You're mistake there is thinking that a simple tax system will catch more money than a complicated one. Why do you think the one we have is so complicated? Because companies pulled crap in the past that was 'within the letter of the law'.
> imagine what we could do with the economy when we don't have to add all the salaries of accountants and tax people,
Accountants and auditing are the punishment companies go through because of past misbehavior. You CAN NOT rely on trust, when you're insisting someone pay you. Ask anyone in Accounts Receivable.
> which add little to no value Depends on which side you're looking at.
Are you the company? They cost you to hire, they cost you in money you could have hidden. But they reduce the likelihood of getting sued, and every now and then they DO save you money that you would normally have paid in taxes. As well, they can tell YOU where the costs are in your company, so you can reduce your overhead.
Are you a shareholder? They act as an incentive for the company officers to behave, by making it more likely that bad behavior will be discovered.
Are you a government? They save YOU having to start lawsuits. And occasionally save you from having to put people in jail for bad behavior.
I admire the ideal, of a world where you didn't have to bludgeon money out of deadbeats. But it ain't this world. Sorry.
> and confiscating the student's property for no valid reason. I believe the teacher is guilty of criminal acts.
Much as I disagree with the teacher's reaction to Linux, I must say that I agree with her response.
Yes, she was acting on erroneous information. But she saw something she thought was (or could well be) illegal, and she acted to stop that right then. A teacher's duty.
Admitting error will involve a heaping serving of crow. But nobody got maimed as a result. Nothing that can't be repaired.
What would you have a teacher do if, for instance, they witnessed a kid pull out a pocket full of rolexes?
Or perhaps more apropos, showing off a root kit...
> Humans are born with the capability of mastering our limbs; fine motor coordination isn't something we're born with, it's learned. Why try to write software to do that?
Perhaps because a flailing arm dope slap with a flesh-and-blood limb can hurt, a flailing arm dope slap with a prosthetic limb can hurt LOTS.
and here's this one gold bar, I'm sure you can tell that it's real gold. Yessiree, real gold. That whole box in the truck. But of course, all you can check is the one bar.
These are, after all, criminals that you are talking about. Who is to say that they were not also con artists?
However, if you assume that even half the account IDs on the disk were valid, that's still in the neighborhood of 2% of all German accounts (if the 21 mil = 3/4 number holds true).
>...somebody who's in charge of building voting machines should not be politically active.
I would have to say that someone who is in charge of building voting machines is by definition politically active, in the same way that independent poll watchers are. What they have to be is politically agnostic, dedicated to the system, not the parties, candidates, or issues under vote.
>When the Federal Reserve prints (or equivalent) and loans out ANY money, the new money gets its value by diluting the value of ALL the money, thus stealing value from the money already out there.
>Libertarians explicitly REJECT this sort of theft.
You're dodging the issue, really. You're saying "the libertarians would abolish the Fed". Which is probably true. But since they can't do that right now, what is their fallback? Would the libertarians be in favor of raising, lowering, or maintaining the interest rate?
Mind that we're talking loans "on the government's goodwill", for all practical purposes, which get repaid *to the goverment* with interest.
Assume for the purposes of argument that I grant the "theft of value" argument you say is the Libertarian position. Is that "theft of value" - a temporary one, in this case - worth the interest charged? And what of the social/economic value gained by the fact that those loans took place? These are the very issues that created the Fed.
I can predict that a person who falls in a lake will get wet. I can observe a person who is all wet. But I cannot infer from that they fell into a lake. The fact that the prediction and the observation are both accurate not withstanding.
The big bang may be the best theory we have for the origin of the universe. But there are observations left unanswered by the theory; predictions unresolved. You'll pardon that I don't accept your theory without reservations.
Um... You really ought to check the sources a bit closer than that, eh?
The editorial you complain about appeared in this article. KDawson took from that source, not from the original Worcester Telegram article.
