With that said, the definition I've always used for fine art is something that will be bought by some rich idiot to hang on his walls to impress a bunch of black-dressed New York snobs that he invites to a once-a-year cocktail party so that he can feel "with it." It doesn't matter what kind of crap it is. It just has to be expensive.
I don't think that the fact that someone is willing to lay down a big chunk of cash for an artwork makes it inherently more valuable.
Agreed, agreed, agreed.
However, the willingness of people to lay down a big chunk of cash for something does seem to figure rather prominently in whether or not museums and others call that something "fine art" or "a nice picture." After all, those paintings on museum walls are almost always worth big dollars. Cash-strapped museums don't just "de-accession" their donated crap; sometimes they sell stuff they should be displaying. They usually issue some sort of statement about "refining the focus of the collection," but the bottom line is that they get big bucks.
Like it or not, no artworks gets accepted by the art establishment as "musuem-quality fine art" without a big price tag. Why do up-and-coming artists salivate at the thought of a prestigious gallery show? Because it lends them legitimacy, helps get them accepted, and, as an inseparable component of the process, it increases the price tag of their works.
You are quite right that digital artworks will be tremendously valuable to viewers. All good art makes the world a better place and that's a pretty valuable function.
But just because digital artists are producing (spiritually, not monetarily) valuable artworks doesn't mean that profs, curators, critics, or collectors will ever refer to their work product as "fine art." Digital artists need to find a way to make their works rare, even artificially so, before they and their works will be taken seriously by the money-game-playing art establishment. And acceptance by the establishment was what the original poster was seeking.
Art is about expressing ideas, not about how unique or collectible the product is. A photograph can be fine art even though an almost unlimited number of copies can be made from the negative,
Well, yes and no. Your heart's in the right place, but when it gets down to brass tacks, I have to disagree. Remember two point, though. First, we're talking about *visual* arts, so mixing in discussions of music and poetry aren't really valid. Words and notes are different from pictures. Also, remember that the original poster was talking about "fine art" and how it is distinguished from other types of art.
With that said, the definition I've always used for fine art is something that will be bought by some rich idiot to hang on his walls to impress a bunch of black-dressed New York snobs that he invites to a once-a-year cocktail party so that he can feel "with it." It doesn't matter what kind of crap it is. It just has to be expensive.
The problems with photographs are exactly as you state - they can be reproduced ad infinitum, though lots of copies require some labor and expense. Computer graphics are even worse in this regard; they can be reproduced ad infinitum with very, very little labor and expense.
So why are early prints more valuable than later ones? More valuable than estate prints? Why are hand-printed-by-the-photographer, limited edition monographs more expensive than high-quality custom silver prints turned out in large numbers? Why are platinum/palladium one-of-a-kind fine art photographic prints so highly prized? Why are top-drawer fine art paintings more expensive still? Because in each case, if the tools and methods used to create the art necessarily enforce rarity, then simple economics kicks in and the price goes up.
Consider this - Why can some photos be sold for much higher prices after the photographer announces that s/he has destroyed the negatives? Rarity. Why was there a minor panic in certain parts of the photographic fine art world when it was discovered that Ansel Adams had NOT destroyed some negatives that he said he had burned? Because the rarity of the prints derived from those negatives was now only theoretical.
Like it or not, for something to be called enduring fine art it has to be something that people will pay a lot of money for. "Fine art for the masses" is a contradiction in terms.
If I wanted to produce fine visual art using a computer, I'd burn the best possible large-format negative, use that to produce 2 or 3 platinum prints on ceramic-coated titanium plates, then destroy both the internegative and the original file. And even then, I'd have a hard time convincing buyers that a backup of the file doesn't exist somewhere and that those really expensive prints I'm trying to sell won't be duped by the thousands 20 years from now.
Computer files as fine art has a long way to go. Never fear, though. It took photography, my personal passion, a couple of lifetimes to get any respect from the fine art world.
I admire your faith, but I separate the notion of faith in God from faith in every single bit of physical evidence on earth of His power. The evidence here is strong, but my perceptions of it are necessarily, humanly flawed. That, and the fact that anything on this earth is subject to corruption by the forces of evil, leads me to discount the physical world (though I certainly do not discard it) in favor of the supernatural, believing that that is the essence of faith.
I love that link! I had never seen all that stuff in one place before. I'll definitely be going back to that page in the future. Thank you big time.
The way you applied the baloney detector to my post, though, was a tad less useful. You sort of hit around some of my arguments, but I don't see any real center-punched home runs. To wit:
the Bible is literally true [Argument from "authority"]
Bzzzzt. Close, but no cigar.
The argument from authority requires that I say "I'm an authority so you should believe me." That's not what I did. I said the Bible was authoritative. In the context of an intellectual rasslin' match, that's the equivalent of quoting an encyclopedia. It's not a perfect argument, but overcoming it requires that you undermine the authority of the source of the quote. That's a tough row to hoe with an encyclopedia. With the Bible, it sort of depends on your frame of reference. In any case, this particular baloney detector doesn't apply.
except where... [Observational selection (counting the hits and forgetting the misses)].
Nope, again. Exercising judgement always requires observational selection. And judgement must always come into play when deciding what data to include when making a decision. Is this authority more to be trusted or that one? Is the data I'm seeing valid or has something screwed up this set of experiments? If yes, do I throw out these results or do something else?
"Observational selection" is a valid counterattack to an argument only where you can show that any stated criteria for exercising judgement are not being properly or consistently applied. I stated my criteria. I believe I'm adhering to it. Show me otherwise if you want to successfully classify my statements as "bad" observational selection.
His days [Special pleading (typically referring to god's will)].
Ya got me. Of course, I don't consider pointing out that God is different from man to be a terribly intellectually dishonest thing to do...but YMMV.:-)
self-important idiots [Ad hominem - attacking the arguer and not the argument]
Oooo, no! Unlike the previous darts you threw, in this case you missed your target by a mile. An ad hominem attack requires that there be someone who is attacked. The quote above didn't attack any immediately identifiable person or group. It only referred to a simple bit of good advice - one that I hope everyone takes to heart - namely, that there are some people in this world you just shouldn't listen to. People who claim to have all the answers to Biblical mysteries. Self-important jerks. Microsoft PR guys. Chat room denizens who message you claiming to be 16 year old cheerleaders who just wanna talk to an older guy. You get the idea.:-)
Now, if you'd called it a straw man argument, you might have had a point.:-)
The Hebrew word for 'day' in Gensis...means a LITERAL 24 HOUR DAY...
...a simile is... a comparison using 'like' or 'as'. The Bible says "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years"... note: "*AS* a 1000 years".
Thanks for the correction on the phrasing. The memory isn't what it used to be and I don't have a Bible close at hand.
As for the literal Hebrew...you make a very good point. On the other hand, I have serious trouble wrapping my mind around lots of big, important concepts like the big bang and the long stretches of time in the history of the world. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the original author simply didn't have a handy word for such epochs.
I consider your point just literalism taken to an excess degree. We know that a week, on our calendar, isn't the amount of time that creation took. From that I draw the conclusion that the days in Genesis aren't literal 24 hour days. And if the last transcriber of that book in Hebrew used a word that is at odds with that conclusion, it'll be up to God to either punish me for my impertinence or congratulate me for using the brain He gave me.
"Everything in the Bible is literally true except where it's obviously intended as a parable or metaphor."
...it's bullshit, because every Christian you ask will have different ideas about "obviously intended."
Obvious to whom? Under what circumstances?
Obvious to me under my circumstances. And that statement is applicable only to me. You see, I choose to interpret on my own, pray about what confuses me, and have faith that God knows that my understandings will be flawed but my heart is in the right place.
Other folks choose to take other paths. Some need a big, centralized church with lots of fancy robed teachers to interpret for them. Some choose to follow a single charismatic voice. Others find other ways. More power to 'em. God gave 'em free will; they can use it as they wish.
I knew people who would argue literally to the death that those were 7 24-hour days, just like days are now.
Yep. I know those same people. And I look at 'em kinda funny, too. I admire their faith, but that particular viewpoint is one I choose not to share.
...the Christian...once he admits that some of the Bible might not be true, doubt creeps in."
Speaking for myself only, of course, I've never experienced doubt creeping in. It usually charges in at a full and noisy gallop. Daily.
I don't believe God expects us to be perfect and have perfect confidence. I think He would call people who think they've attained that level of enlightenment "total assholes" or some such. (I trust He could come up with a better description, though.) After all, not even His son escaped doubt. I think He just expects us to try. And usually fail. And then to deal with it.
