Paranoia / Politics News Comments 2006-11-22
I think the AMT (Alternative minimum tax) should be the primary tax. Lower deduction (20-30K), lower percentage (15-20%) or non deuction and very low percentage (10-15%). Then the tax law will fit in a commoner-understandable 20-page pamplet rather than needing 3 laywers and a whole bookcase full of humoungous law-books. It appears that the AMT’s slowly lowering deduction allowance actually is the transition mechanism to make this the primary tax method.
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I could care less if EMI’s currupt and incompetant management drives the company so low that it goes bankrupt and ceases operations.
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Cool concept. 0.8 exchange rate ($1 = 0.8M$P). First create illusion of 79 cent songs with the exchange rate (stupid people will fall for it). Then add a minimum purchase block size of $5. Free loans in at least a collective total of $10 million (averaging $2 per user, 5 million users). Thats actually not much in MS’s scale though. In the P2PNet article I would alter #5 from “5. Say ’screw it’ and go buy an iPod.” to “5. Say ’screw it’ and go buy an generic portable MP3 player”.
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Law in the way from you getting your movie or song legit, whether it is against you or the company that wants to sell it? No problem! Emule (and BitTorrent) to the rescue!!
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Damn, refusing an EULA and actually getting a refund for it must be so difficult, that you’ll get news coverage if you succeeed!! The user here is a Linux user. My opinion — Too much effort.. Go download something else from Emule or share your copy on Emule or just don’t bother or do anything. Emule is easy. Linux users should refuse to buy any machine that has a Microsoft tax on it.
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I think a lot of plea bargains that still result in a lot of prison time involve the 10, 20, and 30+ year barriers. Remaining sentences of 10-19 years require a minimum low security prison, 20-29 medium, 30+ high (PMITA penintentiary). The higher the security, the more hardened the crinimals in the other inmates. For kiddy porn, the crime is on the lowest of the respect scale, so hardened criminals are more likely to beat and kill you regardless of you social ability and ability to adapt to prison culture. I think most non-murdering sex offenders end up in medium security, but white-collar-only sex offenders are often in low security prisons.
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An economy should not be dependent on housing inflation or the continued indebting and reckless spending of already indebted consumers. Minimal saving outside of productive investments and minimal debting is what an economy should depend on. I hope the housing market drops rock-bottom, and I hope that indebted consumers pay off their credit card debt. I hope they don’t go further and hoard money in a savings account though as most of that goes to house mortagaes and car loans (Many non-new-purchase mortgage procedes go to credit card companies, medical insurance middlement, and lawyers). Mutual funds and Stocks or starting your own business (if it doesn’t suck or rely on gambling, lottory, beer, liquour, ciggarettes, drugs, or welfare handouts) is better. Or donate to open source software projects or science research, or do self-funded research or write your own open source software. If you start spending more again, stay away from parties, impulse-services, and tourist-trips and buy durable toys (guns, bows, steroes, tvs, telescopes, computers, weight machines, home theater, independant renewable energy like solar panels and windmills) and actually keep them for awhile or have a hand-me-down or donation plan.
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This is the list of the internet censorship baddy countries. Belarus, * Burma, * China, * Cuba, Egypt, Iran, * North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, * Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam . Egypt was added in the most recent update, while Libya, * Maldives, and Nepal. The countries with a * had a solid triangle before the country’s name instead of a dash. The pattern seems to be how much of the internet is censored or how much of the population is banned from the internet alltogether, not effectivness or toughness of censorship or harness of punishment of dissidents.
