A lot of posters have commented on the complexity of different tax regimes in different cities, counties and states. I think that the best way to solve the problem of collecting sales tax is to develop a meet in the middle approach.
Amazon should be required to make detailed sales histories available on a yearly basis. They should be required to provide an API that allows any municipality with tax authority to receive a simple CSV list that includes the value of the sale, the date of the sale, the zip code it was sold to, and the category of the merchandise. Amazon should have to take an accounting charge against their estimated tax liability. It will then be the responsibility of each municipality to submit a tax bill to Amazon to collect their taxes. There should be a reasonable statue of limitations to do so. Perhaps three years is long enough?
The API would have to have a way to tag transactions as paid so that Amazon doesn't get double or tripled billed. The most intensive part of the process would be coming up with the merchandise type field. I'm sure Amazon already has it, but there is a question of whether or not is compatible with the tax categories. It should be easy enough to harmonize them though.
Regardless, if he feels that he has a large enough physical security problem to warrant the encryption to protect it from staff, leave! It sets a bad precedent on both sides and just sows seeds for future problems. He will always see them as invasive bastards, and they will see him as a righteous PITA. Better to just move on.
Exactly. That sums up the best course of action. The relationship between the customer and the service provider should be one of mutual respect and support. There are enough providers out there that if one doesn't get the job done, it's easy enough to switch to another. The idea of having to lock down your own box because you don't trust your hosting provider is a bad position to be in.
In the past we got a lot of the microbacteria that our bodies need from our food supply. With the invention of herbacides, fertilizers and various other modern farming "advancements", the food supply has become less diverse. The digestive system is one of the first lines of defense for the immune system. Anyone who is concerned about their digestive health can start with a good probiotic supplement. I like Jarrow Labs EPS probiotic. There are many others on the market though.
I am asking this as a serious question not a rhetorical one: What good does it do anyone to respond as they did, instead of just doing what I have suggested?
Both sides share some blame. The hosting provider should provide justification for wanting root. They should do their due dilligence on their end and make sure that the problem isn't their problem. Ie, "We've checked the rack power. Checked the..., checked the... and they're all okay." Then having done that, they could ask for the logs.. "We want to take a look at the logs to see what the problem looks like from your end."
Odds are that the provider had a bigger problem that was effecting more than the original poster's box. That right there is a big reason to start looking elsewhere.
As a network admin, I've run across "I know what I'm doing" people in the past. FWIW, I'm often times that guy when I'm calling tech support. It's one part ego, one big part actually knowing what I'm doing. I don't want to go through tech support 101 with some monkey on the phone when I know what the issue is.
Having said that, there have been times when I thought I knew what the issue was, but it turned out to be something else. I think that a hosting provider wanting access to log files is perfectly reasonable. They aren't arbitrarily asking for the files. The questioner states that he is having problems and he asked them to sort it out. Tech support 101 says to look at the log files. The questioner doesn't make it clear whether or not he offered to give them the log files.
Is the hosting provider a bit off base? Yes and no. Yes, it's kind of lame that they are rooting boxes. On the other hand, the questioner might be more problems than he is worth from their point of view. If I were in the same situation, I'd just change providers and find one who will put into writing that they won't root my box (good luck with that).
(Car Analogy) - It's like leasing a car with a repair warranty and wanting to do your own repairs. You diagnose the cause of the problem and take the car to the mechanic. You ask the mechanic to fix your car under warranty and he asks you for your keys. You refuse to give him the keys.
It seems to me that if a person can't fix a problem on their own, and that person then asks for help fixing the problem, they need to give up some control to the person they have asked for help from. Unless a person selects a hosting provider with an SLA that will give them physical access to their hardware on a 24/7 basis, that person is going to have to make some accomodation (like providing access to log files) when the hosting provider needs to get involved with troubleshooting.
