Please let us not forget that Chinese are extremely good negotiators and bargainers. Look at the way North Korea is playing six countries like a well tuned orchestra. If NKorea can play this well, imagine how well China will play it. It is very much possible it is a negotiating strategy by Chinese to extract maximum benefit of their eventual suitor MSOffice XML. So let us be cautious and see real committment by the Chinese (and India/Kerala, Brazil, and other developing nations/states) before jumping to conclusions. Words are cheap. Pleasant words are even cheaper. Unless these governments put money where their mouth is, Sun will be just another pawn in the games between these governments and Microsoft.
I would not call them monkeys. But your point is well taken, no body in Redmond knows ALL the obscure hack some programmer did to meet shipping deadline way back in 1993, who has since cashed out his options and is swilling tequila in Aruba. Open Source too could have this problem of people working on a project and then going away. But I believe there is greater continuity of coders in the Open Source arena. Mainly because, I think, not many of them have become millionairs swilling tequila in Aruba.
As a confirmed OO user, I dont think I will get any money. But hey two PCs I bought had 30 day trial version of the software. Does it count? May be MSFT will say, ok how about a Stored Value Card with 16$ in it that expires in 30 days;-)
I think it would be a wash. Handwritten returns are processed by humans and they are apt to spot things that algorithms miss. For example, in a machine readable form, if you get the numbers to match and all the sales reported in 1099s are found correctly, they will trust it and might miss a "creative" cost basis calculation. A human being might spot that guy named Lakshmanan Satyavakeswaran or a Meenarakshagan Vishnu giving 15% of income to the Church of the Laterday Saints of Jesus Christ. He might go, "hey wait a minute, isn't that a Hindu name? May be he converted or may be he is cheating, let me take a closer look".
If it has a few erasures and overwrites, he will think "may be this guy made mistakes, let me do all the calculations and see if they gel." Further the examiner is probably software assisted. She will punch in the hand written numbers in and run the algorithms too. So you might not get the benefit of avoiding the data mining algorithms but get the added scrutiny of an intelligent examiner.
"Microsoft can afford to think in a 10-year timeframe," said Rob Helm, research director at Directions on Microsoft, an independent research group. "When you've got a business like Windows that has 80 percent margins and 90-plus percent market share, even a 10-year threat to shave 10 percent off the business is enough to do something about now."
Did not MSFT claim that it is going to make web app building the main thing? Its MS Visual Studio was morphed into something called MS.NET framework or something? C# and managed C, and ASP server working seamlessly with IE to deliver web applications or some such claim was made?
How many Web Enabling technologies MSFT has peddled so far? DotNetFramework? ActiveX? some dhtml thingie? The new one is going to replace them? Complement them?
I delete cookies, permit them, leave them on, it is all my business. I am under no obligation to provide web site operators reliable count of how many uniqie visitors they get. They should stop complaining and develop better ways to count unique visitors. If they cant, it is still not my problem.
That's an interesting theory, but if the patent were so easy to invalidate, couldn't RIMs competitors do it as well? Thus making the 650M payout redundant and a complete loss.
True, but the idea is to mainly kill off the venture funding for competing services. To compete with RIM the cost of entry into the market is high and it is well nigh impossible without venture funding. With the long shadow of 650 M$ settlement, there wont be big venture funding. Small players will try to invalidate the patent first, and they can be kept at bay using lawyers. And RIM might not even be shooting for a full 15 or 18 years of protection. If the competition is delayed by 5 years, RIM might figure, that gives me X B$ and as long as (X-0.65) > 0, it makes sense to bring in a credible partner who will assert the patent rights and keep the howling competition at bay.
Using wireless communications to deliver electronic mail is such an obvious solution, it should not be patentable at all. The patent office is over worked and such patents would definitely slip through. But definitely we should be able to challenge and have the patent invalidated. How did RIM manage to lose such a case? I think it was a business decision by RIM, to lose the case. Though it lost some 650 million dollars, it gave tremendous credibility to the patent and thus all future competitors would be shut out. Since the patent holder does not really provide any services, RIM is left to be the monopoly intact with a high cost of entry for its competitors.
Many in the Linux community look at the Novell-Msft deal for precisely this reason. "I will pretend to beat you, you pretend to cry" and in that process we will create the impression that I am a unbeatable big honcho on the hill.
The installers were testing the machine when their union mandated coffee break came up. By the time they punched their clock and returned to work, the test image of "PANASONIC" has been burnt in. So very sad....
