Okay, people keep saying this... but when I report my "drug sales" net income (after amortizing my.45 and deducting bribes), won't they just turn that right around and charge you with a crime, implicitly requiring you to waive the fifth?
No, I'm not asking for personal legal advice, all you lawyers out there. I'm just asking if information disclosed this way has some special legal protection. It won't apply to me, since I don't sell drugs, so don't fret.
I might as well mention what the real problem is here, since people keep saying, "if you make a profit in terms of real dollars, that should be taxed, case closed". But if virtual money becomes liquid and convertible enough, government will *have to* tax it directly, even in-game. Why? Imagine this:
I want to defer taxes on dividends, like, you know, every investor with a taxable account wants to do. So let's say the stock exchange sets up "exchange dollars" (EDs), a special currency created and destroyed at will, simply by depositing a dollar or withdrawing it. The EDs are functionally identical to normal dollars, it's just that they only trade on the exchange. Whenever a corporation pays a dividend, it takes its normal dollars, buys EDs, and distributes the dividends. Whenever a corporation raises funds in an IPO, it takes the EDs and converts them to normal dollars. Now, should the investors still pay taxes on the ED dividends they got?
If you say no, then you don't think dividends should be taxed, because this scheme could be implemented today on the stock market -- but obviously, the government wouldn't fall for it.
If you say yes, then you agree that sufficiently-convertible virtual dollars should be taxed even if the profit exists only in-game. At some point, the virtual dollars become like the EDs or a foreign currency.
Americans take their privacy too seriously to ignore this if this becomes public
You mean, you wish they wouldn't ignore this?
"OMG! Vista violates my privacy!" "So what are you going to do about it?" "I'm going to use a different operating system!" "Which one?" "Well, uh, the other one." "Which other one." "Like, the other Windows." "Which other Windows?" "Um, I guess... XP, is it?" "Do you know how to install an operating system?" "Well, no... I mean, I just won't buy computers with Vista." "And where do you buy a computer without Vista?" "Um... I can just choose XP when I order one." "And when XP is discontinued?" "Then I'll get a completely different operating system, from a different company." "You mean a Mac?" "Oh, heavens no." "Then what?" "Um..."
Not because I hate Apple or AT&T... but because I just went through the process of upgrading a seven-year-old phone (Sprint). And it was a pain in the ass. I went through customer support hell, inconsistent stories, runarounds, transfers... I was thinking the whole time, "holy shit, people upgrade phones all the time, why the hell does this have to happen to me?"
Well, as of this weekend, I completed the month-long process of upgrading... and I'm just glad to know I'm not the only one who has to go through a stressful activation process:-)
Is it really a good idea to show all pranksters in the world how to lock up a bunch of innocent people's carts in a store?
I'd much prefer if supermarket pranksters stuck to less annoying pranks, like hiding a speakerphone and ketchup bags in a baby-less baby-holder, having it play "crying" sounds, and then publicly "beating" the "baby" until it "bleeds".
Creative interpretation of game data can be cheating. I remember a while ago (and I'm by no means an expert game hacker) I learned from a site how to change properties of objects in Halo. I used that to make the walls transparent so I could see people coming around a corner and behind walls. It made flag camping pretty easy, and I held off a veteran CTF team for about 10 minutes.
Now, you're right that the server could control more, so it decides what you can and can't see, for example. But this is hardly a straightforward design question. The more data you have to read from the server, the more likely you are to experience lag.
That sounds more like a policy of actively denying services to owners of unlocked phones. But then, don't they have to know what kind it is, somewhere in the process of activating data service?
I was about to sympathize, until I found out
I got up this morning at 8am, and went to the store when it opened. I was the 42nd through the door, and bought 4 of the remaining 18 4GB phones (the 8GBs were all gone). Everyone behind me in line was told a shipment would arrive "later today sometime" and they could wait. No one got out of line and left. that you were a scalper. Hey, nothing wrong with scalping. Some of you will remember I tried to scalp a PS3. But I didn't ask for sympathy when it went sour and act like I was somehow the victim of an injustice for not being able to go through with the plan.
anyone ever compared system failure (say, per computer-hour) improvements to the system failure (per mile) improvements of our innovative combustion engine industry?
anyone ever compared computer system transparency (say, how much of it has publicly available documentation) to the system transparency of our innovative combustion engine industry?
