First, this is wrong. The states may fight over who gets to tax him, but in the end he'll only pay taxes to one state. (Yes, my wife is and accountant.) You are able to deduct taxes you pay in one state against taxes owed in another state.
Uh... if you're claiming that "deducting taxes paid to one state" will somehow cancel out your taxable income in another state, then I have to call bullshit. Deductions don't work that way. Taxes paid to other entities (federal, state) get subtracted from your taxable income, NOT from your taxes owed.
For example, when you deduct Federal Taxes paid from your state income tax return, you end up with less taxable income, but it's certainly not "canceled out." Example: Salary = $75,000. IRS taxes = $20,000. State taxable income = $75,000 - $20,000 = $55,000. State tax rate = 5%. State taxes owed = $55,000 * 0.05 = $2750.
Unless your state has specific exemptions for "income taxes paid to other states" or some kind of reciprocal tax agreement, you must file returns in both states. I did this for several years as a grad student in North Carolina with residence declared elsewhere. Since I made almost no money, my liability was low, but I did end up paying money to two states.
Alas, puns don't get the attention they deserve
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OpenOffice Bloated?
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· Score: 1
I realize that it didn't get moderated as such, but *I* thought it was a funny post...:-)
Don't compare apples to oranges
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OpenOffice Bloated?
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· Score: 5, Informative
Anyone running OpenOffice on a Mac want to add another data point where MS doesn't have code "hidden" in the OS?
Hidden code, you say? Before you go off accusing Microsoft of a Consent Degree violation, perhaps you should be a bit more careful about what exactly you're comparing. It is extremely important when you try to compare "memory usage" on different Operating Systems that you are actually comparing apples to apples. And since you didn't cite the source for your "7.10" and "9.81" numbers above, I doubt you really understand what you're measuring.
If you're using Task Manager, for example, you will by default only see "Mem Usage" which reports the physical memory (i.e., the "working set") consumed by the process. Even though this metric includes both private and shared pages (i.e., shared code and data segments of DLLs are charged to each process here), it does NOT include pages which still reside on disk (either in the executable images, memory-mapped files, or the system pagefile.
Another common memory statistic from Task Manager is "VM Size" (you have to add it to your column view by "View->Select Columns"). "VM Size" tallies private virtual bytes consumed by the process. Private means that this quantity does NOT include shared/shareable pages like DLLs and memory-mapped files. "VM Size" is sometimes smaller than the "Mem Usage" precisely because shared pages aren't counted. This causes a large amount of consternation to those who don't understand what is being reported, because they expect physical memory usage to be smaller. "VM Size" is the equivalent of the process's page file allocation, since shared pages by their nature are already backed up on disk elsewhere.
Another common memory usage metric in Windows can be obtained from Perfmon (perfmon.msc, the Performance MMC snap-in). From this tool, you can view "Virtual Bytes" of each process, which is the amount of reserved virtual memory for the entire process, including shared pages. It is equivalent to "VM Size" from task manager PLUS shared virtual memory.
So, as you can see, it is not altogether obvious what is being reported unless you really understand the details of memory management on the underlying OS. Before comapring application memory usage across platforms, you need to be sure you're using comparable metrics!
The fact that most of your settings are stored in the registry, makes things a lot harder to do from the command line.
Um, you're completely wrong. Apparently you didn't read the article.
Monad uses providers to make much of the system directly accessible from the command-line, including the registry. What this means is that MSH mounts the registry as a filesystem, allowing sysadmins to query for and set registry entries as.NET objects. I'd say that paradigm is much more powerful for script writers than trying to parse configuration text files, either from the command-line or from scripts.
MS is going to arm-twist the Dells and HPs of the world to include it with all new machines whenever it ships, so there will be many millions of copies of it inflicted on the public in any case.
Armtwist? Are you kidding me?
Dell has been begging Microsoft to release Windows more often, because new versions of Windows always increase PC sales. And with Vista's new hardware requirements, Dell can sell beefier PCs with bigger profit margins. Vista will be a huge revenue injection in Dell's left arm. Why on earth would they fight that?
Don't fool yourself. Dell wants Vista to succeed in a big way.
That $300 million will go to finance the Bush administration's War on Pornography, which is now one of the top priorities in the Justice Department. I'm sure that money will be used to hire staff and lawyers to draw up vague "obscenity" charges against anyone distributing any form of pornography in the U.S.
As a fiscal conservative, I'm ashamed to say that I voted for Bush and did not see this coming. Laugh if you will, but I honestly thought politicians had given up policing the bedroom. Apparently not. (And don't give me any partisan crap, many Democrats would love to kill off porn as well...)
Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the Ubuntu Linux distribution, said that although Microsoft is seen as being very pro-patent at the moment, if every other software maker enforced its patents in the same way then Microsoft would find it very difficult and expensive to do business.
What do you call the Eolas lawsuit?? Inexpensive? Give me a break! More than $500 million for one patent? And you don't think Microsoft is worried about patent disputes?
In fact, why do you think that Microsoft patents so aggressively? To sue Linux? No! Historically, their extensive patent portfolio is used defensively. The problem is, defensive patents really only work against large corporations, who will usually settle rather than seeing all-out patent armageddon warfare, which just costs tons of money (e.g., Sun vs. Microsoft). Eolas is exactly the type of company that defensive patents don't work well against: small IP-holding companies looking to cash in by bringing targeted infringement lawsuits against the biggest money-makers. (Don't forget that every other browser on the planet was also infringing upon Eolas -- they just chose not to sue anybody else.)
Paranoid Linux types are always worried about Microsoft using its patents to destroy things like FAT filesystem compatibility, but that has not happened. (If you recall, the recent activity surrounding the FAT patents were initiated by Microsoft competitors, not Microsoft.) That doesn't mean it won't, but it is an important distinction to make!
