Is American consumerism so out of control we take out loans on anticipated income now, in order to spend it as soon as possible (with extra fees tacked on due to interest / finance charges) ?
I wonder what happens to consumers who take said loans if the IRS "corrects" their return and eliminates their refund.
I guess they bought their fancy toys/doodads by the time that happens though, and they can default on their anticipation loan in the same way they stopped paying their credit card bills and mortage; however.
You're fortunate it was just W-2 errors.
If it's just a few one-off's by a few pennies, probably not in their interest to do much more than fix it.
If you had significantly underreported on other forms like property exchange (1099B), or significant amounts on a 1099, it would have automatically triggered a full audit, probably.
That doesn't mean the IRS records are good though, or that everyone always files the proper 1099s against you.
They currently get the best of both worlds:
They are reported the information, they can use to check your filings with.
If less income was reported to them by people paying you than you filed, they either reap the profit, or correct and charge you a penalty for overreporting.
If more income was reported to them for you by others than you reported, then they either fix the error or audit you depending on the circumstances, this might be an ad-hoc audit where IRS officers visit your house and seize your records for review, if the dollar amount is large, they will immediately suspect fraud.
The reports that get filed to them aren't just to correct your errors, they also exist to detect dishonesty on your part.
If they filled in the blanks for you, that would almost completely negate their advantage.
That's because, in real property there is a special type of thing that is legally permitted called a restrictive covenant, or a "covenant running with the land".
The restrictions or promises get added to the deed or title itself in the form of deed restrictions and apply regardless of owner..
Those are different from contracts, and possible because of the real property law, and what deed means.
Even then, deed covenants may be removed or expunged through the courts by way of (possibly expensive) legal action from the landowner.
Exclusionary covenants such as "no people of a certain race" have been found to be illegal and may simply be ignored without consequence.
However... despite the deed restrictions: no deed covenant I have known ever said any thing like this piece of land ceases to be a piece of land or this building, ceases to be a house, and instead becomes worth just the price of its materials, in case the deed covenant is violated.
The buyer terms attempts to circumvent first sale, by stating the agreement is between the buyer and the artist, regardless of whoever the seller is.
And if the terms are violated the item ceases to be a work of art
I don't know... this may be perfectly valid. But it still sounds really funny.
It's like selling someone a painting, with an agreement... that if they sell it to another person that other person has to make an agreement with the original painter.
And if they fail to follow the terms, the item ceases to be a painting.
So yeah... the terms are funny in a kind of absurd way.
I suppose if the terms are violated for the self re-selling piece, though, it does cease to be a re-selling piece... so there's some uniqueness there.
However I say it's still a piece no matter what!
A piece of _____________. (What goes in the blank is up to you)
Yeah... but eBay gets a percentage of every sale... listing fees plus final value fees.
For a $3000 item, the seller loses over $100 in eBay fees, before even considering PayPal's charge.
And then there's shipping.
So the seller will definitely want to sell at a higher price, just to break even.
And yet if they sell at a price just enough higher to cover their fees, the artist wants 15% of that.
So they need to meet an even higher price to break even after the eBay, PayPal, shipping fees AND the artist's 15% of the appreciation (So that Sales Price - Costs - Artists fees > 0).
Not unless the artist makes more than one of them.
The market won't bear arbitrary price increases.
Of course, if successful, the more hands the thing changes, the more notorious the piece of art will be, and the greater the value the market will bear...
The difference is a pyramid scheme seeks to involve as many people as possible.
With an item such as this, it's only one buyer.
And the terms prohibit pricing the item above what the market will bear.
So there's a great deal of risk involved for the buyer..... the 'value of the item' could go down..
Uh... paying an employee working 72 weeks for only 40 hours is highway robbery.
Most likely their wages/salary are inflated to an appropriate salary for the higher number of hours.
If otherwise...
how would they retain any employees doing that?
Surely they'd all bail ship and get jobs at employers willing to pay the predominant market price for their job and hours worked....
By wives' definition: overworked means not spending a lot of quality time with me.
Regardless of how strenuous and stressful the work is... there's more of a self-interest there.
What about married female workers at Rockstar? Do their husbands say they are overworked?
Why are we inquiring of spouses rather than the employee?
Some spouses' definition of "overworked" means working 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, and not chatting (personal calls) on their business line 3+ hours a day.
12 hours a day, 6 days a week is not that bad, that's 72 hours a week.
As long as the employee agreed to it, and the pay is appropriate, that should be fine. There are plenty of professions that involve that many hours a week, e.g. The average Firefighter works >60 hours per week as well.
But again, most of that time is not spent conducting physically draining activity.
