Almost any time money changes hands it is subject to taxation. I don't get why selling a "virtual" item shouldn't be subject to taxation as well? I mean, if I sell software online only -- that's virtual too, right? So doesn't sales (or at least income) tax apply?
The real question is, "Is selling virtual property" subject to capital gains taxes (like selling a second home or shares of stock)? There's an argument to be made there -- and I'd be curious to see what Congress says.
There's an easy solution here, just change your Apache config to add the HTTP_REFERER to your access_log entries. This will give you all your IP addresses with the HTTP_REFERER, so you can scan for referrals from google.* and find out where those clicks came from.
Not sure about everyone else, but I still subscribe to the paper New York Times. I read it on the way into work, I read it in the hammock in the back yard, I read it in Starbucks. Having the electronic version available is great if I want to copy or reference something on my computer, but as far as "getting" my news goes, its still the paper version for me.
I notice that in my version of Firefox the search box defaults to Google, and that the pulldown menu of pre-entered options doesn't even include MSN Search, but Google seems to have been oddly quiet on that front for the many years prior to IE7 that Firefox has made this feature available.
I seem to miss the business need for Google to demand more competitors into the Firefox search. Of course Google is going to cry foul over the IE issue, it is a disadvantage to them. But I'm not sure why Google needs to speak up for Microsoft's search in Firefox. How is that good business for them?
Ohhhh, right. We need to somehow make Google look bad because they've never been convicted of abuse of monopoly power.
Actually, part of the idea is pretty good -- and it was originally suggested by Lawrence Lessig in his book Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace -- except in reverse.
Rather than trying to have every website in the world say "WARNING: PR0N!" -- which would likely lead to massive censorship of content, Lessig proposed that the agent making the request submit what it didn't want to receive at the time of the request. Or in technical terms, send an http header like:
X-Content-Filter: no-pron;
Then, the server that received the request (if it was properly configured) could decide what to do with that information. If they wanted to play along, they could refuse the request with something like:
Status: 441 Filtered
Or they could serve the page as normal.
In typical Bush administration fashion, this Gonzales proposal is ass-backwards. The proposal has this fantasy land idea that somehow every site on the web is going to comply and open itself up to mass censorship by announcing they have porn. It also wants to throw in the tough guy approach of threatening jail time -- for exercising free speech, no less!
The Lessig proposal, like most of his ideas, is a practical, workable, real-world solution. The client proposes what s/he does and doesn't want to see, and the server makes the decision. Even though the whole system is voluntary -- I can see many porn sites complying with this idea because it (a) allows them to say they are helping filter content from children and (b) gives them control over the process.
I still don't get why Apple made their new hardware based around the 32 bit x86 chip. Intel and AMD already have 64 bit chips. Why does it seem like Apple keeps taking steps backwards?
Let's review:
G4 - 128 bit cpu
G5 - 64 bit cpu
x86 - 32 bit cpu (WTF!?)
So now they've move to an architecture that has been kludge'd to oblivion and can only rely on increasing cpu clock speeds to keep going. At least if they moved to a 64 bit architecture they'd have (a) an architecture that hasn't already maxed out it's addressable memory; (b) some clout to push instruction set changes on this still new cpu to reduce the overall pipeline size; and (c) less concern about piracy because 64 bit systems are still the exception rather than the rule.
Oh well, at least their universal binary format means they can keep architecture hopping without stranding their users like they did when they jumped to the PPC.
Many people think that an SSL certificate somehow guarantees a trustful vendor. On the contrary, it simply guarantees that no one will view the information en route. The vendor can do whatever he wants with the information you send.
The main reason for a signed cert is for you to be sure the person presenting the cert is who he says he is. The cert issuing companies are supposed to do due diligence and investigate that the person requesting the cert actually represents the organization that is seeking the certificate. So if I try to setup a website called schwabb.com (note the mispelling of Schwab), try to pass it off as "Charles Schwabb" (sic), and try to get a signed certificate for it, Verisign (or whoever) is supposed to make sure I'm not trying to misrepresent myself as being part of Charles Schwab.
