Are you saying that if my MasterCard is among those 2.2 million, and this guy decides to use it - and I dispute the charges - that the merchant from whom he bought the stuff, rather than the CC company, will be responsible?
Won't this situation last only as long as the first lawsuit takes to perculate through the courts?
Isn't that like saying that because you taught a guy how to fish, he's not intelligent just becuase he was taught? Just as the guy senses bites on the line, the computer sees offensive moves and counters.
If all the guy could do was fish just like you taught him then yes he's not all that inteligent. The key difference is that from you teaching him how to fish, the guy might extrapolate a totally different way of fishing. A computer won't ever do that unless you explicitly program that extrapolation algorithm.
I guess the point I am trying to make is that the computer won't make any discoveries unles you taught it HOW to make this discovery. Once you figured out a process, you can take advantage of the computer's computational abilities to calculate a result (chess moves, etc) better than a human can. How about the computer inventing something totally new, unprompted?
THAT is inteligence, and that is (bad or good, your call) impossible given current tech.
The computer has been taught, very explicitly, how to study possible future moves as well as to interpret past moves. That's the difference between intelligence and... well.. computer inteligence.
I forgot who said this... (I am paraphrasing)
Computers will be inteligent when, as the chessmaster sits down to play a game, the machine responds "I'd rather not."
I was disapointed with TurboTax2002's installation as well. There are two viable options, it seems.
1) www.turbotax.com you can do all your taxes on the web, with seemingly full functionality of the turbotax CD package. There are different levels that you can access, from very basic (and therefore cheapest) to full-featured. Also, if your income is under 27k (i believe) you can use turbotax on the web for FREE. You'll have to look for the link on their site for that. turbotax on the web does both federal and state and files electronically with option to print.
2) Taxcut from H.R.Block. Their software seems to be aimed as a full replacement for Intuit's, and it does appear to work. I still haven't had time to sit down and run through the different filing scenarios and see if TaxCut was as effective as TurboTax, but it looks solid.
By the way, I totally understand why Intuit is instituting this draconian measure, even if it pisses me off as a user. Tax software, unlike just about any other software, has a useful life of 4 and a half months (you wouldn't use it earlier than Jan 1st, and probably not later than April 15th) and infact, it's something you use exactly once. So unlike most other software, there's absolutely no chance that you'll "use it, love it, buy it eventually". Nor can Intuit compensate for piracy by jacking up the price, because there's only so much that people would pay for this software, since:
(1) It's something you use once, so you won't pay for it as much as you'd pay for an office suite you can use, potentially, for half a decade.
(2) You won't pay more than you perceive it will save you in tax returns.
Meanwhile, each year means tons of development for Intuit, with the ever-changing tax code. So it's absolutely imperative for them to make sure people pay for their software rather than have 10 people use the same CD to do their taxes or jus sharing the shit on Kazaa.
And yeah, to be honest it may be worth putting up with. If TaxCut proves to not be flexible enough for what I need to do ( a lot of contractual work, etc. Not a simple W-2 scenario ) then I'll bite the bullet and buy TurboTax, boot sector be damned.
on Linux you need to recompile the kernel and use regular expressions in perl to recover accidentally deleted data. which is ok because it's open source.
Depresed market, my ass. If a company has something to offer, it does well, whether it's.com or not. I happen to work for a site that depends 100% on web sales. When people bitch to us about a depressed market, we make a point of looking at them and saying "huh?"
Cuz.. you know.. we have something to sell, and we sell it affordably.. and people need it.. so they buy.
DESPITE THE FACT THAT WE'VE BEEN COLLECTING SALES TAX ALL ALONG.
(And once states figure out they're losing sales tax income to neighboring states, I'm sure they'll come up with an interesting plan to take care of that. State border patrols, maybe?)
Nah, it'll take care of itself. If the state's got no money, there won't be a paved road, and there won't be police and state troopers to ensure your safe passage. Chances are you and your money will part ways before you get to state border, and you may not get shiny new iterms as part of the deal, either.
Which may teach you a valuable lesson as to why there's taxes.
In the real world, a company (like a store) charges its customers sales tax, which it pays to the state automatically. Then they also pay taxes on the income.
So it's not double taxation at all, since different monies are being taxed. In the case of the sales tax, the tax is imposed on the purchaser, and in the income case, on the profiteer.
Makes sense that the internet should not be immune to this line of thinking.
That is exactly what I do. We don't spam google or do dirty tricks (and we do buy ads, also). I basically make sure that our current content is optimized for google to find.
You're essentially right, but there's a point you may be missing about Daniel Brandt's (never heard of him before) idea.
I work for a machinery retailer who does all its sales through the web. That means that, essentially, our existance depends on being among Google's top 4 results for certain keywords. Ensuring this is part of my job. I guess I am an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) professional...
The reason we focus SO heavily on Google is that, for an increasing number of people on the net, Google is their portal to everything - especially now that other portals like Yahoo, et al., are using Google for their results.
