jdw

It's sad but unsurprising to see people squabble about how legalized theft (i.e., taxation) is distributed.  When somebody lifts your wallet and steals something from it, it's considered theft that is prohibited by law.  But when the government says it will do the same for the greater good, somehow that's A-OK.  Pro-tax people will come out of the woodwork citing roads, bridges, schools and all manner of glorious things legalized theft has funded and is continuing to fund.  But all those things, however good, still are paid for with stolen money.  "Stolen" in that it was taken without giving the tax payer a choice not to pay it.

Regardless of the arguable need for taxation, it's still legalized theft.  No matter how much good it does, theft is theft.  As such, everybody in the business of redistributing the stolen loot is "a little shady." That remains true even when you consider that some theft via taxation is deemed necessary for our current lawless and loveless society to survive.  Despite the need, taxation is still "theft."  I repeat this refrain only because most people refuse to call it what it actually is.

So let's get off the high horses and admit taxation is theft so that "shady" and "criminal" and "embezzle" terms can be thrown in the garbage where they belong.  

Money doesn't typically solve problems.  It more often creates them.  That's yet another thing most people still haven't figured out.  

Real change begins in the human heart, doing things for the good of one's fellow man without being compelled by force.  Only then will you see meaningful change in society.  For now, society fights fire with fire, calls one type of theft bad and another type of theft good.  It's a highly imperfect system we have, but most people brush it off by saying, "no society is perfect."  Of course, that's just a cover to maintain the status quo.  And so the infighting over stolen loot continues.

Deep breath.

Now we move on to the next news story.

Well, it's back to FREEDOM FRIES, I guess.

If articles like this are newsworthy, I suppose I could say, "Apple will ditch the iPhone 16 for iPhone 3G tech in honor of RETRO phones" and then you would publish the rumor?  If not, do I need to be a Digitimes employee?

  

I don't see that as Apple's fault.  It's more of a problem with Jon Stewart.

The scary thing about very old iPhone is the battery condition.  We in the vintage Mac community know very well how old Maxell lithiums have destroyed one too many Mac motherboards.  So seeing how this old iPhone has fared through the years will be interesting, assuming the new owner decides to open it.  A battery is a bag of chemicals just waiting to spray its guts all over the place. Unlike a vintage wine, when you open a boxed iPhone a hundred years hence, it will reveal little more than a mess inside.