How much of that has to do with the fact that the "real" news sites are stepping up their coverage? Slashdot has been up for what, about a decade already? A lot has changed on the web in ten years. If nothing else Google has levelled the playing field in terms of information freshness. Where as in the past when search engines would miss huge swaths of content, it was presumably easier to get fresh information onto Slashdot before it showed up in other places.
Think about it for a second. Consider the various factors involved with "News for nerds" these days. The tech world is NDA central. That limits one main source of information right there. Beyond the NDAs, tech companies have their own communications departments and they want to control the release of information that nerds find interesting. Tech news is far more mainstream these days. When I was in school, the idea of telling people that I talked to people "online" was a huge social stigma and it never came up... I kept it hidden (outside of 2600 meetings, Defcon, etc.) The mainstream nature of it means that there are more people paying attention to it, more people talking about it, more coverage of it.
That's right. I used to get upset about it, but now I just laugh. The most recent example of sysadmin invisibility came out when the CEO thanked "everyone" in the organization for their contributions. "Everyone" that is, except IT. We're just the department that gives everyone else the tools that they utilize to do their jobs with.
If the producers of Americas Army are involved then we can pretty much count on it sucking. The original Americas Army was a great FPS, especially considering that it didn't cost anything for the player. AA3 was a complete mess and unplayable.
It is an interesting conundrum. The "tax payers" are so worried about what is happening with their money that they lean on their legislators to pass all sorts of onerous legislation that costs an arm and an leg to comply with, and also wastes innordinant amounts of time. Those same people then complain about how inefficient government is and how it takes forever to get anything done.
Theft is part of the human condition. Wall Street ripped off the entire country. Enron ripped off a whole bunch of people. Theft and corruption seem to be unavoidable these days.
There is another self perpetuating cycle at work. The legislation and structure of the state creates an environment that implicitly says that workers aren't to be trusted, and that workers are stupid (take the example of not being able to plug in an electronic device for example). What you end up with are the lowest common denominator for employees. You end up with people who are used to not being trusted, and who are used to only doing what their policy or procedure says that they are allowed to do.
To use my girl friend as an example again. A couple of weeks ago they had a disaster drill that was supposed to test out how everyone at the facility was able to use a new online reporting system. From the way she described it, it's a basic system not unlike/. here. Create a post, give it a title, attach a file and upload the file to a particular directory. Simple stuff. Out of the entire facility of ~250 employees, my girl friend was the only person who did the right thing. Director level people didn't do it. Manager level people in similar programs didn't do it right. People in her position around the facility didn't do it right. Nobody got it right.
Is my girl friend going to stick around at the state? Hell no. She's working on her accounting degree and is going to bail ASAP. It's a shame because she's really good at what she does, but the pay is terrible and all of the benefits of being a state employee (numerous days off, good retirement, etc.) are vanishing / have vanished.
It also supports Java. Like the next responder said, he doesn't like Sonicwall and is sticking with PfSense. I've never heard of that product but it is probably worth looking into.
Technically, if it is true ("you" are selecting free/open source software to save tax dollars, and there is a statement someplace in the govt documents indicating that is part of the reason for the choices made) then endorsement or not, it's public information, and I do not see why stating it, if worded correctly (to properly indicate the reason such choices were made) would run afoul of anything.
I'm willing to bet that there isn't anything in his job description about collecting and publishing information about the software that he uses. In fact he could even get in trouble for doing that instead of something else that he should probably be doing. It is kind of like the equivalent of any IT person in any other organization compiling a list of the software they use and publishing it. What is the purpose? How does creating the list help the organization?
They buy pencils and books with a purchase order from an approved vendor. My girl friend works for the state of California. I was talking to her about dealing with invoices the other night. She looked at me like I was crazy. She never deals with invoices because she is only allowed to buy things approved ahead of time and has to go through a long and involved process to do it. Buying anything at the state level (in California) is an exercise in frustration and patience. They can't even buy electronic devices that aren't on the approved list without having the local fire official sign off on them. If they want a microwave they can't just go down to Target and buy one. They have to solicit bids from three approved vendors and MUST go with the lowest price for the item.
