While Blakey probably made the point well enough I'd add the following the question:
If I speak into a microphone and and perfectly describe my desired algorithm so that a machine can execute (and the machine can in fact interpret it) the code I have spoken am I somehow less of a programmer because I didn't use a keyboard? Or was I just sitting around chatting rather than being productive or doing real work.
According to the article the circuits can be made from recycled plastic and then when they are ready to be retired the components of the circuits themselves can be recycled into new circuits. Seems like it really is a bit of a step up in several ways.
Of course now our electronics will have to be added to the list of things we can't just throw away when they quit working. I mean... there's plastic IN there.
First, I didn't compare apples to anything other than apples. I might have compared apple sauce to apple juice (one of them takes a lot more apples to produce the same volume of product), but that doesn't invalidate my point.
I never said it would power everything, but a little all purpose electricity MIGHT be preferable to single purpose electricity that can only power their internet access. Given the option I'll take something that keeps my freezer running when the grid is down and my food from ruining if my other option is internet access.
Now, what does mostly invalidate my point is that this is not something that's going to sit in one person's dwelling. Instead, it is likely to be meant for community use. That might be okay for a collection of computers, but not for a refrigerator. I've seen our community fridge at work... maybe I'll stick with the internet.
C'mon now... Can't I just download the shortwave radio app from the iPhone store?
FTA:Moreover, many countries have makeshift, fragile utility grids, rendering computers and uplinks useless during what are typically interminable outages. Worse, a natural disaster or civil emergency can cause widespread failure of infrastructureâ"ironically, just as the very same facilities are needed to communicate and coordinate with relief workers and local populations. Shipping containers full of recycled computers from the United States and other world powers do little good without electricity.
Seriously though, it seems like an okay idea to make internet connectivity available to every village everywhere, but what happens when it breaks down for any number of reasons? Seems like those panels would be put to a lot better use providing energy for any needs in the event of one of these "fragile utility grid" having a failure than limiting it to just computer / internet access. We just had a grid failure due to a tornado, and I would have taken electricity over internet access given the option...
From the second one:
"Glacier water is superior to common water sources, because it is not filtered through the ground where a variety of dissolved solids and organic particles such as rocks, sand, metals, chemicals and underground pollutants can attach to each water molecule. It is essentially an exclusive worry-free water source â" clear of heavy chemicals, drug residues, jet fuel, toxins, dust particulates, etc. â" unlocked from glaciers that are over 10,000 years old. Not only will our clients be able to drink and bathe in this premium untainted water, they can also breathe indoor air that is hydrated or humidified with pollution-free water."
do just about anything really significant (shady or otherwise) if you want the kids to remember you in class. Then if you are just wanting to complicate matters say something oddballish (Eurika!) immediately following your significant act. Then they'll have to remember the who and the what and the when of the act. But that won't be enough. They'll have to remember what magic word you said immediately afterwards... "TacoNealium!"
I don't see why they would get a pass... I was just thinking maybe that explained it. But the Starbucks thing shoots that out of the water.
I love TX and miss it often. This will not affect that much, but now I'll atleast be able to comfort myself with the thought that I can buy giftcards w/o paying taxes for the card in my current state of dwelling.
Thanks for the info.
Part1:
Okay, to be clear so I understand. Did you buy the Starbucks card AT Starbucks? Or did you buy it elsewhere?
Part2:
In the case of you buying a $100 Visa card at the HomeDepot you basically bought a $100 piece of merchandise from HomeDepot which I can see taxing. You are not sure to be spending it with them, so they probably have to charge tax on it (ie. they cannot be sure that you will pay taxes on it later since you will not be spending it with them and they therefore have to tax it at the time). I cannot see HomeDepot charging tax on a $100 HomeDepot gift card. Anyone got a case where they bought a giftcard for store X at store X and did have to pay tax...?
It probably is because in the examples you provided the purchaser is buying a gift card from another store. Essentially, they are buying a product from a vendor rather than a promise to buy something from the store at which they purchasing the card. If they bought a Walmart gift card at Walmart and they paid tax at the time of the card purchase then that would be unreasonable (assuming the card does not make items purchased with the card tax exempt).
I live in TN. I used to live in TX (Plano / Dallas area). I never bought giftcards while there so I'm not sure how it would apply, but I did used to buy GiftCertificates (like McDonalds). Face value was all that was ever paid.