In the case of a developer, most time is spent thinking.
It's called "needing the money", and sometimes the need for cash trumps having a lot of time for recreation, in certain life situations.
Realizing for most individuals, it's going to be unacceptable over long periods of time, but for a few years it should be alright. Employees at startups have long been known for long work hours in exchange for extra compensation or special fringe benefits.
In fact... in the long run, working 8 hours a day is going to be unacceptable to most people.
Every hear of this concept called "retirement" ?
Would you think it an adequate tradeoff to work 72 hours a week instead of 40, and retire within 10 - 15 years instead of 30 years?
You insensitive clod!
Some of us have other things we value in our lives than work, sleeping, and eating.
For instance, the above provides no time for reading slashdot and commenting.
Besides the fact at R* crunch time, developers are expected to eat while simultaneously working.
So even eating is not fulfilling.
And you've neglected the 3-4 hours required to commute between work and home.
Either that or you're assuming that sleeping at your desk is adequate and proper sleep.
In this case they're a patent troll for a different reason:
As Rambus continued its participation in JEDEC, it became apparent that they were not prepared to agree to JEDEC’s patent policy requiring owners of patents included in a standard to agree to license that technology under terms that are ‘reasonable and non-discriminatory’
...
Rambus withdrew from the organization in 1995. Memos from Rambus at that time showed they were tailoring new patent applications to cover features of SDRAM being discussed, which were public knowledge (JEDEC meetings were not considered secret) and perfectly legal for patent owners who have patented underlying innovations, but were seen as evidence of bad faith by the jury in the first Infineon v. Rambus trial. The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals rejected this theory of bad faith in its decision overturning the fraud conviction Infineon achieved in the first trial
In other words, they were using their status as member of an industry organization, to hear the content of discussions and work on patenting things based on the discussions they were hearing, to ensure manufacturers' technology would infringe on patents they would get......
That's perhaps the ultimate definition of patent troll.
Figure out what innovations other people are coming up with, and patent the pre-requisites to achieve those innovations, before the other people can publish.
If that language was used in the official decision then that means that the maximum allowable fine per song would be set to $2,250 = $54,000/24 right? Is that how legal precedence is established?
No precedent is set by the decision.
But it should actually probably be fairly non-controversial (except as far as the Intellectual property owner is concerned).
Paying 3x the value of the song is deterrant commesurate with the damage done.
The RIAA also needs to be deterred from abusing the courts to pursue cases against individuals who caused very little damage against them.
There is significant prejudice in the process and arbitrariness in their actions, when they pursue huge damages against only some of the people they know (or can know) to have incurred similar damages against them.
The RIAA's abuse of the courts should also be deterred by not awarding them massively excessive damages as an incentive to abuse the legal process...
<Judge> The finding is in favor of the plaintiff. Mr. RIAA, you may proceed.
* The_RIAA slaps Newb-Jammie_Thomas around a bit with a large trout
<Newb-Jammie_Thomas>/action whacks the RIAA by uploading another MP3
* The_RIAA proceeds to file another suit against Newb-Jammie_Thomas for trying to use/me, mistyping it as "/action", and failing, oh yeah: and for the additional MP3 upload.
See, the Nexus One has a striking similarity to the iPhone.
Google is perhaps one of the biggest threat's to Microsoft's solvency, particular with their superiority in search, and their vastly usable ChromeOS.
And Microsoft's Windows product has a critical role in the OS industry that helps Apple reach their target market.
It helps Apple, because it means the general population uses a product that actually is far inferior.
Since almost everyone uses Windows, Linux doesn't seem too special to the general population.
The average person has difficulty seeing a benefit to Linux over say Apple.
Apple can continue to justify to people they should buy their product, because it's a "premium OS", better than OS-es that run on less-expensive hardware in every way.
If Google disrupts Microsoft's market position, it could be a huge threat...
in a world where ChromeOS or Linux are predominant, MacOS has a lot less value:
The public would have good experience with simple, decent OSes, and be unimpressed with MacOS after trying it.
It would make it exceedingly difficult for Apple to successfully sell their "almost the same" "100x as expensive" hardware, when the predominant OS in the market is of reasonable quality and end-user experience.
and the service provider is glad to not tell you they've violated their own privacy policy by giving out info without the proof that they're being legally obligated to do so.
The typical service provider terms of service agreement warns you that the provider will cooperate with law enforcement requests for information.
It's the rule rather than the exception to the rule, that law enforcement can simply nicely ask the service provider, and get the info they need, contact details, data, etc.
It's easy to see how this can lead to use of post-it notes, once certain companies become well enough acquainted with certain law enforcement officers.