Have you looked at the Sonicwall SSL/VPN appliance? I'm sure that there are probably other vendors and even open source solutions that provide similar functionality. With the Sonicwall device all you need is a web browser and you can have a secure remote desktop connection into anything on the private network. I think you can also publish individual applications (a la Citrix, etc) but I never had to get that fancy with it.
You'd think Microsoft would have weaned itself from their perverse reliance of file extensions years ago when people first started clamoring about.386 files. JPEG files have a.jpg or.jpeg extension, but log files have an.evt extension. Unless it's a log file. But what kind of log file is it?
Don't forget.nfo files. For the longest time, I could count on.nfo files containing the oh some important information about who cracked and couriered my warez. Then Microsoft decided to co-opt the file extension for System Information files. The bastards!
The deal is that either you pay for yourself, or I pay for you. You pay for yourself by voluntarily getting health insurance and using that health insurance when you, or your kid, or your spouse gets sick and needs to visit the emergency room, or the doctor. I pay for you, or your spouse, or child when they break a leg, get sick or whatever, and you don't have insurance.
At the end of the day, the cost gets absorbed some how. Have you ever had to pay a doctor's bill without insurance? They're absolutely ridiculous. A bad car accident can bankrupt someone if they're lucky enough to live through the experience. The thing about insurance is that people will swear up and down that they don't need it. People will believe that they are in complete control of their lives. Those are the exact same people who get t-boned by people running red lights, or trip and fall down the stairs after slipping on ice.
You aren't in the business of doing taxes. You're in the business of providing services to other small businesses. Focus on what you are good on and absorb the cost of taxes as a business expense. Whatever you get setup this year is going to be out of date next year. On top of that, the tax code is always changing so even if you do create a decent foundation, you're going to have to constantly keep it up to date. Preparing taxes is a profession in and of itself. Just as your clients aren't web developers, you aren't a tax professional.
Every CPA firm that I ever did consulting for relied on the "CS Professional Suite" (http://thomsonreuters.com/products_services/taxacct/taxacct_products/firms/software-services/) from Thomson / Reuters. It seemed to be the industry standard for work flow management. The software is subscription based and a couple of times a year there are new forms available.
Tax law is one of the examples that I've trotted out in the past when I get on my soap box about OSS being way behind the times and trying to recreate the wheel. There is already a product out there that handles all of the ugliness of being in the CPA business. CPA's look at having to buy the software as a cost of doing business. There is so much value provided by Thomson that even if someone could come up with a software package that does the same thing, they'd still be out of the running because they'd have to build the professional services part of the company that provides updated forms and advice to tax professionals.
The barrier to entry in that particular niche is really high. For smaller players who aren't necessarily CPAs but need tax forms for their business, I think Quickbooks offers 1099 / W2 and similar functionality. Again, the product is already there. Rather than trying to re-invent the wheel, it makes more sense to just pay for the mature product and focus on more important things like finding new clients.
It doesn't matter if the developer is using Visual Studio and forking over cash to Microsoft, or if they are using Eclipse and writing "open source" code. Development hours cost money. Just because the tools are free doesn't mean that the end product is. Just because someone else "could" develop the same thing doesn't mean that they will. There is value in someone else doing the work.
There is a perception among too many people that "open source" = cheap/free. At the end of the day, people want to get paid for their work. Beyond that, there are more people who want a solution that works than there are people with the talent, skills or inclination to develop their own solution.
Got NLP? Certain aspects of it are of course complete hogwash, but the utility of the meta-model cannot be dismissed out of hand. The ability to frame syntactic structures in a way that they are not only received, but fully processed and acted upon by the recipient of them comes in quite handy. Well structured, "for instance.." like examples go a long way toward generating the ability in others to follow along with easily suggested courses of action.
