not a bad idea, really...)
In other projects, the same release might have gone "1.1.1, 1.1.2., 1.1.3" (or if it's an independent OSS project "0.010, 0.011, 0.012" ;) - or 10, 15, 20, 25 30.
I see the appeal of google's choice though - it keeps things simple. "What version are you on?" "3.6.10"... ? Isn't easier to just call it 5?
The only people who really care about the significance of "dot" releases as opposed to major releases are us developers - and perhaps marketing types. End users are usually happy to know that there's a "new version" available that they can download.
I'm guilty of ridiculously arbitrary numbering myself (see sig - 1.1.80? WTF?) -- though with the upcoming release I'm making an improvement by just going all out and calling it "1.2" ;)
probably because the winds of change have them knee deep in the hoopla causing them to go to deep space/virgin sky whilst leaving Earth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Starship_discography
That would have been funnier if you hadn't used italics or provided the link. As it is, you just shouted "hey look at me, I made a FUNNY!"
Not if they visit using a Live CD based OS. Ooops, sorry, just broke your new thing there. :) I'm not above using a Live CD to do things, and to collect stuff, which is stored on other things. IPs won't even help that now. Looks pretty broken. Hope the evercookie is chocolate.
Sooo... what's your point again? What percent of the population uses a LIveCD installation? And of that percentage, what further subset does so without any persistent storage (flash drive, etc) for user settings? (And if one person replies to me "I do, so there" [or its equivalent] , consider yourself virtually smacked for missing the point.)
I'd say it's not broken until there's a less drastic means of evading it. If the only way to do so means - a) clearing history after every page and b) disabling cookies and c) disabling javascript OR d) running a Live CD OS ... well, I think it's pretty safe to say this is gonna be around for a while.
Don't accept cookies.
Also use Links2. (Links is crap, of course. ANd only losers use lynx...)
Back in the real world, some of us do actually want to use the web for doing more than viewing static HTML pages. One or two of us even appreciate those awful persistent logins that cookies enable...
And I echo your complaints about the shitty quality of iTunes, which slows any system it gets on to a crawl.
One day, the developers of iTunes will catch on to this fabulous new concept -- it's called "multi-threading". It can be used to separate resource-intensive tasks from your UI, so that your UI doesn't slow to a crawl (or hang completely)!
His views on life and the Internet have no bearing on his talent (or lack thereof, depending on your opinion). If I let personal politics enter into things, I couldn't enjoy more than half of the movies and music that I do.
There's a surprising number of people who will classify entire genres of music as crap
You mean like Hip Hop?
On a more serious note: What's wrong with Pop? It's just short for "popular", isn't it. And there's loads of great Pop music (as well as the usual loads of crap, of course).
True. And many that we consider "classics" were considered pop in their time - the Beatles among them.