not counting on the fact that the location were my 15 friend and i gater to play at CoD4 doesn't have any adsl

but it's the only location were we could gather to play because none of our homes had enough space and none had the capability to support the energy drain of 16 modern pc!!!

and hardly 1/2 of us will play from our homes because it's a pleasant occasion to gather, and insults via Voip aren't so much satisfactory! :)

so no lan -> no gathering -> no playing -> no buying

not so fictional unfortunately!

in the mail server that I administer there are about 80/90.000 connection to send mail every day, of those only about 2.000 weren't blocked by the greylist.
of those 2000 at least 10% were blocked on the first mail server as spam or virus and then at least another 10% is blocked on the final server for the same causes.

so no more than 1600 mail/day were legittimate (or at least not filtered out, because many spam still pass) and that comprise the locally generated mail (the ones that doesn't have spam or virus except for the occasional epidemic...)

so at least 78400/80000 = 98% were spam (or virus), excluding the locally generated mail at least 99% of the mail coming in from internet is certainly unwanted!

I want be surprised if only 0.5% or less were truly legitimate working mail and not unusefull mailing list never cancelled...

well, steam isn't the only alternative, there are reasonable people like at www.gog.com that sell you downloadable games that will never require an internet connection (except for the first download)

and in few year there will hardly be any device without any possibility of on lyne interaction or at least possibility to simply plug in an usb key with the file downloaded elsewere...

they are after the first part of the taxes, directly detracted from the salary, then there are the ones at the end of the year, the ones on the propriety of house, the one on garbage and some other minor...

but if yours is cut in half there is not an astonish difference as i initially thought. between all the kind of taxes it's about 50-55% in taxes.

that's for the most of the population.

theoretically the more rich have more severe taxes, but they usually have hired professional able to find loophole to pay much less :(

average income at 2500 Euro/month?????

where do you live?

or to be more precise, where do I live!!!

here in Italy 1200-1300 euro/month are much more the norm!

that's for people with some specialization, and after a lot of taxation were already applied by the employer on before the paycheck.

but there were still many different taxes at the end of the year and our local version of VAT (called IVA)
it's more frequently at 20% (with some goods at less, like 4%)

but if you became (for example) a fat bloat practically paralysed, unable to do any work of any kind that could benefit the society and without money to sustain yourself does society leave you to die?

or someone (friend, relatives, church, neighbour, charity, ... ) pay for you in time, sweat or money?

much more likely the latter than the former...

so in 99% of the cases your self destruction is a cost for the society (even if you commit suicide or die there are the cost to dispose of the corpse...) at no added benefit.

you could never be totally separated and independent from the society, unless you live like an Inuit of a long time ago, so you have some privileges and some responsibility, that you want it or not.

well, theoretically no, the people themselves should self regulate and help neighbour and family regulate themselves.

but evidently it hasn't functioned.

so, albeit I doubt this tax is a solution to the problem, I definitely support some kind of intervention.

granted, I'm not from the USA, but from Italy where usually there is a much better culinary tradition. but even here we start to see a lot of really fat child and even mecdonald addicted ones...

contrary to the USA we have public healthcare, so if many stupid people gorge themselves at mcdonald and became really fat and with a ton of health problems that need medical cares I pay for them too!

and making a server for every game area (with a way to move seamlessly from one area/server to another ) instead of many instance of the same server with every area on it?

because about no one know what will happen to him when he was rounded up.

the majority of the world (and of the german themselves) discovered it only when the allied soldier conquered the camps.

so resit to the death or be "simply" relocate was the choice of the moment for most (if they had weapon and time to use them) if they know at all that something will happen and what could it been.

reading your post i immediately thought of many crimes done by stupid USA military against italians. in all those cases the culprit were never estradited to italy.

for reference to those cases, i doesn't remember details but maybe a bit of googling could help...

1) some 20+ year ago some brash stupid topgun flowed their fighter a bit too near some civilian zones, cutting the cable of a chairlift killing some tens of people... cernis case (if i remember correctly)

2) during the last iraqi invasion an italian secret service agent nogotiate to free an italian hostage, when they were on the car to the airport the solder at a roadblock fired a lot on the car killing the agent and another of the passengers. calipary case