Except... that sleeping on your rights for that purpose gives them an affirmative defense against you: laches
The person invoking laches is asserting that an opposing party has "slept on its rights," and that, as a result of this delay, that other party is no longer entitled to its original claim. Put another way, failure to assert one’s rights in a timely manner can result in a claim's being barred by laches. Laches is a form of estoppel for delay....
Laches essentially alleges prejudicial delay and unfairness in the context of a particular situation
Still.. even the threat of suing, and the legal fees might (in some cases) be enough incentive for the target to be persuaded to do what you want...
Disasters are rare. Unless the server is running windows, it probably won't crash at all, for 5 years or more, by the time testing and burn-in is done.
If it is running windows... it might have an occassional issue. But actual physical failures of servers that result in any significant loss are extremely rare. Server backups are frequently overlooked entirely (in error), because restores are so rarely needed in the Enterprise.
When something breaks it's a workstation, almost always.
Not their fault... the online poll set the price at $300 - $400
The under-spec'ed processor and GPU for that price, however IS their fault.
And "easily upgradable" doesn't excuse it much.
What may excuse it is low volume, requiring them to use lower spec'ed components than Apple to meet their price goal.
The online poll results put them in a tough place: "A Netbook form factor PC, in $300 - $400 range". A tower form factor would have allowed less-expensive options (though at higher power consumption, most likely).
Anyways, more is important than just the specs... it's the fact they only use open, documented hardware.
The project was initiated in response to the lack of quality in the Free Software-based hardware solutions currently on the market. As many reviewers and end-users have stated, the pre-installed software used by hardware vendors generated a bad image for Free Software with potentially interested end-users. Much of the software was buggy and not widely tested and device drivers were often unstable, non-free or not available at all.
In other words... a high-quality component choice for non-technically savvy users who want Linux pre-installed?
I suppose high-quality is relative.
They would seem to be claiming the point of the project is to provide a higher quality experience than other pre-installed Linux solutions.
Slashdot Mirror
That's the point at which you go to the pet store and pick up 27 kittens.
When the agents come to inspect the well-being of your children, you show them your "babies".
That's cool... if they think you're 3 years of age, you get the child exemption from having to pay any taxes on interest earned.
And probably other financial writeoffs traditionally intended for saving for a childs' expenses such as education.
And with 27 kids of your own, you got plenty of exemptions.
At least until they figure out their mistake.
Is American consumerism so out of control we take out loans on anticipated income now, in order to spend it as soon as possible (with extra fees tacked on due to interest / finance charges) ?
I wonder what happens to consumers who take said loans if the IRS "corrects" their return and eliminates their refund.
I guess they bought their fancy toys/doodads by the time that happens though, and they can default on their anticipation loan in the same way they stopped paying their credit card bills and mortage; however.
You're fortunate it was just W-2 errors. If it's just a few one-off's by a few pennies, probably not in their interest to do much more than fix it.
If you had significantly underreported on other forms like property exchange (1099B), or significant amounts on a 1099, it would have automatically triggered a full audit, probably.
That doesn't mean the IRS records are good though, or that everyone always files the proper 1099s against you.
They currently get the best of both worlds:
They are reported the information, they can use to check your filings with.
If less income was reported to them by people paying you than you filed, they either reap the profit, or correct and charge you a penalty for overreporting.
If more income was reported to them for you by others than you reported, then they either fix the error or audit you depending on the circumstances, this might be an ad-hoc audit where IRS officers visit your house and seize your records for review, if the dollar amount is large, they will immediately suspect fraud.
The reports that get filed to them aren't just to correct your errors, they also exist to detect dishonesty on your part.
If they filled in the blanks for you, that would almost completely negate their advantage.
That's because, in real property there is a special type of thing that is legally permitted called a restrictive covenant, or a "covenant running with the land". The restrictions or promises get added to the deed or title itself in the form of deed restrictions and apply regardless of owner..
Those are different from contracts, and possible because of the real property law, and what deed means.
Even then, deed covenants may be removed or expunged through the courts by way of (possibly expensive) legal action from the landowner. Exclusionary covenants such as "no people of a certain race" have been found to be illegal and may simply be ignored without consequence.
However... despite the deed restrictions: no deed covenant I have known ever said any thing like this piece of land ceases to be a piece of land or this building, ceases to be a house, and instead becomes worth just the price of its materials, in case the deed covenant is violated.
The buyer terms attempts to circumvent first sale, by stating the agreement is between the buyer and the artist, regardless of whoever the seller is.
And if the terms are violated the item ceases to be a work of art
I don't know... this may be perfectly valid. But it still sounds really funny.