Did Elijah the prophet really have control over bears? Did he really use that control to kill 42 little kids who were mocking him? Was that very nice? Aren't we supposed to turn the other cheek?
I dunno. I suppose some day God will clue me in. Till then, such things will bother me.
The Bible is not internally consistent, and you'd look like a raving lunatic to claim so.
Well, God knows I don't want to look like a raving lunatic.:-)
Humans have a nearly incredibly capacity for self-deception and rationalization...
Yep. Sure do.
and nowhere is this better demonstrated than Bible-worship: millions of people believing without question the handed down myths and legends of a little tribe of people, translated and sanitized hundreds of years ago by a king with an agenda by monks who didn't know the language.
Bible worship? Nah. We're supposed to worship God.
You bring up an excellent point, though, about the corruption of the scriptures. There are multiple editions being published all the time. They don't agree. So, obviously, not all Bibles can be, as a famous TV preacher used to like to say, "the inerrant word of God." I don't have a problem with that. "The Bible," meaning the inspired word of God, is without error. Having said that, though, I must immediately follow up with that fact that I doubt there's ever been a copy of the thing assembled. People have done their best to put together the fragments of those writings and the books we have today are a pretty good approximation. They get the basics right. But I've never been one to argue that, in precise detail, everything written in the most recently published book with "The Bible" embossed on the front is exactly what was originally written. Or even intended.
Maybe I just come from a long line of doubters. My grandfather, an uneducated itinerant hard-shell Baptist evangelist in depression-era rural Mississippi, taught himself both Greek and Hebrew so that he could read and study more and older versions of the Bible. He knew that "the bible" that you go buy in the bookstore today is probably more than a little different from "The Bible" that was originally hand-written by people in, essentially, direct communication with God. I agree with him.
But they're pretty close and I'll continue to use them till something better comes along.
As usual, wheneve the issue of ancient history (where ancient mean "before last Friday"), the flaming Jesus freaks emerge from their self-flagellating to inflict their disgusting morals and creation myths on rational people.
...the only rational approach is to reject religion and accept evolution and the big bang for what they are: the truth, shown by science.
Accepting evolution and the big bang as truth doesn't require rejecting religion. It doesn't even require rejecting fundamentalist Christian religion.
I've never really understood all the hoopla about this subject. There was a time, roughly the 1950s, when most of the U.S. professed to Christianity and nearly all of the U.S. was enraptured by science. If there's such a big conflict between science and creationism and evolution, wouldn't you think it would have been a big topic of debate back then? Yeah, the discussion flared up occasionally then and before (Scopes, anyone?), but most people just seemed to go along with one foot in each camp.
Or did they?
When I was a wee child, I was taught that science had most of the answers precisely because it was helping us understand the wonderful universe God had made. I was taught that God created everything in 7 days. And I was also reminded that the concept of time is pretty elastic. God probably doesn't view it like we do. Remember your Bible: "A day is like unto a thousand years."
So when I first asked about the conflict between "7 days" and "creation and evolution takes a bazillion years," I got a simple answer. To wit: "Everything in the Bible is literally true except where it's obviously intended as a parable or metaphor. In this case, of course God created the world in 7 days - 7 of His days. From our point of view, 7 of His days looks like a mighty long time. Don't get hung up on literalism and legalism. They are mere intellectual cudgels used in meaningless verbal battles between self-important idiots furiously engaged in competitive but highly transient mental masturbation." That always seemed reasonable to me.
God created everything in 7 days. The big bang and evolution are probably some of the tools he used to accomplish that task. Between those two statements, there is no conflict.
This question brings to mind a case from Houston a couple of decades or more ago. While I can't remember the particulars (I think it had to do with racial discrimination and voting rights), I do remember that the plaintiff's lawyer made waves with an elegant hack on the legal system. Having no funds for a protracted battle and wanting to get to the Supreme Court in as short a time as possible, he filed suit in small claims court and claimed less than USD$25 in damages. He lost immediately.
Then he appealed. Now, under Texas law, any claim that small may not be appealed through the state courts. Literally the first available level of appeal was the U.S. Supreme Court. He appealed and prevailed in what was, for a Supreme Court decision, an incredibly short period of time and for a pittance in legal fees.
Faster than what? I think most DSL users want something faster than ISDN and won't want to step back.
However, for people like me who were far enough from the CO that we could only get IDSL (which is basically a type is ISDN) then switching to ISDN in the aftermath of the Northpoint fiasco is a perfectly good choice of action.
As an aside, when I got IDSL the equivalent-speed ISDN was just as expensive but I wanted "always-on," so I went for IDSL. (I've never used ISDN, so I'm not sure about the details.) Now, in checking for alternatives to DSL, my ISP has told me that because ISDN demand has dropped over the last year (everybody wants DSL), the price has also dropped. Bottom line: I'm replacing my USD$40/month IDSL service with USD$20/month ISDN service that's just as fast.
Folks on the fringes of DSL connectivity should *definitely* check out the ISDN alternative.
What I'm most interested in is the way the ISPs handle this. My service provider, ev1.net, has a good rep for customer service. Here's what they've done:
1. Sent out an immediate email to customers telling them what was happening.
2. Set up a web page with *very* frequent updates on how they're going to handle this.
3. Revoked all early termination penalties freeing subscribers to seek alternate providers without the penalties required by our contracts. (They didn't have to do this. Per the contract with subscribers, they could have required that we continue to pay for service we weren't receiving and still be subject to early termination penalties.)
4. Set up dial up accounts for all DSL customers. Those accounts are free until customers can find another provider, although I assume they won't remain free forever.
5. DSL customers without modems can drop by the office for a free (generic, I'm sure) 56K modem. Or they'll ship it to you overnight for $8 or so. (The details aren't completely settled.)
6. Established a special telephone number for limited DSL tech support. (They lost their DSL support structure in this mess.)
7. Put together a customer service team to answer questions about all this, along with a special number to reach that team.
And there are probably some other things I've forgotten. In all, the thing that impresses me the most is that they are trying to answer questions as they come up and aren't simply ducking for cover, sticking their fingers in their ears, and hoping this goes away. My initial impression is that they're dealing with it reasonably well.
I've heard that some other ISPs caught in similar situations have been far less helpful.
I'd love to hear of the experiences of other folks with other providers so that I can gauge whether or not the level of service I'm getting during this screw-up is good, bad, or somewhere in between.
...(No, make that a lousy to great resource, depending on the quality of the person in charge of the program) is the Internal Revenue Service. Call the toll-free help number or your local office and get hold of the Taxpayer Education office or whoever is responsible for the Small Business Tax Workshops in your area. Find out when and where and go.
At their best, these workshops can be a gold mine and bring in guest speakers to cover topics far beyond just taxes. At their worst, though, they can be just a short meeting where some publications get handed out and that's about it. Either way, it won't be a waste of your time.
Of course, the easiest way to find one is to go here, click on your state, and dig a link or two deeper to get the schedule for workshops in your area. Even if there's not a current schedule, there will be a contact name and phone number you can call.
Hmmm. No employee of the IRS can speak on behalf of the IRS without approval. So let's just say I'm some guy with some experience in this stuff. I'm not saying where I work or that anything in this post is official, OK?
Basically, tax prep software that is e-file enabled will do your forms, wrap them up in one big package, and send them to an intermediary. NOT the IRS! The intermediary is subject to all sorts of requirements regarding security and other things. They have to be open to constant scrutiny from the IRS. It would be silly to allow 50 million people to directly update a database at the IRS - there would be too many people who sent in garbage of one type or another.
The intermediary puts together big packages of files that have been checked for problems and transmits those to the IRS.
So why is there no open source efile software? The biggest reason I can think of is security. The IRS approves software for efiling based on a number of factors including their comfort level that the software works nearly perfectly and won't result in anyone trying to send them a bunch of garbage. Open source projects willing to go through a code audit from the IRS aren't exactly common. Open source projects that are able to turn out software to do a complex task essentially error free and be usable by my mother aren't terribly common either. And both those things are necessary to make it to that list the original question referenced.
Of course, there are exceptions. There are some "industrial-strength" tax prep packages that aren't particulary easy to use and are targeted to tax prep offices, CPAs, etc. There are some names on that approved software list that most people wouldn't recognize because they are not tageted to average consumer. But the need to have truly locked-down software and keep it completely current with the law remains and would sink most open source attempts.
