Re:Could Someone Help Me Out With This?
on
Debt Deal Reached
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· Score: 1
As a self employed person, I pay about 15% of my profits as "Self Employment Tax" which (I hope) approximately equals what everyone else (plus their employer) is paying into SS and Medicare. This is, of course, on top of the regular taxes that I pay on my income like everyone else.
Their wording tricked me for a few minutes, but it just dawned on me what they actually did:
1) free streaming videos added to your subscription!
2) You can have streaming alone for $8 a month, or pay $2 extra to add it to the 1-dvd-out plan
3) Forget that, streaming is just another option you can pay for, sucks to be you if you want both.
My guess is that they will either give people a discount for having more than one plan under the same account, and/or they will create a new plan with streaming and a limited # of DVDs per month, for example, to fill the $10-$13 price range.
You know what they could do.. create an 'Amazon California' - similar to amazon.uk, and just raise all the prices accordingly, and maybe add a little amazon tax to pay for their trouble.
Honestly though, CA shouldn't be screwing around with trying to force out of state businesses to collect their taxes. They aren't the only state that's been tinkering with this type of idea though... we'll see what happens when / if the consumers or retailers revolt.
As a web developer who started out with a WYSIWYG editor (Front page... I know, I deserve to be shot), and then moved to a fancy graphical text editor, and now uses SSH and pico/nano or emacs on the server.. I'll say that my work flow, my code, and my websites are better with less between me and the code.
I've tried a few of the other WYSIWYGs over the years, and they always insert sub-standard code, or stupid cruft or do things exactly the wrong way (techniques that were cool 5 years ago or creating the whole thing with tables). If you don't care about that, you should be asking this question on 'smashing magazine' or some other designer's blog and not slashdot.
I was homeschooled in highschool, and I can tell you that it was hard to get along with the other homeschool families.. as soon as they found out that we weren't "christian" we were summarily kicked out. I didn't really learn programming (futzed around with BASIC on our TRS-80), but I taught myself HTML, and a lot about computers just by using one. Now I run a computer repair shop and do web design on the side. The most important thing I learned was how to teach things to myself.
To answer the FQ, first decide if you really want to teach CS or if you just want to teach how to use a computer. If you just want them to learn how to use a computer, there are a lot of textbooks out there aimed at that crowd, just look in any college bookstore (there are CS 90 classes that will have textbooks on the right level)
If you are actually interested in teaching Computer SCIENCE, then it will be a little tougher, cause that isn't really taught these days. Start by getting a computer that can be easily reformatted, and put a *nix operating system on it. Install some programming language.. Ruby, Python, PHP... whatever.. something that makes using strings easy, cause that's what's fun as a beginner. Any kid in highschool can learn the basics of programming.. don't need a textbook, go with the type of book you would use if you were learning a new language as an adult, cause that's what school is for... preparing you to become an adult. Teach the kids to make shell scripts, tweak and recompile other people's programs, get them involved in the community, lol.. have them post on slashdot;-) make them read xkcd... This way, when they get to collage, they will have actual experience in REALLY using a computer and can start to apply the higher concepts that are harder to pick up as you go. And, if they aren't interested in CS as a career, at least they'll be able to use their own computer. You can thrown some hardware stuff in there too for good measure.. can't go wrong with knowing a hard drive from a floppy disc;-)
Agreed, my mouser catalog is about three inches thick... If they don't have what I need, then so is my digikey catalog.
The components section is just a small cabinet tucked waaayyy in the back where you can't find it. I get that they want to appeal to the younger crowd, but that's a saturated market, esp. right now. Why go to Radio shack for cell phone accessories when you can get them for almost free by trading in "points" or whatever with your cell phone carrier. Radio Shack used to fill a niche, and the point of niches is that they are small. If that's a problem, then you have to fight with everyone else to get the attention of the mainstream crowd. The problem is, in my town, there are probably only a couple dozen people who would want to buy electrical components and who wouldn't buy them online.
And that, right there, is why I recommend that we all start using personal servers that we control rather than some data storage that we have no control over.
And, before you say blah, blah, blah consumers aren't smart enough... there are products out there that you can purchase from Best Buy that give you plug and play "cloud storage" that pretty much anyone who can use a USB drive could use. Now, we just need to get more online services to let you use your own server and I would be happy:-)
except, we're not talking about enterprise customers here, we're talking about the fact that XP still has a 1/3 of the market share, and most of the people using are more than happy (if only microsoft would stop releasing new programs that don't work with it). I run a computer repair store in a small city, and it's more like 80% of my customers have XP. All the time, people are asking me how they can install XP on their new computers, and I have to tell them that they really have no choice, and they should learn the new OS... and then, depending on the customer, I switch them to linux;-)
For other people, I usually write the 3 letter name of the month out (nov - 11 - 11), that way no one gets confused. For myself, it's the ISO standard, all the way! 20111111
If you throw the moon + earth image into an image editor and adjust the levels, you'll notice that the moon was moved to make it more.. photogenic. The other image also has some signs of editing... really is kind of funny.
