Have you actually read the 1040? There's really nothing in there that someone with a 5th-grade reading level could not comprehend (and I'm not at all saying you're stupid; I'm saying that the tax form is simpler than you may have been lead to believe). It tells you exactly what to add or subtract, write down, look up in a table, etc. Really more people should do it by hand - I don't think someone can legitimately complain about the complexity of the tax system or their own personal burden unless they've gone to the trouble of figuring it for themselves by hand once or twice.
Interestingly enough, almost every single convolution in the tax code is a tax break for somebody [*]. It's not that no one wants simpler taxes, it's just that no one wants to give up their little niche tax exemption. But if you don't like the minor details, just don't claim those things, and it won't take you even an hour to fill out the whole thing. It can't be that complicated of a tax code; they give you frickin' tax tables so that you don't even have to know how to multiply to fill it out:)
[* the exception being the Alternative Minimum Tax. I don't count the progressive nature of the tax rates as a similar exception since that's not really particularly complicated in the first place - see tax tables above.]
P.S. Since you are the person signing the return, you are signing up for whatever numbers the software has come up with. So you can just as soon go to jail if the software makes a mistake.
I would love to see that. For instance, the state of Illinois provides free online filing. Up 'til now the IRS excuse has been that they didn't want to undercut the non-free tax software market, but if they want me to file electronically, they're going to have to make it cheaper than $.37. I'm not about to pay money just to make things easier on the IRS:)
I actually asked at Best Buy if they would fix mine, which seems to be similarly broken. The tech monkey said that it was probably illegal to do so. I resisted the urge to debate the finer points of U.S. law with him on that regard. Not that I really expected them to do anything about it, but it was mildly amusing for a moment.
OK, I learned something today - I was going to argue with you, but after reading Findlaw for a few minutes I agree with you. For some reason I was thinking I'd seen an acquittal appealed by the government on Law & Order, but I guess either I was wrong, or perhaps they didn't fact-check that show too well:)
I thought it was just a "special form of shorthand", not really actual encryption. I find it difficult to believe that he was doing hard-core mathematically-based encryption, by hand, in the 1660s. It was more a case of using obscure notation than using encryption I would think, although I don't know a great deal about the actual system he used. So it's more of a translation problem (i.e. an obscured language) than a cryptography problem (where breaking the algorithm or brute forcing the key is the only way to get the plaintext).
I know, I know - that was awful. Possibly the real lesson here is not to leave a paper trail at all - just remember what's important about the past; at least then your memories can't be exposed to the prying eyes and prurient interests of future generations (yet?).
I hadn't realized that they required broadcasters to stop, no. I don't think such a mandate would be appropriate until the market has successfully adopted whatever the new standard is.
The interesting thing is I wonder how much they'll actually make after the 3G spectrum auction debacle. I seriously doubt the government will actually receive half of the sale value of that spectrum, just because the enormous costs coupled with a demand slump will bankrupt many of the bidders.
I can understand the need to restructure the bandwidth allocation across the country; I just think that the method of doing so has been planned so that it's good for broadcasters, great for equipment makers, getting better by the minute for content producers, and getting lousier by the minute for the actual consumers of the spectrum.
Sure. But they should arbitrate the spectrum in a way that the public demands, not seek to create artificial demand on their own. Did the public really want to buy all new hardware with potential significant copyright restrictions? Not the last time I checked.
There's a certain minimum amount of copied material required before it becomes copyright infringement, isn't there? If it's only one line you might be OK, since there can't be that much creativity in just one line of code.
Of course, with a rewrite comes necessary additional testing, troubleshooting, etc. The big benefit of using someone else's code is not so much that you don't have to re-code it, but that you don't have to debug and test your re-coded version, even if the amount of functionality you went after was somewhat smaller than the open-source version. Are you sure that you can recreate every little niggling bit of standards compliance that an open-source project, with years of testing in the real world behind it, has gone through? Just because you don't see these time-sucking issues up front doesn't mean they're not there.
Ah, but that's it - the government didn't make people buy color TV sets, people decided to do so on their own because of a perceived difference in quality that made it worth it. If HDTV is so good, why does the government have to mandate it? If it were truly superior for the price, the marketplace would make it a success on its own. The government only has to push it because it's not superior, at least not yet.
I wouldn't hang my hat much on the expectation of privacy. If someone really wanted to hear your conversation or analyze your band-aid, they would do so. "Expectation of privacy" is perhaps some defense against criminal prosecution; it doesn't protect you at all from other private citizens with malign intent. You want real privacy, get a scrambler and an incinerator.
Heck, you even called it a phone "broadcast" - if you're going to radiate energy, I'm not sure how there can even be an expectation of privacy about that energy once it leaves your property. The population at large only has an expectation of privacy because the population doesn't understand how technology actually works. Ignorance of the law is generally no excuse; why should ignorance of reality be able to construct a false shield of privacy?
Me, I shred my bills but don't burn 'em, and I don't have an encrypted phone. But I do at least keep in mind the privacy impact of these choices. I appreciate the current judicial view of privacy, even if I don't find it entirely supportable.