Another reason is because those intermediaries use the software to get paid. TaxWise, for example, is the package used by the IRS, itself, when you walk into the office and ask to have your return prepared. To get TaxWise to work, you have to activate it with a code from the company that is keyed to a special number issued to you by the IRS, the EFIN or Electronic Filer Identification Number. TaxWise then acts as the intermediary. Do you think they want to accept efiled returns from anyone who didn't spend the money to buy their software?
The same deal goes for TurboTax. They will act as your intermediary for a fee. Or, if you make *very* little money, they'll act as your intermediary for free. Either way, though, you will have had to have bought the software from them in the first place.
Tax prep software, *especially* efile software, is something that will be done by commercial software houses. It just doesn't fit with open source.
For heavy-duty and far more technical information about this topic (I've seriously over-simplified some things in this post), try the IRS efile site for software developers. Yes, there is such a thing and it's available to the public. If you really want to know about file specifications, scripted testing of software, and other deeply techy kinds of things, you might want to pick up a copy of Publication 1346, Electronic Return File Specifications and Record Layouts for Individual Income Tax Returns. You can get in dead tree format or entirely online.
All this info can be gotten by digging just a few links below here.
...the name of a porn actress here in the States. I had drinks with her once; she's smart, pretty, well-spoken, and possessed of an infectious sense of fun.
But why on earth would anyone name a distribution after her?
I'm a Unix sysadmin for a large bureau. I work around a few developers and deal with more. We all have roughly the same work experience.
Disclaimer: I love my job. Read what follows with that in mind.
Let's start with the pros, in no particular order.
First, you get to serve your fellow man. Now, stop laughing and think about that. I know that my job directly supports people (I used to be one of them, out in the field, knocking on doors and finding people who didn't want to be found, so I know whereof I speak.) who are enforcing important laws that we, as a society, absolutely need to ensure that anarchy is kept at bay. I help create in the lives of lawbreakers those significant emotional events that cause them to change their behavior. There is no monetary compensation (short of "make me super-rich so I can be a full-time philanthropist") that could possibly equal that kind of ultimate job satisfaction.
Of course, I've reached a level of maturity where I don't consider my success to be a function of how much my car costs. If you, too, are smart enough to realize that true satisfaction comes from within, you can knock down the *big* psychic wages by seeking employment at a government agency that does something you think is important. There are lots to choose from; just do a little research.
Second, the pay is not necessarily all that bad. In high-rent locales, it sucks. But you get the same (base) pay in rural Mississippi. Examples? The entry-level salary for a 334 series grade 9 coder (a reasonable entry level in the HQ of a big agency in DC) is $43K. (What's a 334/9? Off-topic - go check opm.gov for more info.) If you choose to come on board at a much lower level, as you might have to do in the sticks or at a smaller agency, you'll do no worse than $29K a year, but you'll get up to that $43K a year level in two years.
I don't know about you, but I can live a decent life on $43K a year. If you can't, then maybe govt service isn't for you.
Third, much of the private sector bullshit is gone. (It's replaced by public sector bullshit, but I'll cover that below.) I've had private sector experience and I would never go back to places where management can jerk you around or effectively fire you at will like in the private sector. You see, civil service employees are hard to fire. That's important and a very good thing. If not for civil service protections, for example, when a democrat is elected president he could just fire all the republicans. Or vice versa. Such things were the norm in decades past. No longer. Along with protection against politically-motivated personnel actions came protections against just plain stupid personnel actions. Your boss can't say "Cut your hair or you're fired!" It doesn't matter if you're a cross-dressing tattooed biker with a purple spiked mohawk - if you do your job well, you are compensated and promoted according to the rules. And that's the bottom line: there are rules, you know them ahead of time, and management can't change them to screw you over just because they don't like you.
Next, there's the actual work to consider. Personally, I find it a challenge to keep things running because I'm a tinkerer. Our tech is rarely cutting-edge, but it still needs work. How that work is done is different at each place, but if your inquiries into the type of work you'll be expected to do sound interesting to you, then don't let the fact that you aren't bleeding-edge get in the way. Wanna be a Perl guy? Sheesh, we *need* those guys to tie things together. Wanna work on Oracle stuff or put web front ends on Informix database applications or support some of the biggest email systems in the world? The US govt is a good place for those things. Insist on staying right on the bleeding edge? The opportunities are fewer, but they exist. Look carefully.
Where to start looking? Go to Government Computer News at www.gcn.com. Browse a bunch. See what we do. I think you'll be surprised at the variety and levels of involvement and just all-around neat stuff that you'll find if you take the time to search.
Next, perks. There's a 40 hour work week. Not a wink-wink-nudge-nudge 40 hour week, but a REAL 40 hour week. (Does listing this as a perk make me a wuss? Maybe. But I think it mainly just means that I have a life outside work.) When you *have* to work overtime, you get overtime pay. And double pay on holidays. There are more than a dozen holidays a year. You earn 4 hours of sick leave and 4 hours of vacation leave for every two weeks you work from the very beginning. And after you've been here as along as I have, you get 8 hours of vacation time for every two weeks worked. The insurance is usually decent, though private industry, with all its variablility, can often be significantly better. When you have to travel on government business, it's easy to tack vacation time onto your trip. (The government has to pay you to fly there, stay there for the duration of business, and fly back. If you want to insert a few days of vacation time between the end of your business and the flight back, no big deal. You'll just have to pay for them.) No, you don't get to earn frequent flyer miles and you have to sit in coach (unless you can get a doctor to certify that cramming your body into a narrow seat is a health risk, in which case you can fly first class), but I travel *very* frequently for the government. Over the last few months, I've done a week each in Seattle, Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oklahoma City, Austin, Nashville, Indianapolis, Chicago, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and somewhere I'd rather forget in the middle of New Jersey. As long as they don't send me back to Jersey, I'd hit the road again in a heartbeat.
More perks? Your union can be good to useless, but you're never compelled to join or pay dues. A willingness to be mobile just about guarantees quick promotions of competent people. I could go on and on, but I won't. Going into too much detail can be misleading, since these things vary widely from agency to agency. Check for yourself.
Now, the bad stuff.
First, low pay by some people's standards. I work 40 hours a week for $50K. I wouldn't work 80 hours a week for twice or even 5 times that amount. YMMV.
Second, the tools. This one bugs me. Most agencies enforce on all tech workers a standard set of tools. At my agency, for example, if you need to script something you use the shell or Perl. Wanna use Python just because you like it? Forget it. It's not the standard. If you want to be a coder, make double damn sure you ask what tools you'll be required to use. If you don't like them, don't take the job.
Third, public attitudes. People who don't know crap about government service assume there must be something wrong with you if you work here. I work at an especially hated agency. Once I was called for jury duty and during the selection process, I was interviewed in front of everyone. If you've ever been through voire dire (sp?), you know how it works. Anyway, my employer was mentioned. At the first break, a fellow jury panel member made a point of telling me, in front of witnesses, that he'd kill me if I came near him. Not fun and an extreme example, but you'll have to learn to deal with negative reactions. Some places are worse than others, of course. In Washington DC, it's no big deal. In southern Idaho, you lie when people ask you where you work. You just have to learn to deal.
Fourth, the rules. Remember those work rules that protect you against politically-motivated or just plain stupid personnel actions? Many similar rules will constrain your behavior. To avoid an appearance of impropriety, no accepting gifts over a nominal amount. (You'll hesitate to accept a cup of coffee.) No speech at work that could be interpreted as offensive. This one is especially touchy. You *can* say pretty much anything you want at work and that's OK. As soon as someone gets offended, you're in trouble. Want an extreme example? I got on an elevator once with a secretary (roughly my work level in the organization) and a Division Chief (roughly 87 levels of management above me and a different division, to boot.) In response to the usual "hi, how are you?" greeting from the Chief, I said "It's a gorgeous Friday afternoon, I'm about to get off work, and in the meantime I'm locked in a small room with two beautiful women. Life couldn't get any better!"
The Chief formally placed me on warning for sexual harrassment. You'll find idiots like that at every agency.
Fifth, deadwood. This one will bother you if you have any conscience. At nearly every agency, there are some employees who have "retired in place," doing the absolute minimum necessary to get by. They're a pain. In fact, they often make more work for others than they do themselves. Now, don't let anyone fool you. Those same people work in private industry. In govt service, though, we just seem to have a few more. NOT a lot more, but a few.
Sixth, the bureacracy. It's generally huge and frustrating. On the other hand, I deal with vendors frequently and I've observed much the same thing in the private sector. It's just a bit worse in the public sector.
