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https://www.revisor.leg.state.mn.us/bin/getpub.php?pubtype=STAT_CHAP_SEC&year=2006&section=181.78

If you don't use their IP or resources, and don't develop in their line of business or anticipated business, the employer can't claim it.

It did no good, of course, but I wrote an e-mail to the State of Minnesota complaining about the Minnesota Revenue "Where's My Refund" site. I can't think of any legitimate reason for a site like this to use Silverlight (or Flash or any other plugin). Here was my message:

Do you offer a non-Silverlight version of the income tax refund status application? It does not seem to work with a recent stable version of Moonlight, though I have tried little to try to make it work.

Further, why would Silverlight be of any benefit for such a (relatively) simple application? I deal with ASP.NET for a living, and I can't imagine any serious consideration of Silverlight for a public application like this one. Unless there are some requirements of which I am unaware, a simple ASP.NET application would more than suffice (because your site is already .NET-based).

Of course, there is little that can be done now, but perhaps next year...

Here was the ridiculous response:

Good Morning, There is no other version offered at this time. I do not know why this version was chosen.

Thank you for using our website.

Regards,
<name omitted to protect the stupid>

<name omitted to protect the stupid, again, since it was here twice>
Minnesota Department of Revenue
Individual Income Tax Division

This was in 2010, and of course, the same application is still in place.

There are a number of things in Minnesota to see: As mentioned previously the big ball of twine.
The Kensington runestone museum in Alexandria, MN. Not really science, but interesting from a history buff perspective
The Soudan underground mine state park which is part of the MINOS experiment. Near Tower MN
The Hull Rust Mine which is the worlds largest Iron ore mine. Worth seeing if you like big machines. It is just outside of Hibbing, MN
If you want to see some historical technology things the I would suggest the Nowthen Threshing show which has lots early tractors (steam, diesel, kerosene, gasoline), and stationary engines. The start up of the old Fairbanks engine is impressive: 2 stroke, 5 cylinders, 13,000+ cubic inches, 250HP, and shakes the whole building and ground. They also have an operational sawmill, blacksmithing, and threshing demo. Also you can see some impressive fully functional home built miniatures of the large equipment. It is in Nowthen, MN

Agree full heartily. I am currently trying to create a map book geared for hunting and the outdoors in Minnesota. All of the data is freely available (the state of Minnesota has gigs of info freely available) online from various sources. Also there are open source tools to create impressive maps freely available. Add in a bit of effort and self publishing sites like Lulu.com (anyone know of other good ones I could look into) and as an amateur one can probably become successful. Do I ever expect to become rich off this effort, no. Would I mind if I ended up with enough money from this endeavor to purchase a nice 40 acre plot up in the north woods because of it, not at all. I would love it if I could sell one copy to each deer hunter in Minnesota but I doubt I will ever approach that number.

So why am I doing this? Because I looked at maps geared towards hunters and outdoor people and discovered that most of them completely suck and those that don't suck completely still suck as they have incomplete info or the wrong type of info for what a hunter would care about. Again here I am doing it because I want to have a nice spiral bound map book (saddle stitched or stapled never lays flat) for myself and I find it fun. My test maps that I take hunting and hand out to others in the party have proven incredibly useful in finding public land and knowing what to expect before you get there. I know I will probably sell a few copies, mostly to those in my hunting party but anything beyond that would just be icing on the cake.

Agree full heartily. I am currently trying to create a map book geared for hunting and the outdoors in Minnesota. All of the data is freely available (the state of Minnesota has gigs of info freely available) online from various sources. Also there are open source tools to create impressive maps freely available. Add in a bit of effort and self publishing sites like Lulu.com (anyone know of other good ones I could look into) and as an amateur one can probably become successful. Do I ever expect to become rich off this effort, no. Would I mind if I ended up with enough money from this endeavor to purchase a nice 40 acre plot up in the north woods because of it, not at all. I would love it if I could sell one copy to each deer hunter in Minnesota but I doubt I will ever approach that number.

