One is clean and readable, the other wordy and cluttered. I hate xml config files. I don't WANT to be forced to use some bizzaro XML editor, or deal with manually edited XML.
802.11xx just don't cut the mustard without quite a few access points.
Well, then use quite a few access points!!! AP's are dirt cheap - much much less expensive than proprietary alternatives. The last thing you want is some bizzare proprietary client hardware required at each house.
Riiight.... You go ahead and do your simplistic burger-joint-single-income-source taxes. The rest of us that have lots of investments, multiple sources of income, own a business, etc. will continue to use professional accountants.
First, I don't buy that line. Second, That does not address existing apps, or apps ported from other platforms. For example: all the X apps including xterm (needed since the default OSX Terminal app sucks donky doo.) Apple ALREADY supports the right button all over the existing UI. One button mice just make those features harder to get to.
Power users rarely stick with the supplied mouse
UNLESS THEY ARE USING A LAPTOP. I don't know how I can make that any more clear. External mice with laptops are not practical in many situations that you use a laptop.
The solution could be simple. In preferences, by default all buttons could be defined as button one. Power users could alter that behavior. Left-handed power users could also swap left/right. Problem solved. Everyone is happy.
Yes. We all know it's possible, but it is a MAJOR pain that the powerbook only has one button. Yes, their are keybord shortcuts for the right / middle buttons, Still a pain - nothing changes that fact.
If your finances are very simple, then a tax-preparer is not needed. Otherwise it's silly not to use a qualified professional - preferably a CPA and not some walmart employee that took a 2 week course...
Moving to a consuption tax from income tax is not so easy.
Many of us are getting older. We have already paid income tax on our savings and investments. For the people at retirement age, a move to a consuption tax means that they pay the full tax TWICE (which would be Very unfair.)
A better solution is to just move to a fair flat tax, or simplified graduated tax, with Very few deductions. The current tax code is amazingly complicated. The tax code should be able to be summed up in 40 pages instead of 400 volumes.
To respond to the main OP, I wouldn't use H&R Block ever. The preparers are not accountants. In fact, I know one that is a warehouse worker at Walmart. My taxes are complicated - owning a small business, dealing with AMT from stock options, buying and selling real-estate, trust funds, etc. I use a CPA. We go over all the issues in detail to find all the deductions, how to deal with investments in a way that is best from a tax prespective, etc. 4They charge me $250. Why would you pay $175 for someone who is not even an accountant, much less a CPA? I know way too many people that use H&R that ended up with major tax problems due to errors. Stay far far away.
Furthermore, unless your taxes are pretty simple, I wouldn't consider doing them myself. If you just have a normal job, single, rent an apartment, don't invest, then sure! Use Turbotax or whatever. Otherwise you are better off with professional advice and service from a qualified CPA.
I agree. I've been involved in both situations. In fact, we have one opensource app that is only used internally that has been massivly customized - hundreds of programmer hours. We took the app in a different direction than the original team.
We did get bit in the ass on another app however. The person who did the mods left the company, and then there were a bunch of security updates to the app, and the patches were not so easily applied to our version. In addition, we wanted some of the new features available upstream in addition to our features, and integrating the two would have been a huge effort. So we ended up moving to a closed source alternative instead and basically lost a lot of the hours spend on that opensource app.
All in all, the bottom line is that the market does exist for customizing your opensource app for other people. How big that market is depends on a large number of variables.
Sounds like Seibel. God what a POS that stuff is. Every once in a while I run into some clueless company that implemented it and uses the abortion of a web-interface for "self service support." Pure evil.
Yes and no. It depends on what other projects you have going on. Sometimes you have the in-house resources but your time is better spent on other things.
Also keep in mind that no matter how readable your code is, you are going to know it better than anyone else. It just may be faster and cheaper to pay the main developer make the modification.
Ongoing maintenance is an issue too. Let's say that you internally added feature X. The main project does a new major release, and it doesn't contain your feature, so you now have to re-integrate it. More work.
If you are on ADSL, you can greatly improve QOS by getting a sangoma DSL card instead of using the telco supplied DSL modem. The problem with traditional DSL (and cable) modems is the huge input buffer. The way people get around this buffer is to limit the upstream speed to less than full wire speed so that the buffer is always empty.
