You are a moron. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut. But more importantly, you should never infer guilt by association and discount anything because of preconceived notions that are not even relevant.

Grow up.

The guy at the top is always a lying sack of shit. There are people tucked away in a lab somewhere that the PR Department would NEVER allow to step in front of a microphone.

You don't know much about corporations, do you?

"We have always been at war with Eastasia."

Well, the dictionary disagrees with your:

The government is taking my property without my permission, and it gives itself the right to do so. The government partially does it secretly, and if I don't comply I will go to jail.

But you took my words out of context. I am talking about "general forms of tax". For example income tax, sales tax and all taxes that have no specific purpose. Buy an airline ticket? You pay security tax. Fine, fair and square. I choose to buy an airplane ticket and the government has to provide security, ATC etc. So I pay taxes for it. But why the F should I pay income taxes to the government can bail out "Too big to fail" crooks?

I am not opposed to paying taxes in general, I'm just opposed to that "we're taking your money and put it in our wallet, and we'll see later what we'll do with it. But trust us, it's in your interest" crap. You want my money, I want to see (and preferably have a voice as to) what you're doing with it.

I've been deciding whether to switch back to iOS for my next tablet, and this statement has been enough to seal it.

Oh, come off it. Now you sound like the guy on the radio who says 'I have siding on my house installed by our Sponsor, Adolph's Siding Company.'

Google nor Apple are worthy of our trust. Don't use their email services. Don't use their cloud services.

Don't pretend we all need to choose sides.

The part that gets me is that Apple thinks that it's a Google or Apple choice. That by tearing down Google they can raise themselves up.

I choose neither.

But Apple has historically promoted the idea of a competitor to their fandom. They utilize an 'Immanual Goldstein is the enemy' model, with regular five minute hate sessions.

I don't think they can maintain their marketing culture without something out there for their fans to feel superior to.

But we can stop caring. We don't have to pick a flag to wave in the air, or at least we don't need to pick one of the corporate logos on our flags.

Ugh, that's a terrible characterization especially he actually has a valid business model, invest in start ups whose business model is doing highly profitable services for government. It's not about "making" jobs, but hoovering up public funding for profit.

I think the spin about returning tech to government is an attempt to evade the opposition to government expenditures. It may also be an attempt to portray the VC fund he represents as being one of a few players in that sector, even though it probably isn't IMHO.

That's not what he's doing. It's a standard VC fund with the expectation of profit. They just happen to specialize in start ups providing government services.

If you were accurate, he'd be fleeced in short order (your last sentence in other words) and life would move on, but with one significantly poorer and wiser entrepreneur.

Once in a while it is time to go pedantic.
Words have meanings. We can string words together without regard to their meanings, and create an aphorism that sounds good, but it leads to logical incorrectness and a misunderstanding of how things work. It would be better if you were just gibbering.

Theft
In common usage, theft is the taking of another person's property without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it.

Tax
A tax (from the Latin taxo; "rate") is a financial charge or other levy imposed upon a taxpayer (an individual or legal entity) by a state or the functional equivalent of a state such that failure to pay, or evasion of or resistance to collection, is punishable by law.

Donation
A donation is a gift given by physical or legal persons,

Taxation is not theft. The two words describe different circumstances and processes. The outcome may be the same (your stuff is gone), but they are two different words with different meanings.

It would seem to me that if you do not want to pay your taxes but do so under threat of law, it would be theft. If you do want to pay your taxes voluntarily, it would be a donation. Of course this is using common understanding of definitions.

"I still haven't found what I'm looking for" but I prefer Negativland.

Boeing - Giant company able to funnel money to appropriate Senators and congressmen
SpaceX - Small company able to funnel less money than Boeing to anyone.

Stop voting for Republicrats and Demicans.

The first Budget in Obama's term put the war spending on budget.

They were off budget during Bush's terms but one of the first acts Obama did with a democrat congress was to put them on budget.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02...

Now, people may think "good, we need to account for that money anyways" but the fact is they were always accounted for in the end. The problem with this is the rules of congress say you have to pay for new spending. With the wars off budget, when congress decided to do something new or increase something, they had to either decrease somewhere else, raise taxes, or assume an influx of revenue with a realistic chance of it happening. Now, when the wars wind down, congress can simply spend the money as new spending without having to at minimum look for it.

Note, I saw some articles saying that we are still using some supplemental appropriates (off budget) for spending on the wars. I am led to believe this is minor compared to the on budget spending for it.

Minecraft doesn't have a persistent internet connection while running. Most of the server infrastructure in Minecraft is third-party. There's a login when you start the game to authenticate your copy, but a login server is much smaller than a Microtransaction server connected to the game all the time.

You have just proposed lawlessness, and implied that it was okay. I hope you realize exactly what you're saying.

The six has a flat back, Mr. Always Corrected.

the entire enterprise of philosophy is some sort of academic scam

It pretty much is once you understand it.

That's what Neil DeGrasse Tyson said.