In fact the article actually states:
"Mr. Deebâ(TM)s home lab likely violated the regulations of many state and local departments, although officials have not yet announced any penalties. "
I would like to point out that this was a view expressed by the reporter, not a quote from Ms Wilderman or Mr Ferson (both quoted elsewhere). A more relevant quote would be...
Pamela A. Wilderman, Marlboro's code enforcement officer, said Mr. Deeb was doing scientific research and development in a residential area, which is a violation of zoning laws.
... a finding I feel would be hard to enforce, with respect to the materials. His actions may have been against zoning laws, but unless the materials THEMSELVES are prohibited by regulation/law, I feel that confiscating them would require a more firm foundation.
$5,000? Lawsuits ain't cheap. Capitol vs Foster, defendant asked for ~$68K in lawyer fees for the full case. I can't imagine that RIAA's expenses were less than that. But maybe RIAA gets a bulk discount on "court proof" from Media Sentry...
So... say, 2 or 3 settlements, or a motion and a half?
Losing money is never fun, but I'm having a hard time seeing the fine being anything serious.
3. It is the father's gene that decides whether the baby is a boy or a girl.
True - um, not exactly, no. Father's chromosome does. Chromosome bodies hold lots of genes. It's not an on/off switch, have this gene you're male, that one you're female.
7. The universe began with a huge explosion.
True - debated, theorized, not proven. And for inclusive definitions of "explosion", too.
10. Does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth? 11. How long does it take for the Earth to go around the sun?
All security measures have to account for ID-10-T errors, and "error 60" (cm in front of the screen).
UAC might be a good theory, but it fails dramatically by either a) causing users to turn it off, or b) training them to automatically punch "accept". If the warning was exceptional, or infrequent, it would be much more effective.
It would only work on the sort of Neowin-reading "power users" who turn off security features to gain (perceived) speed and (actual) convenience.
Other folks have mentioned "the level grind", or more aptly that the game content gets more limited the longer you play. Thus the people who continue playing tend (generally) to continue the "end game content grind". Those who don't continue to play are gone, of course. Average level goes up. Lower level characters find it harder and harder to gather groups, further reducing the incentive to play those levels.... and incidentally giving players of such characters less practice in group play.
New level cap also meant that there was a lot more content than players could go through, centered around levels that characters no longer spent long times at. There is no "pause" button, to let you continue to experience content at the level it was designed for. (City of Heroes DOES have a mechanism for this - exemplaring.)
You comment that 1-60 content is essentially dead. I contend that, depending on your server, content much higher could be considered "dead" as well. Blizzard has addressed this a little by adding "Daily instance" quests, to stir interest in/provide rewards for some level instances.
"Real life politics", as you might think of it, differs from the politics you were involved in only in the realm of interest.
Your realm of interest was within the EVE game, dealing with invented concerns.
The realm of interest of a city commissioner is that city and how it interacts with other political entities. The realm of interest of a CEO is the company he runs, and the board of directors he reports to. Of a pastor, his congregation, and the church hierarchy.
The people remain real people, though. And much of the time, a person can opt out of "real world politics" as well, in much the same fashion: by removing themselves partially or totally from the realm of interest.
> Many people like the fact that getting destroyed actually sets you back.
'The thrill of danger' is very much less thrilling when the sides are unequal. WoW has has areas of both balanced PvP (battlegrounds and arenas) and unstructured PvP (PvP servers, naturally).
EVE has no balanced PvP that I've seen, at least as a continual thing. Someone bigger than you wants to pop you, you'll generally pop. There is no 'thrill' involved for the victim.
No thrill in being held for ransom. No thrill in being killed by gate-campers faster than you can realize they are there. No thrill in logging on to find your starbase has been destroyed, and everything with it taken or destroyed.
No, the thrill is in the uncertainty: - does this guy we're ganking have big friends? - can we get away with destroying this starbase? - can I get from here to there without encountering PvPers? and only rarely (in PvP) "can I prevail against this enemy?"... because if you didn't start it, chances are pretty good that the other side does hold the advantage.