Yes, MSFT can take the stand that it is the job of application to keep up with the OS as you say. Then the millions of users with applications already installed have to buy updated versions from their vendors, costing money, or they will choose not to upgrade the OS costing MS money. If in one stroke MSFT makes millions of instances of installed applications useless, then suddenly people might get the idea to try other OSs. MSFT does not want such things to happen. The OS upgrade could be very painful but should not be enough to push them over to Linux of Mac. That is how MSFT wants it. Then the applications update will happen over the next three to five years as old computers die and new computers start with applications written for the current OS. Then the cycle starts all over again. The boatloads of money MSFT is wasting in application compatibility is just the cost of doing business to keep Linux at bay.
That is why is neccessary to amend or create a law to make EBay id the sellers and report the gross proceeds. If sellers made profit they will pay tax, if the made loss they will take a deduction.
In North America the desire to save money (regardless how high the price of the item) frequently trumps common sense
I am sure it does. But not as frequently as in Pakistan, Bangladesh or Surinam. See the post by a New Zelander about parcels being left on the porches of USA.
You dont recognize the constitution. You dont recognize any law passed by people who you did not vote for. Further you discount the foundation of Democracy, one man one vote. And you entertain violent about gravely hurting people who disagree with you.
Adam Smith in 1770s talked about the "invisible" hand. The stock market is the direct proof staring at you that shows that "Large number of people, acting independantly on their own self interest will make more intelligent and wise decisions". Very few fund managers have managed to beat the index funds. Someday when you are grown up think about it.
How does this amendment limit governments ability to lay taxes?
It does not. It does not have to. You talk as though the government is some monarch sitting in a throne across the ocean taxing you every which way he pleases. The Govt is you. It is the politicians you voted for who is taxing you.
This country became the richest nation on earth with the ability to rival the great wealth of all the ageless wealth kingdoms of Europe all within a short 100 years.. and we did it all without the Federal Reserve OR the Income Tax.
If you could live in the 19th century, you would not like it. The wealth was concentrated on very few individuals. Andrew Carnegie had more income than one million Americans back in 1900s. That when the poulation of America was 100 million or so. Almost all except the richest of the rich has very tough lives. Poor white people were exploited may be a tad less than poor blacks and native Americans. The difference made the poor whites thank their lucky stars and dutifully enforce the class/race order.
Just look at the economics of the South during the civil war. The fact was that most of the white farmers in the south did not own slaves. A few rich ones did. The rest rented the slaves or hired free men paying very high wages. They could never make a profit because the rich slave owning whites were under selling them. If the South had abolished slavery and made all people pay market wages it would have raised the price of cotton so much that all of them would have benefitted. But what did the 95% of the farmers who had no slaves and the 4% who had less than five slaves do? They drank the cool aid supplied by Jefferson Davis and his ilk and became cannon fodder, willingly.
You think it is some stupid analysis of some far long gone days? Just poke around the Death Tax issue. Follow the money. Who is funding the debate, who paying off the talk radio hosts, and think tanks and Cato institute to distribute this kool-aid.
150 years have gone. And you can trust the middle class white folks to be played like a stringed instrument.
All IRS is demanding EBay to do is to report the sales and identify the sellers. It is the responsibility of the sellers to calculate capital gains or short term profit and pay taxes if any. The demand from IRS is simply a tool to verify tax compliance. Nothing more.
Schwab, Vanguard and Alex Brown send me 1099-(B/Div/Int) and it reports every sale I made last year, identify the security, date of transaction and net proceeds from the sale to IRS and to me. The data is machine readable. IRS checks to see if I have reported all these sales in my tax return. It is upto me to calculate the profit/losss/captial gains. It is my responsibility to prove the correctness of my calculations if I am ever audited. Ebay's responsibility is nothing more than what almost all the financial institutions have borne for ages.
Tell me what you did not see in LHOTP. How many black land owners? How many native americans? How easy/difficult they found it to integrate with that period setting? I will admit I dont know naything about LHOTP. It is possible that it is a hard left show tht portrayed the blacks and native Americans as victims of the greed and rapacity of the settlers. Even if it is, let us just remember that almost all shows are created to make their target audience feel good. They are not designed to provide a fair and balance portrayal of multiple view points.
You make me chuckle. At least in my city (where we had 300 murders last year) it is quite common for break ins to your house and car. I had a CD case with CDRs stolen... even though it cost me $200 to replace the window I wonder the surprise of the thief who tried to pawn those off.