Finally, the law. This, I think, is the main thing that drives people out of govt service. As a govt employee, everything you do is designed to support the mission of your agency. That mission is a direct result of laws passed by Congress. And Congress frequently screws up, requiring things that simply shouldn't be. In my agency, where we do work that is essential to the very existence of government, we still have to deal with a stack of laws and a library full of regulations that have been authored to try to help us meet those laws. Many of those laws and the regulations that proceed from them and the work processes that proceed from those regulations are grounded in some special interest (or just plain incompetent) legislation and are frustrating as hell to deal with. If you can't stand asking "Why are we doing this stupid thing?" and being told "Because Congress said so." then you should flee from govt service. For all the good govt agencies do and all the satisfaction that comes from working for them, this negative is always present to some degree. When you have to code a back door because the Inspector General wants to spy on employees, when you have to include some ungodly tangle of code to produce some report some idiot congressman got included in your budget, you'll have to ask yourself if it's worth it.
Pick your agency carefully and you may decide, as I have, that it *is* worth it. It's a decision only you can make.
Critical evaluations of music, art, etc. are just foolish and narcisstic : Let ME tell you what _I_ like because obviously what YOU like is shit and you just haven't seen the light.
Not if it's done right.
While I generally agree with you, criticism can serve a very valuable function - saving consumer dollars. As a former film critic, I dealt with a similar situation, i.e. an overwhelmingly large number of choices and consumers with little idea where to best spend their money. I found that the best approach was to be very up-front with my prejudices. I did a column on them annually. It was always something along the lines of: "I like this stuff and this actress and if I see a movie with her in it and that kind of subject matter, I'll overlook all kinds of glaring flaws that might drive you crazy." Those of my readers who shared my tastes could then read my reviews and know that if I liked a movie, they stood a better-than-even chance of liking it, too. Likewise, I frequently got email from people who said "I know you like crap. You said so. Anytime you recommend a movie, I know to avoid it." That was fine; I was helping them, too.
The problem with criticism, as I see it, is that most critics come to confuse their prejudices with an objective standard of quality. It just ain't so. But as long as the prejudices of a critic are known (and s/he doesn't take him/herself too seriously), crticism can be a very useful tool helping the reader best decide where to spend their entertainment dollars.
I don't know who does criticism in this fashion nowadays. The Absolute Sound, a magazine that critiques audio equipment and recordings, used to require a lengthy essay every year from every contributing critic on their musical tastes, equipment, and predispositions of judgement. Any intellectually honest critic or published outlet for critical writing should do the same.
I faced a similar situation not long ago and was considering the WebTV. Then I spent a week in a hotel room where, for a few bucks a day, they'd give me a WebTV keyboard and net access. Man, you talk about ugly! The way a bunch of sites were handled was downright unpleasant.
After ruling out the WebTV, I chose to go the ThinkNic route. (www.thinknic.com) For those who don't know, the ThinkNic is a processor, a couple of megs of flash memory (for storing Netscape bookmarks), some RAM, and a CD drive in a small, cheap box. There's no hard drive, no built-in monitor. The OS is on the CD from which the machine boots. It runs Linux 2.something, but that's entirely beside the point since the user can't make any changes to the boot drive data, anyway.
My basic reasoning was that it was a better concept. Most of the net appliances I've seen are expensive enough that you could have gotten a full-fledged computer for the same price or they come saddled with crappy little LCD monitors that, especially for an aging family member with less-than-perfect eyes, would render the device unusable. The ThinkNic avoids these problems. It's cheap at $200 and you can connect it to a nice, big monitor.
I ordered online, the machine arrived in less than a week, and it was a breeze to set up. It's now happily helping my Mom surf hither and yon via an IDSL connection.
I found only a few shortcomings.
First, it comes running Netscape so if you have issues with that browser you'll have those same issues with this machine. Performance issues when rendering tables come to mind. I found that my mom, having no experience with the net, simply expects every page to pop instantly onto her screen the split-second she clicks the mouse. She can't understand why things take so long and the browser isn't helping.
Second, it lost BIOS settings once and wouldn't boot. A quick call to the free tech support fixed that in under five minutes. The problem hasn't recurred. I've had this happen to a number of boxes and definitely wouldn't hold it against the ThinkNic. Actually, the incident shows how good and fast their tech support was.
Third, Java is enabled and you can't turn it off. I have (purely for testing purposes, you understand) found myself in the middle of a "p*** storm" of rapidly opening windows that simply can't be stopped. The keyboard shortcut for closing Netscape is disabled and no one can mouse that fast. Some of the most execrably coded sites will leave you with no practical choice except to hit the power button for a reboot.
Fourth, there are no instant messaging clients. Yes, there's an IRC client (that can't keep logs, dammit) but I assume that anyone wanting to get new users online wouldn't want to try take a newbie up the IRC learning curve right off the bat. For some users, this is the thing that would make the device useless. (Well, that and the fact that it doesn't run AOL.)
Fifth, setting up space on a public file server to store files is trivial to me but certainly wouldn't have been for my Mom. Remember to take care of this step when you initially set up the device. The same goes for setting up some sort of web-based email account. Luckily, the machine walks you through the setup quite thoroughly.
Sixth, the (cheap) sound system is useless and it can't play movie clips on a dial-up connection. Since it doesn't appear to be caching anything, it just plays movies and sounds at the rate they come in - in incomprehensible fits and starts. Now that my mom has an IDSL connection, though, those features are useable.
Finally, it comes with only a couple of games and they're ugly. Workable, but ugly. That needs to be fixed.
None of these flaws is fatal. Despite the long list of nit-picky problems, I'm actually extremely happy with the product and looking forward to the day when software updates become a cottage industry. Someone could put out a CD for this thing that uses, say, Galeon for a browser and includes a couple of instant messaging clients and the thing would be perfect for lots and lots of folks. As it is, it's darn good and a super value.
In this sort of bottom-end market, any product will be seriously compromised in some way. I happen to think the ThinkNic folks chose the right places to compromise. (This is especially true in regards to the decision NOT to include a monitor. If Mom upgrades to a "real" computer, she can keep the nice monitor she's now using making the upgrade process cheaper and smoother.) As long as you recognize the limitations before buying, the ThinkNic gets a big thumbs-up from me.
There is no "balancing"--the Fourth Amendment says you cannot search/seize my property without a warrant
PERIOD.
Wow. I've rarely encountered any statement so completely erroneous.
The Fourth does no such thing. It prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. The police can legally do any search/seizure they damn well please as long as they can later convince a court that it was reasonable. In practice, a whole body of judicial rulings has sprung up over the last 100 years or so that essentially translates "get a warrant first and you won't have to worry (much) about having a search subsequently ruled unreasonable." But that certainly doesn't mean that warrants are required in every case.
I don't like the idea of Carnivore. I feel sure it will be used for nefarious purposes. I think it should be vigorously opposed at every opportunity. But ridiculous overstatement such as this one only undermine our position.
Tell us why Carnivore is unreasonable. Then you'll have a leg up on showing why it violates the Fourth. I'm sure we could serve the cause of liberty by coming up with hundreds of scenarios where it would be unreasonable. Unthinking condemnation of warrantless searches, though, serves no useful purpose.
Even if you had easy access to front-of-case ports, you'd still have to get down on the floor, crouch, squint, wish you hadn't misplaced that flashlight, etc. while attaching cables. At least, you have to do those things if you're as old and half-blind as I am.
What I'd like to see is the ports on the TOP .
Think about it. If the ports are on top of a tower case, you can put the case in one of those desks that holds a tower case on a pull-out tray. The combo would be about perfect; pull out the case/tray and there are the cables, right on top, ready to be futzed with. I won't even have to get out of my seat to plug/unplug stuff.
Another thought: Cut off the top leading corner of the case at a 45-degree angle and you'd have the perfect spot to mount the floppy, CD and maybe DVD drive. You wouldn't have to pull out the case to get to them and they'd be lots more convenient in that sort of top corner placement where they sorta face up at you. To me, this placement would be far better than the current situation with those drives on the front of the case and (inevitably it seems) always just an inch or two too close to the floor to be easy to reach.
Surely someone has done this before. It just seems so...so...obvious.
They haven't? Where's the name of that patent attorney...?
:-)
Re:recording video streams to hard disk question
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Good question. I love my Tivo, but I often find myself wishing it could record two channels at once. (I'm not worried about viewing one and recording another. Since I got the Tivo, I almost never watch TV that isn't time-shifted.) There have even been occasions when I wanted three channels at once. But 10? That's some mighty serious tv-watching.
Surely if the employee has no contract of employment, he/she isn't considered an "employee" in legal terms
No.
