It strains credulity to believe anyone could be as dense as you are acting here.

The wiki article notes that the phrase is commonly misused (like most any technical phrase) but it also alerts you as to what we are referring to - human computers were used for centuries to do exactly what digital computers do today, in e.g. astronomy. They would take input, mechanically apply the designated algorithm, and produce output, just as I have described. They usually worked in teams, with many processors running either in parallel, serial, or both, depending on the job. In the article I linked you can even see a picture of some human computers along with their requisite tools - desks, paper, pens.

You are either extraordinarily dense, extraordinarily ignorant of the subject you chose to expound on, or both.

"It's really just a question of who should be sitting on a stockpile of money and pumping that back into themselves? The government, or a company that makes iPads?"

Neither, please.

But if that's really the only choices you can come up with? Apple should get the money. At least they wont use it to drop bombs. Probably.

In the US, you can generally sue for anything you can find a lawyer willing to file the paperwork on.

Winning the case might be a bit more difficult however.

No, he's talking to you, and he's spot on.

Being a human computer is not simply doing a trivial sum in ones head. It means taking input (on paper) doing complicated calculations with that input (again, on paper) and then producing output (on paper.)

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_computer

"The human doesn't need any hardware to add two numbers, or calculate sums of angles. "

Incorrect. A human needs a pen and paper in order to do the calculations (of course we can do trivial sums in our head but a 'human calculator' requires more than that.) An abacus is extremely helpful as well. And of course, the numbers come from somewhere (input) and when the calculations are complete they are then transmitted in some way as well (output.)

I never said they could do it without any hardware. A human calculator needs essentially the same hardware to do this that a digital computer would. A general purpose digital computer still needs I/O devices to do anything useful, and a human computer doing the same job would need the same.

"So, for example, a patent claim of triangulating a position given three signals is not patentable, because we could do that on paper. But a patent claim that includes receiving those signals from a GPS satellite with an antenna is patentable. "

Which just shows the absurdity of the patent regime. Your argument that a human being could not do that is worse than wrong, it's entirely ignorant. There is no way to triangulate signals without having an antenna involved, and the type of antenna is a purely functional choice based on the situation. Absolutely anything that a computer can do, a person can do. I/O devices? All the computer does with them is send and receive numbers - just exactly the same way a human computer would send and receive numbers appropriately in the same situation.

Indeed, you are living proof of that particular statement.

Yes, when a corporation or any other sort of business pays taxes, that tax is simply another expense which they pass onto their customers. There are a few possible variations on that - if one business is hit with a tax that its competitors manage to avoid, for instance, that business is likely to be OUT of business as a result. But if it's imposed across the board, it simply adds to the operating costs of the businesses affected, and the entire tax burden falls on individuals. When the companies in question are huge multinationals that just means it's even less likely that we little people will be able to find any workable way around paying it.

You can call me stupid and post silly pictures all you want but it's still true.

I dont agree that tax is inevitable (or only possible to get rid of via anarchy) but setting that aside and accepting your contention for the sake of argument - taxes in such a situation should still be assessed directly against the people that actually have to pay them, so that they arent invisible.

You pose a false dilemma. You imply there are only two possible answers, but in fact they are both wrong, and the correct answer is entirely different.

Now let's start with another question, one you didnt include. Do you think multinationals pay tax or not?

Because if you think they do you sir do not understand the basics here. They do not pay taxes, never have, never will. Any and all taxes assessed against them are and will be paid by their customers. No amount of fiddling with tax codes is ever going to change that basic fact, and beyond that, any such fiddling is inevitably going to be done with the interests of said multinationals at the forefront, since they are the ones that wield enough influence with legislators to get what they want.

So it has nothing to do with what I think *should* happen here, but only with what we know from experience and reason does, will and must happen. Whatever tax burden corporations are purportedly saddled with, it is the individual that ultimately pays them.

The solution is to reduce government spending, and thus the total tax burden. All the noise about corporate taxation serves a single purpose - to distract people from that fact and keep us divided and blaming each other so that we dont unite against our common oppressors.

"Let me ask you a question â" is your objection that felons who have served their time can't vote or that the standard for felonies â" those major crimes against society â" has been watered down? Because it sounds to me that it is the watering down of felonies that is your issues â" and I would agree with you there."

I cant speak for the other poster but I would say both contentions are correct. A lot of things are being called felonies now that should not be. But even beyond that, I believe the grandparent poster is correct. Once someone has served their 'debt to society' and are released they should be free again.

That's a pathetic throw-away jab, and the only appropriate answer is 'no you.'

"And some functions really have to be reserved to some form of government at a basic level, unless you want to start outsourcing things like making laws and starting wars to private industry."

Instead of assuming such functions would have to be 'outsourced' why not consider eliminating them? Certainly starting wars is a function we could do without.