I have a great idea. Make it LAW throughout the EU that ALL computers, regardless of OS, must ship WITHOUT a browser, with an instruction sheet in bold letters that you find as soon as you open the box, like the warranty one that says, "Stop, do not return this to the point of sale if you have a problem," that reads, "Pursuant to EU law, this computer ships with no Internet browser. We recommend downloading the browser of your choice. Doing this when you don't already have a browser with which to do it is clearly obvious and left as an exercise for the reader. At [insert computer builder name here], your satisfaction is important to us."

Someone should write a JavaScript interpreter in Python and then port Bochs to JavaScript so we can emulate a virtual machine's instruction set in an interpreted environment running inside an interpreted environment. Then install Linux with GNOME on a 386, run Windows 3.1 in this environment, and note how much faster it is than you-know-what, when you-know-what is running on the biggest, baddest, the shit, fastest box there is around.

It's like that movie where the thing came out of his stomach and killed all the people on the fuckin' spaceship, God rest their souls.

Why don't we figure out how inhabit to Venus and Mars first, and then look for things farther away? At 3000 light years, it's a bit too far to think of starting a settlement there.

To those who have this mutation, I say sucks for you, suckers!! Hah hah!!

Why the hell is my left arm hurting?

Agreed.

I see many minor flaws throughout various parts your argument, but I would like to address one major flaw that pervades the whole thing:

What is wealth? Is it the amount of money in someone's bank account? Is it the total value of all the physical possessions that someone owns? How do you determine how much tax someone pays based on wealth? Do you say, "Hello Mr. Rich Homeowner, your house is worth $350,000 and all the possessions inside it are worth another $75,000, the WealthTax for your wealth bracket is 20%, please pay $85,000." Does it matter that this super rich evil dude has only $417.52 in his bank account, has a credit card bill to pay in two days, a wife and two children to feed, and is basically living from paycheck to paycheck?

Or are you referring to really, super, filthy rich people? Ok, let's change that example. "Hello Mr. Rich Businessman, your mansion is worth $40,000,000, your possessions are worth $30,750,000, your WealthTax bracket is 45%, please pay $31,837,500." Ok that sounds great. Except that Mr. Rich doesn't actually have this money on hand. It has been invested, as you said, all over the place, in order to make him even richer. In stocks, in bonds, as VC funding for a few upstarts. It's being used in a construction project to build a new apartment complex that Mr. Rich plans to rent out to middle class families. Part of it is funding research and development for some new technology that Mr. Rich hopes to make a killing on once it becomes the next killer app. Mr. Rich only keeps $15,000 liquid in his bank account, in order to pay his daily expenses and to have some extra money on hand "just in case."

So what a rich bastard, you might say. How dare he accumulate so much wealth and use it to accumulate even more? What an asshole. What Mr. Rich should do, if we're to follow your logic, is keep all of his money in his bank account, so that when the tax man comes once a year to collect the WealthTax, Mr. Rich will be able to make that $31,837,500 payment that he, according to you, owes for being the rich asshole that he is.

Ok. Let's follow this logic a little bit. Because Mr. Rich, due to the tax laws, must keep this money liquid at all times, it does not get invested in stocks and bonds or as VC funding for some upstarts. So those businesses do not get the benefit of this infusion of cash, and as a result never get off the ground and never hire the employees that they would have hired. The money won't get used in the construction project, so the construction crew is out of a job. The apartment complex that would have become home to some middle class families will never exist. And the research and development will not happen, meaning more jobs that would have existed, don't.

Two points.

Point 1: Wealth is not merely exchanged when a transaction takes place. Instead, wealth is created. If I pay $50 for a pair of shoes, it is because I need the shoes more than I needed the $50. If I worked for my employer to earn those $50, it is because I needed the $50 more than I needed several hours of spare time sitting on my ass watching television. And if my employer paid me the $50 for those hours of work, it is because they needed the results of my work more than they needed the $50. In other words, the exchange takes place because each party gets something worth more to them than what they gave. This is creation of wealth.

Point 2: It is in every person's best interest to advance themselves to a better position than the one they're currently in. This means to act in one's self interest. It is not in your self interest to live in the gutter, so you have a respectable job, you earn a living, and you get yourself an apartment, food, electricity, clothing, a car, gasoline to power it, etc. The business that provides you with your job is also acting in its self interest, paying you because having you working there advances its goals. Through each transaction, both parties involved end up better off than before. In this manner, the entire economy advances.

Rich people do not get that way because they're assholes. They get that way because they take the risks and put in the tremendous efforts that it takes to create this wealth. Would they take the trouble to do any of this if there wasn't the hope of enjoying the fruits of their actions later?