It's like selling someone a painting, with an agreement... that if they sell it to another person that other person has to make an agreement with the original painter.
And if they fail to follow the terms, the item ceases to be a painting.
So yeah... the terms are funny in a kind of absurd way.
I suppose if the terms are violated for the self re-selling piece, though, it does cease to be a re-selling piece... so there's some uniqueness there.
However I say it's still a piece no matter what!
A piece of _____________. (What goes in the blank is up to you)
Yeah... but eBay gets a percentage of every sale... listing fees plus final value fees.
For a $3000 item, the seller loses over $100 in eBay fees, before even considering PayPal's charge.
And then there's shipping. So the seller will definitely want to sell at a higher price, just to break even.
And yet if they sell at a price just enough higher to cover their fees, the artist wants 15% of that.
So they need to meet an even higher price to break even after the eBay, PayPal, shipping fees AND the artist's 15% of the appreciation (So that Sales Price - Costs - Artists fees > 0).
Not unless the artist makes more than one of them.
The market won't bear arbitrary price increases.
Of course, if successful, the more hands the thing changes, the more notorious the piece of art will be, and the greater the value the market will bear...
The difference is a pyramid scheme seeks to involve as many people as possible. With an item such as this, it's only one buyer.
And the terms prohibit pricing the item above what the market will bear.
So there's a great deal of risk involved for the buyer..... the 'value of the item' could go down..
GenerateCrazyFirewallActivity( struct in_addr dest[NUM_TARGETS], int hour, int minute ) { .... } ;
int i,SpoofPackets[NUM_COUNTRIES][HOURS_OF_THE_DAY]
= { { 10, 17} ,
for(j=0;j<NUM_TARGETS;j++) for(i=0;i<NUM_COUNTRIES) { count=SpoofPackets[j][hour] * random_fraction() + (confuse_the_hell_out_of_them ? 100 : 0); SpoofPacketsTo(dest[i],count) }
}
Uh... paying an employee working 72 weeks for only 40 hours is highway robbery. Most likely their wages/salary are inflated to an appropriate salary for the higher number of hours.
If otherwise... how would they retain any employees doing that?
Surely they'd all bail ship and get jobs at employers willing to pay the predominant market price for their job and hours worked....
Rockstar Employees Badly Overworked, Say Wives
By wives' definition: overworked means not spending a lot of quality time with me. Regardless of how strenuous and stressful the work is... there's more of a self-interest there.
What about married female workers at Rockstar? Do their husbands say they are overworked?
Why are we inquiring of spouses rather than the employee?
Some spouses' definition of "overworked" means working 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, and not chatting (personal calls) on their business line 3+ hours a day.
12 hours a day, 6 days a week is not that bad, that's 72 hours a week. As long as the employee agreed to it, and the pay is appropriate, that should be fine. There are plenty of professions that involve that many hours a week, e.g. The average Firefighter works >60 hours per week as well.
But again, most of that time is not spent conducting physically draining activity. In the case of a developer, most time is spent thinking.
It's called "needing the money", and sometimes the need for cash trumps having a lot of time for recreation, in certain life situations.
Realizing for most individuals, it's going to be unacceptable over long periods of time, but for a few years it should be alright. Employees at startups have long been known for long work hours in exchange for extra compensation or special fringe benefits.
In fact... in the long run, working 8 hours a day is going to be unacceptable to most people. Every hear of this concept called "retirement" ?
Would you think it an adequate tradeoff to work 72 hours a week instead of 40, and retire within 10 - 15 years instead of 30 years?
You insensitive clod! Some of us have other things we value in our lives than work, sleeping, and eating.
For instance, the above provides no time for reading slashdot and commenting.
Besides the fact at R* crunch time, developers are expected to eat while simultaneously working. So even eating is not fulfilling.
And you've neglected the 3-4 hours required to commute between work and home. Either that or you're assuming that sleeping at your desk is adequate and proper sleep.
In this case they're a patent troll for a different reason:
In other words, they were using their status as member of an industry organization, to hear the content of discussions and work on patenting things based on the discussions they were hearing, to ensure manufacturers' technology would infringe on patents they would get......
That's perhaps the ultimate definition of patent troll.
Figure out what innovations other people are coming up with, and patent the pre-requisites to achieve those innovations, before the other people can publish.
What the US needs is a process where the higher courts randomly get some percentage of important cases referred from the lower courts for review.
Even though the party taking the action doesn't want to set precedent.
That way, useful precedent can be set, for judicial consistency, even when the case never makes it to appeal...
If that language was used in the official decision then that means that the maximum allowable fine per song would be set to $2,250 = $54,000/24 right? Is that how legal precedence is established?
