You may have to wait a little longer, but people will start buying from Canada or other places without taxes.
I really doubt that. Based on what I see on other forums, most US consumers refuse to buy almost anything if they have to buy it online. I see people all the time who shlep down to their local brick and mortar store to pay more money, spend more time and get a worse quality product than something they could buy cheaper and of higher quality online. Ever been the grocery store or Wal-Mart and noticed how many people refuse to use the self-checkout line? I rest my case.
Good point. I expect Amazon to declare bankruptcy in the near future.
I love how Hitler is being redefined as part of the Communist/Socialist political spectrum.... if this gains traction, it's time to leave the US.
The standard defense of such extreme right wing nuts is that the Nazis were called the National Socialist Party. They put far too much weight on the flowery words they used to gain power, not their actions once they had that power. According to their thinking, North Korea must be democratic because it's in their official name.
They put one of these on the road to my home. At first, it read very close to my GPS speed. Then it seems they recalibrated it, and it now reads my speed to be 10% higher.
> I wish there was a standard for servers, so that I wouldn't have to keep reconfiguring my data center layout.
I know! The 1U vs. 1Ui is driving me nuts!! Why would anybody think that 1024 mm to the meter would make any sense? Thus a 44.45 mm 1U becomes 45.516 mm in the 1Ui unit!!
"The universe is enormous, no doubt there's *someone* out there."
So, you believe in the "invisible man in the sky" too huh?;)
The belief in extraterrestrial life is at least based on the observation that life exists on Earth, and the number of stars and planets like our Sun and Earth in the universe is.. astronomical.
The belief in God has no such basis.
I think the belief in extraterrestrial life is primarily based in the disbelief in God. If there is no other life, then we are special. If there is no God, we are not special. Hence, if there is no God, there ought to be extraterrestrial life.
When you installed a jailbreak on your iPad, it became a personal computer.
Computers have required specific development software / hardware bits for ages.
In the past, it was common to fund the development of developer tools through the sale of copies of developer tools. MPW cost money, CodeWarrior cost money, etc. But these "ages" were supposed to have ended when volunteers ported GCC and other freely licensed developer tools to anything and everything. For example, I'm under the impression that Microsoft started offering Visual Studio Express to compete with MinGW, a port of GCC to Windows. Only with the marketing of cryptographically restricted devices as "personal computer replacements" have these ages returned.
You still don't pay for the tools. XCode is free. The Android development kit is free.
Have your Cake and Eat it too! Dual-boot Linux and Whatever your current flavor of Microsoft OS is! Then after you realize you haven't use that MS OS for 6 months or so except to do the monthly updates, You can go ahead and switch over altogether!
But how can a company buy assets if it doesn't have any money? Oh, sorry, of course it does, because it has income which is generated from selling things to customers. So why shouldn't it pay income tax on its income? Ah, because it's an abstract entity that should not pay tax (as the post I replied to suggested).
Ultimately, the money is either paid as a salary to someone (in which case they pay income tax), or it is used to purchase something (in which case sales tax is paid).
Alternatively, if companies don't pay taxes, they shouldn't enjoy benefits such as protection of laws or electricity provided by infrastructure that is paid for by taxes.
The company should be paying real estate tax if it owns property. That should pay for infrastructure. If it uses electricity, I'm pretty sure it's paying for it.
Why should the general public pay the salaries of lawmakers if they're going to pass laws in favour of companies that don't pay taxes?
The concept of a corporation was invented to allow a group of people to shift the risk of enterprise into an abstract entity. But just because it's an abstract entity doesn't mean that it's not part of the economy.
It is a part of the economy, but it's an intermediate part. The money is either spent to purchase something (sales tax), or paid to someone (personal income tax).
Now, taxes can be used to incentivize behavior. Perhaps it's in the national interest for companies to spend their money immediately, in which case, it should be taxed, to incentivize companies to spend instead of turning a profit.
Personally, I think some sort of fairly low tax, say maybe 10% of income, would be appropriate, based on employee pay. So if a company had most of its work force in the US but tried to shift the profit to an offshore subsidiary with only a couple people staffing an office, the bulk of it would still be taxable. And if a company tried to maliciously shift its profits to avoid paying taxes, it ought to be punitively taxed, say 50% of profit. Hopefully that would eliminate all the economic waste of the tax avoidance industry.