"None of the prior art submitted by the Public Patent Foundation stood up under examination," Microsoft Director of Business Development David Kaefer said in a statement. "The issues that have come up in these re-examinations have nothing to do with (non-Microsoft) prior art. Instead, the issues involve a question over whom--at Microsoft--should be properly listed as an inventor."
This doesn't sound like a out-and-out rejection of the patent, which the headline led me to believe. It looks like Microsoft will be able to keep this patent with a little more work...
It's wrong for people to make excuses for bugs in code which expose my personal information to hackers, stalkers and marketers.
Let's say you put your money in a bank. The bank, in turn, puts your money in a safe. It just so happens that the safe has a subtle flaw in the door hinge that makes it vulnerable to robbers; neither the safe manufacturer nor the bank knows about this vulnerability. So when the bank is robbed, who is to blame for the loss of your money? The bank? The robber? The safe manufacturer?
Your automatic blame of software vendors is analogous to always blaming the safe manufacturer. But the only contract you had was with the bank, who had the responsibility to protect your money. Their failure to do so breaches your contract. Consumers can really only directly blame the service provider who failed to protect them.
The bank, on the other hand, has two recourse options to consider: the robber and the safe manufacturer. While the robber had specific malicious intent (stealing money), the safe manufacturer operated in good faith and indeed their purpose in business is to attempt to protect against such crimes. The only way the safe manufacturer could be legally responsible for the robbery is if 1) they knew the safe was vulnerable and yet did nothing, or 2) the safe's design was so poor as to be criminally negligent.
Given the huge amount of design consideration and effort that security receives in modern software development houses, proving criminal negligence would be a very difficult challenge indeed.
And finally, I despise the fact that lawsuits are everyone's first thought when they don't like a product. "Have a problem? A lawsuit can fix it!" It's a preposterous system stacked against those businesses who try to operate in good faith. The best idea I've heard in years is to force lawsuit losers to pay for court costs and legal fees. That would make people think twice before filing frivolous lawsuits. And don't tell me it doesn't happen. I've been sued twice for absolutely RIDICULOUS stuff. My insurance company settled each case for a nuisance fee, which was all opposing counsel was looking for. A distant cousin of mine is a personal injury attorney, and my skin crawls when I hear about some of the things he has done.
Instead, if you don't like the service you're getting, vote with your feet and encourage others to do the same!
We've had it so easy for the last two generations that we've forgotton what it was like to *really* have to work hard
Maybe. But when I look around and see my friends, many of whom dropped engineering for economics and business/finance degrees, making 2-3X more money than me at this stage, I wonder why *I* work so hard. They go home at 5pm. I work until 10pm regularly. They have social lives. I don't.
And don't even get me started about college lifestyle. My engineering-dropout friends were out partying with their fraternity brothers Thursday night through Sunday night every weekend, while I worked away diligently in the computer clusters and electronics labs. One of my old friends kept asking me, "Dude, why do you do this to yourself?"
I justified the work in several ways. First, I value designing and creating more highly than managing or analyzing. The engineer's status in society, in my view, is noble. Second, I assumed that all my hard work would pay off in the form of a good career, while all the partying hooligans drinking away their most productive years would have a rude awakening when they hit the workforce.
But when *I* hit the workforce, it took 11 months to land a very entry-level job. By contrast, one of my friends who started something called the "12-hours club" (the minimum number of credit hours to remain a full-time student) got a job immediately as an "investment analyst" at a major Wall Street firm. 5 years later, he makes roughly 3 times what I make, and the gap is growing. We're both smart people, but there is no question (he'll readily admit it) that I worked much harder in college.
I was wrong. They were right. I'm just willing to admit the truth. I still feel morally superior, in that all of my hard work produces things which add value to human life, but when I compare the relative benefits to my life (social life, financial life, stress, etc), I still feel shortchanged. But it's no one's fault but mine: I chose this profession. And I chose poorly.
They were freed slaves who landed there after abolition, they started with nothing and in formerly segregated and still racist South they still having nothing today.
Oh, I see: the poverty in New Orleans which exacerbated the effects of the flood damage is the South's own responsibility because they have a racist society. I suppose that poverty and racism have been abolished everywhere else in society except the South, then? Wow. I can't believe that people still think this way in 2005. I encourage you to evacuate your bubble and visit the South sometime. But why do that when you can make smug accusations blaming others?
Ironically, these so-called "racist" Southern states like Texas, Alabama, Florida, and Tennessee have contributed more to the relief effort than any other region. How have YOU helped? How many beds has YOUR state provided for the storm's refugees?
What you don't do is put hundreds of thousands of people in a bowl below sea level AND cut back on the money you spend on the levees which is what the U.S. has been doing for years and which accelerated under the Bush administration,
Right, right. Yep, the Bush administration has been filling New Orleans with people it didn't like, and secretly creating an environment where they would all be wiped out. I'm amazed you're not the political editor for CNN!
Thats WAY more than New Orleans levees have seen in the last 5 years.
The levees haven't seen improvement for 40 years, which includes the Johnson, Carter, and Clinton administrations too. I guess everyone shares a bit of responsibility, don't they? Or do you seriously not see it that way?
They spend billions to rebuild Jeb Bush's Florida every year, they took care of Republican run Mississippi this time. Democrat leaning Louisiana and overwhelmingly Democrat New Orleans was dead last on their partisan priority list and it showed.
I don't know where to begin to tear this idiotic nonsense apart. You are not only stereotyping entire states as one party or another (which is patently stupid), you are confusing "they" in your rhetoric with a combination of public and private enterprises, only a small minority of which is the Federal Government. The overwhelming majority of funds for rebuilding come from insurance claims, charity, and personal finances. The Federal Government is not, and should not be, responsible for "rebuilding" areas affected by a natural disaster.
