745300+ entries in 0.483s
mircea_popescu: rror at every bang of
the downstairs door and at every step on
the staircase, but had understood
they had nothing left
to lose and had boldly set up in
the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?
mircea_popescu: And how we burned in
the camps later,
thinking: What would
things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night
to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had
to say good-bye
to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when
they arrested a quarter of
the entire city, people had not simply sat
there in
their lairs, paling with
te
mircea_popescu: at any rate.
the waco debacle has been perhaps
the costliest enforcing action by
the various bureaus
ThickAsThieves: "Google's new cloud storage prices are as low as $0.026 per gigabyte as a flat rate, far below Amazon's lowest offering of $0.037 per gigabyte, which kicks in if you're holding
terabytes of data in
the AWS cloud."
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform in
the spirit of
that example, 1mn people killed on highways each year, no stalin.
mircea_popescu: but anyway :
the hissing of
the serpent is easily ignored, until
the point you cross its boundary.
mircea_popescu: for all
the appearance and pretense of stolid solidity.
ThickAsThieves: then when you use
the gift card all
that happens again
mircea_popescu: it's difficult
to overstate just how fragile
the entire morloch actually is.
mircea_popescu: meanwhile, five people don't settle and
the entire system collapses in flames.
mircea_popescu: specifically : people who are already defeated
take into consideration nonsense such as "oh but
the feds have a 9x% conviction rate" as a ready-made excuse
to settle.
ThickAsThieves: it's also an absurd degree of
taxation: say i buy a Walmart Gift Card with btc, i should pay sales
tax, gains
tax,
then
the seller reports profit and is
taxed, revenue used
to pay employees is
taxed.
then you
tack on
the accounting burden on both sides, plus
the seller's burden as
tax collector
mike_c: asciilifeform: indeed. how exactly would
they make an effort
to collect anyway? impossible.
bounce: IMO bit of a failing of government
to stick
to asking whether
they can get away with
taxing, and not asking whether
they should
mike_c: i do see your point, but i agree with ascii. it makes no practical difference since
the bureaucrats will not recognize said difference.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform
that's fine and dandy, but
the best way for
their pretense
to remain standing is for
tem
to vehehery carefully steer out of
the way of
their masters.
ThickAsThieves: the IRS makes no effort
to define a virtual currency either
bounce: at least
the
tax office rarely is interested in anything but
taxability
mircea_popescu: stock is a portion of
the business, so i get a brick out of
the building
that is represented by
the stock
ThickAsThieves: Dota 2 gets intricate
too,
the more i play
the more items i get,
they provide a market for selling items for USD credit
bounce: well, as long as
they steal
the
tax obligation with it, I suppose I can live with it
mike_c: if my employer pays me in stock, i owe
taxes. can't hit me in
the head with
that
jurov: don't give anybody a reason
to use silver bullets
then
ThickAsThieves: and
the hospital had commited
theft if
they did not produce
the lead back
to
the owner
diametric: I've done a lot of
things with WoW over
the years before I quit about 3 years ago
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform
this is
true. but, again, with pb i can hit you over
the head.
mircea_popescu: ThickAsThieves you could claim
that for a long
time, actually.
mircea_popescu: either it's not
taxable
throughout, except for realisation
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform again : i can hit you over
the head with
the cement.
diametric: which I said
those selling
the wow gold are liable for
taxes
bounce: er. if nobody "owning" WoW gold can hold
title
then even "stolen" (or
traded, or whatever) gold is held without
title, and so it canot possibly be
theft, now can it?
mircea_popescu: it's just
that
they can believe in one hand and piss in
the other, see which gets warm first.
mircea_popescu: in neither case a representation is made as
to
transfer of
title, which makes blizzard's ip assertions irrelevant.
diametric: I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm
telling you having actually
talked
to Blizzard's legal
team what
they believe
mircea_popescu: people
trading btc idem exchange possession without
title.
mircea_popescu: people
trading wow gold exchange possession without
title.
diametric: ThickAsThieves: all of
this in Blizzard's eyes constitutes
theft of intellectual property
diametric: they need
to pay
taxes, but blizzard doesn't.
bitcoinpete: ThickAsThieves: I've been keeping up with
the logs at least :)
diametric: mircea_popescu: people selling wow gold is
technically stealing it.
diametric: mircea_popescu: in
the same way if I stole your
TV and sold it, you're not responsible for capital gains on it.
mircea_popescu: and actually... wow gold
to usd exchanges are older and a lot more stable
than btc
to usd exchanges.
mircea_popescu: they're both sold on
the grounds of possesion, without
title.
diametric: Technically USD you made illegitimately would be
taxed as income, just as any other illegitimate sale
bitcoinpete: It has
too many footnotes,
too many airquotes, and is a bit long (and
therefore error-prone).
diametric: ThickAsThieves: none, since Blizzard explicitly states ownership of
the gold belongs
to
them.
ThickAsThieves: bitcoinpete, did you program your HootSuite
to post
that
to IRC? ;)
ThickAsThieves: i wonder what my
tax penalties will be for all
that unreported WoW gold
BingoBoingo: The younger one has had a Beiber like fanbase for some
time since his arrest.
ozbot: #FreeJahar: When Conspiracy
Theorists and One Direction Fans Collide
mircea_popescu: now how
the fuck can women
tell who
the violent males are ? he looks
totally harmless
to me.
mircea_popescu: the consensus in
the harem seems
to be
that
these chechen boyz (as
typified by
todashev) sure are pretty
jurov: she apparently
tweeted it (but
these slovak scumbags did not link it)