IT folks don't have the specialized knowledge requirements that are a barrier to entry. Lawyers have to have exposure to all sorts of case law. Doctors, nurses and pharmacists require specialized training that your average person can't just get on the street. I suppose someone could learn some engineering disciplines on their own but they'd have a hard time competing against graduates who have done coursework and projects to prove that they can function in their field.
With IT anybody can setup a small network in their home and work on the fundamentals. Virtualization has made it even easier. There are certification books all over the place. From what I've seen on various job boards, MCSEs, CCIEs and other similar certifications are still in demand. Being an "IT guy" is simply too easy to do. I've been doing it professionally since I was 18 without a degree and making a good living at it.
The difference between the strawmen that you've thrown up and Facebook is that unlike homes and eateries, people can do without Facebook. As a society we have to develop health codes so that we can continue to live together and not all die of disease. The same thing goes with building codes. We can't have our neighbors building unstable structures that will collapse... or running gas pipes that will leak and explode... or water pipes that will burst and flood the neighborhood.
On the other hand, you can turn off your computer right now and never see Facebook again and your neighbors won't care. Your city won't be any worse off without Facebook.
Facebook and the various third parties involved with it and similar sites are simply marketers who have moved onto the next thing. Junk mail doesn't work. Telemarketing doesn't work. Yet all sorts of people are freely sharing information on the internet and that is where the marketing is being focused. "There is no such thing as a free lunch." still holds true on the internet. What right does anyone have to believe that a company like Facebook won't monetize their investment? Facebook didn't materialize out of nowhere simply so that people could have a convenient way to stay in touch with their friends and play free games. Those games aren't free. The servers that run the service and the internet connections that make the service accessible cost money. That money will be recouped somehow.
I agree with you for IT workers. On the other hand, if you've been in IT for a while and have any management ability or the inclination to do consulting, the ability to make a good living still exists. I can't speak for the life of a corporate IT drone, but life in the small / medium business sector is thriving. There are a lot of businesses out there that appreciate the necessity of having a stable IT foundation. With the economic downturn there is more competition for the contracts, but if you're skilled and have a history of success behind you, the work is available. My last employer replaced me with two people when I left in 2006 and he hasn't had to lay any of them off despite the "Greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression".
The greatest change I've seen is the shift to outsourcing and consulting. The ability to have a successful, long term IT career at a single employer is probably further away than it has ever been. But if a person is willing to do contract work, there is work aplenty. Just check dice.com if you don't believe me. I have my resume posted and even though I'm working full time, I still get a couple of calls a month from recruiters who are looking to fill positions.
Who are you kidding? Society is made up of individuals. Individuals make choices. "We" didn't fail the guy. We didn't do anything to make him decide that fucking his adopted daughter with a dildo was a cool thing to do. Blaming society is the biggest load of crap. It follows the logic of, "Well, everyone else is doing it..." Every child in America has probably heard, "If everyone else was jumping off of a cliff, would you do it to?"
Whether it comes down to using drugs, engaging in illicit sexual acts, defrauding others, or any number of taboo activities... society has a collective whole has decided to punish people who step out of line. It isn't always fair. Sometimes it casts people further out from the core of productive members of society. It's the chance that people take when they engage in shady behavior. Some people have it in their hearts to forgive. Bless those people for their compassion.
If anything society has triumphed in this situation. We have decided that if a man is going to adopt a child into his home, he can't sexually abuse the child. If he does, he will be punished for it. That is what is happening here.
We live in a society that pushes materialism. Despite that, I find myself drawn to Taoist and Buddhist philosophies that recognize the problems that come from pursuing materialistic "success". In this day and age there is an alternative to just about every view point out there. Just because society encourages one way of being doesn't mean that a person has to drink the Kool-Aid and go along with a dysfunctional program.