You are comparing present state of affairs of USA to some sort of ideal utopian society and find it wanting. I am comparing the very same USA to present state of affairs for 80% of the world population. In most developing nations, property crimes are rampant, people are poor and the temptation to buy stolen goods at 50% off is very very high. Very clearly you have not lived outside USA.
Even if it is the way the laws are, I will still disagree with them because these laws do more harm than good to the average American while affording larger corporations more loop holes.
You have the right to hold such beliefs and vote accordingly in the elections. Even if you disagree with the law you dont have the option of simply ignoring it. Either challenge it in courts or refuse to obey the law and accept whatever punishment the government dishes out. Civil disobedience is not simply ignoring the law. Civil disobedience means, defy the law, report that you have defied the law and challenge the government to punish you. If the govt decides to punish you, be willing to take it.
If you sold your 2000$ lap top for less than 2000$ in E-Bay, you made a loss, there is no tax for you. There are people who scoop up items on garage sales for very low price and resell it in Ebay for a profit. Some of these folks are so good at it, it increases their income substantially. Those who make profit pay tax on the profit. The fact that you sold it to pawn shop, or on the garage sale or on the flea market or Ebay makes no difference. If you make multiple deals, some at profit and some at loss you pay a tax on the net profit, it any. You can deduct the cost of your computer, ISP charges etc as business expense if you used them for ebay work exclusively. If you have paid a professional photographer to take pictures of your car to post ebay you can deduct that too. If you make a net loss you can deduct upto 3000$ of it from your regular income. If you made more than 3000$ loss, you can carry it over to the next year and the year after etc etc indefinitely.
When you make a profit, on something you have owned for more than one year you pay capital gains. If you have owned it for less than a year the profit is deemed income and you pay income tax on the profit. The buyer will pay the sales tax on the price. If the thing you are selling is your home, and you have owned it for more than five years and lived in it for more than two years in the last five years then upto 600,000$ in capital gains is exempted from tax. There could be more laws and issues on it.
A sale is a sale and income is income. If the law says there is a tax on income it should apply uniformly to everyone. Being a fully computerised market place, such reporting would not be too onerous on E-Bay. In fact small businesses, the mom-and-pop stores would find documenting their tax compliance more burdensome. Banks send out 1099-INT forms listing one dollar and two dollar interest earned. Why cant E-Bay?
When I came to USA first I was amazed to see how much of the expensive stuff is left around the homes completely unsecured. 1000$ grills, 800$ deck furniture, children's toys, garden tools, garden sheds are all left unlocked and no one would steal them. I have lost one tiny bottle of coconut oil left on the sill of an unlocked window in my hostel back in India. Then slowly it dawned on me that most Americans would not buy goods of doubtful provenance from shady sellers. Infact there is a market in b ombay called Chore Bazaar (thief market) which does brisk business. I would very much E-Bay not to degenerate into a giant "Chore-Bazaar.com"
Not that I am a fan of Imus nor am I defending him. But I am very much disturbed that a paid blogger hounded Imus and "created" this much outrage. This does not bode well for the net, the on line communities. How many in the blogosphere are really saying what they believe in? How many are paid spouting off the views of their paymasters? How many such paid hatchet people are creating multiple handles and ids to inflate the numbers, so to speak? I hope every true, not paid posters in/. would come to see this blogger as a threat, unless, of course, he has stated and disclosed clearly he was paid to blog.
They could have easily exited gracefully by eating the exception, not showing you a dialog box and exiting quietly. You knew there was a crash only because as part of their "graceful exit" they told you that they are crashing.
It would be nice if they have a strong validator for input and pinpoint errors. But if you detect that the memory has been corrupted you must exit immediately. Attempting to figure why the memory was corrupt would lead to more bugs and exploitable holes.
Slashdot Mirror
Please let us not forget that Chinese are extremely good negotiators and bargainers. Look at the way North Korea is playing six countries like a well tuned orchestra. If NKorea can play this well, imagine how well China will play it. It is very much possible it is a negotiating strategy by Chinese to extract maximum benefit of their eventual suitor MSOffice XML. So let us be cautious and see real committment by the Chinese (and India/Kerala, Brazil, and other developing nations/states) before jumping to conclusions. Words are cheap. Pleasant words are even cheaper. Unless these governments put money where their mouth is, Sun will be just another pawn in the games between these governments and Microsoft.
