I think the main objection (at least the one I've heard) is that you pay "S&H tax" on internet sales that you don't at brick and mortar stores. Having to also pay sales tax on internet sales may put a damper on internet BtoC.
I can't think of anybody I know that pays use tax for stuff they buy out of state.
I'd be interested in hearing your theories on the legitimacy of sales tax, though. I'd rather have sales tax than income tax.
Personally I think the whole thing is a bit hypocritical anyway. Parents like this piss me off, particularly the types that go out and buy the Titanic video, and make a copy, cutting out the bits where they have sex in the car and you see Kate Winslet's tit and everything, yet they keep all the lying, cheating and violence in.
To someone who sees extra-marital sex as well as wanton violence as equally bad things, I can understand how one could explain censoring the sex but not the violence. (Whether you agree that extra-marital sex is bad or not is beside the point.) Most people with a "normal" upbringing are not going to go around maiming and killing others. Besides, the consequences (hurt, pain, death) are immediately obvious. Thus it's not a strong temptation. However, the temptation for the sex is much stronger and more insidious. Movies are not long enough for the consequences (broken hearts, STD's) to become apparent. You see it glorified, but the reality of the situation is never shown.
If possible, I would censor these movies for my own benefit, because I think it's better for me. I sure as heck would do it for my kids, too.
We're already letting these soulless media companies raise our children, one step at a time, this just looks to me like another way for the parents to not give a shit about their children.
They (parents) cared enough to get the editting done.
Everybody uses timesaving measures all the time. Why do you complain when parents do it? Are you going to complain that parents drive their kids to school in a car (or, heaven forbid, put them on a bus), rather than walking with them?
"Since the technology exists to reduce nicotine in cigarettes to insignificant levels, why, one is led to ask, does the industry keep nicotine in cigarettes at all?"
Because our government is in on the deal. It scolds Big Tobacco with one hand and lights up with the other.
Several kilometers in places, actually. Not to mention most of the road is actually on the Ross Ice Shelf, which floats on the ocean. I doubt they'd want to dig through that.
Agreed. If a person desires power, it's a good idea to keep him out of power. If a person does not desire power, he can probably be trusted to wield that power for the good others.
I've also heard it said we'd probably have a better government if we picked representatives by jabbing a finger in the phone book. Sad commentary, but there's some truth in it.
Condorcet, Condorcet, Condorcet! I can't say this enough. IRV has so many pitfalls that I can't believe anyone seriously recommends it as an alternative. Its faults in the vote-counting method so overwhelm the improvements in its vote-casting method as to make any benefit in using IRV completely illusory. Condorcet uses the same vote-casting method, but the vote-counting method actually does what IRV purports to do.
That's the most obvious one that comes to mind. That translates to longer battery life. If I had to pay a bit more money (and I'm not sure that your "more expensive" claim is true) in order to have more "on the go" time, it might be worth it.
I therefore have no reason to believe that either major party has any intention of reforming the Code, and the only way I can see the Code being changed is for third parties to gain enough votes to be a threat to the majors.
As I'll keep saying until it happens, the better alternative is to enact Condorcet voting. It is not enough for third parties to act merely as "spoilers". If you think about it, a single vote can represent your true preference between, at most, two people. As soon as you introduce a third option, there's an amibuity: are you really for the person you vote for, are are you against his most popular opponent? We need a system that allows you to express preferences between candidates in this way, one that eliminates incentives for "strategic" voting.
That's Condorcet. Conceptually it is only slightly more difficult than single-vote plurality vote (current US system). Think of it this way: in a multi-way race, the "true winner" is the one that would win all (or at least a majority) of head-to-head races against all contenders. A single vote can determine only one head-to-head race - Condorcet provides a ranking method that allows all head-to-head winners to be determined simultaneously. Do not confuse this with an iterative approach to counting such as IRV. The iterative approach is flawed because it eliminates candidates before they've had a chance to be paired off with all other contenders. It is trivial to demonstrate this once you understand how the vote counting for both methods works.
Write your legislators. Write your editors. Explain to your neighbors and friends. Better yet, run for office. Imagine running on a platform that says, "I intend to make it easier for you to vote me - and other politicians - out of office if you don't like what we do".