No precedent is set by the decision.
But it should actually probably be fairly non-controversial (except as far as the Intellectual property owner is concerned).
Treble damages IS a deterrant.
Paying 3x the value of the song is deterrant commesurate with the damage done.
The RIAA also needs to be deterred from abusing the courts to pursue cases against individuals who caused very little damage against them.
There is significant prejudice in the process and arbitrariness in their actions, when they pursue huge damages against only some of the people they know (or can know) to have incurred similar damages against them.
The RIAA's abuse of the courts should also be deterred by not awarding them massively excessive damages as an incentive to abuse the legal process...
The median asking price on a site that lists 486 homes for sale does not indicate the median value of homes in the city, let-alone the neighborhood.
Asking prices are often inflated, most sales occur at a significant amount below asking price, especially in a buyers' market like the current one.
It's doubtful that Yahoo Real Estate has all properties for sale listed.
And it doesn't show which properties are actually selling at that price. Your source of information is questionable and unreliable to say the least.
In addition, the 'median price' is by no means the 'price of a house'.
Plenty of houses (perhaps most) sell 25% below the median of asking price.
Or Trout damages.
<Judge> The finding is in favor of the plaintiff. Mr. RIAA, you may proceed.
* The_RIAA slaps Newb-Jammie_Thomas around a bit with a large trout
<Newb-Jammie_Thomas>/action whacks the RIAA by uploading another MP3
* The_RIAA proceeds to file another suit against Newb-Jammie_Thomas for trying to use /me, mistyping it as " /action", and failing, oh yeah: and for the additional MP3 upload.
Apple sues Google to help Microsoft :)
Waiting for that one to be the headline.
See, the Nexus One has a striking similarity to the iPhone. Google is perhaps one of the biggest threat's to Microsoft's solvency, particular with their superiority in search, and their vastly usable ChromeOS.
And Microsoft's Windows product has a critical role in the OS industry that helps Apple reach their target market.
It helps Apple, because it means the general population uses a product that actually is far inferior.
Since almost everyone uses Windows, Linux doesn't seem too special to the general population. The average person has difficulty seeing a benefit to Linux over say Apple.
Apple can continue to justify to people they should buy their product, because it's a "premium OS", better than OS-es that run on less-expensive hardware in every way.
If Google disrupts Microsoft's market position, it could be a huge threat... in a world where ChromeOS or Linux are predominant, MacOS has a lot less value:
The public would have good experience with simple, decent OSes, and be unimpressed with MacOS after trying it. It would make it exceedingly difficult for Apple to successfully sell their "almost the same" "100x as expensive" hardware, when the predominant OS in the market is of reasonable quality and end-user experience.
and the service provider is glad to not tell you they've violated their own privacy policy by giving out info without the proof that they're being legally obligated to do so.
The typical service provider terms of service agreement warns you that the provider will cooperate with law enforcement requests for information.
It's the rule rather than the exception to the rule, that law enforcement can simply nicely ask the service provider, and get the info they need, contact details, data, etc.
It's easy to see how this can lead to use of post-it notes, once certain companies become well enough acquainted with certain law enforcement officers.
Except... that sleeping on your rights for that purpose gives them an affirmative defense against you: laches
Still.. even the threat of suing, and the legal fees might (in some cases) be enough incentive for the target to be persuaded to do what you want...
It just takes one reader to have access to the text of the article, and post a proper summary on their blog, and then they're back to square 1.
Then it would be a piece of notepaper, with a drawing of a computer on it, and a bundled Ubuntu CD.
Disasters are rare. Unless the server is running windows, it probably won't crash at all, for 5 years or more, by the time testing and burn-in is done.
If it is running windows... it might have an occassional issue. But actual physical failures of servers that result in any significant loss are extremely rare. Server backups are frequently overlooked entirely (in error), because restores are so rarely needed in the Enterprise.
When something breaks it's a workstation, almost always.
Not their fault... the online poll set the price at $300 - $400
The under-spec'ed processor and GPU for that price, however IS their fault. And "easily upgradable" doesn't excuse it much. What may excuse it is low volume, requiring them to use lower spec'ed components than Apple to meet their price goal.
The online poll results put them in a tough place: "A Netbook form factor PC, in $300 - $400 range". A tower form factor would have allowed less-expensive options (though at higher power consumption, most likely).
Anyways, more is important than just the specs... it's the fact they only use open, documented hardware.
And this is redeeming:
In other words... a high-quality component choice for non-technically savvy users who want Linux pre-installed?
I suppose high-quality is relative. They would seem to be claiming the point of the project is to provide a higher quality experience than other pre-installed Linux solutions.