Those few times are precious. Treasure them. They may even be why you play.
Here are some thing they could do: 1) Don't let anyone mine/pick anything that there skill level makes gray to them. 2) put some random drift into movement. 3) limit the price you can sell something for on the AH to 10 times what a vendor would pay 4) don't allow the transfer of more then 100GP a time. Maybe a one time unlimited amount per month.
All of these would be pretty trivial to implement.
1) Just because something is gray (for the uninitiated: no longer grants skill improvement), doesn't mean that you don't need it for some associated skill. Or a skill you picked up after dropping some other skill.
2) It's called 'alcohol'... And ignores that you can get location information at a fairly fine (and numeric) level through the add-on interface. Want to hear the whining when you remove that location information?
3) I think this would actually increase farming, as desired items would INCREASE in scarcity. Gold flows into the game in buckets from people playing characters at the level cap, with nowhere to run out of.
4) transfer of no more than 100gp at a time? What, once a day, or something? "Per transaction" is no more a limit than taking advantage of a sale ("Limit: 5") by going to different cash registers, or bringing your family in to each make separate purchases.
I play a lot of alternate characters. Of your suggestions, the only one that would not affect my own game play is #2. I regularly: #1 use my high level characters to gather materials for my own lower level characters #3 buy quest-related items (often with no vendor price) from the auction house (AH). (I seldom sell items; I have plenty of alts "who will need that eventually!" #4 use one alt to hold cash (so I don't blow it on the auction house), and distribute occasionally to make large purchases (mounts, for instance).
None of which affects the game play of others... unless, like the government, you feel that "because I didn't buy from the AH, it affected commerce and Should Be Regulated" (Wickard v Filburn).
These ideas, at least, do not a solution make. But keep trying.
DU rounds (most often as Armor Piercing Fin Stabilized Depleted Uranium Discarding Sabot) are indeed nasty. In some cases, radiation measured at the outside of the shipping container exceeds 0.5 mR/Hr.
On the other hand, it has better penetration, at longer ranges, than titanium core ammo.
I imagine the concerns for the folks using this ammo run something like... 1) Do I need the advantages of this ammo enough to load/use it? 2) If so, what is it going to do to my (future progeny)?
I wouldn't even imagine that "what about the locals" even enters into it, particularly if it looks like those same "locals" are shooting at you at the time.
As for the locals resenting the US military on the basis of uranium rounds? Love it if you'd point me to a specifically reported case of it. After all, they have so many other reasons to resent the US military ("Infidels!", for instance) that it's hard to settle on something so particular.
I'm saying that finding a bus (or trolly, light rail, subway car, or freeway) with a raving lunatic present is a matter of "luck of the draw". Ride/drive/hitchhike/whatever once, your odds are pretty low. Continue doing so long enough, and the odds approach certainty.
Mind, for some things (say, having your car struck by a bullet from someone "committing road rage"), the time to reach certainty may exceed the (current) average human lifetime, but you can't argue that the odds are zero.
Treating EVERY other driver as if he were "a fucking moron who'll kill you if he can" sounds like a sensible policy to me. Realizing that - some where, some day - you yourself will fit that description for someone else, has some sound benefits to it as well.
But you're talking statistics, and that's prevention; topic for another discussion.
Slashdot Mirror
You're mistake there is thinking that a simple tax system will catch more money than a complicated one. Why do you think the one we have is so complicated? Because companies pulled crap in the past that was 'within the letter of the law'.
> imagine what we could do with the economy when we don't have to add all the salaries of accountants and tax people,
Accountants and auditing are the punishment companies go through because of past misbehavior. You CAN NOT rely on trust, when you're insisting someone pay you. Ask anyone in Accounts Receivable.
> which add little to no value
Depends on which side you're looking at.