When a rich person puts money into building an apartment building, it is in his self interest because the rents over the years will pay for the apartment and then some. But he is also improving the community because now there is additional housing available. Would he do this if there were no promise of earning from it later?

The rich businessman who gets a million dollars a year plus five million bonus plus an expense account got that way because he spent the best years of his life working his ass off while his friends were partying at the club. And in the process of building up this business, he created jobs for thousands of employees. Would he have gone through this trouble and taken the risks if there was no promise of huge profits later?

It's safe to say that without the promise of earning later, without the promise of perhaps becoming rich and enjoying what comes with it, people would NOT get off their butts and expend the time, effort, and resources to make things happen. If you talk about rich people as if they're the devil himself, then you're essentially saying that richness is a problem that needs to be obliterated. Forcefully taxing that wealth away using the power of the government is one way to solve that supposed problem.

But if you take away the incentive, the promise of wealth and a comfortable life later on in exchange for the hard work and efforts of now, then you eliminate any improvement that could possibly happen in our lives, in our community, in our world. Better technology, easier ways of doing things, more effective medicines, new homes to live in, none of these things, none of these creations of wealth would happen without someone being proactive in making them happen. And without the incentive of ending up better off, nobody will bother to be proactive.

In short, saying that we should tax wealth because rich people horde it is absurd. To horde is to take stuff and put it away someplace, where it remains unused, much in the way a dragon hordes a huge stash of gold coins and then lies on top of it. These nefarious rich people, however, do not horde anything. They use what they have to create additional wealth, which always means that other people also benefit because there are two parties to every transaction, and because, as explained above, each such transaction is a creation of wealth for both parties. (e.g., the creation of jobs when rich people use their wealth to generate even more wealth.)

In short, rich people are not evil and need not be punished.

And I would like you to please back up the claim that FairTax is regressive. I don't understand how it could be regressive when it is connected to the amount one spends, and the amount one spends is somehow, mysteriously connected to the amount one has to spend.

Can somebody please explain to me why this issue is specific to Ubuntu and not Linux in general? Is it Ubuntu's default power settings that differ from other distros, or does Ubuntu use drivers or daemons that other distros don't use?

I am not sure if this is the beginning of a troll or a legitimate critique of FairTax, so let's give you the benefit of a doubt and go over this one by one:

I really wish you'd try to back this up with something instead of just stating it as if it's as well accepted a fact as gravity. One idea of FairTax is that instead of 175 million taxpayers, everyone who purchases any product or service pays into the system. This means children who don't work yet, old people who don't work anymore, undocumented people who work under the table, people with criminal sources of income, tourists and exchange students in the country, every single person who buys anything. The tax base is made significantly wider, and the FairTax is revenue neutral, so each current taxpayer will on average pay less in taxes.

The prebate. Meaning everyone get at the beginning of each month the amount they will pay in taxes throughout that month, up to poverty line spending. Poor people pay nothing in taxes. In fact, this will help their cash flow a bit.

This is flawed in many ways. First, it's true that people may, at first, spend less to avoid getting taxed. The money they don't spend immediately will sit in their bank account, accumulating. Their paychecks will be bigger because there won't be withholding. Within a short time, less than a handful of paychecks, that extra money they'll conveniently have will start itching in their pockets and they'll spend it. Further, you may not be aware of this but in addition to what's withheld from your paycheck, your employer must match your social security contributions. They will no longer have to do this, leaving more money available in corporations to (a) reduce their prices or (b) hire more employees and expand. Either way people benefit either from the lower prices (offsetting the FairTax) or from unemployment numbers going down. In short, I wouldn't worry about people suddenly halting their spending. On the contrary, while there may be an initial dip in spending, it will end quickly.

Correct. However, as with all products and services, the FairTax will apply only to new home sales. Also FairTax will reduce the cost of building homes because there will be no hidden corporate income taxes in the price of raw materials, and there will be no such hidden tax in the price of the home itself. All of this will offset the 30% somewhat. It may make it more like 25%, it may make it more like 5%, I have no idea. So yes, you are correct, however, it only applies to new homes and it probably won't be as much as 30%.

I believe you missed the memo. Social security is already screwed up. It is in fact so screwed up that within not too many years from now we will see its collapse. The FairTax says there won't be a separate bank account for Social Security, rather it will come out of the general fund. I do not agree with this as a permanent solution and I agree with you that FairTax does not solve Social Security. But I disagree that it makes Social Security any worse off because the damn thing is already screwed up and we've known since former President Clinton announced in the 1990's that it is definitely going to fail, soon.

Fine.