The point of the article was that they didn't get a search warrant, and then used the search to justify a later, more invasive search of the home with an actual warrant. The only leeway that police get in terms of investigating is the warrant, so there really is no difference between a government employee going through your trash without a warrant and a private citizen doing so.
I do seem to recall from U.S. Government class in high school that the Supreme Court has previously ruled that garbage at the curbside is not protected, so this article is only interesting in that the trial judge seems to have ruled the other way (well, and the fact that the government officials seem to think they're above the law somehow). Really, this is old news - stuff out at the curb is considered to be abandoned; if you don't want it looked through without a warrant, burn it or bury it on your property.
The article mentioned that your trash should be considered sacrosanct at least until the garbage men get it, but it seems to me that the police could then just stop the garbage truck at the corner with your stuff still on top. So there's not much gain of privacy there.
Big deal - what would you do to a kid who brought in Playboy to read in the library? Do that to the goatse.cx kid too. This is not a computer problem, it's a young-and-bored problem.
In defense of those with poor memory: a lot of Microsoft stuff will lock you out after you've tried the wrong password a few times. Which is a halfway good security feature, but also pretty frustrating when you need that email or to print something right now. So there's a cost to just trying to guess what your forgotten password was.
We've got a centralized password thingy, where you have one central password and all sorts of web applications, desktops, etc. all validate against this central server. But there are still problems with some applications that don't work off of this centralized lookup, etc. And centralized password control means that if one account is cracked, the others are wide open.
A good setup IMHO would be to give each user two or more graduated levels of passwords. One password is for their own personal info on HR's page, access to management evaluations of them, etc. - they can decide how secure to make it. Another password is for all business-critical information and apps; you rotate this one every month or two. Another password is for general non-confidential business info; you rotate it once a year or something like that. All applications at a particular "security level" use centralized validation and share the password per user per level. The user account for each is the same, so you maintain accountability even for non-important stuff.
So you have relatively few centralized passwords, but they still are changed based on the risk of what would happen if they became known.
Slashdot Mirror
For a PS1, don't you also have to be able to write one of those funky black CDROMs? Or would you just take the CDROM drive out of the loop entirely?
Spoken like someone who's never waited on a page to load, or maybe just has a lot of time on his or her hands.
Hmmm, hope anodized aluminum is easier to wipe down, then...
Have you actually read the 1040? There's really nothing in there that someone with a 5th-grade reading level could not comprehend (and I'm not at all saying you're stupid; I'm saying that the tax form is simpler than you may have been lead to believe). It tells you exactly what to add or subtract, write down, look up in a table, etc. Really more people should do it by hand - I don't think someone can legitimately complain about the complexity of the tax system or their own personal burden unless they've gone to the trouble of figuring it for themselves by hand once or twice.
Interestingly enough, almost every single convolution in the tax code is a tax break for somebody [*]. It's not that no one wants simpler taxes, it's just that no one wants to give up their little niche tax exemption. But if you don't like the minor details, just don't claim those things, and it won't take you even an hour to fill out the whole thing. It can't be that complicated of a tax code; they give you frickin' tax tables so that you don't even have to know how to multiply to fill it out :)
[* the exception being the Alternative Minimum Tax. I don't count the progressive nature of the tax rates as a similar exception since that's not really particularly complicated in the first place - see tax tables above.]
P.S. Since you are the person signing the return, you are signing up for whatever numbers the software has come up with. So you can just as soon go to jail if the software makes a mistake.
I would love to see that. For instance, the state of Illinois provides free online filing. Up 'til now the IRS excuse has been that they didn't want to undercut the non-free tax software market, but if they want me to file electronically, they're going to have to make it cheaper than $.37. I'm not about to pay money just to make things easier on the IRS :)
How about Virginia?
I actually asked at Best Buy if they would fix mine, which seems to be similarly broken. The tech monkey said that it was probably illegal to do so. I resisted the urge to debate the finer points of U.S. law with him on that regard. Not that I really expected them to do anything about it, but it was mildly amusing for a moment.
OK, I learned something today - I was going to argue with you, but after reading Findlaw for a few minutes I agree with you. For some reason I was thinking I'd seen an acquittal appealed by the government on Law & Order, but I guess either I was wrong, or perhaps they didn't fact-check that show too well :)
I thought it was just a "special form of shorthand", not really actual encryption. I find it difficult to believe that he was doing hard-core mathematically-based encryption, by hand, in the 1660s. It was more a case of using obscure notation than using encryption I would think, although I don't know a great deal about the actual system he used. So it's more of a translation problem (i.e. an obscured language) than a cryptography problem (where breaking the algorithm or brute forcing the key is the only way to get the plaintext).
...Security through obscurity doesn't work :)
I know, I know - that was awful. Possibly the real lesson here is not to leave a paper trail at all - just remember what's important about the past; at least then your memories can't be exposed to the prying eyes and prurient interests of future generations (yet?).
