Exactly! The existence of God can neither be proved nor disproved. Anyone that claims otherwise.. better have some proof!

They came from Pacific Bell, actually.

Ah, honestly I ran out of energy after responding to the other posts. Heh. I'll try to take the time to respond now..

Small companies interested in being acquired would approve of this. Owners and employees of small companies/startups often hope that large companies will buy them. Also, MS and other large corporations don't kill every technology they buy.

You believe that corporations are "greed personified". That is your opinion (not an unequivocal fact). Some corporations may be led by greedy executives while others may be not. Otherwise, corporations obviously do exist to make money. However, a goal of making money does not necessarily equate to being greedy.

Some corporations may break the law, some may not. However, it can hardly be proven that all or even most do break the law in order to make money.

I agree that the law should treat them equally (or fairly). I also agree that corporations shouldn't (necessarily) have special rights. However, I never mentioned this in my original post so I'm not sure how it relates to my statement which was "corporations are not evil".

I agree that treatment of workers overseas is pretty sad. However, I was specifically referring to working environment/benefits in the US (within the context of how increased taxes would affect them).

I think Americans benefits from this. I think the American government should base policy on what is of benefit to its citizens (within reason, not through military means unless necessary, etc).

You have to more than disagree with points, you have to logically refute them.

Well, I believe that we agree, somewhat, in that we are not electing the right people. I also believe that tax reform is a critical component of turning things around. However, I believe the bigger thing to be concerned about is spending. The government should spend less, thus generating smaller/no debts, thus placing less of a tax burden on the citizenry. If reckless spending is/was the problem, hiking taxes is not the answer. Less spending is the answer!

Your turn :).

I disagree w/ most of your points. I don't think that making a profit is inherently evil (or that corporations are inherently evil). I admit that some corporations do bad things, but this is no different from any individual OR government. On the whole, corporations provide hundreds of thousands if not millions of good jobs to Americans. They also provide returns to investors. They typically don't do this via criminal activities. Taxing corporations will reduce income. This means that either expenses or profit will need to be reduced. In all likelyhood, corporations will opt for reducing expenses before reducing profits. This will mean stagnant wages, fewer perks, outsourcing or offshoring, etc.

And why do we want to put more money into the hands of governemnt? They've demonstrated time and again that they are incapable of responsibly managing money.

> No?

Ballmer may be paid too much in your opinion. MS probably could suck up the increased tax burden by lowering executive pay (or at least, in part). However, do I think that will happen? No. They will look for other ways to save money. Replacing staff in the US w/ staff in Asia is one great way to do that (as evidenced by the fact that they're already doing this). Increasing tax rates will only accelerate the replacement of US jobs w/ jobs in Asia.

Also, MS has no fair share to pay. We don't live in communist Russia. MS produces something useful that people are willing to pay for. You (and the government) do nothing (directly) to contribute to their success and as such have no right to their profits. MS's money is theirs. They earned it.

>Tell me again how the profits help out the workers again

Well, I mistakenly said profits instead of income/revenue. So, income/revenue obviously benefits workers by paying their salaries?

You tell them, brother! Way to bypass the entire point of my post.

This is not about 1 person at the top of the company. This is about the tens of thousands of US-based Microsoft employees (and all other US-based employees).

Do you have ANY idea how lucky we are to have such an abundance of comfy, high paying white collar jobs? The sheer quantity found in the US is NOT the norm worldwide.

These jobs allow tens/hundreds of thousands if not millions of Americans to live very nice lifestyles (that is the goal, right? high standard of living?).

Raising the cost of business in the US WILL cause companies to look for ways to make up the difference elsewhere. Companies can VERY EASILY let staff go in the US and hire someone to work in the same role in Asia for 20% of the original cost. Companies WILL do this in order to maintain their quarterly/yearly numbers.

In other words, fsck Ballmer, I have no love for the guy BUT I guarantee you he won't be replaced by someone in Asia. I can't say the same for the rest of the MS staff...

My point is that corporations don't typically build Scrooge McDuck style underground vaults filled with gold coin. Instead, they use the money they make to expand or return profits to their investors.

In other words, while corporations may appear to be greedy (or may even be led by greedy executives), you have to ask yourself, what exactly does that greed translate into?

IMO, that greed translates into more jobs, a market for startup companies and a return on investment (among other things).

These are good things. Jobs are good! The chance to become rich by having the small company you work for purchased is good! The chance to get return on investment is good (401k anyone?)!

If you increase corporate taxes, you increase expenses. Those expenses come from revenue and translate into reduced profits. Reduced profits means less expansion, less purchasing of small companies, less return on investment to investors.

Ah fine, word smith my post instead of responding to the message. Way to take me down a notch.