The wait lines for electronic books is still insanely long - for popular books, there are hundreds of people waiting to be able to check them out. If the library budgets weren't the first thing to get slashed in a poor economy, the libraries would be more likely to buy ebooks... but not ones that self destruct after 26 loans.
Just a note on consumer consent to allow Bing toolbar to mine data... it may be in the EULA, but in my experience (repair tech who helps regular people) most people don't know how they got a Bing Bar in the first place - it usually rides in piggy-back with Java, Open Office or any other bit of software that wants to earn a buck pushing crappy toolbars.
Back in the day, didn't they proclaim that HTML 4 would be the final version, or was I just imagining that?
And - as a web developer... *sigh* what are those guys thinking? It's bad enough that Internet Explorer can't just buckle down and pick a browser to work on, they are trying to do frequent releases like Chrome or Firefox, but without the cross compatibility that the others enjoy.
Why would we want to rip shows from Netflix? Most people who want to pirate go straight to the torrents without any fiddly-hoo with trying to rip it from some hacked up client.
As a purely linux user, I'm tempted to get a roku box so I can stream my netflix without booting into virtualbox and running my browser through there... dumb, dumb, dumb - from the consumer's point of view.
It's ironic. A few years ago the internet (especially bittorent) was killing video rental. Now it's the other way around.
That's because all most of us wanted was an easy and cheap way to watch tv and movies. The "industry" complained about lost sales, while Netflix realised what was actually going on and capitalised on it.
The only thing left is to break up the conflicting interests of the cable and ISP combos.
Interestingly, we never hear any news stories about how annoyed people are to switch to the next version of Windows.
The one time I have transitioned a business over to Linux was when their attempt to move to Vista failed horribly (a software limitation to how many computers could be connected to the server at one time). After spending hundreds of dollars, and still running against one brick wall after another... I reminded them that Linux would have solved their problems for a couple hours of my time. I set them up, and they have been happier than larks for the last 2 years.
I had a similar problem when I tried to sign up for hotmail years ago. It didn't like my last name - so I made one up, who gives if they had something in their TOS forbidding using a pseudonym.
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As a self employed person, I pay about 15% of my profits as "Self Employment Tax" which (I hope) approximately equals what everyone else (plus their employer) is paying into SS and Medicare. This is, of course, on top of the regular taxes that I pay on my income like everyone else.
Their wording tricked me for a few minutes, but it just dawned on me what they actually did:
1) free streaming videos added to your subscription!
2) You can have streaming alone for $8 a month, or pay $2 extra to add it to the 1-dvd-out plan
3) Forget that, streaming is just another option you can pay for, sucks to be you if you want both.
My guess is that they will either give people a discount for having more than one plan under the same account, and/or they will create a new plan with streaming and a limited # of DVDs per month, for example, to fill the $10-$13 price range.
I wish I had mod points - lol!
What bothered me was the disagreement of tense: "He read every email he received and deal with them all" ... it gives me chills even on a re-read.
You know what they could do .. create an 'Amazon California' - similar to amazon.uk, and just raise all the prices accordingly, and maybe add a little amazon tax to pay for their trouble.
Honestly though, CA shouldn't be screwing around with trying to force out of state businesses to collect their taxes. They aren't the only state that's been tinkering with this type of idea though ... we'll see what happens when / if the consumers or retailers revolt.
As a web developer who started out with a WYSIWYG editor (Front page ... I know, I deserve to be shot), and then moved to a fancy graphical text editor, and now uses SSH and pico/nano or emacs on the server .. I'll say that my work flow, my code, and my websites are better with less between me and the code.
I've tried a few of the other WYSIWYGs over the years, and they always insert sub-standard code, or stupid cruft or do things exactly the wrong way (techniques that were cool 5 years ago or creating the whole thing with tables). If you don't care about that, you should be asking this question on 'smashing magazine' or some other designer's blog and not slashdot.
They should call it the Wii Boy
I was homeschooled in highschool, and I can tell you that it was hard to get along with the other homeschool families .. as soon as they found out that we weren't "christian" we were summarily kicked out. I didn't really learn programming (futzed around with BASIC on our TRS-80), but I taught myself HTML, and a lot about computers just by using one. Now I run a computer repair shop and do web design on the side. The most important thing I learned was how to teach things to myself.