Or to expand on that, since a lot of WoW (and other games) involves boring leveling, a great idea would be to port in some kind of educational audio, like a foreign language-learning tape. Some of it will pretty much have to sink in.
I've also long had this idea that they should take a normal long RPG-like game (like a Zelda), and have you play it such that they gradually transform the language they use in it, into a foreign language. You'd play through once in your own language, and then another time with the gradual change. Your mind would probably more easily adapt then.
No, you can't say that Apple or Ubuntu facilitate a "People Ready Business" because obviously Microsoft owns the term "People Ready Business", just like you can't say that the source for a program is open unless it meets OSI's definition of "open source".
"Here's a resource that explains the basics of writing a word processor." "Here's a utility that allows you to visually add text and related features to the window of a program." "Here's the well-commented portion of a popular program that implements word processing."
The people who know the software didn't learn it from some magical unknown documentation system but by working on the source.
Yep, that's right: everyone who wrote a word processor learned how to by thumbing through undocumented previous word processors.
If someone hasn't written up documentation for the source yet then why do you expect them to do so for you?
I expect people to write documentation, regardless of my needs.
I never assumed that, I still wish to kill every single mozilla person who thought that making half assed extension dev. documentation was a good idea. Nonetheless I don't see what you expected from them.
You mean, you didn't understand what point I was making when I entered the discussion: suggesting that I learn how to implement a word processing feature that's not in any existing word processing package, by digging through Open Office, is a monumentally stupid idea, yet everyone seems to think that's a good idea, revealing they don't understand what well-documented, well-commented, searchable code requires.
C# is a programming language running on a framework. It has a documentation language specification and has open source implementations. Visual C# is an IDE for said language although it is only a tool.
Wow, like the A/C thought, you're really slow at this. Let's take a step back and work in baby steps.
I want a feature. I want to do get it the easiest way. Closed-source off-the-shelf, open-source off-the-shelf, something I write from scratch, something that exist which I modify, hire someone to write... it makes no difference. Any one of those could be the easiest.
What I meant by Visual C# being the best option is that it's extremely easy to use, especially in constructing graphical interfaces, so working from the ground up in that IDE was the best solution. That is, it beat out all that FOSS that I was supposed to be able to learn from.
I figure this phenomenon can be used for good as well. If you can convince yourself of anything by doing that and "acting" like you believe it, why not use it to, say, give yourself lots of confidence, which is notoriously hard to fake? That is, every day, several times, say positive things about yourself that you want to believe...
Oddly enough, this isn't limited to religion. I went to a pain therapy center for back pain and part of the regimen was to see a "pain psychologist" or something like that. She had me listen to a breathing tape. Afterward, she asked me a lot of questions about whether "I believe" that method will work, trying to prod me into accepting that it will work. I tried to explain the concept of a placebo to her, but to no avail.
I know this is an A/C and all, but I still want to clarify.
I was not upset that I couldn't get Ubuntu running. I anticipated that. What upset me was the combination of the facts that:
1) That failure ALSO locked me out of Windows. 2) The instructions did NOT tell me to take precautions I was later expected to have taken. 3) The instructions HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that I do something that DEFEATED the EXTRA precautions I did take. (Specifically, the precaution of installing Ubuntu to a completely separate hard drive which would allow me to load simply by booting from that drive, defeated by having GRUB installed, which took over control, failed, and refused to do anying further on boot.)
It was the combination of these unjustifiable failures that upset me.
You're correct. I wanted the feature. And despite your knee-jerk reaction, I did intend to code it myself. However, my knowledge of programming word processors is not very expansive. That is, oddly enough, why I went on forums to ask for pointers on how I'd learn to do this. The point of my story -- that evaded you -- was that people casually and incorrectly assume that because the source is open, that it's easy to learn from and modify. It's not. Especially so for something as large as Open Office.
