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Comment Re:Hmm.. must be some difference (Score 1) 1259

Australia's government-provided student loans are repaid through the tax system. They only need to be repaid once your income goes over a certain threshold, and there is no real interest rate - it is merely indexed with inflation so that you repay the same amount in real terms. It is also discharged upon death.

Some typical figures: if your taxable income for this year is $38,000 or less, you do not need to pay anything this year. The maximum rate you might need to repay is 8% of your taxable income (if you earn more than $71,000). Compulsory payments can be deferred under circumstances of financial hardship.

There is also Youth Allowance, a government payment of up to $10k/yr (depending upon parental income) for living expenses while studying or other activities likely to increase employability. This does not require repayment.

Comment Re:Am I cynical? (Score 1) 1505

Taxes are paid on profits, not revenues. Evading taxes allows them more profit (which goes directly and indirectly to investors), but does not affect their costs.

If their prices (and hence revenues) are low enough that they would fold if they had to pay tax, then they are not making a profit and would not have had to pay company tax anyway!

Comment Re:Wont increase taxes on middle class (Score 1) 1505

You seem to have missed my entire point. Corporations do not pay taxes, at all!

Correct: it is the investors in the company who pay the company taxes, by slowing of share price increases and reduced dividends. So yes, as I do have some investments, I am arguing for higher taxes on myself. But not by the mechanism you describe.

Comment Re:Not a tax scam (Score 1) 1505

And guess who winds up paying for the taxes companies pay? Yep, the people that buy the products

No, company taxes are paid on profits, not revenue. Those profits generally affect share prices and dividends, both of which benefit investors. So it is a tax primarily on those who invest in companies, not on those who merely buy from them.

Comment Re:Only 2-4% transition from free to paid gaming (Score 1) 158

One fact missing from the above that might be fairly pertinent, is that Three Rings currently derives most of their income from in-game items bought with real cash.

For example, their Puzzle Pirates game used to be straight subscription only. Then they opened up new servers based on tradable micropayment tokens instead, and it took off like a rocket. Not just in number of players, but also in revenue - apparently without greatly increasing overheads.

That isn't true RMT, but fills the same demand. I think if game developers go the way of creating true RMT markets, they're abdicating any moral position they might have had on keeping real cash out of the game, but also missing out on any of the potential benefits of abandoning that position. So I think it's a pretty dumb idea.

Comment Re:Answers (Score 1) 724

I can imagine that a heavy Photoshop user would want every bit of RAM he can get too. The Word-wielding-office-worker? I don't think so.

Given the tendency of Word-wielding-office-workers to put dozens of pictures straight from their 10 megapixel digital cameras into documents without trimming or downsampling, you better believe that they'll eat up tons of RAM rather quickly. Then they'll leave them open all day while they just open up a new Word document for each new thing they work on.

Comment Re:If you're running as non-administrator.... (Score 2, Insightful) 120

It's not a virus, it's a worm - it exploits bugs in automated OS services to run the code. There doesn't even need to be a user logged in for this to spread. (It also scans local networks for weak passwords and attempts to install itself via autorun on removable media) However, there is no fundamental reason why those services should run with permission to install anything either.

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