Slashdot Mirror
A lot of posters have commented on the complexity of different tax regimes in different cities, counties and states. I think that the best way to solve the problem of collecting sales tax is to develop a meet in the middle approach.
Amazon should be required to make detailed sales histories available on a yearly basis. They should be required to provide an API that allows any municipality with tax authority to receive a simple CSV list that includes the value of the sale, the date of the sale, the zip code it was sold to, and the category of the merchandise. Amazon should have to take an accounting charge against their estimated tax liability. It will then be the responsibility of each municipality to submit a tax bill to Amazon to collect their taxes. There should be a reasonable statue of limitations to do so. Perhaps three years is long enough?
The API would have to have a way to tag transactions as paid so that Amazon doesn't get double or tripled billed. The most intensive part of the process would be coming up with the merchandise type field. I'm sure Amazon already has it, but there is a question of whether or not is compatible with the tax categories. It should be easy enough to harmonize them though.
Regardless, if he feels that he has a large enough physical security problem to warrant the encryption to protect it from staff, leave! It sets a bad precedent on both sides and just sows seeds for future problems. He will always see them as invasive bastards, and they will see him as a righteous PITA. Better to just move on.
Exactly. That sums up the best course of action. The relationship between the customer and the service provider should be one of mutual respect and support. There are enough providers out there that if one doesn't get the job done, it's easy enough to switch to another. The idea of having to lock down your own box because you don't trust your hosting provider is a bad position to be in.
In the past we got a lot of the microbacteria that our bodies need from our food supply. With the invention of herbacides, fertilizers and various other modern farming "advancements", the food supply has become less diverse. The digestive system is one of the first lines of defense for the immune system. Anyone who is concerned about their digestive health can start with a good probiotic supplement. I like Jarrow Labs EPS probiotic. There are many others on the market though.
I am asking this as a serious question not a rhetorical one: What good does it do anyone to respond as they did, instead of just doing what I have suggested?
Both sides share some blame. The hosting provider should provide justification for wanting root. They should do their due dilligence on their end and make sure that the problem isn't their problem. Ie, "We've checked the rack power. Checked the ..., checked the ... and they're all okay." Then having done that, they could ask for the logs.. "We want to take a look at the logs to see what the problem looks like from your end."
Odds are that the provider had a bigger problem that was effecting more than the original poster's box. That right there is a big reason to start looking elsewhere.
As a network admin, I've run across "I know what I'm doing" people in the past. FWIW, I'm often times that guy when I'm calling tech support. It's one part ego, one big part actually knowing what I'm doing. I don't want to go through tech support 101 with some monkey on the phone when I know what the issue is.
Having said that, there have been times when I thought I knew what the issue was, but it turned out to be something else. I think that a hosting provider wanting access to log files is perfectly reasonable. They aren't arbitrarily asking for the files. The questioner states that he is having problems and he asked them to sort it out. Tech support 101 says to look at the log files. The questioner doesn't make it clear whether or not he offered to give them the log files.
Is the hosting provider a bit off base? Yes and no. Yes, it's kind of lame that they are rooting boxes. On the other hand, the questioner might be more problems than he is worth from their point of view. If I were in the same situation, I'd just change providers and find one who will put into writing that they won't root my box (good luck with that).
(Car Analogy) - It's like leasing a car with a repair warranty and wanting to do your own repairs. You diagnose the cause of the problem and take the car to the mechanic. You ask the mechanic to fix your car under warranty and he asks you for your keys. You refuse to give him the keys.
It seems to me that if a person can't fix a problem on their own, and that person then asks for help fixing the problem, they need to give up some control to the person they have asked for help from. Unless a person selects a hosting provider with an SLA that will give them physical access to their hardware on a 24/7 basis, that person is going to have to make some accomodation (like providing access to log files) when the hosting provider needs to get involved with troubleshooting.