I actually spend a lot of time with different word processors trying to figure them out enough that I could add the feature. I even funded -- that's right, paid! -- a rent-a-coder.com contract that I would have gladly open-sourced, in order to get the program. But that was a failure, largely because the progammer "forgot" requirements that were visible from the beginning and that he confirmed his understanding of, by putting in his own words. (I ended up paying for only the portion that was completed.)
So, you're about par for the course in terms of understanding this problem.
Btw, you know what method I eventually settled on? Visual C#... free, and closed-source.
Heh, I'm glad someone more knowledgeable than me (by a lot) agrees with me on this. I thought I was just clueless when I made that observation.
A while back, I wanted to have a word processor with some features* that didn't exist on any current such program. I asked on some forums how to go about this. The typical response was, "Oh, just grab an open source word processor and add the feature! Open Office would be great for this!"
*For example, drawing arrows between words, and encoding the information about which arrow points to which, in an xml-type text file.
Aw, damn, I guess Dave Schroeder should have listenedtome about the importance of karma buffers when you're going to say something unpopular, because you don't know when that will happen.
Oh well, at *I* won't get penalized for posting this...
My question is, why encode their name and all, like that? Why not put some random number in, and then have some table that only Apple has, that matches that number to their information? Or would that be just as bad from the privacy standpoint? "Hey, someone might steal my iPod, extract the random number from the file, break into Apple's database, look up my information, and then have all the information they need to use my now-canceled credit cards or report me for illegally-shared files."
Whenever someone says, "I can't improve the code for open-source program X, because I don't know the computer language it's written in", I tell them, "well, then you're only slightly less qualified than someone who does know the language".
Open source programs are typically not well-commented and searchable enough for a capable outsider to improve upon without significant investment of time.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, people keep saying this ... but when I report my "drug sales" net income (after amortizing my .45 and deducting bribes), won't they just turn that right around and charge you with a crime, implicitly requiring you to waive the fifth?
No, I'm not asking for personal legal advice, all you lawyers out there. I'm just asking if information disclosed this way has some special legal protection. It won't apply to me, since I don't sell drugs, so don't fret.
I might as well mention what the real problem is here, since people keep saying, "if you make a profit in terms of real dollars, that should be taxed, case closed". But if virtual money becomes liquid and convertible enough, government will *have to* tax it directly, even in-game. Why? Imagine this:
I want to defer taxes on dividends, like, you know, every investor with a taxable account wants to do. So let's say the stock exchange sets up "exchange dollars" (EDs), a special currency created and destroyed at will, simply by depositing a dollar or withdrawing it. The EDs are functionally identical to normal dollars, it's just that they only trade on the exchange. Whenever a corporation pays a dividend, it takes its normal dollars, buys EDs, and distributes the dividends. Whenever a corporation raises funds in an IPO, it takes the EDs and converts them to normal dollars. Now, should the investors still pay taxes on the ED dividends they got?
If you say no, then you don't think dividends should be taxed, because this scheme could be implemented today on the stock market -- but obviously, the government wouldn't fall for it.
If you say yes, then you agree that sufficiently-convertible virtual dollars should be taxed even if the profit exists only in-game. At some point, the virtual dollars become like the EDs or a foreign currency.
There was no Big Bang. Just a time when Chuck Norris decided to let the universe exist.
Americans take their privacy too seriously to ignore this if this becomes public
... XP, is it?" ... I mean, I just won't buy computers with Vista." ... I can just choose XP when I order one." ..."
You mean, you wish they wouldn't ignore this?
"OMG! Vista violates my privacy!"
"So what are you going to do about it?"
"I'm going to use a different operating system!"
"Which one?"
"Well, uh, the other one."
"Which other one."
"Like, the other Windows."
"Which other Windows?"
"Um, I guess
"Do you know how to install an operating system?"
"Well, no
"And where do you buy a computer without Vista?"
"Um
"And when XP is discontinued?"