Let's see, you've managed to call the South racist, blame the Bush Administration for the New Orleans levee system, and spout absolute falsehoods about who pays for rebuilding. Why should we listen to you? You're a flame.
Nazi Germany's minister of propaganda, Josef Goebbels once said: "if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth".
The same can be said of the comments posted here on Slashdot. Propaganda is a two-edged sword, and Slashdot is the Information Ministry of anti-MS enthusiasts.
Bombing trains in Spain seemed to be pretty effective in influencing an election. I am not saying this to be flip it just seems pretty evident in light of what happened there.
Unfortunately, I agree. The outcome of the Spanish elections and the ensuing policy changes made me very sad, perhaps even more so than the bombs themselves did. Their reaction to the attack set an extremely disturbing precedent that can only encourage future such acts.
My only hope is that people recognize the issues at stake and stand up for what they know is right. Striking at terrorist networks around the world was bound to trigger retaliation attempts; this has been known for years now. We just didn't know when the attacks would happen or what target they would pick next. Our course during this period has been reliable and straightforward: take the fight actively to them as much as possible. So now that they have managed to strike a retaliatory blow, the question facing us is this: Can we withstand these retaliatory attacks before our collective resolve collapses under the weight of second-guessing?
Do you really be that terrorist are the "bad guy" that decides to kill random people?... Terrorist don't act randomly and kill people without a reason, why would they?
Yes, they are the "bad guys." Killing random people is, in fact, *precisely* what terrorists do. The entire goal of terrorism is to strike fear in the minds of a population so that they do not know where or when another attack may come, or who may be targeted. The lack of an obvious target is precisely what supposedly makes it effective.
The fundamental difference between terrorists and westerners is that westerners practice a morality which dictates that all people have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This morality directly conflicts with the belief system espoused by Fundamentalist Islam. That is the heart of the issue. The "precipitating historical injustices" which you think have led directly to terrorist attacks (such as deployed troops in the Holy Land, or US/EU support of the Israeli government), are simply rallying cries for a Jihad launched long ago due to these underlying philosophical differences. And if you don't see that, then you need to brush up on the history of Fundamentalist Islamic terrorism.
They're not stupid.
They are, in fact, incredibly stupid if they think their tactics will work to coerce ANY policy change if I (and others who believe strongly in Western ideals) have anything to say about it. Luckily, because I live in a democracy, I do have something to say about it, and I have done precisely that in 2002 and 2004.
my guess is the unskilled ones kept screwing it up.
Headline: Economists everywhere surrendered when confronted with a new definition of 'skilled worker:'
skilled worker - a worker who doesn't screw things up
I realize this was the point of the OP, but seriously: calling assembly line testers "skilled" because they can test two at once is a bit of a stretch, no? "Skilled" used to mean that you have both training and experience in "special skills" that set you apart from what untrained people could do with some practice. But apparently now "skilled" just means that you've learned how to do anything.
I mean, even using a mop takes some basic instruction so you don't make worse of a mess than when you started. I suppose janitors meet this new definition of "skilled" too.
So who doesn't qualify as being "skilled"? An idiot that can't do the job properly?
I can't believe you're trying to defend your idiotic analogy. This is funny.
Fish and cheese do not go together. You have to think really hard of an example where they do.
Contrast this with Media Players and Operating Systems. The two go hand-in hand. You CANNOT INSTALL a mainstream operating system today that does not include a media player built-in.
If it was the case then there would be only one propane grill manufacturer to buy from, and propane grills would have to be integral to doing business for pretty much every even moderately sized company on the planet.
This is absolutely untrue! Businesses today have many PC options other than Microsoft: Sun, IBM, Apple, and Novell to name a few. I know businesses that run their entire company using a single IBM AS/400 with lots of terminals. The simple fact of the matter is, companies CHOOSE to buy a Microsoft Windows PC because they like the benefits they get from the most popular platform: low cost, massive support available, and tons of available software. They could spend a few hundred $$ extra per PC and buy an Apple computer, for instance, but they do not. Why do you think that is? Someone is twisting their arm? Please.
Contrast this with AT&T's control of the US phone network prior to 1984. You weren't even allowed to plug in a non-AT&T phone into their network, much less hook up your proprietary network into theirs without a special (and expensive) agreement! There was absolutely no choice there whatsoever.
In this market utensil manufacturers are very justified in complaining that they have been pushed out of the market by the PropaneUSA company's illegal extension of its monopoly.
You don't understand the Sherman Antitrust Act very well, do you? Monopolies are only guilty of a violation when they have used unfair, anticompetetive practices to stomp out competition to achieve the monopoly or keep competitors at bay. Adding an industry-standard feature to a product that already has high marketshare is absolutely not illegal! And if you think it is, I defy you to cite ANY case in history where it has been declared illegal in a court of law!
If PropaneUSA had colluded to fix prices, or bullied steel suppliers into selling exclusively to it and not to its competitors, then you would be right: they would be engaging in "anticompetitive practices" under the Sherman Antitrust Act and would become an illegal monopoly. In fact, there is a very precise list of activities in which a monopoly is prohibited from engaging, such as charging different customers different prices (known as a "discriminating monopoly" and covered in the Clayton Act) and engaging in inter-corporate stock deals that create market collusion. If you were at all familiar with anti-trust law, you would know this already.
The problem with your analogy as you wrote it was you say "gained a monopoly" but then treat them as if they were not a monopoly for the rest of your argument. Maybe you don't believe MS is a monopoly or maybe you just don't understand what a monopoly really is and just how badly it can be abused.
You think I don't know? I think you don't know what a monopoly is! Monopolies exist everywhere, and they are perfectly legal until they violate antitrust law. Engaging in anti-competitive practices is what makes a monopoly illegal, NOT the fact that they have an overwhelming market share.