You can purchase a signed cert for JFBVB and create the subdomain site EBAY.JFBVB.COM, but the cert will say, "EBAY.JFBVB.COM". It won't say "eBay.com". I don't care what the website says, if the cert doesn't say the correct name of the company, I'm not buying.
The problem illustrated by the Washington Post article is that some CA's aren't doing their due-diligence; and issuing certs to phishers who are claiming to be from organizations they're not part of. That creates a credibility problem for certificate authorities and undermines the whole "trust" nature of the certificate system. They probably got away with it in this case because Mountain America is a small bank -- hopefully Chase Manhattan or Citibank certs get more scrutiny. But this should ring every CA's alarm bells.
While Westinghouse may be known for it's every day electronics (elevators, microwaves, TVs) and the Westinghouse Science Award (which is still a pretty cool and pretty geeky achievement) and it's defense contracting (nuclear power), I think it's most important achievement is bringing Tesla's idea of alternating current to the consumer.
I wonder how Linux idealists feel about their cute little OS being deployed in machinery of war?
Aside from the flagrantly flamebaiting nature of this statement, what completely naive sentiment. Welcome to 1995.
Linux has been used by defense contractors for over a decade. This isn't "new." They use Linux for the same reasons anyone else uses it -- it's a solid and stable POSIX based operating system; there are no licensing fees/royalties; and you get the source-code.
Regarding the other part of the OP's comment, it's a bit of strange, funny coincidence that a lot of people in the defense contracting industry are ideologically opposed to war (some right-wingers might call them "hippies"); but there are few other industries with the heavy R&D budget that desperately need smart, technical people. Einstein and Fermi were both pacifists even though their work contributed to the first atomic bomb.
Maybe instead of having to fight back these software patent proposals every year, an EU delegate should propose amending the EU charter to specifically BAN software patents? Seems the pro-patent folks can't take "nay" for an answer.
Yes, because as we all know the really valuable data on the computer is the OS and installed programs. You know, the stuff that can be replaced in a few hours.
What do you think the worm is exploiting? Is it the user's custom shell script? His hand-made excel macros?
No, it's the bundled software (including parts of the OS). So, yes, the user data is more valuable than the prepackaged software, but having a copy of a frequently used program (say aim.exe) writable by anyone using the computer (instead of only the administrator and only immediately after the admin has entered his password) only helps viruses and worms propogate.
Something as simple as Unix file permissions on commonly used programs goes a long way toward data security.
Seriously, it sounds twisted but lots of the guys at Microsoft (I don't work there, but I know people who do) work on their personal Powerbooks (in the office). As long as upper management (Director/SVP/etc) doesn't see it, there's no problem.
That's the problem I have with the ACLU. I'm completely opposed to them on most of their favorite issues, so I would be disinclined to ask for their help on anything, even something I do think they got right. It's probably not fair to them, but I associate them with the whole range of their positions, good and bad.
You'd probably be surprised to know that William F. Buckley Jr. was defended by the ACLU in the 70's; and William F. Buckley Jr. is definitely not who you'd think of as your typical ACLU supporter. They've also defended Rush Limbaugh and the KKK -- not because the ACLU agrees with their beliefs, but because they support their civil rights.
That's why I'm kind of confused by your statement that you're "opposed to them on most of their favorite issues..." Their favorite issues are defending the constitution and your civil rights. How can you be opposed to your civil rights?
I think I prefer the older Gimp (1.2). I've tried a couple versions from the newer 2.x series, and I think it's lost some of its quality. Sure adding Python-Fu is nifty and there's some nice eye-candy in the tools, but they've dropped some of the important features, and I'm noticing more color artifacts in my images after I make some simple changes.
e.g. Image->Colors->Invert from v1.2 has disappeared. Filters->Colors->Value Invert is a poor replacement.
Also, the menu-reorg is a bit confusing. I was used to the old menus so I can't always tell whether a feature has been removed or moved without extensively searching all the menus. A nice 'use Gimp 1.x menus' preference would be nice here.