Could you please explain this? How so? You buy as much as you can afford to buy. If the tax is x% and you buy y, you pay y*x in taxes. If you're poor and y is small, you pay small. If you're Bill Gates and you spend big, you pay big. I don't see how this is regressive. Please explain.

I agree with you that taxes place a drag on the economy. However this is not only true of sales taxes. It is true of ALL types and amounts of taxes. If you disagree, then I suppose all the withholding items on your paycheck don't introduce a drag on the economy? Or the enormous costs, not of the taxes themselves, but of complying with the current tax code, meaning money paid to accountants, money spent on products like TurboTax or TaxCut software, money spent on gas when driving to do these things, money spent by businesses on outsourcing payroll services, because payroll is an unimaginably complicated mess, money spent paying clerks to do all of this stuff, money spent to print the forms that everyone has to fill out and file, money spent on postage to send these forms in, money spent in a million other ways. Think spending money in these ways helps the economy? That is called the broken window fallacy in economics.

If the tax differs significantly here and five miles away from here, yes. However, if the same tax applies throughout the entire country, what are you going to do, fly to Cancun to save on sales taxes? I doubt too many people will go through the trouble of crossing borders into another country just to save on the price of something. Besides, even if you cross the border to save on taxes, you will have to declare it in customs if more than a few hundred bucks. So no, I don't think people will go through all this trouble.

Obviously I disagree that sales taxes have such big problems, but we could put this idea aside and suggest making the FairTax an entirely income tax. Say everyone pays 10%. Or x%. It doesn't matter what the percentage is, so long as everyone pays the same percentage. That would be acceptable. However it would be susceptible to the problems of an income tax. It is possible to cheat on income taxes by working under the table or otherwise misreporting your income, but it is not possible to cheat on sales taxes because you would need the cooperation of the store or business you're buying from. Not too many businesses would take the risk of getting caught to help someone else save on taxes. An income tax is great for gangsters and drug dealers, because they are not recognized by the system and therefore don't pay any. An income tax requires all 175 million workers to file each year. A sales tax requires 20 million businesses to file. Huge reduction in paperwork. Huge reduction in administrative work for people and for the government.

Companies do not pay taxes of any kind. Taxes paid by companies end up in the price of the good being sold. So people pay that tax, whether they know it or not. In addition to the income taxes you pay now, you are paying the income taxes of every corporation involved in making any product or service you buy. What FairTax does is remove the taxation from all those levels and place it all on the receipt in one neat number when you buy something. This is transparency, something an income tax, even if "paid" by companies, cannot give you.

What the hell are these evil corrupt, diabolical rich people going to do with these tons of riches that are accumulating? Money is like potential energy. It is worthless until you get something in exchange for it. Besides, it's not just accumulating under a mattress. These wicked rich people, the businessmen and women of America who commit such atrocities as hiring people (creating employment), investing their money in businesses that hire people (creating employment), donating money to charities, or even just putting it in the bank (which invests it), are the ones who take huge risks, work incredibly hard for long hours, provide employment and income for others, build up businesses that produce the products and services you want, and in short provide opportunity for those who prefer to work from 9 to 5 and get a paycheck. Money does not just sit around and accumulate. It is used to purchase land, buildings, equipment (a.k.a. capital), to hire people, to improve the community, to do many things. So this argument is totally shot out of the water.

Wrong. Under FairTax this would be called a Taxable Employer, meaning a household that has domestic workers (servants). Yes, you would have to pay the tax on that.

You have to buy a plane ticket to go there? Tax. Besides, if you're so rich that you can afford to be anywhere, then having an income tax instead of this "Fair" Tax, as you propose, would mean that this rich person could move out of the country altogether. Good bye! No more taxes collected from this evil rich dude, and guess what, when he moved away he took his business with him so his former employees are out of work and standing in the unemployment line, taking money back out of the government that now has to be covered by your paycheck.

Perhaps you weren't paying attention to the original poster? He said, go to www.fairtax.org and start reading. I would say that replacing some five-digit number of pages of tax rules and regulations with a 150 page bill fulfills your call for "drastically simplified." :)

You are correct. A tax is an expense. All expenses, whether the cost of having employees, the cost of rent, the cost of taxes, the cost of new computers for the office, all of these, get factored into the price of each unit of product the business sells. When you buy a loaf of bread, you are not paying sales tax because that is an exempted item, but you ARE paying the income tax of the company that produced that loaf of bread. Whenever someone says something silly like, "Corporations have tons of money, just tax more out of the corporations," what they're really saying is, "Please increase the price of bread, milk, soda, booze, and everything else by making the corporations collect more from me in taxes!"