We're already 5-10 years behind where we would be with a healthy market and it is only going to get worse unless the laws are actually enforced... laws that have stopped this same thing before.
You have absolutely no way to back up a claim that we are "5-10 years behind". That's just rhetorical nonsense. And if that's the extent of your argument, then I don't think Microsoft has anything to worry about in court.
Comparing Windows to fish and WMP to cheese is absolutely, utterly ridiculous and you know it. Fish and cheese have nothing to do with one another: fish is certainly not a platform for cheese. OSes and bundled software are fundamentally linked: you must have an OS to run the software, and buyers expect a new computer with an OS to come with functionality built-in.
A more accurate comparison would be a propane barbecue grill. Let's say a grill company becomes a monopoly somehow because its propane grill commands a 90% market share. Now let's say the grill company decides to start bundling things with the grill, like a set of grill utensils (tongs, fork, etc.) These utensils aren't the greatest, but they're pretty good and they integrate nicely with the grill because they have special attachments which make them stow away easily.
Keep in mind that no one is forcing people to USE the utensils, and nothing prevents people from going to the store and buying other utensils (or even using their old utensils). The built-in utensils are just there if you choose to use them.
But now the old utensil companies are very upset (some would say mad). Sales are down because many propane grill customers are happy with their new grill's built-in utensils and don't see a reason to buy theirs anymore. And despite the fact that every other grill company also bundles utensils with their grills, the utensil companies blame only ONE company -- PropaneUSA -- for their falling sales.
The problem here is that the Utensil makers business model is seriously flawed. They don't really have anything to offer above and beyond what PropaneUSA offers. Utensils aren't rocket science, or else PropaneUSA wouldn't be able to make them. And fundamentally, the economy of scale that PropaneUSA commands means that it can make and package these utensils more efficiently than can the little independent utensil manufacturers. Once in a blue moon, a truly innovative utensil manufacturer might come along and sell some cool utensils with fancy features that people are willing to buy because they are so clearly superior to the bundled utensils. But until then, most of these companies would be better off looking for something else to manufacture.
Failed companies are as important to capitalism as successful companies. As any economist will tell you, capitalism's true genius is that it weeds out companies that have become superfluous and no longer serve a useful purpose. Countries with laws that artificially prop up companies after the market would otherwise have destroyed them are undermining the efficiency of their economy as a whole. Those workers could be doing useful work elsewhere; instead they're hell-bent on making utensils that people really don't want that badly.
RealMedia... er, I mean "the utensil company"... needs to waste less time complaining about bundling and more time finding customers who want to buy their products. When's the last time you wanted to go out and install RealPlayer?
And if you consider that the guy in question is an ex-Lobbist for the oil industry... I would say that is more than enough to at least say that the guy should never have been in charge of editing that report in particular.
No, his previous experience makes him a skeptical reviewer, which is a very good thing. Did he try to change the results? No. He added a few adverbs to enhance concerns that are already expressed in the documents. For instance, pointing out that modeling environmental change is "extremely" difficult. I have to agree: it *is* extremely difficult. His comments are designed to increase the skepticism with which we interpret these very complicated and very preliminary scientific studies.
Skepticism lies at the FOUNDATION of science. Rather putting blind faith in the mantra of Soothsayers and Shamans, scientists conduct consistent, reproducible, and well-defined experiments designed to test whether these mantras seem to be plausible.
But it is this very skepticism that the Environmental Movement lacks! The best way to capture a huge audience and convince people that something is incredibly important is to tell them that if they ignore you, they will die soon! And the best way to do that is to use a classic technique of persuasion called Scaremongering.
And it is the technique of Scaremongering that the Environmentalists have perfected to a science. It is, if you will, the Mantra of the Environmental Movement. And this mantra conflicts directly with scientific scepticism, which the Environmental Movement attempts to quash at every step. "We don't have TIME to be skeptical!" they say. "We don't have TIME to study this any more! We must act now or we're all DOOMED!" And conveniently, the only way to act is to do precisely what they say, because the Mantra is Truth and will show us the Way.
No one is denying that the Earth is warming ever so slightly, by roughly 0.5 degree Celsius over the past 50 years. The contentious argument is over whether human beings are causing this temperature change, or whether it is a natural trend resulting from our continuing thaw from the last Ice Age. I have seen disturbingly little research attempting to rule out this theory. How can ANYONE just "believe" that human beings must be the cause of Global Warming without seeing any scientific proof?
Also, scientists have come to no consensus whatsoever regarding what the rate of warming will be for the next few decades. In fact, the numbers from "research studies" I have seen are SO wildly different that most scientific communities would hesitate to even call it publishable research. More like "guesswork."
The Bush Administration, to its credit, has refused to jump on the Global Bandwagon here and instead has commissioned studies, at public expense, to determine whether human-caused Global Warming poses the level of threat which environmental lobbying groups claim. Personally, I don't care what the Bush Administration's motivation is for this skepticism. Skepticism is exactly what this situation requires.
I am thrilled that we are not simply throwing billions of dollars at the problem before we even understand it enough to produce consistent scientific studies!
There were effectively two requirements resulting from this case: Selling a version of Windows without Media Player, and Licensing the technology behind its Server protocols.
It's the latter case that the EU can't do much about. Microsoft wants to charge a per-copy license fee for implementations of its Server protocols. The EU's ruling requires Microsoft to license the protocols, but explicitly allows the company to charge fees for the licenses. OSS projects hate this "per-seat" license because it doesn't work with their model of giving away copies without even keeping track of how many are in existence. So the OSS community is lobbying the EU Commission to reject ANY per-seat license fee, because it destroys their ability to use such a license.