I would not call them monkeys. But your point is well taken, no body in Redmond knows ALL the obscure hack some programmer did to meet shipping deadline way back in 1993, who has since cashed out his options and is swilling tequila in Aruba. Open Source too could have this problem of people working on a project and then going away. But I believe there is greater continuity of coders in the Open Source arena. Mainly because, I think, not many of them have become millionairs swilling tequila in Aruba.
As a confirmed OO user, I dont think I will get any money. But hey two PCs I bought had 30 day trial version of the software. Does it count? May be MSFT will say, ok how about a Stored Value Card with 16$ in it that expires in 30 days ;-)
If it has a few erasures and overwrites, he will think "may be this guy made mistakes, let me do all the calculations and see if they gel." Further the examiner is probably software assisted. She will punch in the hand written numbers in and run the algorithms too. So you might not get the benefit of avoiding the data mining algorithms but get the added scrutiny of an intelligent examiner.
Dude, if you want to construct a joke using real and WMP, please make it easy for the mods to spot it. Like bold facing it or something.
Did not MSFT claim that it is going to make web app building the main thing? Its MS Visual Studio was morphed into something called MS .NET framework or something? C# and managed C, and ASP server working seamlessly with IE to deliver web applications or some such claim was made?
How many Web Enabling technologies MSFT has peddled so far? DotNetFramework? ActiveX? some dhtml thingie? The new one is going to replace them? Complement them?
I delete cookies, permit them, leave them on, it is all my business. I am under no obligation to provide web site operators reliable count of how many uniqie visitors they get. They should stop complaining and develop better ways to count unique visitors. If they cant, it is still not my problem.
True, but the idea is to mainly kill off the venture funding for competing services. To compete with RIM the cost of entry into the market is high and it is well nigh impossible without venture funding. With the long shadow of 650 M$ settlement, there wont be big venture funding. Small players will try to invalidate the patent first, and they can be kept at bay using lawyers. And RIM might not even be shooting for a full 15 or 18 years of protection. If the competition is delayed by 5 years, RIM might figure, that gives me X B$ and as long as (X-0.65) > 0, it makes sense to bring in a credible partner who will assert the patent rights and keep the howling competition at bay.
Many in the Linux community look at the Novell-Msft deal for precisely this reason. "I will pretend to beat you, you pretend to cry" and in that process we will create the impression that I am a unbeatable big honcho on the hill.
My faith in slashdot restored. This comment went down to -1 flamebait/troll before coming back to the original level. Thanks.
The installers were testing the machine when their union mandated coffee break came up. By the time they punched their clock and returned to work, the test image of "PANASONIC" has been burnt in. So very sad....
Yes, MSFT can take the stand that it is the job of application to keep up with the OS as you say. Then the millions of users with applications already installed have to buy updated versions from their vendors, costing money, or they will choose not to upgrade the OS costing MS money. If in one stroke MSFT makes millions of instances of installed applications useless, then suddenly people might get the idea to try other OSs. MSFT does not want such things to happen. The OS upgrade could be very painful but should not be enough to push them over to Linux of Mac. That is how MSFT wants it. Then the applications update will happen over the next three to five years as old computers die and new computers start with applications written for the current OS. Then the cycle starts all over again. The boatloads of money MSFT is wasting in application compatibility is just the cost of doing business to keep Linux at bay.
That is why is neccessary to amend or create a law to make EBay id the sellers and report the gross proceeds. If sellers made profit they will pay tax, if the made loss they will take a deduction.
In North America the desire to save money (regardless how high the price of the item) frequently trumps common sense
I am sure it does. But not as frequently as in Pakistan, Bangladesh or Surinam. See the post by a New Zelander about parcels being left on the porches of USA.
Adam Smith in 1770s talked about the "invisible" hand. The stock market is the direct proof staring at you that shows that "Large number of people, acting independantly on their own self interest will make more intelligent and wise decisions". Very few fund managers have managed to beat the index funds. Someday when you are grown up think about it.
It does not. It does not have to. You talk as though the government is some monarch sitting in a throne across the ocean taxing you every which way he pleases. The Govt is you. It is the politicians you voted for who is taxing you.
This country became the richest nation on earth with the ability to rival the great wealth of all the ageless wealth kingdoms of Europe all within a short 100 years.. and we did it all without the Federal Reserve OR the Income Tax.