Finally, the big thing Gimp 1.2 lacked was font/text processing -- and that was what I was really hoping they were going to fix in the 2.x series. Unfortunately, they didn't. Their dynamic text layers have always sucked, so (IMHO) it's really a shame that it's now the only option for adding text to an image. Open Office Draw is way ahead of Gimp when it comes to font/text processing.
I know it's an OSS project, and I (admittedly) haven't contributed a single patch to make it better -- so I don't really have a right to complain. It's just sad that the later versions of the Gimp seemed to have taken a step backward.
There's actually several forms of nuclear power that a quite clean and don't produce the waste people usually associate with nuclear power. Unfortunately, we're bound by the nuclear non-proliferation treaty which prevents us from pursuing these forms of power. These power sources are much cleaner than coal or oil power plants and much more sustainable than natural gas plants.
The real source of opposition is the security agencies who are worried that the nuclear components used in these reactors will become targets for terrorists (either to steal or destroy).
MPG isn't the only consideration and many diesels aren't very good when it comes to controlling tailpipe emissions. You may get better mileage, but you aren't doing the environment any favors.
If you're interested in driving "greener" don't just look for MPG. See if the car is marked as LE or VLE (low-emission or very-low-emission).
Scientists don't use evolution because they're out to win some sort of ideological battle. They use it because it works. They want to understand how an amino acid becomes a protein. Evolution helps explain the process. Creationism and ID don't explain the process at all. They just say two things: (a) god made them; and (b) stop asking questions.
If evolution didn't help further science, it would be abandoned in favor of whatever did. But it works, which is why scientists rely on it and why teachers need to explain it in science classrooms.
I was just as surprised. This keyboard has been on ThinkGeek for at least a year now. Is OSDN having a fire sale or something? Too many in the warehouse?
How is this news?
While we're on the subject, I've been looking for one of the old black, metal keyboards from the 80's. But to no avail. Does anyone have any tips? PS/2, AT, whatever doesn't matter. Thanks.
In Guantanamo Bay, you get a prayer rug and warm, filling meals compliant with your religion. You get clean, running water and state-of-the-art plumbing. You can spit, pee, and throw feces at the guards and not get punished. You are also allowed to read your choice of religious literature. You are never tortured, and have access to ACLU Lawyers. You get all this even though you fought against American troops and you didn't wear a uniform and you didn't fight in the name of any country that exists today.
That was the funniest thing I've read on/. lately.
Obviously you know all this about the Gitmo because unlike every other human-rights, legal, political and humanitarian organization in the world, you have free, unrestricted access to roam around the grounds any time you choose. Not even congressmen get this level of access, but you have special omniscient and omnipresent powers.
You also must have unlimited access to interview detainees (that is, the detainees who didn't tell you about the torture, waterboarding, noise-assault and forced-nudity). Also you must've overlooked the medical staff who (in violation of medical ethics) were providing confidential patient information about detainees to interrogators.
While I agree with your main premise, I think it requires further clarification. The reason the MBAs make more is because they are typically in administration. Administrators will always make more because they make the decisions (opposed to doing the work). What salary to pay someone is just another decision.
Not to be the acronymn police, but do you want to try that one again? Or does PRC stand for something else here, because I didn't find it mentioned in TFA.
All you need is a Jabber-compatible Instant Messaging client (such as Apple's iChat, or gaim), and a GMail address.
Evidently this is some new use of the word "compatible" that I am not aware of. iChat mangles Jabber roster lists, screws up Jabber chat rooms and doesn't handle away notifications properly.
Ok, the FCC wants to track and regulate wifi? I got no problem with that as long as they reserve an allocated chunk of the radio spectrum exclusively for wifi. After all, that's when the FCC gets involved -- when you're dealing with licensed, regulated broadcast.
But as long as my access points have to compete with baby monitors, cordless phones, 2 way radios, RF remotes, etc and we're all clumped together in the unlicensed spectrum, they'll need to track my AP the old fashioned way.
Slashdot Mirror
The real question is, "Is selling virtual property" subject to capital gains taxes (like selling a second home or shares of stock)? There's an argument to be made there -- and I'd be curious to see what Congress says.
There's an easy solution here, just change your Apache config to add the HTTP_REFERER to your access_log entries. This will give you all your IP addresses with the HTTP_REFERER, so you can scan for referrals from google.* and find out where those clicks came from.