"Then I'll get a completely different operating system, from a different company."
"You mean a Mac?"
"Oh, heavens no."
"Then what?"
"Um
Not because I hate Apple or AT&T ... but because I just went through the process of upgrading a seven-year-old phone (Sprint). And it was a pain in the ass. I went through customer support hell, inconsistent stories, runarounds, transfers ... I was thinking the whole time, "holy shit, people upgrade phones all the time, why the hell does this have to happen to me?"
... and I'm just glad to know I'm not the only one who has to go through a stressful activation process :-)
Well, as of this weekend, I completed the month-long process of upgrading
And by "McDonald's", I of course mean "teledildonics"?
Is it really a good idea to show all pranksters in the world how to lock up a bunch of innocent people's carts in a store?
I'd much prefer if supermarket pranksters stuck to less annoying pranks, like hiding a speakerphone and ketchup bags in a baby-less baby-holder, having it play "crying" sounds, and then publicly "beating" the "baby" until it "bleeds".
Creative interpretation of game data can be cheating. I remember a while ago (and I'm by no means an expert game hacker) I learned from a site how to change properties of objects in Halo. I used that to make the walls transparent so I could see people coming around a corner and behind walls. It made flag camping pretty easy, and I held off a veteran CTF team for about 10 minutes.
Now, you're right that the server could control more, so it decides what you can and can't see, for example. But this is hardly a straightforward design question. The more data you have to read from the server, the more likely you are to experience lag.
That sounds more like a policy of actively denying services to owners of unlocked phones. But then, don't they have to know what kind it is, somewhere in the process of activating data service?
I wonder how much his colleagues paid him for the privilege of buying four despite only being one person in line?
I wonder how many people who did this for the Wii/PS3 weren't scalpers.
anyone ever compared system failure (say, per computer-hour) improvements to the system failure (per mile) improvements of our innovative combustion engine industry?
anyone ever compared computer system transparency (say, how much of it has publicly available documentation) to the system transparency of our innovative combustion engine industry?
Or to expand on that, since a lot of WoW (and other games) involves boring leveling, a great idea would be to port in some kind of educational audio, like a foreign language-learning tape. Some of it will pretty much have to sink in.
I've also long had this idea that they should take a normal long RPG-like game (like a Zelda), and have you play it such that they gradually transform the language they use in it, into a foreign language. You'd play through once in your own language, and then another time with the gradual change. Your mind would probably more easily adapt then.
I bet there's also a Coalition for the Prediction of Surprises.
"OH YES, oh, YES! this appearance of enjoyment brought to you by you"
No, you can't say that Apple or Ubuntu facilitate a "People Ready Business" because obviously Microsoft owns the term "People Ready Business", just like you can't say that the source for a program is open unless it meets OSI's definition of "open source".
Right, Bruce?
What did you expect them to tell you?
... it makes no difference. Any one of those could be the easiest.
"Here's a resource that explains the basics of writing a word processor."
"Here's a utility that allows you to visually add text and related features to the window of a program."
"Here's the well-commented portion of a popular program that implements word processing."
The people who know the software didn't learn it from some magical unknown documentation system but by working on the source.
Yep, that's right: everyone who wrote a word processor learned how to by thumbing through undocumented previous word processors.
If someone hasn't written up documentation for the source yet then why do you expect them to do so for you?
I expect people to write documentation, regardless of my needs.
I never assumed that, I still wish to kill every single mozilla person who thought that making half assed extension dev. documentation was a good idea. Nonetheless I don't see what you expected from them.
You mean, you didn't understand what point I was making when I entered the discussion: suggesting that I learn how to implement a word processing feature that's not in any existing word processing package, by digging through Open Office, is a monumentally stupid idea, yet everyone seems to think that's a good idea, revealing they don't understand what well-documented, well-commented, searchable code requires.
C# is a programming language running on a framework. It has a documentation language specification and has open source implementations. Visual C# is an IDE for said language although it is only a tool.
Wow, like the A/C thought, you're really slow at this. Let's take a step back and work in baby steps.