Are you the company? They cost you to hire, they cost you in money you could have hidden. But they reduce the likelihood of getting sued, and every now and then they DO save you money that you would normally have paid in taxes. As well, they can tell YOU where the costs are in your company, so you can reduce your overhead.
Are you a shareholder? They act as an incentive for the company officers to behave, by making it more likely that bad behavior will be discovered.
Are you a government? They save YOU having to start lawsuits. And occasionally save you from having to put people in jail for bad behavior.
I admire the ideal, of a world where you didn't have to bludgeon money out of deadbeats. But it ain't this world. Sorry.
If you really want to do them in, call ASCAP!
> and confiscating the student's property for no valid reason. I believe the teacher is guilty of criminal acts.
Much as I disagree with the teacher's reaction to Linux, I must say that I agree with her response.
Yes, she was acting on erroneous information. But she saw something she thought was (or could well be) illegal, and she acted to stop that right then. A teacher's duty.
Admitting error will involve a heaping serving of crow. But nobody got maimed as a result. Nothing that can't be repaired.
What would you have a teacher do if, for instance, they witnessed a kid pull out a pocket full of rolexes?
Or perhaps more apropos, showing off a root kit...
> Humans are born with the capability of mastering our limbs; fine motor coordination isn't something we're born with, it's learned. Why try to write software to do that?
Perhaps because a flailing arm dope slap with a flesh-and-blood limb can hurt, a flailing arm dope slap with a prosthetic limb can hurt LOTS.
and here's this one gold bar, I'm sure you can tell that it's real gold. Yessiree, real gold. That whole box in the truck. But of course, all you can check is the one bar.
These are, after all, criminals that you are talking about. Who is to say that they were not also con artists?
However, if you assume that even half the account IDs on the disk were valid, that's still in the neighborhood of 2% of all German accounts (if the 21 mil = 3/4 number holds true).
> ...somebody who's in charge of building voting machines should not be politically active.
I would have to say that someone who is in charge of building voting machines is by definition politically active, in the same way that independent poll watchers are. What they have to be is politically agnostic, dedicated to the system, not the parties, candidates, or issues under vote.
>When the Federal Reserve prints (or equivalent) and loans out ANY money, the new money gets its value by diluting the value of ALL the money, thus stealing value from the money already out there.
>Libertarians explicitly REJECT this sort of theft.
You're dodging the issue, really. You're saying "the libertarians would abolish the Fed". Which is probably true. But since they can't do that right now, what is their fallback? Would the libertarians be in favor of raising, lowering, or maintaining the interest rate?
Mind that we're talking loans "on the government's goodwill", for all practical purposes, which get repaid *to the goverment* with interest.
Assume for the purposes of argument that I grant the "theft of value" argument you say is the Libertarian position. Is that "theft of value" - a temporary one, in this case - worth the interest charged? And what of the social/economic value gained by the fact that those loans took place? These are the very issues that created the Fed.
Brings a new meaning to "Special Olympics".
I'm coming back to this conversation late, but... I'm having a little trouble that you aren't arguing my point...
I can predict that a person who falls in a lake will get wet.
I can observe a person who is all wet.
But I cannot infer from that they fell into a lake.
The fact that the prediction and the observation are both accurate not withstanding.
The big bang may be the best theory we have for the origin of the universe. But there are observations left unanswered by the theory; predictions unresolved. You'll pardon that I don't accept your theory without reservations.
Um... You really ought to check the sources a bit closer than that, eh?
The editorial you complain about appeared in this article. KDawson took from that source, not from the original Worcester Telegram article.
In fact the article actually states:
"Mr. Deebâ(TM)s home lab likely violated the regulations of many state and local departments, although officials have not yet announced any penalties. "
I would like to point out that this was a view expressed by the reporter, not a quote from Ms Wilderman or Mr Ferson (both quoted elsewhere). A more relevant quote would be...
Pamela A. Wilderman, Marlboro's code enforcement officer, said Mr. Deeb was doing scientific research and development in a residential area, which is a violation of zoning laws.