The term "employee" is defined various ways by various agencies, both state and federal, in the U.S. The existence of a written contract is just one factor in determining whether someone is an employee. There are generally 20 common law factors that are used to determine the employee status of a person. It absolutely does not matter if either or both the parties involved say they are or are not in an employee-employer relationship. The actual facts and circumstances of the situation determine if an employement situation exists.
For a short (perhaps too short) look at the way the Social Security Administration codifies these factors, look here.
For a readable, slightly expanded re-statement of the factors, look here.
And for more than you ever wanted to know, look here.
Some of the bureaucrat-speak in the 60-page RFP is lots of fun. I wonder how many potential "offerors" will be tripped up by that requirement for a "Certificate of Toxic Chemical Release Reporting?"
Slashdot Mirror
People are submitting what they saw on "The Screensavers" last nite? Mercy. I thought Slashdot drove their content, not the other way around.
What's next? Barking cats?
Agreed, agreed, agreed.
However, the willingness of people to lay down a big chunk of cash for something does seem to figure rather prominently in whether or not museums and others call that something "fine art" or "a nice picture." After all, those paintings on museum walls are almost always worth big dollars. Cash-strapped museums don't just "de-accession" their donated crap; sometimes they sell stuff they should be displaying. They usually issue some sort of statement about "refining the focus of the collection," but the bottom line is that they get big bucks.
Like it or not, no artworks gets accepted by the art establishment as "musuem-quality fine art" without a big price tag. Why do up-and-coming artists salivate at the thought of a prestigious gallery show? Because it lends them legitimacy, helps get them accepted, and, as an inseparable component of the process, it increases the price tag of their works.
You are quite right that digital artworks will be tremendously valuable to viewers. All good art makes the world a better place and that's a pretty valuable function.
But just because digital artists are producing (spiritually, not monetarily) valuable artworks doesn't mean that profs, curators, critics, or collectors will ever refer to their work product as "fine art." Digital artists need to find a way to make their works rare, even artificially so, before they and their works will be taken seriously by the money-game-playing art establishment. And acceptance by the establishment was what the original poster was seeking.
Well, yes and no. Your heart's in the right place, but when it gets down to brass tacks, I have to disagree. Remember two point, though. First, we're talking about *visual* arts, so mixing in discussions of music and poetry aren't really valid. Words and notes are different from pictures. Also, remember that the original poster was talking about "fine art" and how it is distinguished from other types of art.
With that said, the definition I've always used for fine art is something that will be bought by some rich idiot to hang on his walls to impress a bunch of black-dressed New York snobs that he invites to a once-a-year cocktail party so that he can feel "with it." It doesn't matter what kind of crap it is. It just has to be expensive.
The problems with photographs are exactly as you state - they can be reproduced ad infinitum, though lots of copies require some labor and expense. Computer graphics are even worse in this regard; they can be reproduced ad infinitum with very, very little labor and expense.
So why are early prints more valuable than later ones? More valuable than estate prints? Why are hand-printed-by-the-photographer, limited edition monographs more expensive than high-quality custom silver prints turned out in large numbers? Why are platinum/palladium one-of-a-kind fine art photographic prints so highly prized? Why are top-drawer fine art paintings more expensive still? Because in each case, if the tools and methods used to create the art necessarily enforce rarity, then simple economics kicks in and the price goes up.
Consider this - Why can some photos be sold for much higher prices after the photographer announces that s/he has destroyed the negatives? Rarity. Why was there a minor panic in certain parts of the photographic fine art world when it was discovered that Ansel Adams had NOT destroyed some negatives that he said he had burned? Because the rarity of the prints derived from those negatives was now only theoretical.
Like it or not, for something to be called enduring fine art it has to be something that people will pay a lot of money for. "Fine art for the masses" is a contradiction in terms.
If I wanted to produce fine visual art using a computer, I'd burn the best possible large-format negative, use that to produce 2 or 3 platinum prints on ceramic-coated titanium plates, then destroy both the internegative and the original file. And even then, I'd have a hard time convincing buyers that a backup of the file doesn't exist somewhere and that those really expensive prints I'm trying to sell won't be duped by the thousands 20 years from now.
Computer files as fine art has a long way to go. Never fear, though. It took photography, my personal passion, a couple of lifetimes to get any respect from the fine art world.
I admire your faith, but I separate the notion of faith in God from faith in every single bit of physical evidence on earth of His power. The evidence here is strong, but my perceptions of it are necessarily, humanly flawed. That, and the fact that anything on this earth is subject to corruption by the forces of evil, leads me to discount the physical world (though I certainly do not discard it) in favor of the supernatural, believing that that is the essence of faith.
Reasonable? Or, in your view, just wishy-washy?
I love that link! I had never seen all that stuff in one place before. I'll definitely be going back to that page in the future. Thank you big time.
The way you applied the baloney detector to my post, though, was a tad less useful. You sort of hit around some of my arguments, but I don't see any real center-punched home runs. To wit:
Bzzzzt. Close, but no cigar.
The argument from authority requires that I say "I'm an authority so you should believe me." That's not what I did. I said the Bible was authoritative. In the context of an intellectual rasslin' match, that's the equivalent of quoting an encyclopedia. It's not a perfect argument, but overcoming it requires that you undermine the authority of the source of the quote. That's a tough row to hoe with an encyclopedia. With the Bible, it sort of depends on your frame of reference. In any case, this particular baloney detector doesn't apply.
Nope, again. Exercising judgement always requires observational selection. And judgement must always come into play when deciding what data to include when making a decision. Is this authority more to be trusted or that one? Is the data I'm seeing valid or has something screwed up this set of experiments? If yes, do I throw out these results or do something else?
"Observational selection" is a valid counterattack to an argument only where you can show that any stated criteria for exercising judgement are not being properly or consistently applied. I stated my criteria. I believe I'm adhering to it. Show me otherwise if you want to successfully classify my statements as "bad" observational selection.
Ya got me. Of course, I don't consider pointing out that God is different from man to be a terribly intellectually dishonest thing to do...but YMMV. :-)
Oooo, no! Unlike the previous darts you threw, in this case you missed your target by a mile. An ad hominem attack requires that there be someone who is attacked. The quote above didn't attack any immediately identifiable person or group. It only referred to a simple bit of good advice - one that I hope everyone takes to heart - namely, that there are some people in this world you just shouldn't listen to. People who claim to have all the answers to Biblical mysteries. Self-important jerks. Microsoft PR guys. Chat room denizens who message you claiming to be 16 year old cheerleaders who just wanna talk to an older guy. You get the idea. :-)
Now, if you'd called it a straw man argument, you might have had a point. :-)
Thanks for the correction on the phrasing. The memory isn't what it used to be and I don't have a Bible close at hand.
As for the literal Hebrew...you make a very good point. On the other hand, I have serious trouble wrapping my mind around lots of big, important concepts like the big bang and the long stretches of time in the history of the world. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the original author simply didn't have a handy word for such epochs.
I consider your point just literalism taken to an excess degree. We know that a week, on our calendar, isn't the amount of time that creation took. From that I draw the conclusion that the days in Genesis aren't literal 24 hour days. And if the last transcriber of that book in Hebrew used a word that is at odds with that conclusion, it'll be up to God to either punish me for my impertinence or congratulate me for using the brain He gave me.
I'm betting on the latter.
Obvious to me under my circumstances. And that statement is applicable only to me. You see, I choose to interpret on my own, pray about what confuses me, and have faith that God knows that my understandings will be flawed but my heart is in the right place.
Other folks choose to take other paths. Some need a big, centralized church with lots of fancy robed teachers to interpret for them. Some choose to follow a single charismatic voice. Others find other ways. More power to 'em. God gave 'em free will; they can use it as they wish.
Yep. I know those same people. And I look at 'em kinda funny, too. I admire their faith, but that particular viewpoint is one I choose not to share.
Speaking for myself only, of course, I've never experienced doubt creeping in. It usually charges in at a full and noisy gallop. Daily.
I don't believe God expects us to be perfect and have perfect confidence. I think He would call people who think they've attained that level of enlightenment "total assholes" or some such. (I trust He could come up with a better description, though.) After all, not even His son escaped doubt. I think He just expects us to try. And usually fail. And then to deal with it.
I dunno. I suppose some day God will clue me in. Till then, such things will bother me.
Well, God knows I don't want to look like a raving lunatic. :-)
Yep. Sure do.
Bible worship? Nah. We're supposed to worship God.