..but it seems odd to me that 99% of the comments here are all anti-MS, pro-tax. What do corporations do with profits? They use them to PAY STAFF, GIVE RAISES, purchase companies, save for bad economies (like the current one??), and return money to investors. What.. the hell.. is wrong w/ doing this? Generally speaking, corporations operating in the US are not evil. There are no corporate slave camps, no corporate mass graves, nobody making two dollars a day, none of that. Here in the US, corporations provide cushy jobs to often times lazy Americans. You can get a job making 50-100k "managing" or generally doing other low effort things.

So, ya, let's be smart, tax giant organizations providing millions of cushy, well paid jobs! We've killed manufacturing in this country, now let's kill of white collar jobs too!! Soon we can all work at fscking Starbucks!!

Also, why the hell do we want to give more money to a government that does nothing but waste it? The government spends 1/2 it's time creating problems and the other 1/2 trying to solve them. Stop funding the idiots in DC!! Bring responsibility back to the individual and back to the community! Stop trying to offload your personal responsibilities on to your government... or don't.. but don't complain when you DO end up in shackles (few personal liberties, large tax burden, no input into the political process -- we're almost there!).

FFS!

Dude. The US built ARPANet and the DNS system. The US has no obligation to hand it over to the UN. If the UN or other countries want a different DNS system, then go build it? What is complicated about that?

Ah, these are the reasons I prefer to use a Mac w/ Mac OS X instead of Windows/Linux, not a sales pitch.

Ya, I probably should have chosen a different term. I'm referring to the aesthetics of the laptop as well as the typically good feature set (in addition to the actual build quality).

For example, I purchased a late 2008 MacBook Pro. This laptop has an all aluminum case, nice glass screen w/ a very bright LED display, it is fairly thin and fairly light, etc. It would be difficult for me to find another laptop that provided this same quality of design and feature set. Really this is a personal preference issue, but I think MacBooks are more appealing in terms of design, etc.

It also helps to consider that Apple often brings new HW features "to the masses". They were the first to introduce CD-ROM less computers (widespread). The MacBook Air was the "thinest" laptop available (and had SSD). My current MacBook has a nice mini-DVI port (not some huge DVI or DB9 port), the magnetic power cord connector, etc. All in all, it's obvious that they try to drive sales via new, innovative products. In other words, their model is to create new useful things in order to attract new users. I like having new useful things.

Ah, really, the benefits IMO are that you spend less time dealing with the complex/cobbled together environment, you get a more consistent/better UI and more commercial support for applications. I do a lot of development/learning on NetBSD in X/Fluxbox. I enjoy the simple keyboard based navigation and the old school "hacker" feel of it all BUT it was (and is) a complete and total pain in the ass to setup compared to OS X (it's not that bad really, but definitely more difficult than OS X). I've used other WMs like KDE, Gnome, etc. They're not bad, but they're definitely behind Windows and OS X in terms of consistency across applications, consistency of widgets, quality of applications (the look & feel, usage or feature sets are behind in many ways).

So really, you get a better user experience (not just eye candy), you have an easier time administering your machine and you have access to more applications (perhaps excluding games) like PhotoShop, Excel, blah blah (if you happen to need to use those things).

You might say that apps like Open Office, Gimp, etc fill the SW needs, but really, you can run those on Mac OS X too so w/ the Mac you have same options as Linux and more (without the hassle).

Ya, I agree that one disadvantage of the Mac is the inability to play games.

Ah, I'm saying that the laptop itself is typically nicer and will sometimes include HW features not found elsewhere, that Mac OS X provides a better interface (not just pretty, but more useful), that you have access to more useful software and that, if needed, you can still run Windows and Linux software.

So, I prefer having a nicer laptop, a nicer UI, having to spend less time trying to get applications built/working, having access to applications like PhotoShop AND the ability to run Windows, NetBSD etc in VMware when I want to use those as well.

Also, for dev, Xcode is a fairly nice IDE. I have yet to find an equally nice IDE for Linux/BSD.

Ah, this was stated in one of the parent posts. I can spell it out for you though. Windows does not provide a Unix environment. Ubuntu does not provide an "excellent" UI. X-Windows + the various window manager are nice, usable, more than I could hope to build myself BUT they are not, IMO, nicer than the UI inclued w/ OS X. So - a Mac provides you with the following advantages: 1) good build quality (aluminum case, bright LED, etc) 2) Unix system w/ very solid UI 3) retain ability to run Windows/play games. Thus, if you buy a Mac AND dual boot it, you can have both full support for games and a Unix system w/ a "best of breed" user interface. If you buy a non-Apple system you can still have Windows and Linux/BSD, etc. However, the Linux/BSD/X-Windows based UI won't be as nice. In fact, you can even buy an Apple laptop and run Windows/Linux. You're still ahead due to the nicer laptop.