Homer: Oh yeah? You guys play God all the time! Just ask your octoparrot over there!
Octoparrot: Rawwwk! Polly shouldn't be! [waves tentacles]
I hadn't realized that they required broadcasters to stop, no. I don't think such a mandate would be appropriate until the market has successfully adopted whatever the new standard is.
The interesting thing is I wonder how much they'll actually make after the 3G spectrum auction debacle. I seriously doubt the government will actually receive half of the sale value of that spectrum, just because the enormous costs coupled with a demand slump will bankrupt many of the bidders.
I can understand the need to restructure the bandwidth allocation across the country; I just think that the method of doing so has been planned so that it's good for broadcasters, great for equipment makers, getting better by the minute for content producers, and getting lousier by the minute for the actual consumers of the spectrum.
Sure. But they should arbitrate the spectrum in a way that the public demands, not seek to create artificial demand on their own. Did the public really want to buy all new hardware with potential significant copyright restrictions? Not the last time I checked.
There's a certain minimum amount of copied material required before it becomes copyright infringement, isn't there? If it's only one line you might be OK, since there can't be that much creativity in just one line of code.
Out of curiosity, how did they do it?
Of course, with a rewrite comes necessary additional testing, troubleshooting, etc. The big benefit of using someone else's code is not so much that you don't have to re-code it, but that you don't have to debug and test your re-coded version, even if the amount of functionality you went after was somewhat smaller than the open-source version. Are you sure that you can recreate every little niggling bit of standards compliance that an open-source project, with years of testing in the real world behind it, has gone through? Just because you don't see these time-sucking issues up front doesn't mean they're not there.
Ah, but that's it - the government didn't make people buy color TV sets, people decided to do so on their own because of a perceived difference in quality that made it worth it. If HDTV is so good, why does the government have to mandate it? If it were truly superior for the price, the marketplace would make it a success on its own. The government only has to push it because it's not superior, at least not yet.
I wouldn't hang my hat much on the expectation of privacy. If someone really wanted to hear your conversation or analyze your band-aid, they would do so. "Expectation of privacy" is perhaps some defense against criminal prosecution; it doesn't protect you at all from other private citizens with malign intent. You want real privacy, get a scrambler and an incinerator.
Heck, you even called it a phone "broadcast" - if you're going to radiate energy, I'm not sure how there can even be an expectation of privacy about that energy once it leaves your property. The population at large only has an expectation of privacy because the population doesn't understand how technology actually works. Ignorance of the law is generally no excuse; why should ignorance of reality be able to construct a false shield of privacy?
Me, I shred my bills but don't burn 'em, and I don't have an encrypted phone. But I do at least keep in mind the privacy impact of these choices. I appreciate the current judicial view of privacy, even if I don't find it entirely supportable.
The point of the article was that they didn't get a search warrant, and then used the search to justify a later, more invasive search of the home with an actual warrant. The only leeway that police get in terms of investigating is the warrant, so there really is no difference between a government employee going through your trash without a warrant and a private citizen doing so.
I do seem to recall from U.S. Government class in high school that the Supreme Court has previously ruled that garbage at the curbside is not protected, so this article is only interesting in that the trial judge seems to have ruled the other way (well, and the fact that the government officials seem to think they're above the law somehow). Really, this is old news - stuff out at the curb is considered to be abandoned; if you don't want it looked through without a warrant, burn it or bury it on your property.
The article mentioned that your trash should be considered sacrosanct at least until the garbage men get it, but it seems to me that the police could then just stop the garbage truck at the corner with your stuff still on top. So there's not much gain of privacy there.
Wait - they can't get security right, and you expect them to have decent software configuration management too? You slavedriver :)
If I had points, I would mod you up just for "disgronificate" :)
Big deal - what would you do to a kid who brought in Playboy to read in the library? Do that to the goatse.cx kid too. This is not a computer problem, it's a young-and-bored problem.
Well, I learned something today. This hasn't been my experience with various *nix machines, but then again maybe they just weren't too well secured :)
In defense of those with poor memory: a lot of Microsoft stuff will lock you out after you've tried the wrong password a few times. Which is a halfway good security feature, but also pretty frustrating when you need that email or to print something right now. So there's a cost to just trying to guess what your forgotten password was.
We've got a centralized password thingy, where you have one central password and all sorts of web applications, desktops, etc. all validate against this central server. But there are still problems with some applications that don't work off of this centralized lookup, etc. And centralized password control means that if one account is cracked, the others are wide open.
A good setup IMHO would be to give each user two or more graduated levels of passwords. One password is for their own personal info on HR's page, access to management evaluations of them, etc. - they can decide how secure to make it. Another password is for all business-critical information and apps; you rotate this one every month or two. Another password is for general non-confidential business info; you rotate it once a year or something like that. All applications at a particular "security level" use centralized validation and share the password per user per level. The user account for each is the same, so you maintain accountability even for non-important stuff.
So you have relatively few centralized passwords, but they still are changed based on the risk of what would happen if they became known.