If you could live in the 19th century, you would not like it. The wealth was concentrated on very few individuals. Andrew Carnegie had more income than one million Americans back in 1900s. That when the poulation of America was 100 million or so. Almost all except the richest of the rich has very tough lives. Poor white people were exploited may be a tad less than poor blacks and native Americans. The difference made the poor whites thank their lucky stars and dutifully enforce the class/race order.
Just look at the economics of the South during the civil war. The fact was that most of the white farmers in the south did not own slaves. A few rich ones did. The rest rented the slaves or hired free men paying very high wages. They could never make a profit because the rich slave owning whites were under selling them. If the South had abolished slavery and made all people pay market wages it would have raised the price of cotton so much that all of them would have benefitted. But what did the 95% of the farmers who had no slaves and the 4% who had less than five slaves do? They drank the cool aid supplied by Jefferson Davis and his ilk and became cannon fodder, willingly.
You think it is some stupid analysis of some far long gone days? Just poke around the Death Tax issue. Follow the money. Who is funding the debate, who paying off the talk radio hosts, and think tanks and Cato institute to distribute this kool-aid.
150 years have gone. And you can trust the middle class white folks to be played like a stringed instrument.
Schwab, Vanguard and Alex Brown send me 1099-(B/Div/Int) and it reports every sale I made last year, identify the security, date of transaction and net proceeds from the sale to IRS and to me. The data is machine readable. IRS checks to see if I have reported all these sales in my tax return. It is upto me to calculate the profit/losss/captial gains. It is my responsibility to prove the correctness of my calculations if I am ever audited. Ebay's responsibility is nothing more than what almost all the financial institutions have borne for ages.
Hey, Looks like I am part of the target audience for LHOTP and never knew it!
Tell me what you did not see in LHOTP. How many black land owners? How many native americans? How easy/difficult they found it to integrate with that period setting? I will admit I dont know naything about LHOTP. It is possible that it is a hard left show tht portrayed the blacks and native Americans as victims of the greed and rapacity of the settlers. Even if it is, let us just remember that almost all shows are created to make their target audience feel good. They are not designed to provide a fair and balance portrayal of multiple view points.
You are comparing present state of affairs of USA to some sort of ideal utopian society and find it wanting. I am comparing the very same USA to present state of affairs for 80% of the world population. In most developing nations, property crimes are rampant, people are poor and the temptation to buy stolen goods at 50% off is very very high. Very clearly you have not lived outside USA.
You have the right to hold such beliefs and vote accordingly in the elections. Even if you disagree with the law you dont have the option of simply ignoring it. Either challenge it in courts or refuse to obey the law and accept whatever punishment the government dishes out. Civil disobedience is not simply ignoring the law. Civil disobedience means, defy the law, report that you have defied the law and challenge the government to punish you. If the govt decides to punish you, be willing to take it.
The system is quite fair, indeed.
When you make a profit, on something you have owned for more than one year you pay capital gains. If you have owned it for less than a year the profit is deemed income and you pay income tax on the profit. The buyer will pay the sales tax on the price. If the thing you are selling is your home, and you have owned it for more than five years and lived in it for more than two years in the last five years then upto 600,000$ in capital gains is exempted from tax. There could be more laws and issues on it.
When I came to USA first I was amazed to see how much of the expensive stuff is left around the homes completely unsecured. 1000$ grills, 800$ deck furniture, children's toys, garden tools, garden sheds are all left unlocked and no one would steal them. I have lost one tiny bottle of coconut oil left on the sill of an unlocked window in my hostel back in India. Then slowly it dawned on me that most Americans would not buy goods of doubtful provenance from shady sellers. Infact there is a market in b ombay called Chore Bazaar (thief market) which does brisk business. I would very much E-Bay not to degenerate into a giant "Chore-Bazaar.com"
Not that I am a fan of Imus nor am I defending him. But I am very much disturbed that a paid blogger hounded Imus and "created" this much outrage. This does not bode well for the net, the on line communities. How many in the blogosphere are really saying what they believe in? How many are paid spouting off the views of their paymasters? How many such paid hatchet people are creating multiple handles and ids to inflate the numbers, so to speak? I hope every true, not paid posters in /. would come to see this blogger as a threat, unless, of course, he has stated and disclosed clearly he was paid to blog.
It would be nice if they have a strong validator for input and pinpoint errors. But if you detect that the memory has been corrupted you must exit immediately. Attempting to figure why the memory was corrupt would lead to more bugs and exploitable holes.