Unfortunately for the OSS community, the EU Commision doesn't just represent OSS groups: it also represents all the makers of proprietary software throughout Europe. And these proprietary software vendors actually support Microsoft's position here.
See, per-seat licensing is an extremely common way to sell software; revenue is generated in direct proportion to the popularity of your product. These proprietary software vendors are scared at the thought that any company should be forced to give up this form of sales because it is "incompatible with OSS competition." So when the EU shops around this Microsoft proposal to industry leaders, most commercial software companies will probably indicate their satisfaction with Microsoft's per-seat license proposal. They certainly don't want to set up any legal precedents for future run-ins with Open Source competitors claiming THEIR license fees are "unfair."
But atleast it didn't took you? Did it took you 4 years to pass English 101?
That's a good strategy: you don't like the argument, so you attack its syntax... Here's a newsflash: not everyone here is a native English speaker. So most reasonable posters show some grammatical leniency and instead focus on the author's intent.
How did it take you "4 years to get your printer up and running"?
The parent was undoubtedly referring to the pitiful state of printer support Linux at the time of the Windows 2000 launch in March 2000. At launch, Win2k had support for thousands of printers inbox. But with Linux, unless you had a fairly standard postscript or PCL4/5 compatible printer, printing was usually not even an option except in text mode.
My guess is it probably took about 4 years for the parent's printer to receive support. Although a large number of inkjet printers have been added via either CUPS raster drivers or GIMP-print, it has been a slow and arduous process, and many are still unsupported.
The reason these tests ARE relevant is that the vast majority of users do not run Linux on their Macs, nor do they run BSD on their PCs.
The tests are pitting the common OS on each platform against each other. That is a fine comparison, because it represents the basic choice that people face when they want to choose a platform.
You just have to be careful how you interpret the results. Since neither the hardware nor the software are held in common as a "control" variable, there is no way to compare System A's software against system B's, or System A's hardware against System B's.
The best conclusion you can draw from a system level comparison like this one is that, given the test environment, System A was faster than System B overall.
And in this case, it looks like the G5-OSX combo is "System B"...
Slashdot Mirror
Uh... if you're claiming that "deducting taxes paid to one state" will somehow cancel out your taxable income in another state, then I have to call bullshit. Deductions don't work that way. Taxes paid to other entities (federal, state) get subtracted from your taxable income, NOT from your taxes owed.
For example, when you deduct Federal Taxes paid from your state income tax return, you end up with less taxable income, but it's certainly not "canceled out." Example: Salary = $75,000. IRS taxes = $20,000. State taxable income = $75,000 - $20,000 = $55,000. State tax rate = 5%. State taxes owed = $55,000 * 0.05 = $2750.
Unless your state has specific exemptions for "income taxes paid to other states" or some kind of reciprocal tax agreement, you must file returns in both states. I did this for several years as a grad student in North Carolina with residence declared elsewhere. Since I made almost no money, my liability was low, but I did end up paying money to two states.
I realize that it didn't get moderated as such, but *I* thought it was a funny post... :-)
Hidden code, you say? Before you go off accusing Microsoft of a Consent Degree violation, perhaps you should be a bit more careful about what exactly you're comparing. It is extremely important when you try to compare "memory usage" on different Operating Systems that you are actually comparing apples to apples. And since you didn't cite the source for your "7.10" and "9.81" numbers above, I doubt you really understand what you're measuring.
If you're using Task Manager, for example, you will by default only see "Mem Usage" which reports the physical memory (i.e., the "working set") consumed by the process. Even though this metric includes both private and shared pages (i.e., shared code and data segments of DLLs are charged to each process here), it does NOT include pages which still reside on disk (either in the executable images, memory-mapped files, or the system pagefile.
Another common memory statistic from Task Manager is "VM Size" (you have to add it to your column view by "View->Select Columns"). "VM Size" tallies private virtual bytes consumed by the process. Private means that this quantity does NOT include shared/shareable pages like DLLs and memory-mapped files. "VM Size" is sometimes smaller than the "Mem Usage" precisely because shared pages aren't counted. This causes a large amount of consternation to those who don't understand what is being reported, because they expect physical memory usage to be smaller. "VM Size" is the equivalent of the process's page file allocation, since shared pages by their nature are already backed up on disk elsewhere.
Another common memory usage metric in Windows can be obtained from Perfmon (perfmon.msc, the Performance MMC snap-in). From this tool, you can view "Virtual Bytes" of each process, which is the amount of reserved virtual memory for the entire process, including shared pages. It is equivalent to "VM Size" from task manager PLUS shared virtual memory.
So, as you can see, it is not altogether obvious what is being reported unless you really understand the details of memory management on the underlying OS. Before comapring application memory usage across platforms, you need to be sure you're using comparable metrics!
Um, you're completely wrong. Apparently you didn't read the article.
Monad uses providers to make much of the system directly accessible from the command-line, including the registry. What this means is that MSH mounts the registry as a filesystem, allowing sysadmins to query for and set registry entries as .NET objects. I'd say that paradigm is much more powerful for script writers than trying to parse configuration text files, either from the command-line or from scripts.
Armtwist? Are you kidding me?
Dell has been begging Microsoft to release Windows more often, because new versions of Windows always increase PC sales. And with Vista's new hardware requirements, Dell can sell beefier PCs with bigger profit margins. Vista will be a huge revenue injection in Dell's left arm. Why on earth would they fight that?
Don't fool yourself. Dell wants Vista to succeed in a big way.
So you have a problem with Islamic democracies, then?
And here I thought we were trying to allow them to choose their own type of government... Silly me.
That $300 million will go to finance the Bush administration's War on Pornography, which is now one of the top priorities in the Justice Department. I'm sure that money will be used to hire staff and lawyers to draw up vague "obscenity" charges against anyone distributing any form of pornography in the U.S.