The downside to this is obvious. If you're not on Google, you're not on the internet. So, what would happen if somehow Google decided to go against PageRank and "override" our relevancy. They have the power to drive us out of business. They probably won't. But they could.
Google has almost complete control of what is and is not visible on the web. So potentially, they can very easily filter out things that they don't want people to see. Why would they do it?
Well... Why would the phone company decide to do away with phone service to a part of their service area? Why would the electric company shut down its generators in July heat? Why would the water company decide that you can only have water one hour a day?
The answer to those questions is: I don't know, it wouldn't make sense for these companies to do it. But the idea is that they need to be regulated to ENSURE this doesn't happen. Same with Google: I can't imagine they filtering out some sites of keywords, but they CAN: and this can have humongous effect on people all over the world.
An even better analogy is the broadcast industry. There are regulations that say that a single company cannot own so many local affiliates so it reaches more than XX% of the total population. The idea being that if someone has a monopoly on the medium, they can very effectively control the information that people who rely on this medium see.
Does it make sense that the Internet is immune to these issues? Well, yes and no. Some of us aren't dependant 100% on Google. In fact, sooner or later someone would post a "Hey, Google blocks this site" message on Slashdot" and the jig would be up. But most Internet users depend on Google 100% to find stuff on the web, and that's a lot of power for one private, and unregulated, firm to have.
If there are people like me whose job it is to make sure some things are easily findable by Google, there are certainly people who'd pay good money to make sure certain things are NOT found.
There aren't tens of thousand of drivers for Linux. At last count, there are only six known drivers for Linux. None of which supports are relevant hardware.
I read the whole thread and have reached a conclusion: source code comments are not funny. If the funniest thing we can put as a comment is// this should never happen.... perhaps we need to seek an alternate source of comedy.
Slashdot Mirror
Pardon me, but who foots the bill now?
Are you saying that if my MasterCard is among those 2.2 million, and this guy decides to use it - and I dispute the charges - that the merchant from whom he bought the stuff, rather than the CC company, will be responsible?
Won't this situation last only as long as the first lawsuit takes to perculate through the courts?
Isn't that like saying that because you taught a guy how to fish, he's not intelligent just becuase he was taught? Just as the guy senses bites on the line, the computer sees offensive moves and counters.
If all the guy could do was fish just like you taught him then yes he's not all that inteligent. The key difference is that from you teaching him how to fish, the guy might extrapolate a totally different way of fishing. A computer won't ever do that unless you explicitly program that extrapolation algorithm.
I guess the point I am trying to make is that the computer won't make any discoveries unles you taught it HOW to make this discovery. Once you figured out a process, you can take advantage of the computer's computational abilities to calculate a result (chess moves, etc) better than a human can. How about the computer inventing something totally new, unprompted?
THAT is inteligence, and that is (bad or good, your call) impossible given current tech.
The computer has been taught, very explicitly, how to study possible future moves as well as to interpret past moves. That's the difference between intelligence and... well.. computer inteligence.
I forgot who said this... (I am paraphrasing)
Computers will be inteligent when, as the chessmaster sits down to play a game, the machine responds "I'd rather not."
Thanks for that bit of info. Does anyone else have feedback about TaxCut vs TurboTax?
I was disapointed with TurboTax2002's installation as well. There are two viable options, it seems.
1) www.turbotax.com you can do all your taxes on the web, with seemingly full functionality of the turbotax CD package. There are different levels that you can access, from very basic (and therefore cheapest) to full-featured. Also, if your income is under 27k (i believe) you can use turbotax on the web for FREE. You'll have to look for the link on their site for that. turbotax on the web does both federal and state and files electronically with option to print.
2) Taxcut from H.R.Block. Their software seems to be aimed as a full replacement for Intuit's, and it does appear to work. I still haven't had time to sit down and run through the different filing scenarios and see if TaxCut was as effective as TurboTax, but it looks solid.
By the way, I totally understand why Intuit is instituting this draconian measure, even if it pisses me off as a user. Tax software, unlike just about any other software, has a useful life of 4 and a half months (you wouldn't use it earlier than Jan 1st, and probably not later than April 15th) and infact, it's something you use exactly once. So unlike most other software, there's absolutely no chance that you'll "use it, love it, buy it eventually". Nor can Intuit compensate for piracy by jacking up the price, because there's only so much that people would pay for this software, since:
(1) It's something you use once, so you won't pay for it as much as you'd pay for an office suite you can use, potentially, for half a decade.
(2) You won't pay more than you perceive it will save you in tax returns.
Meanwhile, each year means tons of development for Intuit, with the ever-changing tax code. So it's absolutely imperative for them to make sure people pay for their software rather than have 10 people use the same CD to do their taxes or jus sharing the shit on Kazaa.
And yeah, to be honest it may be worth putting up with. If TaxCut proves to not be flexible enough for what I need to do ( a lot of contractual work, etc. Not a simple W-2 scenario ) then I'll bite the bullet and buy TurboTax, boot sector be damned.