I buy BestBuy gift cards occasionally and there is no way I would pay tax on them. I also buy stocking stuffer Starbucks gift cards every year for my wife and never pay more than face value (I don't drink Starbucks so that's all I ever buy when I go). She gets taxed on the coffee she buys from them, but no taxes are applied at the time of the gift card purchase.
You might want to check your receipt on that bestbuy deal... maybe it was a fee of 8%? The other possiblity is that it was not a Bestbuy gift card you bought. Did you maybe buy an iTunes card FROM best buy? Then the iTunes card is merchandice rather than a "prepayment" for items to be picked up later. Again, I cannot imagine paying sales tax on a gift card that is to be used at the same location from which I just bought the card and that I know what I buy with the card will be taxed again.
I have experience with the exact situation you are talking about. When I was going public with one of my websites I wanted the perfect name. I had a pretty good domain name already, but I felt that it was too specific. I wanted one that both spoke to what was being currently offered by the site, but still left room for the site to offer more than it already did.
Eventually I settled on a name and it was owned by someone else. It was just serving ads. I WHOISed it, used the contact information and asked how much they wanted. What they asked for was not unreasonable. I felt like it could be an awesome name for the site's genre so I accepted and things went without a hitch. UNTIL...
Later, something like 3 days later, I decided that the hyphenated version of the name would be nice to have as well. I went to register it and it was owned also. WHOIS again. Guess who? Same guy... guess when registered? Same day he transferred the other one to me. In the end I decided it was worth it to me to buy it from him as well (after I bought the.net of the hyphenated).
I got exactly what I wanted. He made a small chunk of change (probably paid his home internet bill for the year). I was actually impressed with how smoothly it went down. I was even slightly impressed that he had the sense to go buy the other one when i bought the first one (though I intentionally did not buy the hyphenated one to start with because i wanted him to see he had options if he was in love with the name so he could still sell the first one to me).
I guess I would say just try to contact them and find out what they want. It might be less than you expect OR you might not be able to get it at all with your available funds. I wish you luck. Having a good domain name that reflects what you do will help a lot in growing your site's popularity. Not having your #1 choice will probably not kill your chances, but it can make things a little bit harder. It might be worth the extra money to get exactly what you want.
010001.... That's not how it works here. You buy a gift card for $10000. You fork over $10000, not $10000 + tax. The tax is collected when something is purchased WITH the giftcard. I think paeanblack is right that you should, theoretically, pay something like an income tax on that $10000 gift card (assuming no credits / exemptions / whatever are available). The fun happens to be that you'll get hit again with sales tax when you actually buy something, but there is nothing abnormal about it.
Don't take this comment to mean I agree. I really have no idea how in the world you choose a "comparable product" and "what it would sell for". I mean, I can look on ebay right now and find the same product for 10 different prices. Which one should be used as the basis for taxing it if I could buy the same product and download it?
You make a good point, but I don't think what you added changes anything about what I said. Betting where it is illegal is illegal. But the act presented by the state doesn't go after small time casual betting folk.
The fact is that the act itself should not be applicable to what Minnesota is trying to do. The act does not care about casual gambling. The act is only interested in those that are "the bookmaker, the gambler who makes it his business to take bets or to lay off bets." It might be illegal per the state, but that particular act (the state's basis for their case) does not apply to the users of the websites. The users are the casual gamblers that were specifically excluded in one of the opinions (see my previous post).
That being said, someone else pointed out that the ISPs may or may not be breaking the law according to the act. Are they the ones taking / laying off bets? I don't think so. The ISPs are part of the wire. They are not the criminal. Perhaps some other statute / act should have been presented by the state. As it is I see no way for them to use this to acheive their goal. Of course take my opinion with a grain of salt. I am programmer not a lawyer. But if I were a betting man...
"In analyzing the first element, the legislative history[60] of the Wire Act seems to support the position that casual bettors would fall outside of the prosecutorial reach of the statute. During the House of Representatives debate on the bill, Congressman Emanuel Celler, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee stated "[t]his bill only gets after the bookmaker, the gambler who makes it his business to take bets or to lay off bets. . . It does not go after the causal gambler who bets $2 on a race. That type of transaction is not within the purvue of the statute."[61] In Baborian, the federal district court concluded that Congress did not intend to include social bettors within the umbrella of the statute, even those bettors that bet large sums of money and show a certain degree of sophistication.[62] "
IANAL, but I would say from that statute that it is not illegal to gamble or to use gambling cites to gamble. It's illegal to be a bookie (sp?) or facilitate organized gambling as a business. The sites themselves my be illegal, but the users seem to be okay?