So why am I doing this? Because I looked at maps geared towards hunters and outdoor people and discovered that most of them completely suck and those that don't suck completely still suck as they have incomplete info or the wrong type of info for what a hunter would care about. Again here I am doing it because I want to have a nice spiral bound map book (saddle stitched or stapled never lays flat) for myself and I find it fun. My test maps that I take hunting and hand out to others in the party have proven incredibly useful in finding public land and knowing what to expect before you get there. I know I will probably sell a few copies, mostly to those in my hunting party but anything beyond that would just be icing on the cake.

All I ever get back from most of my representatives is a stand form letter du jour (a different one for each issue), and a request for campaign donations when the next elections comes around since I had contacted them. The only exception I have ever had on this was my local senator to the state of Minnesota (Senate district 37 Chris Gerlach) who actually writes back a letter addressing specific point I bring up. I frequently write, e-mail and call my representatives (each one probably 3-4 times a year) I receive and actually read the Minnesota government publication session weekly so I know what bills have been submitted and what is going on so I am probably the worst kind of constituent for a sitting politician, one that is actually informed and active.

You are wrong. Deal with it.

Actually you are wrong:

When traffic is moving at highway speeds and there are no backups, it makes sense to move sooner to the lane that will remain open through construction.

(source: the article you linked to). In other words, if traffic is flowing smoothly, keep it flowing smoothly by merging smoothly (and early). (Of course, once traffic is stationary and backed up, then it makes sense to use both lanes, because not doing so just doubles the length of the tailback. But that's not the situation that the GP was referring to :-)

This is correct. The State of Minnesota has already starting studying this issue. It has been a topic for transportation planners for several years

http://www.dot.state.mn.us/newsrels/11/04/18mbuf.html

In my opinion, there are serious privacy concerns with the system. In order to provide road condition/safety information and perform congestion pricing it tracks location constantly. The study isn't concerned with privacy as an implementation issue, although previous surveys have noted there could be a problem with public acceptance.

God bless Minnesota :/

But I agree, that's how it's supposed to work.

Use taxes don't violate the Interstate Commerce clause. Not even Amazon claims that. Here is a pretty good explanation of how state taxes interact with the Interstate Commerce clause. Note that a tax is illegal only if it discriminates against Interstate Commerce, and particularly note the heading Discriminatory Taxes May Be Valid as Complementary Taxes.

The fifth amendment doesn't seem to apply in the courts; to quote his honor, William K. Sessions, Chief District Court Judge in Vermont in United States vs. Boucher:

"Holding that the 5th Amendment privilege against self-incrimination does not require the conclusion that a criminal defendant may elect not to divulge a password for an encrypted hard drive."

It also hasn't stopped judges from using the presence of encryption and unwillingness to give up the keys as evidence of misconduct.

If anything, Britain has stronger protection of individual rights than we have here in the US -- the defendant in this case doesn't risk a dozen years in jail, disenfranchisement and being barred from many occupations for life, like he would over here. I'd take good old Ius Commune over our system.

Exactly. My state even has a website where you can find local farms selling produce, meats, flowers, whatever. One could visit the farm and check conditions for themselves.

Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with said site or any of the farms since I don't grow anything but a couple of tomato plants in my garden. Other states probably have something similar, but I'm not looking it up for everyone.

Xcel has contracted an additional three hundred megawatts of wind energy by 2010 and must obtain ten percent of its own electricity from renewable sources by 2015. Xcel is expected to increase its wind power contracts from 302 megawatts to one 1125 megawatts by 2010.

If you're worried about avian species, Wikipedia quotes two studies that found in seven months a death of 1.1 to 1.4 birds killed per windmill. Bats are higher but it's lower than bat deaths related to lighthouses, communication towers, tall buildings, power lines, and fences. So while unfortunate, it could probably be viewed as acceptable.