You bring up an excellent point, though, about the corruption of the scriptures. There are multiple editions being published all the time. They don't agree. So, obviously, not all Bibles can be, as a famous TV preacher used to like to say, "the inerrant word of God." I don't have a problem with that. "The Bible," meaning the inspired word of God, is without error. Having said that, though, I must immediately follow up with that fact that I doubt there's ever been a copy of the thing assembled. People have done their best to put together the fragments of those writings and the books we have today are a pretty good approximation. They get the basics right. But I've never been one to argue that, in precise detail, everything written in the most recently published book with "The Bible" embossed on the front is exactly what was originally written. Or even intended.
Maybe I just come from a long line of doubters. My grandfather, an uneducated itinerant hard-shell Baptist evangelist in depression-era rural Mississippi, taught himself both Greek and Hebrew so that he could read and study more and older versions of the Bible. He knew that "the bible" that you go buy in the bookstore today is probably more than a little different from "The Bible" that was originally hand-written by people in, essentially, direct communication with God. I agree with him.
But they're pretty close and I'll continue to use them till something better comes along.
Accepting evolution and the big bang as truth doesn't require rejecting religion. It doesn't even require rejecting fundamentalist Christian religion.
I've never really understood all the hoopla about this subject. There was a time, roughly the 1950s, when most of the U.S. professed to Christianity and nearly all of the U.S. was enraptured by science. If there's such a big conflict between science and creationism and evolution, wouldn't you think it would have been a big topic of debate back then? Yeah, the discussion flared up occasionally then and before (Scopes, anyone?), but most people just seemed to go along with one foot in each camp.
Or did they?
When I was a wee child, I was taught that science had most of the answers precisely because it was helping us understand the wonderful universe God had made. I was taught that God created everything in 7 days. And I was also reminded that the concept of time is pretty elastic. God probably doesn't view it like we do. Remember your Bible: "A day is like unto a thousand years."
So when I first asked about the conflict between "7 days" and "creation and evolution takes a bazillion years," I got a simple answer. To wit: "Everything in the Bible is literally true except where it's obviously intended as a parable or metaphor. In this case, of course God created the world in 7 days - 7 of His days. From our point of view, 7 of His days looks like a mighty long time. Don't get hung up on literalism and legalism. They are mere intellectual cudgels used in meaningless verbal battles between self-important idiots furiously engaged in competitive but highly transient mental masturbation." That always seemed reasonable to me.
God created everything in 7 days. The big bang and evolution are probably some of the tools he used to accomplish that task. Between those two statements, there is no conflict.
Is that so hard to accept?
Then you brag about it on Slashdot.
Then the judge finds out that a bunch of people manipulated his court in bad faith.
Then your lawyers get disbarred.
Then you get to spend quite a while sitting in a really bad state-run hotel trying to avoid the big guy who likes to call you "Sweety."
This question brings to mind a case from Houston a couple of decades or more ago. While I can't remember the particulars (I think it had to do with racial discrimination and voting rights), I do remember that the plaintiff's lawyer made waves with an elegant hack on the legal system. Having no funds for a protracted battle and wanting to get to the Supreme Court in as short a time as possible, he filed suit in small claims court and claimed less than USD$25 in damages. He lost immediately.
Then he appealed. Now, under Texas law, any claim that small may not be appealed through the state courts. Literally the first available level of appeal was the U.S. Supreme Court. He appealed and prevailed in what was, for a Supreme Court decision, an incredibly short period of time and for a pittance in legal fees.
Anybody have any good test cases in mind?
I'll check. Many thanks to you if you've saved me from a grievous error.
Faster than what? I think most DSL users want something faster than ISDN and won't want to step back.
However, for people like me who were far enough from the CO that we could only get IDSL (which is basically a type is ISDN) then switching to ISDN in the aftermath of the Northpoint fiasco is a perfectly good choice of action.
As an aside, when I got IDSL the equivalent-speed ISDN was just as expensive but I wanted "always-on," so I went for IDSL. (I've never used ISDN, so I'm not sure about the details.) Now, in checking for alternatives to DSL, my ISP has told me that because ISDN demand has dropped over the last year (everybody wants DSL), the price has also dropped. Bottom line: I'm replacing my USD$40/month IDSL service with USD$20/month ISDN service that's just as fast.
Folks on the fringes of DSL connectivity should *definitely* check out the ISDN alternative.
You're kidding, right? Either that, or you've never been an ass on a bulletin board with a strong sysop.
A good sysop was not just a "meaningful effort" to control hostility and chaos, they were damn effective ones, too.
I'm one of the affected subscribers.
What I'm most interested in is the way the ISPs handle this. My service provider, ev1.net, has a good rep for customer service. Here's what they've done:
1. Sent out an immediate email to customers telling them what was happening.
2. Set up a web page with *very* frequent updates on how they're going to handle this.
3. Revoked all early termination penalties freeing subscribers to seek alternate providers without the penalties required by our contracts. (They didn't have to do this. Per the contract with subscribers, they could have required that we continue to pay for service we weren't receiving and still be subject to early termination penalties.)
4. Set up dial up accounts for all DSL customers. Those accounts are free until customers can find another provider, although I assume they won't remain free forever.
5. DSL customers without modems can drop by the office for a free (generic, I'm sure) 56K modem. Or they'll ship it to you overnight for $8 or so. (The details aren't completely settled.)
6. Established a special telephone number for limited DSL tech support. (They lost their DSL support structure in this mess.)
7. Put together a customer service team to answer questions about all this, along with a special number to reach that team.
And there are probably some other things I've forgotten. In all, the thing that impresses me the most is that they are trying to answer questions as they come up and aren't simply ducking for cover, sticking their fingers in their ears, and hoping this goes away. My initial impression is that they're dealing with it reasonably well.
I've heard that some other ISPs caught in similar situations have been far less helpful.
I'd love to hear of the experiences of other folks with other providers so that I can gauge whether or not the level of service I'm getting during this screw-up is good, bad, or somewhere in between.
...(No, make that a lousy to great resource, depending on the quality of the person in charge of the program) is the Internal Revenue Service. Call the toll-free help number or your local office and get hold of the Taxpayer Education office or whoever is responsible for the Small Business Tax Workshops in your area. Find out when and where and go.
At their best, these workshops can be a gold mine and bring in guest speakers to cover topics far beyond just taxes. At their worst, though, they can be just a short meeting where some publications get handed out and that's about it. Either way, it won't be a waste of your time.
Of course, the easiest way to find one is to go here, click on your state, and dig a link or two deeper to get the schedule for workshops in your area. Even if there's not a current schedule, there will be a contact name and phone number you can call.
A good page of general-purpose links for anyone starting a small business is here
A good place to start finding out about taxes, complete with a freebie from the Small Business Administration, is here.
Enjoy.Hmmm. No employee of the IRS can speak on behalf of the IRS without approval. So let's just say I'm some guy with some experience in this stuff. I'm not saying where I work or that anything in this post is official, OK?
Basically, tax prep software that is e-file enabled will do your forms, wrap them up in one big package, and send them to an intermediary. NOT the IRS! The intermediary is subject to all sorts of requirements regarding security and other things. They have to be open to constant scrutiny from the IRS. It would be silly to allow 50 million people to directly update a database at the IRS - there would be too many people who sent in garbage of one type or another.
The intermediary puts together big packages of files that have been checked for problems and transmits those to the IRS.
So why is there no open source efile software? The biggest reason I can think of is security. The IRS approves software for efiling based on a number of factors including their comfort level that the software works nearly perfectly and won't result in anyone trying to send them a bunch of garbage. Open source projects willing to go through a code audit from the IRS aren't exactly common. Open source projects that are able to turn out software to do a complex task essentially error free and be usable by my mother aren't terribly common either. And both those things are necessary to make it to that list the original question referenced.
Of course, there are exceptions. There are some "industrial-strength" tax prep packages that aren't particulary easy to use and are targeted to tax prep offices, CPAs, etc. There are some names on that approved software list that most people wouldn't recognize because they are not tageted to average consumer. But the need to have truly locked-down software and keep it completely current with the law remains and would sink most open source attempts.
Another reason is because those intermediaries use the software to get paid. TaxWise, for example, is the package used by the IRS, itself, when you walk into the office and ask to have your return prepared. To get TaxWise to work, you have to activate it with a code from the company that is keyed to a special number issued to you by the IRS, the EFIN or Electronic Filer Identification Number. TaxWise then acts as the intermediary. Do you think they want to accept efiled returns from anyone who didn't spend the money to buy their software?
The same deal goes for TurboTax. They will act as your intermediary for a fee. Or, if you make *very* little money, they'll act as your intermediary for free. Either way, though, you will have had to have bought the software from them in the first place.