$5,000? Lawsuits ain't cheap. Capitol vs Foster, defendant asked for ~$68K in lawyer fees for the full case. I can't imagine that RIAA's expenses were less than that. But maybe RIAA gets a bulk discount on "court proof" from Media Sentry...
So... say, 2 or 3 settlements, or a motion and a half?
Losing money is never fun, but I'm having a hard time seeing the fine being anything serious.
"Test your science savvy..."
3. It is the father's gene that decides whether the baby is a boy or a girl.
True - um, not exactly, no. Father's chromosome does. Chromosome bodies hold lots of genes. It's not an on/off switch, have this gene you're male, that one you're female.
7. The universe began with a huge explosion.
True - debated, theorized, not proven. And for inclusive definitions of "explosion", too.
10. Does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth?
11. How long does it take for the Earth to go around the sun?
C'mon, now. Trying to ensure folks get one right?
Look at the keypad. The numbers will be worn down.
Extending this thought...
Hmm... This person's account password is ASDW left, up, right! The worn keys say so!
All security measures have to account for ID-10-T errors, and "error 60" (cm in front of the screen).
UAC might be a good theory, but it fails dramatically by either a) causing users to turn it off, or b) training them to automatically punch "accept". If the warning was exceptional, or infrequent, it would be much more effective.
It would only work on the sort of Neowin-reading "power users" who turn off security features to gain (perceived) speed and (actual) convenience.
There, fixed it for you.
PEBKAC- Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair.
I've also heard this referred to as an "error 60" (60 centimeters from the monitor), or an ID-10-t error...
Other folks have mentioned "the level grind", or more aptly that the game content gets more limited the longer you play. Thus the people who continue playing tend (generally) to continue the "end game content grind". Those who don't continue to play are gone, of course. Average level goes up. Lower level characters find it harder and harder to gather groups, further reducing the incentive to play those levels. ... and incidentally giving players of such characters less practice in group play.
New level cap also meant that there was a lot more content than players could go through, centered around levels that characters no longer spent long times at. There is no "pause" button, to let you continue to experience content at the level it was designed for. (City of Heroes DOES have a mechanism for this - exemplaring.)
You comment that 1-60 content is essentially dead. I contend that, depending on your server, content much higher could be considered "dead" as well. Blizzard has addressed this a little by adding "Daily instance" quests, to stir interest in/provide rewards for some level instances.
That's not really a proper distinction.
"Real life politics", as you might think of it, differs from the politics you were involved in only in the realm of interest.
Your realm of interest was within the EVE game, dealing with invented concerns.
The realm of interest of a city commissioner is that city and how it interacts with other political entities. The realm of interest of a CEO is the company he runs, and the board of directors he reports to. Of a pastor, his congregation, and the church hierarchy.
The people remain real people, though. And much of the time, a person can opt out of "real world politics" as well, in much the same fashion: by removing themselves partially or totally from the realm of interest.
Exciting:
having decisions presented to you, and choosing the (right/wrong) one.
Not exciting:
Events entirely beyond your control, information you had no way of knowing, killing you.
If you don't realize there is a risk, there is no pleasure in overcoming the risk. And a certain outcome (positive or negative) is not a risk.
> Many people like the fact that getting destroyed actually sets you back.
'The thrill of danger' is very much less thrilling when the sides are unequal. WoW has has areas of both balanced PvP (battlegrounds and arenas) and unstructured PvP (PvP servers, naturally).
EVE has no balanced PvP that I've seen, at least as a continual thing. Someone bigger than you wants to pop you, you'll generally pop. There is no 'thrill' involved for the victim.
No thrill in being held for ransom.
No thrill in being killed by gate-campers faster than you can realize they are there.
No thrill in logging on to find your starbase has been destroyed, and everything with it taken or destroyed.
No, the thrill is in the uncertainty: ... because if you didn't start it, chances are pretty good that the other side does hold the advantage.