The advancements in turbine technology and infrastructure will always be needed but to answer the DOE's "Annual installations need to increase more than threefold." Why don't they just buy up a bunch of (relatively) cheap farmland in Minnesota? I think you can get away with negotiating the small plot of land they use and service roads through fields while still letting the bulk of the land be used for farming. Farmers already maneuver around sloughs that rise and fall with the water table. I don't know how the rights to offshore wind farms work or what the costs to permits are but it seems like you'd just have a strip of them so why not just do a huge block out in the middle of nowhere instead?

You can see which states really took off with wind power, I don't know why you're highlighting coastal areas and the Great Lakes when Colorado and Texas have demonstrated an equally large potential.

According to the Minnesota DOT not only is it acceptable its the most efficient. http://www.dot.state.mn.us/newsrels/04/08/31merge.html

Same old story, you have a two party system where both parties are being funded by corporations, and God forbid you should suggest some kind of government regulation because that is "socialism" and as every patriotic American knows Socialism = Evil.

And what is social security? A mild form of socialism. What are taxes (especially those that go to public owned parks, libraries and schools)?

I believe that we've slowly warmed up to the idea that the best economic system lies somewhere between pure capitalism and pure socialism. And even on a state by state basis you will find a wide array of where each state sits. Take Minnesota versus Texas, in Texas it might be well known to all the patriotic 'wing-nut conservatives' that Socialism is Evil but in Minnesota I can tell you that the patriotic 'bleeding heart liberals' that Socialist programs are necessary to protect the poor and sick. I know that the political winds of politics are different because I grew up in Minnesota under the poverty line on Minnesota Care and received college grants based on need. Everyone around me loved it. I now live in Northern Virginia where I leave that out of conversations after listening to a few folks rail on "Communist Minnesota." Fine.

Decentralization of power back to the states is good. And shows that many models can work for many different people. I speculate that socialism is evil locally to you. Please don't extrapolate it to a national scale.

This will, of course, ultimately be passed on to the customers. Ultimately, this is a way to raise taxes to force a change in private industry. The government keeps the money, and we the people pay the taxes. It won't hurt the companies in this case because there is no choice in electricity providers. You can't switch electric companies like you can cell phone companies. How, exactly, will this force "cleaner" electricity generation? What will be done with the money from these tariffs? Will it only be used for environmental concerns, or will it just go into the general budget?

Minnesota has grown to be fourth in Wind Power generation. And if you look at time lapse growth they're really pushing that. The weird thing about it is that they're not even one of the prime wind resource states although I will testify that the wind gets ridiculous out there. Now, you probably already know this but Tim Pawlenty (Republican) is the governor of Minnesota and of course is going to try to get a bid for the presidential run in 2012. On his about page:

implementing a plan to Americanize our energy sources by generating 25% of the state's electricity from renewable sources by 2025

As a moderate Democrat, I was kind of afraid when he almost got a bid in 2008 ... because he's actually not that bad of a candidate. He doesn't talk like a moron and he's got his head in a lot of the right places. If he would cut the Christian God talk out of his speeches, I'd probably be on board. Sorry to get offtopic but I'm trying to say that this tariff would probably be a huge in road for him to moderates if he could pull it off. I'm certain he's not the prime motivator behind this but I would bet that they'd take the taxes from this and dump it into wind incentives. They're racing against Iowa in the wind department. California and Texas are too big and too prime locations to take on for Megawatt generation from wind power.

That is where I bet they would take this money: incentives to corporations for wind power.

If you're ever in the neighborhood, a tour of the mine and the lab are well worth the visit.

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Soudan,+mn
http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/state_parks/soudan_underground_mine/index.html
http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/soudan/physics_tour.html

(Generally open June-September -- check before you come.)

If you're ever in the neighborhood, a tour of the mine and the lab are well worth the visit.

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Soudan,+mn
http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/state_parks/soudan_underground_mine/index.html
http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/soudan/physics_tour.html

(Generally open June-September -- check before you come.)