I'll be darned. I actually found the source code for the "dna sonification project". It turns out it was INTENDED to be a "dna" program, but it will allow any string... for example it could play the text on slashdot as "music".
I'm not sure it isn't an early version (some debugging message boxes occasionally pop up) but it works once the libraries are installed. If anyone is interested let me know... I'll gladly provide the JAVA source code and other libraries as I'm not doing much with it these days other than having it stashed away in a box. I don't have a java development environment on any of my machines anymore so it will come in it's current state or not at all.
It could actually make some pretty cool sound sequences. It allowed you to define the number of nucleotides that defined a note. Then it let you break those apart into a duration component and a frequency component. The frequency ranged 8 octaves and the durations were WholeNote, Half, Quarter, Eighth, 1/16, 1/32.
I did a dna to sound project as a graduate student that actually played notes for a given chromosome. In fact I created an entire virtual orchestra (multiple machines) that were able to sync up and play from the same piece of sheet music (DNA). I don't remember exactly how I encoded the notes (If I recall the user was able to (1) select how many alleles should be in a note (2) the program would then break a given strand up according to the value entered (3) the user would choose the frequency to apply to each generated collection of alleles (4) the strand would be played. It didn't sound too bad. Kind of random, but not too bad. Definitely better than just reading them outloud.
The idea was that while LOOKING at the string ACTGGGAACCTTA a person may not see (consciously) anything of interest... not even repeated sequences of characters if they were sufficiently far apart... However, humans are VERY good at noticing patterns in sounds. So are animals. I won't get in to exactly what we were trying to accomplish at the time other than pattern recognition of good and bad DNA (for one purpose or another), but I will say that these folks should be able to create "music" if they wanted.
[Now I'm going to have to dig through the archives to see if I can find my program]
Slashdot Mirror
While Blakey probably made the point well enough I'd add the following the question: If I speak into a microphone and and perfectly describe my desired algorithm so that a machine can execute (and the machine can in fact interpret it) the code I have spoken am I somehow less of a programmer because I didn't use a keyboard? Or was I just sitting around chatting rather than being productive or doing real work.
According to the article the circuits can be made from recycled plastic and then when they are ready to be retired the components of the circuits themselves can be recycled into new circuits. Seems like it really is a bit of a step up in several ways.
Of course now our electronics will have to be added to the list of things we can't just throw away when they quit working. I mean... there's plastic IN there.
First, I didn't compare apples to anything other than apples. I might have compared apple sauce to apple juice (one of them takes a lot more apples to produce the same volume of product), but that doesn't invalidate my point.
I never said it would power everything, but a little all purpose electricity MIGHT be preferable to single purpose electricity that can only power their internet access. Given the option I'll take something that keeps my freezer running when the grid is down and my food from ruining if my other option is internet access.
Now, what does mostly invalidate my point is that this is not something that's going to sit in one person's dwelling. Instead, it is likely to be meant for community use. That might be okay for a collection of computers, but not for a refrigerator. I've seen our community fridge at work... maybe I'll stick with the internet.
C'mon now... Can't I just download the shortwave radio app from the iPhone store?
FTA:Moreover, many countries have makeshift, fragile utility grids, rendering computers and uplinks useless during what are typically interminable outages. Worse, a natural disaster or civil emergency can cause widespread failure of infrastructureâ"ironically, just as the very same facilities are needed to communicate and coordinate with relief workers and local populations. Shipping containers full of recycled computers from the United States and other world powers do little good without electricity.
Seriously though, it seems like an okay idea to make internet connectivity available to every village everywhere, but what happens when it breaks down for any number of reasons? Seems like those panels would be put to a lot better use providing energy for any needs in the event of one of these "fragile utility grid" having a failure than limiting it to just computer / internet access. We just had a grid failure due to a tornado, and I would have taken electricity over internet access given the option...