It's also the corporations' fault. Every time they try to levy a standard tax the lobbyists come out and beg, wheedle, and bribe to get loopholes in the law. They should just set a standard import/ export tax, no exceptions.
True, that's what they (corps) do. But it's our fault for voting such pushovers into office. Elect some people that stand for principle over politics and you'll get fair across-the-board standards.
As long as the 16th Amendment allows the gov't to squeeze "the rich" for whatever they want to give it to "the poor", they can continue to buy their votes in November. As long as they have the power of office, they will continue to get money from corps for these special favors. And as long as the 17th Amendment removes State gov'ts from having any balancing influence at the federal level, nothing will change. Money and power are powerful and perverse incentives.
However, the solution isn't "campaign finance reform" or "term limits". Some of the most expensive races are US Senate, which removing the 17th Amendment would solve. Besides, we ought to be able to spend our money how we please. There's been more money in politics now since the "reforms" of the 70's than before. And we already have term limits - you get to "vote the bums out" every November. What we need is voting method reform so that we have a real choice, so that non-Dem/Rep votes make a difference.
I'm already voting for thirdparties. Of course, we need these same Congress-critters to enact Condorcet voting, so that such "protest" votes get noticed...
Secondly, sales tax is a horrible way to raise money anyway. Of the three forms of taxation (income, property, sales aka "outgo"), it is the most regressive (meaning impacts the middle class more than the upper class and the lower class more than the middle class). A sales tax discourages purchasing. Sales tax HURTS the economy more than any other form of taxation.
Baloney. Graduated income tax is inherently evil because it denies equal protection under the law. A rich man's dollars are worth less than a poor man's, because he happens to have more of them. That's not right. What business is it of government's to decide how much my money is worth? If a dollar isn't a dollar, our whole financial system is corrupt.
A flat income tax (no minimum exemptions, no deductions) is a small step in the right direction. (And I do mean small.) Everybody's money is just as valuable as anyone else's. It's up to the individual to make himself valuable. You get rewarded by merit and hard work. However, even a flat income tax is still unjust. Why should a third party have any say in my wage negotiations with my employer? Once gov't has authority to drive any wedge between what the employer is willing to pay for work and what the employee is willing to accept for that work, it has the authority to make that wedge arbitrarily large. At some point the either the employer has to pay so much for help that he can't make it in business, or the employee brings home so little that he can't make a living.
(Employer withholding is a whole 'nother ball of wax. The gov't gets tons of free labor in collecting its taxes. Every effort to help such-and-such constituency just adds another layer of complexity to the tax code and consumes more time. Plus the fact that it very effectively hides the true cost of taxation from the average American citizen. It's hard to remember that you negotiated a decent $12/hour wage with your boss when all you ever see is about $9 in your pay. If we had to write a check to the IRS every month or quarter to actually pay taxes yourself, more people would wonder "Where the heck is all this money going?" We'd force more accountability from our elected officials.)
This is precisely the reason that "No capitation, or other direct, tax shall be laid, unless in proportion to the census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken." Equal protection under the law. Every person is fundamentally just as valuable as every other. To place a direct tax on a person you must tax everybody the same flat dollar amount. Obviously you can't collect $5k from someone that doesn't have it, and to throw them in jail for being poor isn't something a free society does, hence apportioned direct taxes were seldom (if ever) used. Enter the 16th Amendment. Suddenly some people became more "equal" than others.
Sales tax is far more fair. I remain in control of how much tax I pay, because I decide how much I spend. I can shop for bargains, and I can defer luxury purchases, saving or investing in the meantime to increase my personal wealth.
"But my income tax is too high already!" Only because the current federal income tax system (state income tax is typically around 2-3% compared to the up to 33% federal) is effectively regressive. If we didn't give upper-class income brackets all sorts of effective loopholes to reduce their income (eg, Congress just declared the capital gains tax to be zero, eliminating BILLIONS of dollars of federal income, and returning money to the people in the country who are in the least need of additional cash), because, and this is the important part, different income levels tend to get their income from different sources, and those sources are taxed differently.
So basically you're playing the class warfare card. You've envious of the rich, and want some of what they got.