Bridgewater's statutory claims focus on two provisions in Minn.Stat. 475.52, subd. 1. First, Bridgewater contends that Monticello did not have the statutory authority to issue the bonds because the Fiber Project is not a “utility or other public convenience from which a revenue is or may be derived.” Minn.Stat. 475.52, subd. 1. Second, Bridgewater asserts that Monticello intends to improperly apply the bond proceeds to pay current expenses, which is explicitly prohibited by the statute. Interpretation of these statutory provisions is an issue of first impression in Minnesota.

http://www.lawlibrary.state.mn.us/archive/ctappub/0906/opa081928-0602.pdf

States can not impose taxes or regulations which discriminate against interstate commerce. http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/pubs/ss/clssintc.htm.

However, they are absolutely entitled to impose non-discriminatory taxes, excise or otherwise, against parties that either reside or conduct business within their boundaries.

Well, not quite. Link below for the State of Minnesota's use tax form, which states that any sales tax paid in another state can be deducted from the amount that should be reported to Minnesota. Not a "reimbursement" but the net effect (to the taxpayer) is the same. Maryland does the same thing with their use tax.

MN Use Tax

Are these the same Minnesotans, who think "carnally knowing any person by the anus or by or with the mouth." is "Sodomy", and recognize that whoever "voluntarily engages in or submits to an act of sodomy with another" is wrong and merits a severe sanction of "imprisonment for not more than one year or to payment of a fine of not more than $3,000, or both" ? https://www.revisor.leg.state.mn.us/statutes/?id=609.293 at least we now have a price: 1 song equals 27 bjs. can any grupie/musician on /. confirm this?

Well Mr./Ms. CPA, the original poster didn't mention any exceptions so s/he isn't quite correct. Minnesota residents don't have to pay use tax if they spend less than $770 on goods that would normally be subject to the tax. See this document. The original poster also did not mention that some goods are not subject to use tax. In Minnesota that includes clothing, food, and medicine. Some states don't charge sales tax at all.

My state specifically allows driving while stoned. https://www.revisor.leg.state.mn.us/statutes/?id=169A.20&year=2008&keyword_type=exact&keyword=marijuana

No, it means it's illegal to do so for somebody else (and charge for it) for one of the reasons enumerated under the applicable statue (as posted above). Or simply get a license to do so.

It's lovely to see that illegally obtained evidence is still illegitimate in the courts. Kinda gives you a warm feeling inside.

Agreed. Well from the letter of the law, it does sound like MediaSentry operated as an unlicensed Private Detective and regardless of whether she's guilty or not, I hope they uphold the law. It kind of saddens me that this may vary state to state, do other states have these sort of protections in place to stop a completely biased party (oh, like your ISP or MediaSentry) from gathering evidence against you for a trial?

I'm not a lawyer but it sounds like this lawyer finally did his homework and will probably stop the trial altogether due to lack of any evidence at all. I hope the RIAA learns its lesson and stops these frivolous lawsuits.

I have a '66 Ford Country Squire station wagon that falls into your multi-decade realm. This car has run reliably on MN's required ethanol content of 10%, BUT it required replacing fuel system components that were built with natural rubber, such as the fuel pump diaphragm and short sections of the fuel line. These parts were easily replaced with modern substitutes containing synthetic nitrile rubbers such as Buna-N. However, older vehicles did not depend on many of the rubber and plastic parts found in today's cars; older vehicles used a lot of steel, brass, and aluminum in their fuel systems, which mainly consisted of a fuel pump and carburetor. Today's vehicles usually incorporate 1 plastic fuel injector per cylinder, not to mention that the plastics and rubber components are cheaper to manufacture, which was the ultimate reason for their use.

A district court in Texas struck it down. The state of Minnesota still claims copyright on statutes and the federal government still has "regulations" (such as OSHA standards) that simply refer to a page from a book written by a corporation. If you want the book, you'll have to shell out hundreds of dollars.

I've been to the Soudan mine and the underground lab. Heck, I helped get them wired up. The network at the site is all fibre-optic and, except for the VAXen they still had running a few of years back, it is (or was) all very state-of-the art. The uplink, however, is a different story.