How much of that has to do with the fact that the "real" news sites are stepping up their coverage? Slashdot has been up for what, about a decade already? A lot has changed on the web in ten years. If nothing else Google has levelled the playing field in terms of information freshness. Where as in the past when search engines would miss huge swaths of content, it was presumably easier to get fresh information onto Slashdot before it showed up in other places.
Think about it for a second. Consider the various factors involved with "News for nerds" these days. The tech world is NDA central. That limits one main source of information right there. Beyond the NDAs, tech companies have their own communications departments and they want to control the release of information that nerds find interesting. Tech news is far more mainstream these days. When I was in school, the idea of telling people that I talked to people "online" was a huge social stigma and it never came up... I kept it hidden (outside of 2600 meetings, Defcon, etc.) The mainstream nature of it means that there are more people paying attention to it, more people talking about it, more coverage of it.
That's right. I used to get upset about it, but now I just laugh. The most recent example of sysadmin invisibility came out when the CEO thanked "everyone" in the organization for their contributions. "Everyone" that is, except IT. We're just the department that gives everyone else the tools that they utilize to do their jobs with.
If the producers of Americas Army are involved then we can pretty much count on it sucking. The original Americas Army was a great FPS, especially considering that it didn't cost anything for the player. AA3 was a complete mess and unplayable.
It is an interesting conundrum. The "tax payers" are so worried about what is happening with their money that they lean on their legislators to pass all sorts of onerous legislation that costs an arm and an leg to comply with, and also wastes innordinant amounts of time. Those same people then complain about how inefficient government is and how it takes forever to get anything done.
Theft is part of the human condition. Wall Street ripped off the entire country. Enron ripped off a whole bunch of people. Theft and corruption seem to be unavoidable these days.
There is another self perpetuating cycle at work. The legislation and structure of the state creates an environment that implicitly says that workers aren't to be trusted, and that workers are stupid (take the example of not being able to plug in an electronic device for example). What you end up with are the lowest common denominator for employees. You end up with people who are used to not being trusted, and who are used to only doing what their policy or procedure says that they are allowed to do.
To use my girl friend as an example again. A couple of weeks ago they had a disaster drill that was supposed to test out how everyone at the facility was able to use a new online reporting system. From the way she described it, it's a basic system not unlike /. here. Create a post, give it a title, attach a file and upload the file to a particular directory. Simple stuff. Out of the entire facility of ~250 employees, my girl friend was the only person who did the right thing. Director level people didn't do it. Manager level people in similar programs didn't do it right. People in her position around the facility didn't do it right. Nobody got it right.
Is my girl friend going to stick around at the state? Hell no. She's working on her accounting degree and is going to bail ASAP. It's a shame because she's really good at what she does, but the pay is terrible and all of the benefits of being a state employee (numerous days off, good retirement, etc.) are vanishing / have vanished.
It also supports Java. Like the next responder said, he doesn't like Sonicwall and is sticking with PfSense. I've never heard of that product but it is probably worth looking into.
Technically, if it is true ("you" are selecting free/open source software to save tax dollars, and there is a statement someplace in the govt documents indicating that is part of the reason for the choices made) then endorsement or not, it's public information, and I do not see why stating it, if worded correctly (to properly indicate the reason such choices were made) would run afoul of anything.
I'm willing to bet that there isn't anything in his job description about collecting and publishing information about the software that he uses. In fact he could even get in trouble for doing that instead of something else that he should probably be doing. It is kind of like the equivalent of any IT person in any other organization compiling a list of the software they use and publishing it. What is the purpose? How does creating the list help the organization?
They buy pencils and books with a purchase order from an approved vendor. My girl friend works for the state of California. I was talking to her about dealing with invoices the other night. She looked at me like I was crazy. She never deals with invoices because she is only allowed to buy things approved ahead of time and has to go through a long and involved process to do it. Buying anything at the state level (in California) is an exercise in frustration and patience. They can't even buy electronic devices that aren't on the approved list without having the local fire official sign off on them. If they want a microwave they can't just go down to Target and buy one. They have to solicit bids from three approved vendors and MUST go with the lowest price for the item.