Well the politicians like that too. You see, the richest 50% of the people pay 96% of the taxes, but the poorest 50%'s votes count just as much as theirs! And when it comes election time, the vote is the currency that really matters. As long as politicians can be counted on to give the poor something for nothing, they'll stay in power, and they do it by stealing the fruits of your labor.
Should "the rich" get most of the money from tax cuts/rebates? Darn right! They pay 96% of the tax, they should get 96% of the cuts. Much better, though, to give everyone a 100% income tax cut. You work hard for your money, so you should have the right to keep it and do with it as you please. We need an incentive to get people to work instead of being indigent. Rewarding non-work (welfare) is not the way to do it. (Compulsory charity is not charity at all.) The communism model never works, and America has known it for a long time. See the examples at Jamestown and Plymouth colonies.
There are many that would tell you that the Depression was caused by the Federal Reserve in conjunction with income tax. Fractional reserve banking is a sham that makes bankers wealthy at our expense. Paper dollars are backed by debt, not value. Income tax keeps increasing to cover up the fact that our fiat money system is a house of cards waiting to topple. Eliminate the income tax, bring back the higher tariffs. Bring back the gold standard.
Do you realize that if we were simply to use the 1990 budget, we could pretty much eliminate the need for income tax? That's how much government has grown in the past decade or so. How much income tax are you paying every year? $15k? Is your life improved $15k/year by gov't services compared to 1990? Mine isn't. I'd rather have the money back in my pocket.
I couldn't agree more. If you tax what I spend, I am in control by deciding what I really need now and what I can defer, investing in the meantime to increase my wealth. If you tax what I earn, you put a third party in control of what should be a private agreement between me and my employer. Where's the freedom in that?
I completely agree. Blame the person who is committing the crime, not innocent bystanders who, through unrelated (in)action, created conditions that made the crime possible. However, the trend in the legal system today is to blame the bystanders.
For example, it's already happening with guns - if you don't lock up your gun and someone steals it from you to use it in a crime, you are liable. (Would it be the same if they stole a steak knife instead of a gun?) If you made or sold the gun that was used in a crime, you could be held liable. (Would Ginsu be liable also?) Etc. It's like a cartoon I once saw where a lawyer was saying to the man in the witness box, "So it's true! You are the farmer who grew the corn that was bought by the distillery to be made into the alcohol that was shipped by the distributor to the bar who served it to my client, which caused him to get into an accident while driving home drunk!" It's utterly ridiculous. What's next? Do we convict the grandparents of the actual criminal since they "contributed" to the conditions (the criminal's very existence) that made the crime possible?
Leaving your computer unsecured is not a crime. It's stupid, but stupidity is not a crime. You may take defensive actions under agreed terms, such as denying service to the infected party, as someone mentioned in the ISP example.
Blackbox is lighter and has more features than fvwm, and seems a lot nicer to use, IMO. Give it a shot. Just for the sake of comparison, note IceWM is about the same size as fvwm, and has a few more features, but not as featureful as Blackbox.
C'mon, Apple, it's 2003. The Mozilla-spoofing stunt was stupid when Microsoft first did it back in the Stone Age of '95-'96. Just come out and label yourself "KHTML/2.1 [en] (MacOS X)/Safari 1.0" or something similar. With all the high-quality spec-compliant browsers currently available, any serious website that is still sniffing for "Mozilla" is doing itself a disservice. There's no reason for it anymore.
Code to specs and trust the browser to do something sensible with it. If it doesn't, the user will upgrade, which is a good thing.
Now I just need a stylesheet so that Keynote presentations can be viewed on the web with OperaShow. I don't need flashy animations, so for me a web document that can be referred to later by my listeners is a much better presentation.
Minimalism. This is the main reason I like NetBSD. It is more minimalist than any Linux distro and even FreeBSD.
Hear, hear! My SE/30 runs NetBSD. I love the "unclutteredness" of the system and the package system.
Regarding licenses, I haven't done much comparison of the two. But my gut feeling is that while GPL gives freedom to code, BSD gives freedom to people. Personally I think freeing people is a worthier goal.
No, he was quite correct. Jury Nullification is a very old legal tradition. William Penn was acquitted (of what I don't remember) by a British jury, even though they were confined by the judge for days. They staunchly refused to convict a man who had done no wrong, regardless of what the law said.