Not sure about everyone else, but I still subscribe to the paper New York Times. I read it on the way into work, I read it in the hammock in the back yard, I read it in Starbucks. Having the electronic version available is great if I want to copy or reference something on my computer, but as far as "getting" my news goes, its still the paper version for me.
Ohhhh, right. We need to somehow make Google look bad because they've never been convicted of abuse of monopoly power.
Rather than trying to have every website in the world say "WARNING: PR0N!" -- which would likely lead to massive censorship of content, Lessig proposed that the agent making the request submit what it didn't want to receive at the time of the request. Or in technical terms, send an http header like:
Then, the server that received the request (if it was properly configured) could decide what to do with that information. If they wanted to play along, they could refuse the request with something like: Or they could serve the page as normal.In typical Bush administration fashion, this Gonzales proposal is ass-backwards. The proposal has this fantasy land idea that somehow every site on the web is going to comply and open itself up to mass censorship by announcing they have porn. It also wants to throw in the tough guy approach of threatening jail time -- for exercising free speech, no less!
The Lessig proposal, like most of his ideas, is a practical, workable, real-world solution. The client proposes what s/he does and doesn't want to see, and the server makes the decision. Even though the whole system is voluntary -- I can see many porn sites complying with this idea because it (a) allows them to say they are helping filter content from children and (b) gives them control over the process.
Homer: "This gets my worst review yet -- seven thumbs up."
Let's review:
G4 - 128 bit cpu
G5 - 64 bit cpu
x86 - 32 bit cpu (WTF!?)
So now they've move to an architecture that has been kludge'd to oblivion and can only rely on increasing cpu clock speeds to keep going. At least if they moved to a 64 bit architecture they'd have (a) an architecture that hasn't already maxed out it's addressable memory; (b) some clout to push instruction set changes on this still new cpu to reduce the overall pipeline size; and (c) less concern about piracy because 64 bit systems are still the exception rather than the rule.
Oh well, at least their universal binary format means they can keep architecture hopping without stranding their users like they did when they jumped to the PPC.
The main reason for a signed cert is for you to be sure the person presenting the cert is who he says he is. The cert issuing companies are supposed to do due diligence and investigate that the person requesting the cert actually represents the organization that is seeking the certificate. So if I try to setup a website called schwabb.com (note the mispelling of Schwab), try to pass it off as "Charles Schwabb" (sic), and try to get a signed certificate for it, Verisign (or whoever) is supposed to make sure I'm not trying to misrepresent myself as being part of Charles Schwab.
You can purchase a signed cert for JFBVB and create the subdomain site EBAY.JFBVB.COM, but the cert will say, "EBAY.JFBVB.COM". It won't say "eBay.com". I don't care what the website says, if the cert doesn't say the correct name of the company, I'm not buying.
The problem illustrated by the Washington Post article is that some CA's aren't doing their due-diligence; and issuing certs to phishers who are claiming to be from organizations they're not part of. That creates a credibility problem for certificate authorities and undermines the whole "trust" nature of the certificate system. They probably got away with it in this case because Mountain America is a small bank -- hopefully Chase Manhattan or Citibank certs get more scrutiny. But this should ring every CA's alarm bells.
While Westinghouse may be known for it's every day electronics (elevators, microwaves, TVs) and the Westinghouse Science Award (which is still a pretty cool and pretty geeky achievement) and it's defense contracting (nuclear power), I think it's most important achievement is bringing Tesla's idea of alternating current to the consumer.
Linux has been used by defense contractors for over a decade. This isn't "new." They use Linux for the same reasons anyone else uses it -- it's a solid and stable POSIX based operating system; there are no licensing fees/royalties; and you get the source-code.
Regarding the other part of the OP's comment, it's a bit of strange, funny coincidence that a lot of people in the defense contracting industry are ideologically opposed to war (some right-wingers might call them "hippies"); but there are few other industries with the heavy R&D budget that desperately need smart, technical people. Einstein and Fermi were both pacifists even though their work contributed to the first atomic bomb.