As a fiscal conservative, I'm ashamed to say that I voted for Bush and did not see this coming. Laugh if you will, but I honestly thought politicians had given up policing the bedroom. Apparently not. (And don't give me any partisan crap, many Democrats would love to kill off porn as well...)
What do you call the Eolas lawsuit?? Inexpensive? Give me a break! More than $500 million for one patent? And you don't think Microsoft is worried about patent disputes?
In fact, why do you think that Microsoft patents so aggressively? To sue Linux? No! Historically, their extensive patent portfolio is used defensively. The problem is, defensive patents really only work against large corporations, who will usually settle rather than seeing all-out patent armageddon warfare, which just costs tons of money (e.g., Sun vs. Microsoft). Eolas is exactly the type of company that defensive patents don't work well against: small IP-holding companies looking to cash in by bringing targeted infringement lawsuits against the biggest money-makers. (Don't forget that every other browser on the planet was also infringing upon Eolas -- they just chose not to sue anybody else.)
Paranoid Linux types are always worried about Microsoft using its patents to destroy things like FAT filesystem compatibility, but that has not happened. (If you recall, the recent activity surrounding the FAT patents were initiated by Microsoft competitors, not Microsoft.) That doesn't mean it won't, but it is an important distinction to make!
From article:
This doesn't sound like a out-and-out rejection of the patent, which the headline led me to believe. It looks like Microsoft will be able to keep this patent with a little more work...
Let's say you put your money in a bank. The bank, in turn, puts your money in a safe. It just so happens that the safe has a subtle flaw in the door hinge that makes it vulnerable to robbers; neither the safe manufacturer nor the bank knows about this vulnerability. So when the bank is robbed, who is to blame for the loss of your money? The bank? The robber? The safe manufacturer?
Your automatic blame of software vendors is analogous to always blaming the safe manufacturer. But the only contract you had was with the bank, who had the responsibility to protect your money. Their failure to do so breaches your contract. Consumers can really only directly blame the service provider who failed to protect them.
The bank, on the other hand, has two recourse options to consider: the robber and the safe manufacturer. While the robber had specific malicious intent (stealing money), the safe manufacturer operated in good faith and indeed their purpose in business is to attempt to protect against such crimes. The only way the safe manufacturer could be legally responsible for the robbery is if 1) they knew the safe was vulnerable and yet did nothing, or 2) the safe's design was so poor as to be criminally negligent.
Given the huge amount of design consideration and effort that security receives in modern software development houses, proving criminal negligence would be a very difficult challenge indeed.
And finally, I despise the fact that lawsuits are everyone's first thought when they don't like a product. "Have a problem? A lawsuit can fix it!" It's a preposterous system stacked against those businesses who try to operate in good faith. The best idea I've heard in years is to force lawsuit losers to pay for court costs and legal fees. That would make people think twice before filing frivolous lawsuits. And don't tell me it doesn't happen. I've been sued twice for absolutely RIDICULOUS stuff. My insurance company settled each case for a nuisance fee, which was all opposing counsel was looking for. A distant cousin of mine is a personal injury attorney, and my skin crawls when I hear about some of the things he has done.
Instead, if you don't like the service you're getting, vote with your feet and encourage others to do the same!
Maybe. But when I look around and see my friends, many of whom dropped engineering for economics and business/finance degrees, making 2-3X more money than me at this stage, I wonder why *I* work so hard. They go home at 5pm. I work until 10pm regularly. They have social lives. I don't.
And don't even get me started about college lifestyle. My engineering-dropout friends were out partying with their fraternity brothers Thursday night through Sunday night every weekend, while I worked away diligently in the computer clusters and electronics labs. One of my old friends kept asking me, "Dude, why do you do this to yourself?"
I justified the work in several ways. First, I value designing and creating more highly than managing or analyzing. The engineer's status in society, in my view, is noble. Second, I assumed that all my hard work would pay off in the form of a good career, while all the partying hooligans drinking away their most productive years would have a rude awakening when they hit the workforce.
But when *I* hit the workforce, it took 11 months to land a very entry-level job. By contrast, one of my friends who started something called the "12-hours club" (the minimum number of credit hours to remain a full-time student) got a job immediately as an "investment analyst" at a major Wall Street firm. 5 years later, he makes roughly 3 times what I make, and the gap is growing. We're both smart people, but there is no question (he'll readily admit it) that I worked much harder in college.
I was wrong. They were right. I'm just willing to admit the truth. I still feel morally superior, in that all of my hard work produces things which add value to human life, but when I compare the relative benefits to my life (social life, financial life, stress, etc), I still feel shortchanged. But it's no one's fault but mine: I chose this profession. And I chose poorly.
Just FYI, the plural of consortium is consortia.
Oh, I see: the poverty in New Orleans which exacerbated the effects of the flood damage is the South's own responsibility because they have a racist society. I suppose that poverty and racism have been abolished everywhere else in society except the South, then? Wow. I can't believe that people still think this way in 2005. I encourage you to evacuate your bubble and visit the South sometime. But why do that when you can make smug accusations blaming others?
Ironically, these so-called "racist" Southern states like Texas, Alabama, Florida, and Tennessee have contributed more to the relief effort than any other region. How have YOU helped? How many beds has YOUR state provided for the storm's refugees?
Right, right. Yep, the Bush administration has been filling New Orleans with people it didn't like, and secretly creating an environment where they would all be wiped out. I'm amazed you're not the political editor for CNN!
The levees haven't seen improvement for 40 years, which includes the Johnson, Carter, and Clinton administrations too. I guess everyone shares a bit of responsibility, don't they? Or do you seriously not see it that way?