But if JN is a principle enshrined in the legal system, why shouldn't lawyers/judges be informing juries of this? You think that defense attorneys in particular would want fully-informed juries.
Just goes to show how ignorant our society is and how warped the system is.
Hey, anybody from South Dakota care to comment on what the heck happened to the Fully Informed Jury Amendment referendum on the the ballot this fall? I heard it failed, probably due to heavy lobbying against it. Any details? I haven't seen any in the news.
Because solutions which depend upon JSPs tend to become a mass of unreusable scriplets, having this separation allows for a more maintainable site and avoids the pitfalls which have traditionally plagued JSPs.
I suppose I'd "get it" better if I'd done more JSP development than I have. I guess I'm lacking the context to see how useful this is. I'm hoping to do write a small web tool for myself soon though, so I will read up on this and see if it clicks.
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I think the main objection (at least the one I've heard) is that you pay "S&H tax" on internet sales that you don't at brick and mortar stores. Having to also pay sales tax on internet sales may put a damper on internet BtoC.
I can't think of anybody I know that pays use tax for stuff they buy out of state.
I'd be interested in hearing your theories on the legitimacy of sales tax, though. I'd rather have sales tax than income tax.
To someone who sees extra-marital sex as well as wanton violence as equally bad things, I can understand how one could explain censoring the sex but not the violence. (Whether you agree that extra-marital sex is bad or not is beside the point.) Most people with a "normal" upbringing are not going to go around maiming and killing others. Besides, the consequences (hurt, pain, death) are immediately obvious. Thus it's not a strong temptation. However, the temptation for the sex is much stronger and more insidious. Movies are not long enough for the consequences (broken hearts, STD's) to become apparent. You see it glorified, but the reality of the situation is never shown.
If possible, I would censor these movies for my own benefit, because I think it's better for me. I sure as heck would do it for my kids, too.
They (parents) cared enough to get the editting done.
Everybody uses timesaving measures all the time. Why do you complain when parents do it? Are you going to complain that parents drive their kids to school in a car (or, heaven forbid, put them on a bus), rather than walking with them?
And that's why it will never happen.
Several kilometers in places, actually. Not to mention most of the road is actually on the Ross Ice Shelf, which floats on the ocean. I doubt they'd want to dig through that.
...you know you're near the Finnish line.
Pa-dum-BUMP!
(Sorry, couldn't resist.)
Agreed. If a person desires power, it's a good idea to keep him out of power. If a person does not desire power, he can probably be trusted to wield that power for the good others.
I've also heard it said we'd probably have a better government if we picked representatives by jabbing a finger in the phone book. Sad commentary, but there's some truth in it.
Condorcet, Condorcet, Condorcet! I can't say this enough. IRV has so many pitfalls that I can't believe anyone seriously recommends it as an alternative. Its faults in the vote-counting method so overwhelm the improvements in its vote-casting method as to make any benefit in using IRV completely illusory. Condorcet uses the same vote-casting method, but the vote-counting method actually does what IRV purports to do.
That's the most obvious one that comes to mind. That translates to longer battery life. If I had to pay a bit more money (and I'm not sure that your "more expensive" claim is true) in order to have more "on the go" time, it might be worth it.
As I'll keep saying until it happens, the better alternative is to enact Condorcet voting. It is not enough for third parties to act merely as "spoilers". If you think about it, a single vote can represent your true preference between, at most, two people. As soon as you introduce a third option, there's an amibuity: are you really for the person you vote for, are are you against his most popular opponent? We need a system that allows you to express preferences between candidates in this way, one that eliminates incentives for "strategic" voting.
That's Condorcet. Conceptually it is only slightly more difficult than single-vote plurality vote (current US system). Think of it this way: in a multi-way race, the "true winner" is the one that would win all (or at least a majority) of head-to-head races against all contenders. A single vote can determine only one head-to-head race - Condorcet provides a ranking method that allows all head-to-head winners to be determined simultaneously. Do not confuse this with an iterative approach to counting such as IRV. The iterative approach is flawed because it eliminates candidates before they've had a chance to be paired off with all other contenders. It is trivial to demonstrate this once you understand how the vote counting for both methods works.
Write your legislators. Write your editors. Explain to your neighbors and friends. Better yet, run for office. Imagine running on a platform that says, "I intend to make it easier for you to vote me - and other politicians - out of office if you don't like what we do".