LILO and GRUB shouldn't have the monopoly on fucking up my boot sector, damnit!
You're one bitter bastard.
on Linux you need to recompile the kernel and use regular expressions in perl to recover accidentally deleted data. which is ok because it's open source.
your plan is to exchange handjobs for data?
13 year old anarchists are too young to appreciate the beauty of interstate highways.
You'd need to pay for special shipping.
Let me put it this way...
.com or not. I happen to work for a site that depends 100% on web sales. When people bitch to us about a depressed market, we make a point of looking at them and saying "huh?"
If you make no money, you don't get taxed.
Depresed market, my ass. If a company has something to offer, it does well, whether it's
Cuz.. you know.. we have something to sell, and we sell it affordably.. and people need it.. so they buy.
DESPITE THE FACT THAT WE'VE BEEN COLLECTING SALES TAX ALL ALONG.
(And once states figure out they're losing sales tax income to neighboring states, I'm sure they'll come up with an interesting plan to take care of that. State border patrols, maybe?)
Nah, it'll take care of itself. If the state's got no money, there won't be a paved road, and there won't be police and state troopers to ensure your safe passage. Chances are you and your money will part ways before you get to state border, and you may not get shiny new iterms as part of the deal, either.
Which may teach you a valuable lesson as to why there's taxes.
In the real world, a company (like a store) charges its customers sales tax, which it pays to the state automatically. Then they also pay taxes on the income.
So it's not double taxation at all, since different monies are being taxed. In the case of the sales tax, the tax is imposed on the purchaser, and in the income case, on the profiteer.
Makes sense that the internet should not be immune to this line of thinking.
May I recomend you go to a doctor? If it pains you to remember that XP came after 2000, there's something wrong somewhere.
Like anything that spews off my fingertips, via the keyboard, my post is a work of art. Namely, you make of it what you wish.
Someone may have read my post and interpreted it as sarcasm. Someone may have read it and, like you did, have had it evoke strong feelings.
I merely post. How you react is up to you.
That is exactly what I do. We don't spam google or do dirty tricks (and we do buy ads, also). I basically make sure that our current content is optimized for google to find.
I might be missing something (i barely passed physics)
As far as I understand, the 120mph figure doesn't mean anything. I've gone 120mph in my car, w/o much excitement.
I think the real thrill is from the ACCELERATION? The forces you feel are related to how FAST you get to the 120mhp figure.
You're essentially right, but there's a point you may be missing about Daniel Brandt's (never heard of him before) idea.
I work for a machinery retailer who does all its sales through the web. That means that, essentially, our existance depends on being among Google's top 4 results for certain keywords. Ensuring this is part of my job. I guess I am an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) professional...
The reason we focus SO heavily on Google is that, for an increasing number of people on the net, Google is their portal to everything - especially now that other portals like Yahoo, et al., are using Google for their results.
The downside to this is obvious. If you're not on Google, you're not on the internet. So, what would happen if somehow Google decided to go against PageRank and "override" our relevancy. They have the power to drive us out of business. They probably won't. But they could.
Google has almost complete control of what is and is not visible on the web. So potentially, they can very easily filter out things that they don't want people to see. Why would they do it?
Well... Why would the phone company decide to do away with phone service to a part of their service area? Why would the electric company shut down its generators in July heat? Why would the water company decide that you can only have water one hour a day?
The answer to those questions is: I don't know, it wouldn't make sense for these companies to do it. But the idea is that they need to be regulated to ENSURE this doesn't happen. Same with Google: I can't imagine they filtering out some sites of keywords, but they CAN: and this can have humongous effect on people all over the world.
An even better analogy is the broadcast industry. There are regulations that say that a single company cannot own so many local affiliates so it reaches more than XX% of the total population. The idea being that if someone has a monopoly on the medium, they can very effectively control the information that people who rely on this medium see.
Does it make sense that the Internet is immune to these issues? Well, yes and no. Some of us aren't dependant 100% on Google. In fact, sooner or later someone would post a "Hey, Google blocks this site" message on Slashdot" and the jig would be up. But most Internet users depend on Google 100% to find stuff on the web, and that's a lot of power for one private, and unregulated, firm to have.
If there are people like me whose job it is to make sure some things are easily findable by Google, there are certainly people who'd pay good money to make sure certain things are NOT found.
But if Google gives SearchKing sites a low rank? Well, nobody seems to be complaining but SearchKing.
First they came for the Jews...
WHY would you assume that?
Because it mentioned HARDWARE DRIVERS, which everyone knows don't exist for Linux.
There aren't tens of thousand of drivers for Linux. At last count, there are only six known drivers for Linux. None of which supports are relevant hardware.
His assumption was valid, since there tend not to be open source drivers for anything.
Actually, in soviet Russia books get you locked UP, not locked OUT.
I read the whole thread and have reached a conclusion: source code comments are not funny. If the funniest thing we can put as a comment is // this should never happen.... perhaps we need to seek an alternate source of comedy.