I don't know where to begin to tear this idiotic nonsense apart. You are not only stereotyping entire states as one party or another (which is patently stupid), you are confusing "they" in your rhetoric with a combination of public and private enterprises, only a small minority of which is the Federal Government. The overwhelming majority of funds for rebuilding come from insurance claims, charity, and personal finances. The Federal Government is not, and should not be, responsible for "rebuilding" areas affected by a natural disaster.
Let's see, you've managed to call the South racist, blame the Bush Administration for the New Orleans levee system, and spout absolute falsehoods about who pays for rebuilding. Why should we listen to you? You're a flame.
No, I'd say the cutoff is about 50-55 there. After that, it's all about quality of your Apple Pies and Cookies...
--ducks for cover--
Um, yes.
The same can be said of the comments posted here on Slashdot. Propaganda is a two-edged sword, and Slashdot is the Information Ministry of anti-MS enthusiasts.
Unfortunately, I agree. The outcome of the Spanish elections and the ensuing policy changes made me very sad, perhaps even more so than the bombs themselves did. Their reaction to the attack set an extremely disturbing precedent that can only encourage future such acts.
My only hope is that people recognize the issues at stake and stand up for what they know is right. Striking at terrorist networks around the world was bound to trigger retaliation attempts; this has been known for years now. We just didn't know when the attacks would happen or what target they would pick next. Our course during this period has been reliable and straightforward: take the fight actively to them as much as possible. So now that they have managed to strike a retaliatory blow, the question facing us is this: Can we withstand these retaliatory attacks before our collective resolve collapses under the weight of second-guessing?
I've read history, thank you very much.
Yes, they are the "bad guys." Killing random people is, in fact, *precisely* what terrorists do. The entire goal of terrorism is to strike fear in the minds of a population so that they do not know where or when another attack may come, or who may be targeted. The lack of an obvious target is precisely what supposedly makes it effective.
The fundamental difference between terrorists and westerners is that westerners practice a morality which dictates that all people have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This morality directly conflicts with the belief system espoused by Fundamentalist Islam. That is the heart of the issue. The "precipitating historical injustices" which you think have led directly to terrorist attacks (such as deployed troops in the Holy Land, or US/EU support of the Israeli government), are simply rallying cries for a Jihad launched long ago due to these underlying philosophical differences. And if you don't see that, then you need to brush up on the history of Fundamentalist Islamic terrorism.
They are, in fact, incredibly stupid if they think their tactics will work to coerce ANY policy change if I (and others who believe strongly in Western ideals) have anything to say about it. Luckily, because I live in a democracy, I do have something to say about it, and I have done precisely that in 2002 and 2004.
Headline: Economists everywhere surrendered when confronted with a new definition of 'skilled worker:'
I realize this was the point of the OP, but seriously: calling assembly line testers "skilled" because they can test two at once is a bit of a stretch, no? "Skilled" used to mean that you have both training and experience in "special skills" that set you apart from what untrained people could do with some practice. But apparently now "skilled" just means that you've learned how to do anything.
I mean, even using a mop takes some basic instruction so you don't make worse of a mess than when you started. I suppose janitors meet this new definition of "skilled" too.
So who doesn't qualify as being "skilled"? An idiot that can't do the job properly?
I can't believe you're trying to defend your idiotic analogy. This is funny.
Fish and cheese do not go together. You have to think really hard of an example where they do.
Contrast this with Media Players and Operating Systems. The two go hand-in hand. You CANNOT INSTALL a mainstream operating system today that does not include a media player built-in.
This is absolutely untrue! Businesses today have many PC options other than Microsoft: Sun, IBM, Apple, and Novell to name a few. I know businesses that run their entire company using a single IBM AS/400 with lots of terminals. The simple fact of the matter is, companies CHOOSE to buy a Microsoft Windows PC because they like the benefits they get from the most popular platform: low cost, massive support available, and tons of available software. They could spend a few hundred $$ extra per PC and buy an Apple computer, for instance, but they do not. Why do you think that is? Someone is twisting their arm? Please.
Contrast this with AT&T's control of the US phone network prior to 1984. You weren't even allowed to plug in a non-AT&T phone into their network, much less hook up your proprietary network into theirs without a special (and expensive) agreement! There was absolutely no choice there whatsoever.
You don't understand the Sherman Antitrust Act very well, do you? Monopolies are only guilty of a violation when they have used unfair, anticompetetive practices to stomp out competition to achieve the monopoly or keep competitors at bay. Adding an industry-standard feature to a product that already has high marketshare is absolutely not illegal! And if you think it is, I defy you to cite ANY case in history where it has been declared illegal in a court of law!
If PropaneUSA had colluded to fix prices, or bullied steel suppliers into selling exclusively to it and not to its competitors, then you would be right: they would be engaging in "anticompetitive practices" under the Sherman Antitrust Act and would become an illegal monopoly. In fact, there is a very precise list of activities in which a monopoly is prohibited from engaging, such as charging different customers different prices (known as a "discriminating monopoly" and covered in the Clayton Act) and engaging in inter-corporate stock deals that create market collusion. If you were at all familiar with anti-trust law, you would know this already.
You think I don't know? I think you don't know what a monopoly is! Monopolies exist everywhere, and they are perfectly legal until they violate antitrust law. Engaging in anti-competitive practices is what makes a monopoly illegal, NOT the fact that they have an overwhelming market share.
You have absolutely no way to back up a claim that we are "5-10 years behind". That's just rhetorical nonsense. And if that's the extent of your argument, then I don't think Microsoft has anything to worry about in court.
Comparing Windows to fish and WMP to cheese is absolutely, utterly ridiculous and you know it. Fish and cheese have nothing to do with one another: fish is certainly not a platform for cheese. OSes and bundled software are fundamentally linked: you must have an OS to run the software, and buyers expect a new computer with an OS to come with functionality built-in.