True, that's what they (corps) do. But it's our fault for voting such pushovers into office. Elect some people that stand for principle over politics and you'll get fair across-the-board standards.
As long as the 16th Amendment allows the gov't to squeeze "the rich" for whatever they want to give it to "the poor", they can continue to buy their votes in November. As long as they have the power of office, they will continue to get money from corps for these special favors. And as long as the 17th Amendment removes State gov'ts from having any balancing influence at the federal level, nothing will change. Money and power are powerful and perverse incentives.
However, the solution isn't "campaign finance reform" or "term limits". Some of the most expensive races are US Senate, which removing the 17th Amendment would solve. Besides, we ought to be able to spend our money how we please. There's been more money in politics now since the "reforms" of the 70's than before. And we already have term limits - you get to "vote the bums out" every November. What we need is voting method reform so that we have a real choice, so that non-Dem/Rep votes make a difference.
I'm already voting for third parties. Of course, we need these same Congress-critters to enact Condorcet voting, so that such "protest" votes get noticed...
Baloney. Graduated income tax is inherently evil because it denies equal protection under the law. A rich man's dollars are worth less than a poor man's, because he happens to have more of them. That's not right. What business is it of government's to decide how much my money is worth? If a dollar isn't a dollar, our whole financial system is corrupt.
A flat income tax (no minimum exemptions, no deductions) is a small step in the right direction. (And I do mean small.) Everybody's money is just as valuable as anyone else's. It's up to the individual to make himself valuable. You get rewarded by merit and hard work. However, even a flat income tax is still unjust. Why should a third party have any say in my wage negotiations with my employer? Once gov't has authority to drive any wedge between what the employer is willing to pay for work and what the employee is willing to accept for that work, it has the authority to make that wedge arbitrarily large. At some point the either the employer has to pay so much for help that he can't make it in business, or the employee brings home so little that he can't make a living.
(Employer withholding is a whole 'nother ball of wax. The gov't gets tons of free labor in collecting its taxes. Every effort to help such-and-such constituency just adds another layer of complexity to the tax code and consumes more time. Plus the fact that it very effectively hides the true cost of taxation from the average American citizen. It's hard to remember that you negotiated a decent $12/hour wage with your boss when all you ever see is about $9 in your pay. If we had to write a check to the IRS every month or quarter to actually pay taxes yourself, more people would wonder "Where the heck is all this money going?" We'd force more accountability from our elected officials.)
This is precisely the reason that "No capitation, or other direct, tax shall be laid, unless in proportion to the census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken." Equal protection under the law. Every person is fundamentally just as valuable as every other. To place a direct tax on a person you must tax everybody the same flat dollar amount. Obviously you can't collect $5k from someone that doesn't have it, and to throw them in jail for being poor isn't something a free society does, hence apportioned direct taxes were seldom (if ever) used. Enter the 16th Amendment. Suddenly some people became more "equal" than others.
Sales tax is far more fair. I remain in control of how much tax I pay, because I decide how much I spend. I can shop for bargains, and I can defer luxury purchases, saving or investing in the meantime to increase my personal wealth.
So basically you're playing the class warfare card. You've envious of the rich, and want some of what they got.
Well the politicians like that too. You see, the richest 50% of the people pay 96% of the taxes, but the poorest 50%'s votes count just as much as theirs! And when it comes election time, the vote is the currency that really matters. As long as politicians can be counted on to give the poor something for nothing, they'll stay in power, and they do it by stealing the fruits of your labor.
Should "the rich" get most of the money from tax cuts/rebates? Darn right! They pay 96% of the tax, they should get 96% of the cuts. Much better, though, to give everyone a 100% income tax cut. You work hard for your money, so you should have the right to keep it and do with it as you please. We need an incentive to get people to work instead of being indigent. Rewarding non-work (welfare) is not the way to do it. (Compulsory charity is not charity at all.) The communism model never works, and America has known it for a long time. See the examples at Jamestown and Plymouth colonies.