QOS is most freqently needed on upstream data since downstream has higher speeds. Since most ISP's don't support QOS at all, about the only place you have any control is upstream on the local loop.
Yep. What made me resort to ad blocking is all the flashing, moving, and even noise generating ads. Popup blocking started first (X10 ads), and I think the last straw was an evil Macromedia flash ad that "zoomed" over the entire page. That was it. War. Total adblocking is now enabled.
In one of my past jobs, I worked for a very high-volume web site. We had a policy that we would not accept any flashing or Java ads. Unfortunately, doubleclick would often rotate in "pool" ads that violated our terms. This required manually blocking a particular ad from our site. Total PITA.
Advertizers have only themselves to blame. Just because technology allows you to do something does not mean that it's a good idea.
Adsense on google IS much better, although I find it annoying to see stupid stuff like "find the lowest price on apache httpd.conf on nextag!" (or ebay...)
I'll second 3ware. I've had problems with Promise and their "fake" raid, changing chipsets ever 5 minutes and breaking compatability, etc.
3ware isn't cheap but you get what you pay for. High-quality, great performance, great support, and it "just works" with Linux.
I've had issues with several brands / chipsets of onboard SATA controllers, which is why I went with 3ware. Software raid is all fine and good if you can get reliable drivers! If not, then avoid it.
With 1T of storage, you are talking quite a few drives. Make sure you have good cooling, big power supply, etc.
Many people are going to have some kind of broadband service for reasons other than VoIP. The cost is irrelevant. I'm paying $89 / month for business DSL for my data needs whether or not I do VoIP over it too. I incurr no additional cost other than the per-minute rate. The only reason I have POTS service at all is because Verizon does not offer DSL without it. Pots is great for incomming and local outgoing. I just don't use it for regional or long-distance due to the insane prices that ALL POTS long-distance carriers charge. Once the fiber rollout in my area is complete, I won't need POTS at all. Pots is a dead technology. It just doesn't know it yet.
Rather than a disposable phone, I'd rather see a cheap SoHo "cell-tower" that I can hook up to my Asterisk phone system. When I'm at home, my personal cell-tower is closest and reroutes my calls over my POTS or VoIP line. This would replace all the crappy cordless phones now being sold. Does anyone make a cordless phone that doesn't totally suck and has a reasonable price point? The only one that seems close is engenius which starts at about $350 for one phone plus base (way overpriced.)
Um, yeah. That's kind of what I said. Flat rate plans. You are paying about $30 / month (out of the $50) for that "unlimited" service. BTW, I'm not talking about cell phones (let's compare apples to apples here...) That 1.47 cents per minute rate is on VoIP, and I would need to make over 2000 minutes of calls before it's more expensive than your unlimited service. That's 2.75 hours a day every day on the phone... Are you seriously making that many long-distance calls from home? (These flat-rate plans are residential...)
Flat rate plans are a ripoff for most people. Even at a 5 cent per minute rate, you would still need to make 600 minutes of long-distance calls to break even. 600 minutes is a lot. I have yet to go over my 450 mins on my cell phone, ever. Even on long business trips where I call home to the wife and kids every night PLUS all the business calls.
BTW, the flat rate ripoff also applies to some VoIP providers. Vonage's unlimited plan is still $25 / month which would need 1700 minutes to break even. That's no bargain.
People need to do the math. Look at thier usage. Do the research on various plans and providers. The reason flat rate plans exist is because MOST people don't get to the break-even point.
Asterisk is great because I can create a dial plan that uses the POTS line for local calls and 911, VoIP for most long-distance, and private VoIP to remote businesses / friends that have VoIP software (zero cost calls.)
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, let me correct that statement - they change the "transparency" of the dye which is in front of the reflective layer.
Um, recordable CD drives don't "burn pits" in aluminum foil. They change the reflective properties of a photo-sensitive dye.
Um, even on a mac you have to hand edit if you want to do something that the GUI doesn't handle - this happens ALL THE TIME.
One is clean and readable, the other wordy and cluttered. I hate xml config files. I don't WANT to be forced to use some bizzaro XML editor, or deal with manually edited XML.
We are talking about a 6 mile zone - not an entire state. It's very practical.