They should go a step further. Stop indexing all German news sites and charge a fee to those who want their articles in the search indexes, since it is additional overhead for Google to make exceptions for them.
Yes Google should do that, thereby totally abusing their near monoly position on the search market in an attempt to blackmail a nation state into legislating in a way that suits Google an action which is guaranteed to instantly get the undivided attention of the EU commission (the same one who handed Microsoft a record $1,4 billon fine).
So in your opinion, Google should be forced to index all of these German publishers and pay for the privilege of having to do this?
Case number 2... You can't buy stamps in the lobby any longer. The post master at my local office said the vending machines were too problematic and expensive to maintain, so they were removed. Now if you want to buy stamps, you have to get to the post office when they are open. See above for the likelyhood of that. I've received postcards from the USPS that offered to sell me stamps by mail.... with a postage fee added to my purchase. Are you kidding me?
FYI, many grocery stores cell stamps at the checkout counter.
There are paranoids out there, but even many of them would give a pre-schooler a pass on the security or at least acknowledge that they shouldn't be on the no-fly list.
Hey man, you're just thinking reactively, here. We have to stay one step ahead of the terrorists. Bet you'd feel pretty dumb if we let pre-schoolers on to airplanes without checking them, and then one of them blew up a plane!
Slashdot Mirror
Eating magnets? What's the attraction in that?
Ironic, don't you think?
It's certainly a polarizing topic.
Christ. And I thought Alaskans were weird for flying to Seattle and buying big ticket items.
At least we all drive on the same side of the road. (Well, mostly. Seattle traffic is pretty random these days.)
They are weird. They should keep going down to Portland where they won't have to pay sales tax.
You may have to wait a little longer, but people will start buying from Canada or other places without taxes.
I really doubt that. Based on what I see on other forums, most US consumers refuse to buy almost anything if they have to buy it online. I see people all the time who shlep down to their local brick and mortar store to pay more money, spend more time and get a worse quality product than something they could buy cheaper and of higher quality online. Ever been the grocery store or Wal-Mart and noticed how many people refuse to use the self-checkout line? I rest my case.
Good point. I expect Amazon to declare bankruptcy in the near future.
Well, we could ban education, because it is dangerous, people might learn something that can be used wrongly. ;-)
Have you heard about the state of public education?
I love how Hitler is being redefined as part of the Communist/Socialist political spectrum.... if this gains traction, it's time to leave the US.
The standard defense of such extreme right wing nuts is that the Nazis were called the National Socialist Party. They put far too much weight on the flowery words they used to gain power, not their actions once they had that power. According to their thinking, North Korea must be democratic because it's in their official name.
Much like people who voted for Obama.
They put one of these on the road to my home. At first, it read very close to my GPS speed. Then it seems they recalibrated it, and it now reads my speed to be 10% higher.
and the lgpl-part is, why companies like apple can use it without opensourcing their browser.
And also, perhaps, the reason they use and improve the open source part.
> I wish there was a standard for servers, so that I wouldn't have to keep reconfiguring my data center layout.
I know! The 1U vs. 1Ui is driving me nuts!! Why would anybody think that 1024 mm to the meter would make any sense? Thus a 44.45 mm 1U becomes 45.516 mm in the 1Ui unit!!
Is that a kibimillimeter?
My car (2007) reads about 10% high. OBD-II is accurate to within 1 MPH of GPS, but the needle on the dial is 10% higher.
Similarly with Fortran. In the aerospace industry, I've worked on programs initially written in the 60s, with various parts upgraded at various times.
So whether you want to count in binary or base 10, it still shows you the actual number of bytes.
"The universe is enormous, no doubt there's *someone* out there."
So, you believe in the "invisible man in the sky" too huh? ;)
The belief in extraterrestrial life is at least based on the observation that life exists on Earth, and the number of stars and planets like our Sun and Earth in the universe is .. astronomical.
The belief in God has no such basis.
I think the belief in extraterrestrial life is primarily based in the disbelief in God. If there is no other life, then we are special. If there is no God, we are not special. Hence, if there is no God, there ought to be extraterrestrial life.
My jailbroke(en ??) iPad
When you installed a jailbreak on your iPad, it became a personal computer.
Computers have required specific development software / hardware bits for ages.