Have you looked at the Sonicwall SSL/VPN appliance? I'm sure that there are probably other vendors and even open source solutions that provide similar functionality. With the Sonicwall device all you need is a web browser and you can have a secure remote desktop connection into anything on the private network. I think you can also publish individual applications (a la Citrix, etc) but I never had to get that fancy with it.
You'd think Microsoft would have weaned itself from their perverse reliance of file extensions years ago when people first started clamoring about .386 files. JPEG files have a .jpg or .jpeg extension, but log files have an .evt extension. Unless it's a log file. But what kind of log file is it?
Don't forget .nfo files. For the longest time, I could count on .nfo files containing the oh some important information about who cracked and couriered my warez. Then Microsoft decided to co-opt the file extension for System Information files. The bastards!
The deal is that either you pay for yourself, or I pay for you. You pay for yourself by voluntarily getting health insurance and using that health insurance when you, or your kid, or your spouse gets sick and needs to visit the emergency room, or the doctor. I pay for you, or your spouse, or child when they break a leg, get sick or whatever, and you don't have insurance.
At the end of the day, the cost gets absorbed some how. Have you ever had to pay a doctor's bill without insurance? They're absolutely ridiculous. A bad car accident can bankrupt someone if they're lucky enough to live through the experience. The thing about insurance is that people will swear up and down that they don't need it. People will believe that they are in complete control of their lives. Those are the exact same people who get t-boned by people running red lights, or trip and fall down the stairs after slipping on ice.
You aren't in the business of doing taxes. You're in the business of providing services to other small businesses. Focus on what you are good on and absorb the cost of taxes as a business expense. Whatever you get setup this year is going to be out of date next year. On top of that, the tax code is always changing so even if you do create a decent foundation, you're going to have to constantly keep it up to date. Preparing taxes is a profession in and of itself. Just as your clients aren't web developers, you aren't a tax professional.
Every CPA firm that I ever did consulting for relied on the "CS Professional Suite" (http://thomsonreuters.com/products_services/taxacct/taxacct_products/firms/software-services/) from Thomson / Reuters. It seemed to be the industry standard for work flow management. The software is subscription based and a couple of times a year there are new forms available.
Tax law is one of the examples that I've trotted out in the past when I get on my soap box about OSS being way behind the times and trying to recreate the wheel. There is already a product out there that handles all of the ugliness of being in the CPA business. CPA's look at having to buy the software as a cost of doing business. There is so much value provided by Thomson that even if someone could come up with a software package that does the same thing, they'd still be out of the running because they'd have to build the professional services part of the company that provides updated forms and advice to tax professionals.
The barrier to entry in that particular niche is really high. For smaller players who aren't necessarily CPAs but need tax forms for their business, I think Quickbooks offers 1099 / W2 and similar functionality. Again, the product is already there. Rather than trying to re-invent the wheel, it makes more sense to just pay for the mature product and focus on more important things like finding new clients.
It doesn't matter if the developer is using Visual Studio and forking over cash to Microsoft, or if they are using Eclipse and writing "open source" code. Development hours cost money. Just because the tools are free doesn't mean that the end product is. Just because someone else "could" develop the same thing doesn't mean that they will. There is value in someone else doing the work.
There is a perception among too many people that "open source" = cheap/free. At the end of the day, people want to get paid for their work. Beyond that, there are more people who want a solution that works than there are people with the talent, skills or inclination to develop their own solution.
..they will still charge for extra ketchup and McNugget sauces.
Got NLP? Certain aspects of it are of course complete hogwash, but the utility of the meta-model cannot be dismissed out of hand. The ability to frame syntactic structures in a way that they are not only received, but fully processed and acted upon by the recipient of them comes in quite handy. Well structured, "for instance.." like examples go a long way toward generating the ability in others to follow along with easily suggested courses of action.