802.11xx just don't cut the mustard without quite a few access points.
Well, then use quite a few access points!!! AP's are dirt cheap - much much less expensive than proprietary alternatives. The last thing you want is some bizzare proprietary client hardware required at each house.
Riiight.... You go ahead and do your simplistic burger-joint-single-income-source taxes. The rest of us that have lots of investments, multiple sources of income, own a business, etc. will continue to use professional accountants.
One-button mice lead to better UI design.
First, I don't buy that line. Second, That does not address existing apps, or apps ported from other platforms. For example: all the X apps including xterm (needed since the default OSX Terminal app sucks donky doo.) Apple ALREADY supports the right button all over the existing UI. One button mice just make those features harder to get to.
Power users rarely stick with the supplied mouse
UNLESS THEY ARE USING A LAPTOP. I don't know how I can make that any more clear. External mice with laptops are not practical in many situations that you use a laptop.
The solution could be simple. In preferences, by default all buttons could be defined as button one. Power users could alter that behavior. Left-handed power users could also swap left/right. Problem solved. Everyone is happy.
Yes. We all know it's possible, but it is a MAJOR pain that the powerbook only has one button. Yes, their are keybord shortcuts for the right / middle buttons, Still a pain - nothing changes that fact.
Even easier with an Asterisk phone system. I already have whitelists, blacklists, and greylists setup. Quite easy really.
I don't get ANY telemarketing calls anymore and I'm not even on the DoNotCall list.
If your finances are very simple, then a tax-preparer is not needed. Otherwise it's silly not to use a qualified professional - preferably a CPA and not some walmart employee that took a 2 week course...
Moving to a consuption tax from income tax is not so easy.
Many of us are getting older. We have already paid income tax on our savings and investments. For the people at retirement age, a move to a consuption tax means that they pay the full tax TWICE (which would be Very unfair.)
A better solution is to just move to a fair flat tax, or simplified graduated tax, with Very few deductions. The current tax code is amazingly complicated. The tax code should be able to be summed up in 40 pages instead of 400 volumes.
To respond to the main OP, I wouldn't use H&R Block ever. The preparers are not accountants. In fact, I know one that is a warehouse worker at Walmart. My taxes are complicated - owning a small business, dealing with AMT from stock options, buying and selling real-estate, trust funds, etc. I use a CPA. We go over all the issues in detail to find all the deductions, how to deal with investments in a way that is best from a tax prespective, etc. 4They charge me $250. Why would you pay $175 for someone who is not even an accountant, much less a CPA? I know way too many people that use H&R that ended up with major tax problems due to errors. Stay far far away.
Furthermore, unless your taxes are pretty simple, I wouldn't consider doing them myself. If you just have a normal job, single, rent an apartment, don't invest, then sure! Use Turbotax or whatever. Otherwise you are better off with professional advice and service from a qualified CPA.
I agree. I've been involved in both situations. In fact, we have one opensource app that is only used internally that has been massivly customized - hundreds of programmer hours. We took the app in a different direction than the original team.
We did get bit in the ass on another app however. The person who did the mods left the company, and then there were a bunch of security updates to the app, and the patches were not so easily applied to our version. In addition, we wanted some of the new features available upstream in addition to our features, and integrating the two would have been a huge effort. So we ended up moving to a closed source alternative instead and basically lost a lot of the hours spend on that opensource app.
All in all, the bottom line is that the market does exist for customizing your opensource app for other people. How big that market is depends on a large number of variables.
Sounds like Seibel. God what a POS that stuff is. Every once in a while I run into some clueless company that implemented it and uses the abortion of a web-interface for "self service support." Pure evil.
Yes and no. It depends on what other projects you have going on. Sometimes you have the in-house resources but your time is better spent on other things.
Also keep in mind that no matter how readable your code is, you are going to know it better than anyone else. It just may be faster and cheaper to pay the main developer make the modification.
Ongoing maintenance is an issue too. Let's say that you internally added feature X. The main project does a new major release, and it doesn't contain your feature, so you now have to re-integrate it. More work.
If you are on ADSL, you can greatly improve QOS by getting a sangoma DSL card instead of using the telco supplied DSL modem. The problem with traditional DSL (and cable) modems is the huge input buffer. The way people get around this buffer is to limit the upstream speed to less than full wire speed so that the buffer is always empty.