- does this guy we're ganking have big friends?
- can we get away with destroying this starbase?
- can I get from here to there without encountering PvPers?
and only rarely (in PvP) "can I prevail against this enemy?"
Those few times are precious. Treasure them. They may even be why you play.
Here are some thing they could do:
1) Don't let anyone mine/pick anything that there skill level makes gray to them.
2) put some random drift into movement.
3) limit the price you can sell something for on the AH to 10 times what a vendor would pay
4) don't allow the transfer of more then 100GP a time. Maybe a one time unlimited amount per month.
All of these would be pretty trivial to implement.
1) Just because something is gray (for the uninitiated: no longer grants skill improvement), doesn't mean that you don't need it for some associated skill. Or a skill you picked up after dropping some other skill.
2) It's called 'alcohol'... And ignores that you can get location information at a fairly fine (and numeric) level through the add-on interface. Want to hear the whining when you remove that location information?
3) I think this would actually increase farming, as desired items would INCREASE in scarcity. Gold flows into the game in buckets from people playing characters at the level cap, with nowhere to run out of.
4) transfer of no more than 100gp at a time? What, once a day, or something? "Per transaction" is no more a limit than taking advantage of a sale ("Limit: 5") by going to different cash registers, or bringing your family in to each make separate purchases.
I play a lot of alternate characters. Of your suggestions, the only one that would not affect my own game play is #2. I regularly:
#1 use my high level characters to gather materials for my own lower level characters
#3 buy quest-related items (often with no vendor price) from the auction house (AH). (I seldom sell items; I have plenty of alts "who will need that eventually!"
#4 use one alt to hold cash (so I don't blow it on the auction house), and distribute occasionally to make large purchases (mounts, for instance).
None of which affects the game play of others... unless, like the government, you feel that "because I didn't buy from the AH, it affected commerce and Should Be Regulated" (Wickard v Filburn).
These ideas, at least, do not a solution make. But keep trying.
DU rounds (most often as Armor Piercing Fin Stabilized Depleted Uranium Discarding Sabot) are indeed nasty. In some cases, radiation measured at the outside of the shipping container exceeds 0.5 mR/Hr.
On the other hand, it has better penetration, at longer ranges, than titanium core ammo.
I imagine the concerns for the folks using this ammo run something like...
1) Do I need the advantages of this ammo enough to load/use it?
2) If so, what is it going to do to my (future progeny)?
I wouldn't even imagine that "what about the locals" even enters into it, particularly if it looks like those same "locals" are shooting at you at the time.
As for the locals resenting the US military on the basis of uranium rounds? Love it if you'd point me to a specifically reported case of it. After all, they have so many other reasons to resent the US military ("Infidels!", for instance) that it's hard to settle on something so particular.
If you're thinking "Iraq", you might consider that's the same place that locals stole radioactive material and used it for decorations, or dumped it in the sewer when they found it was bad for them.
Not so many folks play Warcraft using a Cell-modem. (Picture, if you will, 2400 'minutes' on your cell phone bill...)
file sharing applications are inappropriate for AT&T(TM)s mobile wireless broadband network
Plugging in via router and FIOS/cable/DSL is different than what's being discussed.
Not at all.
I'm saying that finding a bus (or trolly, light rail, subway car, or freeway) with a raving lunatic present is a matter of "luck of the draw". Ride/drive/hitchhike/whatever once, your odds are pretty low. Continue doing so long enough, and the odds approach certainty.
Mind, for some things (say, having your car struck by a bullet from someone "committing road rage"), the time to reach certainty may exceed the (current) average human lifetime, but you can't argue that the odds are zero.
Treating EVERY other driver as if he were "a fucking moron who'll kill you if he can" sounds like a sensible policy to me. Realizing that - some where, some day - you yourself will fit that description for someone else, has some sound benefits to it as well.
But you're talking statistics, and that's prevention; topic for another discussion.
You been prawned!