IT folks don't have the specialized knowledge requirements that are a barrier to entry. Lawyers have to have exposure to all sorts of case law. Doctors, nurses and pharmacists require specialized training that your average person can't just get on the street. I suppose someone could learn some engineering disciplines on their own but they'd have a hard time competing against graduates who have done coursework and projects to prove that they can function in their field.
With IT anybody can setup a small network in their home and work on the fundamentals. Virtualization has made it even easier. There are certification books all over the place. From what I've seen on various job boards, MCSEs, CCIEs and other similar certifications are still in demand. Being an "IT guy" is simply too easy to do. I've been doing it professionally since I was 18 without a degree and making a good living at it.
The difference between the strawmen that you've thrown up and Facebook is that unlike homes and eateries, people can do without Facebook. As a society we have to develop health codes so that we can continue to live together and not all die of disease. The same thing goes with building codes. We can't have our neighbors building unstable structures that will collapse... or running gas pipes that will leak and explode... or water pipes that will burst and flood the neighborhood.
On the other hand, you can turn off your computer right now and never see Facebook again and your neighbors won't care. Your city won't be any worse off without Facebook.
Facebook and the various third parties involved with it and similar sites are simply marketers who have moved onto the next thing. Junk mail doesn't work. Telemarketing doesn't work. Yet all sorts of people are freely sharing information on the internet and that is where the marketing is being focused. "There is no such thing as a free lunch." still holds true on the internet. What right does anyone have to believe that a company like Facebook won't monetize their investment? Facebook didn't materialize out of nowhere simply so that people could have a convenient way to stay in touch with their friends and play free games. Those games aren't free. The servers that run the service and the internet connections that make the service accessible cost money. That money will be recouped somehow.
I agree with you for IT workers. On the other hand, if you've been in IT for a while and have any management ability or the inclination to do consulting, the ability to make a good living still exists. I can't speak for the life of a corporate IT drone, but life in the small / medium business sector is thriving. There are a lot of businesses out there that appreciate the necessity of having a stable IT foundation. With the economic downturn there is more competition for the contracts, but if you're skilled and have a history of success behind you, the work is available. My last employer replaced me with two people when I left in 2006 and he hasn't had to lay any of them off despite the "Greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression".
The greatest change I've seen is the shift to outsourcing and consulting. The ability to have a successful, long term IT career at a single employer is probably further away than it has ever been. But if a person is willing to do contract work, there is work aplenty. Just check dice.com if you don't believe me. I have my resume posted and even though I'm working full time, I still get a couple of calls a month from recruiters who are looking to fill positions.
Who are you kidding? Society is made up of individuals. Individuals make choices. "We" didn't fail the guy. We didn't do anything to make him decide that fucking his adopted daughter with a dildo was a cool thing to do. Blaming society is the biggest load of crap. It follows the logic of, "Well, everyone else is doing it..." Every child in America has probably heard, "If everyone else was jumping off of a cliff, would you do it to?"
Whether it comes down to using drugs, engaging in illicit sexual acts, defrauding others, or any number of taboo activities... society has a collective whole has decided to punish people who step out of line. It isn't always fair. Sometimes it casts people further out from the core of productive members of society. It's the chance that people take when they engage in shady behavior. Some people have it in their hearts to forgive. Bless those people for their compassion.
If anything society has triumphed in this situation. We have decided that if a man is going to adopt a child into his home, he can't sexually abuse the child. If he does, he will be punished for it. That is what is happening here.
We live in a society that pushes materialism. Despite that, I find myself drawn to Taoist and Buddhist philosophies that recognize the problems that come from pursuing materialistic "success". In this day and age there is an alternative to just about every view point out there. Just because society encourages one way of being doesn't mean that a person has to drink the Kool-Aid and go along with a dysfunctional program.
You would be wrong about that. I read an article recently that said the drone operators are in Nevada.