There are many that would tell you that the Depression was caused by the Federal Reserve in conjunction with income tax. Fractional reserve banking is a sham that makes bankers wealthy at our expense. Paper dollars are backed by debt, not value. Income tax keeps increasing to cover up the fact that our fiat money system is a house of cards waiting to topple. Eliminate the income tax, bring back the higher tariffs. Bring back the gold standard.
Do you realize that if we were simply to use the 1990 budget, we could pretty much eliminate the need for income tax? That's how much government has grown in the past decade or so. How much income tax are you paying every year? $15k? Is your life improved $15k/year by gov't services compared to 1990? Mine isn't. I'd rather have the money back in my pocket.
I couldn't agree more. If you tax what I spend, I am in control by deciding what I really need now and what I can defer, investing in the meantime to increase my wealth. If you tax what I earn, you put a third party in control of what should be a private agreement between me and my employer. Where's the freedom in that?
I completely agree. Blame the person who is committing the crime, not innocent bystanders who, through unrelated (in)action, created conditions that made the crime possible. However, the trend in the legal system today is to blame the bystanders.
For example, it's already happening with guns - if you don't lock up your gun and someone steals it from you to use it in a crime, you are liable. (Would it be the same if they stole a steak knife instead of a gun?) If you made or sold the gun that was used in a crime, you could be held liable. (Would Ginsu be liable also?) Etc. It's like a cartoon I once saw where a lawyer was saying to the man in the witness box, "So it's true! You are the farmer who grew the corn that was bought by the distillery to be made into the alcohol that was shipped by the distributor to the bar who served it to my client, which caused him to get into an accident while driving home drunk!" It's utterly ridiculous. What's next? Do we convict the grandparents of the actual criminal since they "contributed" to the conditions (the criminal's very existence) that made the crime possible?
Leaving your computer unsecured is not a crime. It's stupid, but stupidity is not a crime. You may take defensive actions under agreed terms, such as denying service to the infected party, as someone mentioned in the ISP example.
Blackbox is lighter and has more features than fvwm, and seems a lot nicer to use, IMO. Give it a shot. Just for the sake of comparison, note IceWM is about the same size as fvwm, and has a few more features, but not as featureful as Blackbox.
C'mon, Apple, it's 2003. The Mozilla-spoofing stunt was stupid when Microsoft first did it back in the Stone Age of '95-'96. Just come out and label yourself "KHTML/2.1 [en] (MacOS X)/Safari 1.0" or something similar. With all the high-quality spec-compliant browsers currently available, any serious website that is still sniffing for "Mozilla" is doing itself a disservice. There's no reason for it anymore.
Code to specs and trust the browser to do something sensible with it. If it doesn't, the user will upgrade, which is a good thing.
Plug-ins bad; text markup good.
Now I just need a stylesheet so that Keynote presentations can be viewed on the web with OperaShow. I don't need flashy animations, so for me a web document that can be referred to later by my listeners is a much better presentation.
This leads one to ask, "Which is the retard? The browser, or the 'compatibility' scripts?"
Hear, hear! My SE/30 runs NetBSD. I love the "unclutteredness" of the system and the package system.
Regarding licenses, I haven't done much comparison of the two. But my gut feeling is that while GPL gives freedom to code, BSD gives freedom to people. Personally I think freeing people is a worthier goal.
But does it predate the Apple ][? The poster said that's where the extra meta-keys (Open Apple, Closed Apple) started.
PS, Slashdot, my preview says that it's 6 PM on the 1st, but it's about 8:20 CST on the 2nd.
No, he was quite correct. Jury Nullification is a very old legal tradition. William Penn was acquitted (of what I don't remember) by a British jury, even though they were confined by the judge for days. They staunchly refused to convict a man who had done no wrong, regardless of what the law said.
But if JN is a principle enshrined in the legal system, why shouldn't lawyers/judges be informing juries of this? You think that defense attorneys in particular would want fully-informed juries.
Just goes to show how ignorant our society is and how warped the system is.
Hey, anybody from South Dakota care to comment on what the heck happened to the Fully Informed Jury Amendment referendum on the the ballot this fall? I heard it failed, probably due to heavy lobbying against it. Any details? I haven't seen any in the news.
I suppose I'd "get it" better if I'd done more JSP development than I have. I guess I'm lacking the context to see how useful this is. I'm hoping to do write a small web tool for myself soon though, so I will read up on this and see if it clicks.