I want a feature. I want to do get it the easiest way. Closed-source off-the-shelf, open-source off-the-shelf, something I write from scratch, something that exist which I modify, hire someone to write
What I meant by Visual C# being the best option is that it's extremely easy to use, especially in constructing graphical interfaces, so working from the ground up in that IDE was the best solution. That is, it beat out all that FOSS that I was supposed to be able to learn from.
Is this starting to make sense?
MIT scientists trying to cure something, just because it's heavily over-represented in MIT students?
I'm just saying, wouldn't it be easier to just cure datelessness?
I figure this phenomenon can be used for good as well. If you can convince yourself of anything by doing that and "acting" like you believe it, why not use it to, say, give yourself lots of confidence, which is notoriously hard to fake? That is, every day, several times, say positive things about yourself that you want to believe...
... *gets to-do list*
Hm
Oddly enough, this isn't limited to religion. I went to a pain therapy center for back pain and part of the regimen was to see a "pain psychologist" or something like that. She had me listen to a breathing tape. Afterward, she asked me a lot of questions about whether "I believe" that method will work, trying to prod me into accepting that it will work. I tried to explain the concept of a placebo to her, but to no avail.
*sigh*
I know this is an A/C and all, but I still want to clarify.
I was not upset that I couldn't get Ubuntu running. I anticipated that. What upset me was the combination of the facts that:
1) That failure ALSO locked me out of Windows.
2) The instructions did NOT tell me to take precautions I was later expected to have taken.
3) The instructions HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that I do something that DEFEATED the EXTRA precautions I did take. (Specifically, the precaution of installing Ubuntu to a completely separate hard drive which would allow me to load simply by booting from that drive, defeated by having GRUB installed, which took over control, failed, and refused to do anying further on boot.)
It was the combination of these unjustifiable failures that upset me.
*sigh*
... free, and closed-source.
Yep, another one of those people.
You're correct. I wanted the feature. And despite your knee-jerk reaction, I did intend to code it myself. However, my knowledge of programming word processors is not very expansive. That is, oddly enough, why I went on forums to ask for pointers on how I'd learn to do this. The point of my story -- that evaded you -- was that people casually and incorrectly assume that because the source is open, that it's easy to learn from and modify. It's not. Especially so for something as large as Open Office.
I actually spend a lot of time with different word processors trying to figure them out enough that I could add the feature. I even funded -- that's right, paid! -- a rent-a-coder.com contract that I would have gladly open-sourced, in order to get the program. But that was a failure, largely because the progammer "forgot" requirements that were visible from the beginning and that he confirmed his understanding of, by putting in his own words. (I ended up paying for only the portion that was completed.)
So, you're about par for the course in terms of understanding this problem.
Btw, you know what method I eventually settled on? Visual C#
Heh, I'm glad someone more knowledgeable than me (by a lot) agrees with me on this. I thought I was just clueless when I made that observation.
A while back, I wanted to have a word processor with some features* that didn't exist on any current such program. I asked on some forums how to go about this. The typical response was, "Oh, just grab an open source word processor and add the feature! Open Office would be great for this!"
*For example, drawing arrows between words, and encoding the information about which arrow points to which, in an xml-type text file.
Aw, damn, I guess Dave Schroeder should have listened to me about the importance of karma buffers when you're going to say something unpopular, because you don't know when that will happen.
...
Oh well, at *I* won't get penalized for posting this
My question is, why encode their name and all, like that? Why not put some random number in, and then have some table that only Apple has, that matches that number to their information? Or would that be just as bad from the privacy standpoint? "Hey, someone might steal my iPod, extract the random number from the file, break into Apple's database, look up my information, and then have all the information they need to use my now-canceled credit cards or report me for illegally-shared files."
Whenever someone says, "I can't improve the code for open-source program X, because I don't know the computer language it's written in", I tell them, "well, then you're only slightly less qualified than someone who does know the language".
Open source programs are typically not well-commented and searchable enough for a capable outsider to improve upon without significant investment of time.