Category: Politics

Indirect taxes

I get increasingly annoyed by the various indirect taxes in Norway, such as the fees for state services.

Re-regisitering a car is one of them, the fee to the state for purchasing a new appartment is another. The latter fee is about 2 percent of the price. Call me crazy, but I don't think the amount of work increases linearly with the price of the apartment or house.

One of the state's largest income sources is the Value Added Tax (VAT), which is 25 percent for generic items, 11 percent for certain groceries, and a whole bunch of other numbers for various transactions, such as 8 percent for the broadcasting license

When I purchased my car the re-registration fee was about 1300 USD. The cost estimates for the same task is about 50 USD.

After intensified media attention on the subject, the government might get more openness around these fees. The Secretary of Finance and myself probably have different reasons to react, however. Her reasoning is that it is unjustified because it is paid by the common man and not "the rich", a classification she place somewhere between one third and half of the Norwegian population in.

In my opinion these services should be priced at self-cost and not serve as yet another indirect tax.

Puerto rico is low on cash

As I have an acquaintance originating from Puerto Rico, and have read two books written by him about Puerto Rico, titled Shining Star and Pulling Strings, I'm somewhat extra facinated about Puerto Rico. Interestingly enough Puerto Rico literally translates to Rich Port, despite this, amongst others CNN reports that

Nearly 1,600 schools shuttered. Some 205,000 public workers without pay. All government offices closed except for essential services, such as police and hospitals.

This is the scenario if local lawmakers don't approve a bailout plan this week for this U.S. Caribbean territory, which has a $1 billion deficit and runs out of cash on Monday to pay civil servants and provide public services.

As the article continues

"It's a dire situation. The fiscal crisis is real," said Argeo Quinones, an economic professor at the University of Puerto Rico.

"They're running out of options," added David Hitchcock, a director at credit rating agency Standard & Poor's. Standard & Poor's and Moody's Investors Service say Puerto Rico's economic outlook was negative and have put Puerto Rico on a special watch status -- with the possibility of downgrading the government's credit rating.

Good luck to Puerto Rico on fixing up the financial crizis.

On Linux being anti-capitalistic

As most of those who knows me knows, I'm a GNU/Linux advocate. The GNU/Linux operating system is running exclusively on all my computers, and that is the way it will continue to be for a long time. This is what I'm happy with, providing me both the flexibility and the stability I want from day to day.

Today I was presented with a blog post at ShelleyTheRepublican that was, uhm, interesting.

Fortunately Microsoft have prepared a great deal of information to help computer users get away from this menace

Interestingly enough I wrote an article commenting on Microsoft's Get The Facts campaign not too long ago, which had 15,000 unique visitors in a day. Something tells me Tristan Shuddery, the original author of the article, was not one of them.

My favorite paragraph in the blog post is still

If you see a company using Linux, it may be that they have not paid for this software. Report them to the Business Software Alliance who have the legal authority to inspect any company's computers for illegal programs like Linux.

The Business Software Alliance's website states the following:

The Business Software Alliance is the foremost organization dedicated to promoting a safe and legal digital world. BSA is the voice of the world's commercial software industry and its hardware partners before governments and in the international marketplace. Its members represent the fastest growing industry in the world. BSA educates consumers on software management and copyright protection, cyber security, trade, e-commerce and other Internet-related issues.

Now, first of all. Using a product that is offered for free is still legal, no matter what Shelley seems to believe. For some reason she seems to believe that nobody is making money off of GNU/Linux. But has she considered that most pay more for support than the actual product? And people want to customize their packages to fit their company, giving programmers work to do. Companies, like International Business Machines (IBM) is making money and providing jobs for employees all around the world, including America which she seems particulary centered around.

Finally, remember to include Linux users in your prayers tonight. As individuals we may not be able to change people's minds, but the Bible teaches that God can make any sinner repent.

Well, its a good thing I'm non-religious then, and I have a hard time expressing how happy I am that this woman is unable to change my mind.

Tristan follows up on the story in a comment to the post stating

Thanks for posting my article Shelley; I submitted this to the mainstream IT press, but none of them wanted to know. It's shocking to learn that the same liberal bias that infects mainstream news-sources also affects the technical press.

Yes, Linux is a primative European clone; It is much less capable than Windows. In fact it omits features that were standard in Windows back in 1998; For example Linux has no built-in anti-virus or anti-spyware software.

You cannot even buy popular utilities like Norton Security to compensate for this fact. There are no tools for common tasks like defragging a hard disk. God knows what you would use to send a fax or make a website. You cannot even get Front Page for Linux.

Linux is that bad; The only explaination I can think for people using it is that it by-passes the protection given by American companies and the Dept of Homeland Security. It should be considered a terrorist program.

Tristan

protect yourself against identity theft

Interestingly enough, Tristan's web log (blog) is hosted on blogger.com, a service provided by Google. as "rj" states in some comments:

rj said...

Shelley, you'd do better to go research the matter yourself.

There's a good chance that blogger.com runs on Linux. Maybe you should ask them.

Shelley said...

No way. Blogger.com is hosting on Windows!!!
I would not host my website on Linux either. It's disgusting.

rj said...

Blogger.com is run by Google.

"What operating system (OS) does the Google Search Appliance run on?

The Google Search Appliance is based on the same software that is used in Google's datacenters. The operating system is a hardened version of Linux that is optimized for search, sometimes referred to as Google Linux."

Google Enterprise Solutions

"Google quickly outgrew the confines of its Menlo Park home, and by February 1999 had moved to an office on University Avenue in Palo Alto. At eight employees, Google's staff had nearly tripled, and the service was answering more than 500,000 queries per day. Interest in the company had grown as well. Red Hat signed on as its first commercial search customer, drawn in part by Google's commitment to running its servers on the open source operating system Linux."

Google Corporate Information

And to close up, the ShelleyTheRepublican website is itself hosted using the Open Source Apache running Linux.

Sorry, I think you are a liar.
Me and linux hosting? Never!

Ignorance is bliss.