Perhaps this new project, which they've actually been working on for years, will give them the boost they need to get a fiber run from Ely. Maybe they've gotten it already. When I was working with the project, we had to run fiber to a hut on a hill, run coax to the other company's hut, microwave the signal to Tower, MN, and then run it over 11 pair of copper to Soudan.

It worked.

If you like the outdoors and like to travel, it's beautiful country up there. If you don't mind the skeeters and the black flies. The Soudan Mine is actually a state park, and during the summer months you can visit. They run tours down the mine on a regular basis. You ride a car down an incline into the mine, about a half mile down and they walk you around and show you how the mining was done. Greenstone and iron... the iron so pure you can weld to it.

If you catch the 10 am tour (double check me on that before you go) you also get a tour of the Physics lab. It puts the BatCave to shame--and yes, there are plenty of bats down there. The lab is carved out of the rock and iron of the mine and it looks like a set from a War Games or Dr. Strangelove type movie. Huge (very) steel plates hang from railings overhead, with fine fiber optic cable running through them, trying to catch a glimpse of a neutrino or two as they fly through. The neutrinos, of course, are being fired at Soudan from Fermilab in Illinois.

Worth the trip, just to see the mine, but the Physics lab is icing on the underground cake.

http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/state_parks/soudan_underground_mine/index.html

So gambling is OK as long as it fills their coffers and at odds that would get any casino run out of town in Vegas. I wouldn't be surprised if the odds were more in your favor at a rigged poker game than at the Minnesota state lottery. Any argument against out-of-state gambling they could make would be hypocritical at best since Joe Sixpack could just as easily blow his paycheck on lotto tickets as he could on Online poker.

Now Utah is pretty cut-and-dried on the subject and I would not criticize them for being hypocritical if they were trying to do this. Of course, by their definition I could make an argument that participating in a 401K plan violates this statute. It seems a lot of people would be no worse off now had they put all their 401K funds into lotto tickets. But I digress...

Yes: http://www.lottery.state.mn.us/

I already commented on this, but state-run lottery would gladly hand out cement shoes to those who get in their way.

#2 - The logistics of holding a "national recount" are simply not possible. Recounting a state alone is bad enough (look at the Dem vote fraud efforts for Franken and the "targeted recounting" of counties, which magically has more votes than voters in several Dem-heavy districts trying to steal the Senate election).

Show me a single county in Minnesota that's reporting more votes than voters. It shouldn't be hard, because you say that there are several. The data are freely available from the Minnesota Secretary of State http://electionresults.sos.state.mn.us/20081104/ so there's nothing standing in your way.

Note: a county that reports more valid votes after a recount than it did on election night is an entirely different thing than a county reporting more votes than voters. The former is a natural result from going back over the data more carefully, the latter is a huge red flag that someone screwed up and would be actual news, instead of a throwaway line muttered by wingnuts.

I'm not saying that the Minnesota recount has gone perfectly, both sides have been pretty childish, but if you're going to complain about it at least complain about real problems.

Largemouth Bass will eat ducklings. http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/snapshots/fish/largemouthbass.html

http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/cco/rules/mncon/mncon.htm

169A.52 Sub 3: Test refusal; license revocation. (a) Upon certification by the peace officer that there existed probable cause to believe the person had been driving, operating, or in physical control of a motor vehicle in violation of section 169A.20 (driving while impaired), and that the person refused to submit to a test, the commissioner shall revoke the person's license or permit to drive, or nonresident operating privilege, for a period of one year even if a test was obtained pursuant to this section after the person refused to submit to testing.

say there is a union. it 'protects' your job. ... and wages due to rise of the unions...

You do realize that without those lines the rest of your post reads as history and not supposition right? The lack of unions sure has not done diddly for off shoring. Would unions have made it worse? Maybe, maybe not, we dont know. What we do know however is that without Unions present it did happen. What I can also tell you is that in the state of Minnesota the Republican Governor came out to state that we wouldn't offshore state IT jobs. Oh, did I mention that this was brought about because of the concerns expressed by the State's unionized IT workers?