Tax prep software, *especially* efile software, is something that will be done by commercial software houses. It just doesn't fit with open source.
For heavy-duty and far more technical information about this topic (I've seriously over-simplified some things in this post), try the IRS efile site for software developers. Yes, there is such a thing and it's available to the public. If you really want to know about file specifications, scripted testing of software, and other deeply techy kinds of things, you might want to pick up a copy of Publication 1346, Electronic Return File Specifications and Record Layouts for Individual Income Tax Returns. You can get in dead tree format or entirely online.
All this info can be gotten by digging just a few links below here.
...the name of a porn actress here in the States. I had drinks with her once; she's smart, pretty, well-spoken, and possessed of an infectious sense of fun.
But why on earth would anyone name a distribution after her?
Holy crap, this is a big subject!
I'm a Unix sysadmin for a large bureau. I work around a few developers and deal with more. We all have roughly the same work experience.
Disclaimer: I love my job. Read what follows with that in mind.
Let's start with the pros, in no particular order.
First, you get to serve your fellow man. Now, stop laughing and think about that. I know that my job directly supports people (I used to be one of them, out in the field, knocking on doors and finding people who didn't want to be found, so I know whereof I speak.) who are enforcing important laws that we, as a society, absolutely need to ensure that anarchy is kept at bay. I help create in the lives of lawbreakers those significant emotional events that cause them to change their behavior. There is no monetary compensation (short of "make me super-rich so I can be a full-time philanthropist") that could possibly equal that kind of ultimate job satisfaction.
Of course, I've reached a level of maturity where I don't consider my success to be a function of how much my car costs. If you, too, are smart enough to realize that true satisfaction comes from within, you can knock down the *big* psychic wages by seeking employment at a government agency that does something you think is important. There are lots to choose from; just do a little research.
Second, the pay is not necessarily all that bad. In high-rent locales, it sucks. But you get the same (base) pay in rural Mississippi. Examples? The entry-level salary for a 334 series grade 9 coder (a reasonable entry level in the HQ of a big agency in DC) is $43K. (What's a 334/9? Off-topic - go check opm.gov for more info.) If you choose to come on board at a much lower level, as you might have to do in the sticks or at a smaller agency, you'll do no worse than $29K a year, but you'll get up to that $43K a year level in two years.
I don't know about you, but I can live a decent life on $43K a year. If you can't, then maybe govt service isn't for you.
Third, much of the private sector bullshit is gone. (It's replaced by public sector bullshit, but I'll cover that below.) I've had private sector experience and I would never go back to places where management can jerk you around or effectively fire you at will like in the private sector. You see, civil service employees are hard to fire. That's important and a very good thing. If not for civil service protections, for example, when a democrat is elected president he could just fire all the republicans. Or vice versa. Such things were the norm in decades past. No longer. Along with protection against politically-motivated personnel actions came protections against just plain stupid personnel actions. Your boss can't say "Cut your hair or you're fired!" It doesn't matter if you're a cross-dressing tattooed biker with a purple spiked mohawk - if you do your job well, you are compensated and promoted according to the rules. And that's the bottom line: there are rules, you know them ahead of time, and management can't change them to screw you over just because they don't like you.
Next, there's the actual work to consider. Personally, I find it a challenge to keep things running because I'm a tinkerer. Our tech is rarely cutting-edge, but it still needs work. How that work is done is different at each place, but if your inquiries into the type of work you'll be expected to do sound interesting to you, then don't let the fact that you aren't bleeding-edge get in the way. Wanna be a Perl guy? Sheesh, we *need* those guys to tie things together. Wanna work on Oracle stuff or put web front ends on Informix database applications or support some of the biggest email systems in the world? The US govt is a good place for those things. Insist on staying right on the bleeding edge? The opportunities are fewer, but they exist. Look carefully.
Where to start looking? Go to Government Computer News at www.gcn.com. Browse a bunch. See what we do. I think you'll be surprised at the variety and levels of involvement and just all-around neat stuff that you'll find if you take the time to search.
Next, perks. There's a 40 hour work week. Not a wink-wink-nudge-nudge 40 hour week, but a REAL 40 hour week. (Does listing this as a perk make me a wuss? Maybe. But I think it mainly just means that I have a life outside work.) When you *have* to work overtime, you get overtime pay. And double pay on holidays. There are more than a dozen holidays a year. You earn 4 hours of sick leave and 4 hours of vacation leave for every two weeks you work from the very beginning. And after you've been here as along as I have, you get 8 hours of vacation time for every two weeks worked. The insurance is usually decent, though private industry, with all its variablility, can often be significantly better. When you have to travel on government business, it's easy to tack vacation time onto your trip. (The government has to pay you to fly there, stay there for the duration of business, and fly back. If you want to insert a few days of vacation time between the end of your business and the flight back, no big deal. You'll just have to pay for them.) No, you don't get to earn frequent flyer miles and you have to sit in coach (unless you can get a doctor to certify that cramming your body into a narrow seat is a health risk, in which case you can fly first class), but I travel *very* frequently for the government. Over the last few months, I've done a week each in Seattle, Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oklahoma City, Austin, Nashville, Indianapolis, Chicago, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and somewhere I'd rather forget in the middle of New Jersey. As long as they don't send me back to Jersey, I'd hit the road again in a heartbeat.
More perks? Your union can be good to useless, but you're never compelled to join or pay dues. A willingness to be mobile just about guarantees quick promotions of competent people. I could go on and on, but I won't. Going into too much detail can be misleading, since these things vary widely from agency to agency. Check for yourself.
Now, the bad stuff.
First, low pay by some people's standards. I work 40 hours a week for $50K. I wouldn't work 80 hours a week for twice or even 5 times that amount. YMMV.
Second, the tools. This one bugs me. Most agencies enforce on all tech workers a standard set of tools. At my agency, for example, if you need to script something you use the shell or Perl. Wanna use Python just because you like it? Forget it. It's not the standard. If you want to be a coder, make double damn sure you ask what tools you'll be required to use. If you don't like them, don't take the job.
Third, public attitudes. People who don't know crap about government service assume there must be something wrong with you if you work here. I work at an especially hated agency. Once I was called for jury duty and during the selection process, I was interviewed in front of everyone. If you've ever been through voire dire (sp?), you know how it works. Anyway, my employer was mentioned. At the first break, a fellow jury panel member made a point of telling me, in front of witnesses, that he'd kill me if I came near him. Not fun and an extreme example, but you'll have to learn to deal with negative reactions. Some places are worse than others, of course. In Washington DC, it's no big deal. In southern Idaho, you lie when people ask you where you work. You just have to learn to deal.
Fourth, the rules. Remember those work rules that protect you against politically-motivated or just plain stupid personnel actions? Many similar rules will constrain your behavior. To avoid an appearance of impropriety, no accepting gifts over a nominal amount. (You'll hesitate to accept a cup of coffee.) No speech at work that could be interpreted as offensive. This one is especially touchy. You *can* say pretty much anything you want at work and that's OK. As soon as someone gets offended, you're in trouble. Want an extreme example? I got on an elevator once with a secretary (roughly my work level in the organization) and a Division Chief (roughly 87 levels of management above me and a different division, to boot.) In response to the usual "hi, how are you?" greeting from the Chief, I said "It's a gorgeous Friday afternoon, I'm about to get off work, and in the meantime I'm locked in a small room with two beautiful women. Life couldn't get any better!"
The Chief formally placed me on warning for sexual harrassment. You'll find idiots like that at every agency.
Fifth, deadwood. This one will bother you if you have any conscience. At nearly every agency, there are some employees who have "retired in place," doing the absolute minimum necessary to get by. They're a pain. In fact, they often make more work for others than they do themselves. Now, don't let anyone fool you. Those same people work in private industry. In govt service, though, we just seem to have a few more. NOT a lot more, but a few.
Sixth, the bureacracy. It's generally huge and frustrating. On the other hand, I deal with vendors frequently and I've observed much the same thing in the private sector. It's just a bit worse in the public sector.
Finally, the law. This, I think, is the main thing that drives people out of govt service. As a govt employee, everything you do is designed to support the mission of your agency. That mission is a direct result of laws passed by Congress. And Congress frequently screws up, requiring things that simply shouldn't be. In my agency, where we do work that is essential to the very existence of government, we still have to deal with a stack of laws and a library full of regulations that have been authored to try to help us meet those laws. Many of those laws and the regulations that proceed from them and the work processes that proceed from those regulations are grounded in some special interest (or just plain incompetent) legislation and are frustrating as hell to deal with. If you can't stand asking "Why are we doing this stupid thing?" and being told "Because Congress said so." then you should flee from govt service. For all the good govt agencies do and all the satisfaction that comes from working for them, this negative is always present to some degree. When you have to code a back door because the Inspector General wants to spy on employees, when you have to include some ungodly tangle of code to produce some report some idiot congressman got included in your budget, you'll have to ask yourself if it's worth it.