To answer the FQ, first decide if you really want to teach CS or if you just want to teach how to use a computer. If you just want them to learn how to use a computer, there are a lot of textbooks out there aimed at that crowd, just look in any college bookstore (there are CS 90 classes that will have textbooks on the right level)
If you are actually interested in teaching Computer SCIENCE, then it will be a little tougher, cause that isn't really taught these days. Start by getting a computer that can be easily reformatted, and put a *nix operating system on it. Install some programming language .. Ruby, Python, PHP ... whatever .. something that makes using strings easy, cause that's what's fun as a beginner. Any kid in highschool can learn the basics of programming .. don't need a textbook, go with the type of book you would use if you were learning a new language as an adult, cause that's what school is for ... preparing you to become an adult. Teach the kids to make shell scripts, tweak and recompile other people's programs, get them involved in the community, lol .. have them post on slashdot ;-) make them read xkcd ... This way, when they get to collage, they will have actual experience in REALLY using a computer and can start to apply the higher concepts that are harder to pick up as you go. And, if they aren't interested in CS as a career, at least they'll be able to use their own computer. You can thrown some hardware stuff in there too for good measure .. can't go wrong with knowing a hard drive from a floppy disc ;-)
I was mildly interested until they said that they had only used AOL search data ... wow. No wonder there's so much old lady porn, it's the user base.
Agreed, my mouser catalog is about three inches thick ... If they don't have what I need, then so is my digikey catalog.
The components section is just a small cabinet tucked waaayyy in the back where you can't find it. I get that they want to appeal to the younger crowd, but that's a saturated market, esp. right now. Why go to Radio shack for cell phone accessories when you can get them for almost free by trading in "points" or whatever with your cell phone carrier. Radio Shack used to fill a niche, and the point of niches is that they are small. If that's a problem, then you have to fight with everyone else to get the attention of the mainstream crowd. The problem is, in my town, there are probably only a couple dozen people who would want to buy electrical components and who wouldn't buy them online.
And that, right there, is why I recommend that we all start using personal servers that we control rather than some data storage that we have no control over.
And, before you say blah, blah, blah consumers aren't smart enough ... there are products out there that you can purchase from Best Buy that give you plug and play "cloud storage" that pretty much anyone who can use a USB drive could use. Now, we just need to get more online services to let you use your own server and I would be happy :-)
except, we're not talking about enterprise customers here, we're talking about the fact that XP still has a 1/3 of the market share, and most of the people using are more than happy (if only microsoft would stop releasing new programs that don't work with it). I run a computer repair store in a small city, and it's more like 80% of my customers have XP. All the time, people are asking me how they can install XP on their new computers, and I have to tell them that they really have no choice, and they should learn the new OS ... and then, depending on the customer, I switch them to linux ;-)
For other people, I usually write the 3 letter name of the month out (nov - 11 - 11), that way no one gets confused. For myself, it's the ISO standard, all the way! 20111111
If you throw the moon + earth image into an image editor and adjust the levels, you'll notice that the moon was moved to make it more .. photogenic. The other image also has some signs of editing ... really is kind of funny.
The wait lines for electronic books is still insanely long - for popular books, there are hundreds of people waiting to be able to check them out. If the library budgets weren't the first thing to get slashed in a poor economy, the libraries would be more likely to buy ebooks ... but not ones that self destruct after 26 loans.
Just a note on consumer consent to allow Bing toolbar to mine data ... it may be in the EULA, but in my experience (repair tech who helps regular people) most people don't know how they got a Bing Bar in the first place - it usually rides in piggy-back with Java, Open Office or any other bit of software that wants to earn a buck pushing crappy toolbars.
Back in the day, didn't they proclaim that HTML 4 would be the final version, or was I just imagining that?
And - as a web developer ... *sigh* what are those guys thinking? It's bad enough that Internet Explorer can't just buckle down and pick a browser to work on, they are trying to do frequent releases like Chrome or Firefox, but without the cross compatibility that the others enjoy.
What's really fucked up is when the early adopters pay more and get less .. oh wait, that's how every other company does it
Why would we want to rip shows from Netflix? Most people who want to pirate go straight to the torrents without any fiddly-hoo with trying to rip it from some hacked up client.
As a purely linux user, I'm tempted to get a roku box so I can stream my netflix without booting into virtualbox and running my browser through there... dumb, dumb, dumb - from the consumer's point of view.
so actually, a 1/3 of the world's spam is sent out from 500,000 people who are running windows?
That's because all most of us wanted was an easy and cheap way to watch tv and movies. The "industry" complained about lost sales, while Netflix realised what was actually going on and capitalised on it.
The only thing left is to break up the conflicting interests of the cable and ISP combos.
This whole thing is probably a great idea from the only person who benefits:
It's too bad that they fell for it.
The only thing I learned on a computer in elementary school was how to prepare for long, overland journeys in a covered wagon.
Interestingly, we never hear any news stories about how annoyed people are to switch to the next version of Windows.
The one time I have transitioned a business over to Linux was when their attempt to move to Vista failed horribly (a software limitation to how many computers could be connected to the server at one time). After spending hundreds of dollars, and still running against one brick wall after another ... I reminded them that Linux would have solved their problems for a couple hours of my time. I set them up, and they have been happier than larks for the last 2 years.
I had a similar problem when I tried to sign up for hotmail years ago. It didn't like my last name - so I made one up, who gives if they had something in their TOS forbidding using a pseudonym.