Sera

Minnesota does not allow this to happen after problems in the 2004 election. https://www.revisor.leg.state.mn.us/statutes/?id=208.08&year=2008 http://web.archive.org/web/20041217034158/http://www.startribune.com/stories/587/5134791.html

I realize you tried to make a joke, but haven't you seen any of the many news reports showing manure recycling creating methane, and using that to power a generator?

This was the first google result for 'manure recycling'.

http://www.nextstep.state.mn.us/res_detail.cfm?id=2007

Is that so?

What, exactly, is the oppertunity cost of the interstate hiway system? According to http://www.dot.state.mn.us/interstate50/50facts.html, it cost $114 billion over 35 years (Wikipedia lists that as $425 billion in inflation-adjusted 2006 dollars). The trucking industry (born directly as a result of that hiway system) pulled $645.6 billion in revenue in 2006 alone. That doesn't even account for other uses of the system, like increased tourisim.

I'd say the interstate hiway system was a great investment on the government's part. Libertarians are free to throw a hissy fit if they want.

In short, as cool as we all would like wind power generation to be, it just falls way too short in the aforemention critical statistic. If you've seen the wind farm outside of San Fran, you know how big they can get. The nuke plant between SD & LA (iirc) is but a postage stamp compared to that windfarm and it probably has about twice the power output.

However the US has enough potential wind power to electrify the US. On top of that, whereas the land a nuclear power plant uses is only good for that, wind gennies on farms can supplement a farmer's income, ie they can still grow food on it. Right now wind is the fastest growing energy source in the world.

No, we have no such investigative licensed in Minnesota.

Sincerely,

Marie Ohman, Executive Director
MN Private Detective & Protective Agent Services Board

• Irrigation management "WiFi Cloud Covers Rural Oregon" in Wired, 2005.
• Wireless water and temperature sensors in a survey of a city park "Baltimore Ecosystem Study in 2005 Jim Gray's paper "Life Under Your Feet: An End-to-End Soil Ecology Sensor Network, Database, Web Server, and Analysis Service", provides implementation detail.

Netting it out: wireless sensors have been important and become more important with communications clouds. Applications for agriculture generally, including vineyards (where microclimate sensing sorts out good from great) and organic production (where pest management and nitrogen fixing have play).

Other "stuff" includes aquatic studies, or smart environments where Acme Farm Roombas navigate fields automatically with, say, groundhog zapping water jets. An early test relied upon GPS and gyroscopes for locational awareness of "automated tractors which could not "detect all obstacles". Wireless sensors could improve efficacy. Calling Cyberdyne!

And those whiny Ficus can go back to state government lobbies where they belong.

I'm not sure why you're saying "this just doesn't work", because ramp metering happens to work.

Have evaluations of the effectiveness of ramp meters been done anywhere?

Mitigating factors: Some people ignore the lights anyway, completely negating the effectiveness of ramp metering. Also, I admit to blowing through red lights when it is so painfully obvious that entering traffic at 35 mph would be an impediment to mainline traffic (because mainline traffic is moving at 55mph or more).

Minneota eHealth is intending to share records. I just hope it won't require Microsoft technology. That would be sickening.

they use more specialised (and expensive) tools for things like Finite Element analysis (ie bridges, etc.)

Right, but this one was done with Excel for sure.

This all comes from the Minnesota Department of Education site. http://education.state.mn.us/

It appears you just read the headline and nothing else. The article doesn't elaborate much on the consideration, except to note that an appeals court ruled its inclusion as evidence was "somewhat relevant". The article does say:
"...Rather, Levie's conviction was based on the in-person testimony of the girl who said she was paid to pose nude, coupled with the history of searches for "Lolitas" in Levie's Web browser." It seems to be me he would have been convicted regardless of the PGP's presence on his hard drive.
You can find the complete appeals court ruling at http://www.lawlibrary.state.mn.us/archive/ctappub/ 0505/opa040381-0503.htm