Now bottled water from glaciers is suspect. I feel for these folks:
http://www.free-press-release.com/news/200906/1244408897.html
and these folks
http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Luxury-Water-Utilities-Llc-864814.html
From the second one:
"Glacier water is superior to common water sources, because it is not filtered through the ground where a variety of dissolved solids and organic particles such as rocks, sand, metals, chemicals and underground pollutants can attach to each water molecule. It is essentially an exclusive worry-free water source â" clear of heavy chemicals, drug residues, jet fuel, toxins, dust particulates, etc. â" unlocked from glaciers that are over 10,000 years old. Not only will our clients be able to drink and bathe in this premium untainted water, they can also breathe indoor air that is hydrated or humidified with pollution-free water."
Drink up!
do just about anything really significant (shady or otherwise) if you want the kids to remember you in class. Then if you are just wanting to complicate matters say something oddballish (Eurika!) immediately following your significant act. Then they'll have to remember the who and the what and the when of the act. But that won't be enough. They'll have to remember what magic word you said immediately afterwards... "TacoNealium!"
I don't see why they would get a pass... I was just thinking maybe that explained it. But the Starbucks thing shoots that out of the water. I love TX and miss it often. This will not affect that much, but now I'll atleast be able to comfort myself with the thought that I can buy giftcards w/o paying taxes for the card in my current state of dwelling. Thanks for the info.
Part1:
Okay, to be clear so I understand. Did you buy the Starbucks card AT Starbucks? Or did you buy it elsewhere?
Part2:
In the case of you buying a $100 Visa card at the HomeDepot you basically bought a $100 piece of merchandise from HomeDepot which I can see taxing. You are not sure to be spending it with them, so they probably have to charge tax on it (ie. they cannot be sure that you will pay taxes on it later since you will not be spending it with them and they therefore have to tax it at the time). I cannot see HomeDepot charging tax on a $100 HomeDepot gift card. Anyone got a case where they bought a giftcard for store X at store X and did have to pay tax...?
It probably is because in the examples you provided the purchaser is buying a gift card from another store. Essentially, they are buying a product from a vendor rather than a promise to buy something from the store at which they purchasing the card. If they bought a Walmart gift card at Walmart and they paid tax at the time of the card purchase then that would be unreasonable (assuming the card does not make items purchased with the card tax exempt).
I live in TN. I used to live in TX (Plano / Dallas area). I never bought giftcards while there so I'm not sure how it would apply, but I did used to buy GiftCertificates (like McDonalds). Face value was all that was ever paid.
I buy BestBuy gift cards occasionally and there is no way I would pay tax on them. I also buy stocking stuffer Starbucks gift cards every year for my wife and never pay more than face value (I don't drink Starbucks so that's all I ever buy when I go). She gets taxed on the coffee she buys from them, but no taxes are applied at the time of the gift card purchase.
You might want to check your receipt on that bestbuy deal... maybe it was a fee of 8%? The other possiblity is that it was not a Bestbuy gift card you bought. Did you maybe buy an iTunes card FROM best buy? Then the iTunes card is merchandice rather than a "prepayment" for items to be picked up later. Again, I cannot imagine paying sales tax on a gift card that is to be used at the same location from which I just bought the card and that I know what I buy with the card will be taxed again.
I have experience with the exact situation you are talking about. When I was going public with one of my websites I wanted the perfect name. I had a pretty good domain name already, but I felt that it was too specific. I wanted one that both spoke to what was being currently offered by the site, but still left room for the site to offer more than it already did.
.net of the hyphenated).
Eventually I settled on a name and it was owned by someone else. It was just serving ads. I WHOISed it, used the contact information and asked how much they wanted. What they asked for was not unreasonable. I felt like it could be an awesome name for the site's genre so I accepted and things went without a hitch. UNTIL...
Later, something like 3 days later, I decided that the hyphenated version of the name would be nice to have as well. I went to register it and it was owned also. WHOIS again. Guess who? Same guy... guess when registered? Same day he transferred the other one to me. In the end I decided it was worth it to me to buy it from him as well (after I bought the
I got exactly what I wanted. He made a small chunk of change (probably paid his home internet bill for the year). I was actually impressed with how smoothly it went down. I was even slightly impressed that he had the sense to go buy the other one when i bought the first one (though I intentionally did not buy the hyphenated one to start with because i wanted him to see he had options if he was in love with the name so he could still sell the first one to me).
I guess I would say just try to contact them and find out what they want. It might be less than you expect OR you might not be able to get it at all with your available funds. I wish you luck. Having a good domain name that reflects what you do will help a lot in growing your site's popularity. Not having your #1 choice will probably not kill your chances, but it can make things a little bit harder. It might be worth the extra money to get exactly what you want.