In the past, it was common to fund the development of developer tools through the sale of copies of developer tools. MPW cost money, CodeWarrior cost money, etc. But these "ages" were supposed to have ended when volunteers ported GCC and other freely licensed developer tools to anything and everything. For example, I'm under the impression that Microsoft started offering Visual Studio Express to compete with MinGW, a port of GCC to Windows. Only with the marketing of cryptographically restricted devices as "personal computer replacements" have these ages returned.
You still don't pay for the tools. XCode is free. The Android development kit is free.
Our "R" is more like a vowel. Theirs is more like a consonant, and sounds somewhat like our "L".
Have your Cake and Eat it too! Dual-boot Linux and Whatever your current flavor of Microsoft OS is! Then after you realize you haven't use that MS OS for 6 months or so except to do the monthly updates, You can go ahead and switch over altogether!
This would be great, if the cake weren't a lie.
Audi sells the A3 with a TDI in the US. Rumor is that they'll be bringing over additional TDI models.
But how can a company buy assets if it doesn't have any money? Oh, sorry, of course it does, because it has income which is generated from selling things to customers. So why shouldn't it pay income tax on its income? Ah, because it's an abstract entity that should not pay tax (as the post I replied to suggested).
Ultimately, the money is either paid as a salary to someone (in which case they pay income tax), or it is used to purchase something (in which case sales tax is paid).
Alternatively, if companies don't pay taxes, they shouldn't enjoy benefits such as protection of laws or electricity provided by infrastructure that is paid for by taxes.
The company should be paying real estate tax if it owns property. That should pay for infrastructure. If it uses electricity, I'm pretty sure it's paying for it.
Why should the general public pay the salaries of lawmakers if they're going to pass laws in favour of companies that don't pay taxes?
The concept of a corporation was invented to allow a group of people to shift the risk of enterprise into an abstract entity. But just because it's an abstract entity doesn't mean that it's not part of the economy.
It is a part of the economy, but it's an intermediate part. The money is either spent to purchase something (sales tax), or paid to someone (personal income tax).
Now, taxes can be used to incentivize behavior. Perhaps it's in the national interest for companies to spend their money immediately, in which case, it should be taxed, to incentivize companies to spend instead of turning a profit.
Personally, I think some sort of fairly low tax, say maybe 10% of income, would be appropriate, based on employee pay. So if a company had most of its work force in the US but tried to shift the profit to an offshore subsidiary with only a couple people staffing an office, the bulk of it would still be taxable. And if a company tried to maliciously shift its profits to avoid paying taxes, it ought to be punitively taxed, say 50% of profit. Hopefully that would eliminate all the economic waste of the tax avoidance industry.
Then make sure that corporations can have no assets. After all, they're just abstract entities.
As long as they pay sales tax to purchase their assets, why shouldn't they have them?
Their own sheer stupidity truly is amazing. Maybe they'll make a movie off of it one day...
If someone makes a movie, for a censored industry. Does it turn a profit?
In Hollywood, nothing turns a profit...
Now a $1 bill will get you a burger.
Where?
Welcome to America: http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/food/meal_bundles/dollar_menu.html
They should go a step further. Stop indexing all German news sites and charge a fee to those who want their articles in the search indexes, since it is additional overhead for Google to make exceptions for them.
Yes Google should do that, thereby totally abusing their near monoly position on the search market in an attempt to blackmail a nation state into legislating in a way that suits Google an action which is guaranteed to instantly get the undivided attention of the EU commission (the same one who handed Microsoft a record $1,4 billon fine).
So in your opinion, Google should be forced to index all of these German publishers and pay for the privilege of having to do this?
Well sure, except apparently nobody knows who is the union, if anyone at all, so how does it have any bargaining power?
I'm curious, what do your unions do?
Case number 2... You can't buy stamps in the lobby any longer. The post master at my local office said the vending machines were too problematic and expensive to maintain, so they were removed. Now if you want to buy stamps, you have to get to the post office when they are open. See above for the likelyhood of that. I've received postcards from the USPS that offered to sell me stamps by mail.... with a postage fee added to my purchase. Are you kidding me?
FYI, many grocery stores cell stamps at the checkout counter.
There are paranoids out there, but even many of them would give a pre-schooler a pass on the security or at least acknowledge that they shouldn't be on the no-fly list.
Hey man, you're just thinking reactively, here. We have to stay one step ahead of the terrorists. Bet you'd feel pretty dumb if we let pre-schoolers on to airplanes without checking them, and then one of them blew up a plane!