QOS is most freqently needed on upstream data since downstream has higher speeds. Since most ISP's don't support QOS at all, about the only place you have any control is upstream on the local loop.
Yep. What made me resort to ad blocking is all the flashing, moving, and even noise generating ads. Popup blocking started first (X10 ads), and I think the last straw was an evil Macromedia flash ad that "zoomed" over the entire page. That was it. War. Total adblocking is now enabled.
In one of my past jobs, I worked for a very high-volume web site. We had a policy that we would not accept any flashing or Java ads. Unfortunately, doubleclick would often rotate in "pool" ads that violated our terms. This required manually blocking a particular ad from our site. Total PITA.
Advertizers have only themselves to blame. Just because technology allows you to do something does not mean that it's a good idea.
Adsense on google IS much better, although I find it annoying to see stupid stuff like "find the lowest price on apache httpd.conf on nextag!" (or ebay...)
The terms "Lotus Notes" and "breath easier" are generally not seen together unless the topic is moving away from it.
It also has some of the WORST HTML compliance / rendering of any application I have ever seen. Just do a google search for "lotus notes html email".
Please anything but. (well, maybe not Outlook...)
Flamebait? That was funny! Supersizeme... :-)
I'll second 3ware. I've had problems with Promise and their "fake" raid, changing chipsets ever 5 minutes and breaking compatability, etc.
3ware isn't cheap but you get what you pay for. High-quality, great performance, great support, and it "just works" with Linux.
I've had issues with several brands / chipsets of onboard SATA controllers, which is why I went with 3ware. Software raid is all fine and good if you can get reliable drivers! If not, then avoid it.
With 1T of storage, you are talking quite a few drives. Make sure you have good cooling, big power supply, etc.
I read it the same way. My guess is that the reporter got it backwards. Sending SMS spam TO those domains should be a fine of $11K.
Time to upgrade from that accoustic coupler modem...
Many people are going to have some kind of broadband service for reasons other than VoIP. The cost is irrelevant. I'm paying $89 / month for business DSL for my data needs whether or not I do VoIP over it too. I incurr no additional cost other than the per-minute rate. The only reason I have POTS service at all is because Verizon does not offer DSL without it. Pots is great for incomming and local outgoing. I just don't use it for regional or long-distance due to the insane prices that ALL POTS long-distance carriers charge. Once the fiber rollout in my area is complete, I won't need POTS at all. Pots is a dead technology. It just doesn't know it yet.
Rather than a disposable phone, I'd rather see a cheap SoHo "cell-tower" that I can hook up to my Asterisk phone system. When I'm at home, my personal cell-tower is closest and reroutes my calls over my POTS or VoIP line. This would replace all the crappy cordless phones now being sold. Does anyone make a cordless phone that doesn't totally suck and has a reasonable price point? The only one that seems close is engenius which starts at about $350 for one phone plus base (way overpriced.)
Um, yeah. That's kind of what I said. Flat rate plans. You are paying about $30 / month (out of the $50) for that "unlimited" service. BTW, I'm not talking about cell phones (let's compare apples to apples here...) That 1.47 cents per minute rate is on VoIP, and I would need to make over 2000 minutes of calls before it's more expensive than your unlimited service. That's 2.75 hours a day every day on the phone... Are you seriously making that many long-distance calls from home? (These flat-rate plans are residential...)
Flat rate plans are a ripoff for most people. Even at a 5 cent per minute rate, you would still need to make 600 minutes of long-distance calls to break even. 600 minutes is a lot. I have yet to go over my 450 mins on my cell phone, ever. Even on long business trips where I call home to the wife and kids every night PLUS all the business calls.
BTW, the flat rate ripoff also applies to some VoIP providers. Vonage's unlimited plan is still $25 / month which would need 1700 minutes to break even. That's no bargain.
People need to do the math. Look at thier usage. Do the research on various plans and providers. The reason flat rate plans exist is because MOST people don't get to the break-even point.
Asterisk is great because I can create a dial plan that uses the POTS line for local calls and 911, VoIP for most long-distance, and private VoIP to remote businesses / friends that have VoIP software (zero cost calls.)