Maybe instead of having to fight back these software patent proposals every year, an EU delegate should propose amending the EU charter to specifically BAN software patents? Seems the pro-patent folks can't take "nay" for an answer.
No, it's the bundled software (including parts of the OS). So, yes, the user data is more valuable than the prepackaged software, but having a copy of a frequently used program (say aim.exe) writable by anyone using the computer (instead of only the administrator and only immediately after the admin has entered his password) only helps viruses and worms propogate.
Something as simple as Unix file permissions on commonly used programs goes a long way toward data security.
Seriously, it sounds twisted but lots of the guys at Microsoft (I don't work there, but I know people who do) work on their personal Powerbooks (in the office). As long as upper management (Director/SVP/etc) doesn't see it, there's no problem.
That's why I'm kind of confused by your statement that you're "opposed to them on most of their favorite issues..." Their favorite issues are defending the constitution and your civil rights. How can you be opposed to your civil rights?
I think I prefer the older Gimp (1.2). I've tried a couple versions from the newer 2.x series, and I think it's lost some of its quality. Sure adding Python-Fu is nifty and there's some nice eye-candy in the tools, but they've dropped some of the important features, and I'm noticing more color artifacts in my images after I make some simple changes.
e.g. Image->Colors->Invert from v1.2 has disappeared. Filters->Colors->Value Invert is a poor replacement.
Also, the menu-reorg is a bit confusing. I was used to the old menus so I can't always tell whether a feature has been removed or moved without extensively searching all the menus. A nice 'use Gimp 1.x menus' preference would be nice here.
Finally, the big thing Gimp 1.2 lacked was font/text processing -- and that was what I was really hoping they were going to fix in the 2.x series. Unfortunately, they didn't. Their dynamic text layers have always sucked, so (IMHO) it's really a shame that it's now the only option for adding text to an image. Open Office Draw is way ahead of Gimp when it comes to font/text processing.
I know it's an OSS project, and I (admittedly) haven't contributed a single patch to make it better -- so I don't really have a right to complain. It's just sad that the later versions of the Gimp seemed to have taken a step backward.
The real source of opposition is the security agencies who are worried that the nuclear components used in these reactors will become targets for terrorists (either to steal or destroy).
If you're interested in driving "greener" don't just look for MPG. See if the car is marked as LE or VLE (low-emission or very-low-emission).
Scientists don't use evolution because they're out to win some sort of ideological battle. They use it because it works. They want to understand how an amino acid becomes a protein. Evolution helps explain the process. Creationism and ID don't explain the process at all. They just say two things: (a) god made them; and (b) stop asking questions.
If evolution didn't help further science, it would be abandoned in favor of whatever did. But it works, which is why scientists rely on it and why teachers need to explain it in science classrooms.
How is this news?
While we're on the subject, I've been looking for one of the old black, metal keyboards from the 80's. But to no avail. Does anyone have any tips? PS/2, AT, whatever doesn't matter. Thanks.
Obviously you know all this about the Gitmo because unlike every other human-rights, legal, political and humanitarian organization in the world, you have free, unrestricted access to roam around the grounds any time you choose. Not even congressmen get this level of access, but you have special omniscient and omnipresent powers.
You also must have unlimited access to interview detainees (that is, the detainees who didn't tell you about the torture, waterboarding, noise-assault and forced-nudity). Also you must've overlooked the medical staff who (in violation of medical ethics) were providing confidential patient information about detainees to interrogators.
Nice one, Mr. President. You're a very funny man.
While I agree with your main premise, I think it requires further clarification. The reason the MBAs make more is because they are typically in administration. Administrators will always make more because they make the decisions (opposed to doing the work). What salary to pay someone is just another decision.
Sorry, couldn't resist. :)
Chinese People's Republic of China?
Not to be the acronymn police, but do you want to try that one again? Or does PRC stand for something else here, because I didn't find it mentioned in TFA.
I'd say stick with Adium for now.
But as long as my access points have to compete with baby monitors, cordless phones, 2 way radios, RF remotes, etc and we're all clumped together in the unlicensed spectrum, they'll need to track my AP the old fashioned way.