Pick your agency carefully and you may decide, as I have, that it *is* worth it. It's a decision only you can make.
Hope this helps.
Not if it's done right.
While I generally agree with you, criticism can serve a very valuable function - saving consumer dollars. As a former film critic, I dealt with a similar situation, i.e. an overwhelmingly large number of choices and consumers with little idea where to best spend their money. I found that the best approach was to be very up-front with my prejudices. I did a column on them annually. It was always something along the lines of: "I like this stuff and this actress and if I see a movie with her in it and that kind of subject matter, I'll overlook all kinds of glaring flaws that might drive you crazy." Those of my readers who shared my tastes could then read my reviews and know that if I liked a movie, they stood a better-than-even chance of liking it, too. Likewise, I frequently got email from people who said "I know you like crap. You said so. Anytime you recommend a movie, I know to avoid it." That was fine; I was helping them, too.
The problem with criticism, as I see it, is that most critics come to confuse their prejudices with an objective standard of quality. It just ain't so. But as long as the prejudices of a critic are known (and s/he doesn't take him/herself too seriously), crticism can be a very useful tool helping the reader best decide where to spend their entertainment dollars.
I don't know who does criticism in this fashion nowadays. The Absolute Sound, a magazine that critiques audio equipment and recordings, used to require a lengthy essay every year from every contributing critic on their musical tastes, equipment, and predispositions of judgement. Any intellectually honest critic or published outlet for critical writing should do the same.
I faced a similar situation not long ago and was considering the WebTV. Then I spent a week in a hotel room where, for a few bucks a day, they'd give me a WebTV keyboard and net access. Man, you talk about ugly! The way a bunch of sites were handled was downright unpleasant.
After ruling out the WebTV, I chose to go the ThinkNic route. (www.thinknic.com) For those who don't know, the ThinkNic is a processor, a couple of megs of flash memory (for storing Netscape bookmarks), some RAM, and a CD drive in a small, cheap box. There's no hard drive, no built-in monitor. The OS is on the CD from which the machine boots. It runs Linux 2.something, but that's entirely beside the point since the user can't make any changes to the boot drive data, anyway.
My basic reasoning was that it was a better concept. Most of the net appliances I've seen are expensive enough that you could have gotten a full-fledged computer for the same price or they come saddled with crappy little LCD monitors that, especially for an aging family member with less-than-perfect eyes, would render the device unusable. The ThinkNic avoids these problems. It's cheap at $200 and you can connect it to a nice, big monitor.
I ordered online, the machine arrived in less than a week, and it was a breeze to set up. It's now happily helping my Mom surf hither and yon via an IDSL connection.
I found only a few shortcomings.
First, it comes running Netscape so if you have issues with that browser you'll have those same issues with this machine. Performance issues when rendering tables come to mind. I found that my mom, having no experience with the net, simply expects every page to pop instantly onto her screen the split-second she clicks the mouse. She can't understand why things take so long and the browser isn't helping.
Second, it lost BIOS settings once and wouldn't boot. A quick call to the free tech support fixed that in under five minutes. The problem hasn't recurred. I've had this happen to a number of boxes and definitely wouldn't hold it against the ThinkNic. Actually, the incident shows how good and fast their tech support was.
Third, Java is enabled and you can't turn it off. I have (purely for testing purposes, you understand) found myself in the middle of a "p*** storm" of rapidly opening windows that simply can't be stopped. The keyboard shortcut for closing Netscape is disabled and no one can mouse that fast. Some of the most execrably coded sites will leave you with no practical choice except to hit the power button for a reboot.
Fourth, there are no instant messaging clients. Yes, there's an IRC client (that can't keep logs, dammit) but I assume that anyone wanting to get new users online wouldn't want to try take a newbie up the IRC learning curve right off the bat. For some users, this is the thing that would make the device useless. (Well, that and the fact that it doesn't run AOL.)
Fifth, setting up space on a public file server to store files is trivial to me but certainly wouldn't have been for my Mom. Remember to take care of this step when you initially set up the device. The same goes for setting up some sort of web-based email account. Luckily, the machine walks you through the setup quite thoroughly.
Sixth, the (cheap) sound system is useless and it can't play movie clips on a dial-up connection. Since it doesn't appear to be caching anything, it just plays movies and sounds at the rate they come in - in incomprehensible fits and starts. Now that my mom has an IDSL connection, though, those features are useable.
Finally, it comes with only a couple of games and they're ugly. Workable, but ugly. That needs to be fixed.
None of these flaws is fatal. Despite the long list of nit-picky problems, I'm actually extremely happy with the product and looking forward to the day when software updates become a cottage industry. Someone could put out a CD for this thing that uses, say, Galeon for a browser and includes a couple of instant messaging clients and the thing would be perfect for lots and lots of folks. As it is, it's darn good and a super value.
In this sort of bottom-end market, any product will be seriously compromised in some way. I happen to think the ThinkNic folks chose the right places to compromise. (This is especially true in regards to the decision NOT to include a monitor. If Mom upgrades to a "real" computer, she can keep the nice monitor she's now using making the upgrade process cheaper and smoother.) As long as you recognize the limitations before buying, the ThinkNic gets a big thumbs-up from me.
Wow. I've rarely encountered any statement so completely erroneous.
The Fourth does no such thing. It prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. The police can legally do any search/seizure they damn well please as long as they can later convince a court that it was reasonable. In practice, a whole body of judicial rulings has sprung up over the last 100 years or so that essentially translates "get a warrant first and you won't have to worry (much) about having a search subsequently ruled unreasonable." But that certainly doesn't mean that warrants are required in every case.
I don't like the idea of Carnivore. I feel sure it will be used for nefarious purposes. I think it should be vigorously opposed at every opportunity. But ridiculous overstatement such as this one only undermine our position.
Tell us why Carnivore is unreasonable. Then you'll have a leg up on showing why it violates the Fourth. I'm sure we could serve the cause of liberty by coming up with hundreds of scenarios where it would be unreasonable. Unthinking condemnation of warrantless searches, though, serves no useful purpose.
Even if you had easy access to front-of-case ports, you'd still have to get down on the floor, crouch, squint, wish you hadn't misplaced that flashlight, etc. while attaching cables. At least, you have to do those things if you're as old and half-blind as I am.
What I'd like to see is the ports on the TOP .
Think about it. If the ports are on top of a tower case, you can put the case in one of those desks that holds a tower case on a pull-out tray. The combo would be about perfect; pull out the case/tray and there are the cables, right on top, ready to be futzed with. I won't even have to get out of my seat to plug/unplug stuff.Another thought: Cut off the top leading corner of the case at a 45-degree angle and you'd have the perfect spot to mount the floppy, CD and maybe DVD drive. You wouldn't have to pull out the case to get to them and they'd be lots more convenient in that sort of top corner placement where they sorta face up at you. To me, this placement would be far better than the current situation with those drives on the front of the case and (inevitably it seems) always just an inch or two too close to the floor to be easy to reach.
Surely someone has done this before. It just seems so...so...obvious.
They haven't? Where's the name of that patent attorney...?
:-)
Good question. I love my Tivo, but I often find myself wishing it could record two channels at once. (I'm not worried about viewing one and recording another. Since I got the Tivo, I almost never watch TV that isn't time-shifted.) There have even been occasions when I wanted three channels at once. But 10? That's some mighty serious tv-watching.
No.
The term "employee" is defined various ways by various agencies, both state and federal, in the U.S. The existence of a written contract is just one factor in determining whether someone is an employee. There are generally 20 common law factors that are used to determine the employee status of a person. It absolutely does not matter if either or both the parties involved say they are or are not in an employee-employer relationship. The actual facts and circumstances of the situation determine if an employement situation exists.
For a short (perhaps too short) look at the way the Social Security Administration codifies these factors, look here.
For a readable, slightly expanded re-statement of the factors, look here.
And for more than you ever wanted to know, look here.
Some of the bureaucrat-speak in the 60-page RFP is lots of fun. I wonder how many potential "offerors" will be tripped up by that requirement for a "Certificate of Toxic Chemical Release Reporting?"