010001.... That's not how it works here. You buy a gift card for $10000. You fork over $10000, not $10000 + tax. The tax is collected when something is purchased WITH the giftcard. I think paeanblack is right that you should, theoretically, pay something like an income tax on that $10000 gift card (assuming no credits / exemptions / whatever are available). The fun happens to be that you'll get hit again with sales tax when you actually buy something, but there is nothing abnormal about it. Don't take this comment to mean I agree. I really have no idea how in the world you choose a "comparable product" and "what it would sell for". I mean, I can look on ebay right now and find the same product for 10 different prices. Which one should be used as the basis for taxing it if I could buy the same product and download it?
You make a good point, but I don't think what you added changes anything about what I said. Betting where it is illegal is illegal. But the act presented by the state doesn't go after small time casual betting folk.
The fact is that the act itself should not be applicable to what Minnesota is trying to do. The act does not care about casual gambling. The act is only interested in those that are "the bookmaker, the gambler who makes it his business to take bets or to lay off bets." It might be illegal per the state, but that particular act (the state's basis for their case) does not apply to the users of the websites. The users are the casual gamblers that were specifically excluded in one of the opinions (see my previous post).
That being said, someone else pointed out that the ISPs may or may not be breaking the law according to the act. Are they the ones taking / laying off bets? I don't think so. The ISPs are part of the wire. They are not the criminal. Perhaps some other statute / act should have been presented by the state. As it is I see no way for them to use this to acheive their goal. Of course take my opinion with a grain of salt. I am programmer not a lawyer. But if I were a betting man...
According to the act cited in the original post:
"In analyzing the first element, the legislative history[60] of the Wire Act seems to support the position that casual bettors would fall outside of the prosecutorial reach of the statute. During the House of Representatives debate on the bill, Congressman Emanuel Celler, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee stated "[t]his bill only gets after the bookmaker, the gambler who makes it his business to take bets or to lay off bets. . . It does not go after the causal gambler who bets $2 on a race. That type of transaction is not within the purvue of the statute."[61] In Baborian, the federal district court concluded that Congress did not intend to include social bettors within the umbrella of the statute, even those bettors that bet large sums of money and show a certain degree of sophistication.[62] "
IANAL, but I would say from that statute that it is not illegal to gamble or to use gambling cites to gamble. It's illegal to be a bookie (sp?) or facilitate organized gambling as a business. The sites themselves my be illegal, but the users seem to be okay?
No?
I'll be darned. I actually found the source code for the "dna sonification project". It turns out it was INTENDED to be a "dna" program, but it will allow any string... for example it could play the text on slashdot as "music".
I'm not sure it isn't an early version (some debugging message boxes occasionally pop up) but it works once the libraries are installed. If anyone is interested let me know... I'll gladly provide the JAVA source code and other libraries as I'm not doing much with it these days other than having it stashed away in a box. I don't have a java development environment on any of my machines anymore so it will come in it's current state or not at all.
It could actually make some pretty cool sound sequences. It allowed you to define the number of nucleotides that defined a note. Then it let you break those apart into a duration component and a frequency component. The frequency ranged 8 octaves and the durations were WholeNote, Half, Quarter, Eighth, 1/16, 1/32.
I did a dna to sound project as a graduate student that actually played notes for a given chromosome. In fact I created an entire virtual orchestra (multiple machines) that were able to sync up and play from the same piece of sheet music (DNA). I don't remember exactly how I encoded the notes (If I recall the user was able to (1) select how many alleles should be in a note (2) the program would then break a given strand up according to the value entered (3) the user would choose the frequency to apply to each generated collection of alleles (4) the strand would be played. It didn't sound too bad. Kind of random, but not too bad. Definitely better than just reading them outloud.
The idea was that while LOOKING at the string ACTGGGAACCTTA a person may not see (consciously) anything of interest... not even repeated sequences of characters if they were sufficiently far apart... However, humans are VERY good at noticing patterns in sounds. So are animals. I won't get in to exactly what we were trying to accomplish at the time other than pattern recognition of good and bad DNA (for one purpose or another), but I will say that these folks should be able to create "music" if they wanted.
[Now I'm going to have to dig through the archives to see if I can find my program]