I agree. The tax code as it stands now is a nightmare. I found out about FairTax when I came across The FairTax Book at the bookstore. I read the whole book in one sitting. Seriously! A book about taxes, and I couldn't put it down. The arguments made in the book seem well thought out and make sense. The general feeling I got was that if this ever became law, the whole world would be abuzz about it and businesses would rush back to America. I would certainly appreciate being able to put my extra money in savings, to get taxed only at such time that I decide to make a purchase, and not having to deal with April 15th. I don't care if FairTax saved me nothing in taxes, it would definitely save hours of clerical work on my part and on my employer's part, and that money would be available to fuel the economy instead. I totally agree with you. Now if only we could get Washington to agree.

It is very dangerous when rulings like this come about. Who is to define when bundling of one product with another constitutes antitrust violation? When Apple "bundles" Safari with Mac OS X, is that antitrust? When you install Ubuntu and Firefox is "bundled" with it, is that antitrust? When you install a text editor and syntax highlighting files for a bunch of languages are "bundled" with it, is that antitrust? What about Solitaire? Can that be bundled? Why the emphasis on the browser? Because Opera feels it inconvenient that Windows already comes with a browser?

Let me tell you something. I found out about Opera when it was in version 3. Back then, you could use it for 30 days (if you didn't use it during a day, it didn't count against your 30 days), and if you liked it, you had to pay. Shareware. Their marketing message at the time was something along the lines that, we're so sure you'll like the speed of our browser, here are the links to download Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. Try and compare. And they were absolutely right. Their browser was faster in every respect, leaner, smaller, tighter. When you clicked a file to download it, it immediately began to download, while you were selecting the destination. Contrast that with IE and Netscape of the time, which waited until you took half an hour to navigate to where you wanted the file before they even started. Page rendering was faster. The interface was uncluttered, simple, quick, easy to use. It was a wonderful product. I continued upgrading through versions 4, 5, 6, and 7. At some point in there, it stopped being shareware and became free software. And at some point, I stopped using it and moved on to Firefox. The reason was simple. The browser grew and began to include all kinds of bells and whistles. The interface became cluttered. Too much junk in my opinion. I am sure that some people like that, but for me, the very reason to use Opera was that it was the opposite of these other bloated browsers. It became IMHO what I was trying to get away from. Don't get me wrong. In the 5 or 6 or 7 years that I used Opera, it was a lifesaver. It was a joy to use, much, much, much better than the alternative (which at some point between the demise of Netscape and the first release of Firefox, was only IE or very crippled browsers). I just think they should have concentrated on having the tiniest yet fully featured browser, lightning fast, low memory usage, etc. So they could keep linking to the IE download page, because they could be so sure and correct that their browser kicks the pants off the competition. Unfortunately they chose the legal route, which is always a bad thing.

Back to Microsoft. If due to some court case, Microsoft is not allowed to bundle anything together, then soon nobody will be allowed to bundle anything together. This will be horrible! Besides, if you buy computer with Windows OS and there is no browser bundled with it, how in the hell are you supposed to download a different browser? 99.9% of computer users will NOT know how to download a browser without first having one with which to download one. In fact, even if you were going to compile wget from sources, you'd still need a browser to get the sources and the compiler. This is an example of courts, companies, lawyers, who have no clue about computers (and think the monitor is the computer) just trying to play the lawsuit lottery against Microsoft. Face it. They no longer have a monopoly. Apple is nearly at 10% of the market. Linux has some share. The *BSDs have some share. People DO have a choice now. If they don't buy an Apple (which is dead simple to use and doesn't cost more than a comparable "PC" machine), and if they don't want to learn Linux (or won't or can't) then it is their choice to use Windows. And there is no monopoly in the browser area either. With IE, Konquerer, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, shit the list goes on and on. What monopoly? This is not antitrust. This is bullshit. Sorry. I LOVE Opera. Opera 3 especially. It has come a long way since then, many improvements, but the fact is that when all was darkness around and Opera shone some light on the Internet by making it actually bearable to use rather than the horror that was IE or Netscape, but I am no fan of this lawsuit.

That's awesome. I'm glad it's not just geeks chained to desks here on /. I stand corrected. :)

The next thing you know, they'll make up a screen scraper in JavaScript. There are several things to learn from this. For the users, one, that you should completely clear your browser (Clear Private Data or similar) before going to a banking website, two that you should NEVER open other websites (or have them open) while you're signed in to a banking website, third that when you've finished banking, you should completely clear your browser again. For the browser makers (Firefox devs reading this?), third party cookies should be disabled by default, the option to turn them on should come with stern warnings, and each website can ONLY read cookies previously set by itself. Further when an encrypted page is opened, its memory should be such that other pages cannot access any part of it. In other words, the same sandboxing approach taken to deal with other security issues, within the browser for encrypted pages.