A more accurate comparison would be a propane barbecue grill. Let's say a grill company becomes a monopoly somehow because its propane grill commands a 90% market share. Now let's say the grill company decides to start bundling things with the grill, like a set of grill utensils (tongs, fork, etc.) These utensils aren't the greatest, but they're pretty good and they integrate nicely with the grill because they have special attachments which make them stow away easily.
Keep in mind that no one is forcing people to USE the utensils, and nothing prevents people from going to the store and buying other utensils (or even using their old utensils). The built-in utensils are just there if you choose to use them.
But now the old utensil companies are very upset (some would say mad). Sales are down because many propane grill customers are happy with their new grill's built-in utensils and don't see a reason to buy theirs anymore. And despite the fact that every other grill company also bundles utensils with their grills, the utensil companies blame only ONE company -- PropaneUSA -- for their falling sales.
The problem here is that the Utensil makers business model is seriously flawed. They don't really have anything to offer above and beyond what PropaneUSA offers. Utensils aren't rocket science, or else PropaneUSA wouldn't be able to make them. And fundamentally, the economy of scale that PropaneUSA commands means that it can make and package these utensils more efficiently than can the little independent utensil manufacturers. Once in a blue moon, a truly innovative utensil manufacturer might come along and sell some cool utensils with fancy features that people are willing to buy because they are so clearly superior to the bundled utensils. But until then, most of these companies would be better off looking for something else to manufacture.
Failed companies are as important to capitalism as successful companies. As any economist will tell you, capitalism's true genius is that it weeds out companies that have become superfluous and no longer serve a useful purpose. Countries with laws that artificially prop up companies after the market would otherwise have destroyed them are undermining the efficiency of their economy as a whole. Those workers could be doing useful work elsewhere; instead they're hell-bent on making utensils that people really don't want that badly.
RealMedia... er, I mean "the utensil company" ... needs to waste less time complaining about bundling and more time finding customers who want to buy their products. When's the last time you wanted to go out and install RealPlayer?
No, his previous experience makes him a skeptical reviewer, which is a very good thing. Did he try to change the results? No. He added a few adverbs to enhance concerns that are already expressed in the documents. For instance, pointing out that modeling environmental change is "extremely" difficult. I have to agree: it *is* extremely difficult. His comments are designed to increase the skepticism with which we interpret these very complicated and very preliminary scientific studies.
Skepticism lies at the FOUNDATION of science. Rather putting blind faith in the mantra of Soothsayers and Shamans, scientists conduct consistent, reproducible, and well-defined experiments designed to test whether these mantras seem to be plausible.
But it is this very skepticism that the Environmental Movement lacks! The best way to capture a huge audience and convince people that something is incredibly important is to tell them that if they ignore you, they will die soon! And the best way to do that is to use a classic technique of persuasion called Scaremongering.
And it is the technique of Scaremongering that the Environmentalists have perfected to a science. It is, if you will, the Mantra of the Environmental Movement. And this mantra conflicts directly with scientific scepticism, which the Environmental Movement attempts to quash at every step. "We don't have TIME to be skeptical!" they say. "We don't have TIME to study this any more! We must act now or we're all DOOMED!" And conveniently, the only way to act is to do precisely what they say, because the Mantra is Truth and will show us the Way.
No one is denying that the Earth is warming ever so slightly, by roughly 0.5 degree Celsius over the past 50 years. The contentious argument is over whether human beings are causing this temperature change, or whether it is a natural trend resulting from our continuing thaw from the last Ice Age. I have seen disturbingly little research attempting to rule out this theory. How can ANYONE just "believe" that human beings must be the cause of Global Warming without seeing any scientific proof?
Also, scientists have come to no consensus whatsoever regarding what the rate of warming will be for the next few decades. In fact, the numbers from "research studies" I have seen are SO wildly different that most scientific communities would hesitate to even call it publishable research. More like "guesswork."
The Bush Administration, to its credit, has refused to jump on the Global Bandwagon here and instead has commissioned studies, at public expense, to determine whether human-caused Global Warming poses the level of threat which environmental lobbying groups claim. Personally, I don't care what the Bush Administration's motivation is for this skepticism. Skepticism is exactly what this situation requires.
I am thrilled that we are not simply throwing billions of dollars at the problem before we even understand it enough to produce consistent scientific studies!
This has already been discussed at length by the industry analysts last week when the EU indicated that it was likely to accept Microsoft's proposal. See http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/zd/200506 02/tc_zd/153327.
There were effectively two requirements resulting from this case: Selling a version of Windows without Media Player, and Licensing the technology behind its Server protocols.
It's the latter case that the EU can't do much about. Microsoft wants to charge a per-copy license fee for implementations of its Server protocols. The EU's ruling requires Microsoft to license the protocols, but explicitly allows the company to charge fees for the licenses. OSS projects hate this "per-seat" license because it doesn't work with their model of giving away copies without even keeping track of how many are in existence. So the OSS community is lobbying the EU Commission to reject ANY per-seat license fee, because it destroys their ability to use such a license.
Unfortunately for the OSS community, the EU Commision doesn't just represent OSS groups: it also represents all the makers of proprietary software throughout Europe. And these proprietary software vendors actually support Microsoft's position here.
See, per-seat licensing is an extremely common way to sell software; revenue is generated in direct proportion to the popularity of your product. These proprietary software vendors are scared at the thought that any company should be forced to give up this form of sales because it is "incompatible with OSS competition." So when the EU shops around this Microsoft proposal to industry leaders, most commercial software companies will probably indicate their satisfaction with Microsoft's per-seat license proposal. They certainly don't want to set up any legal precedents for future run-ins with Open Source competitors claiming THEIR license fees are "unfair."
That's a good strategy: you don't like the argument, so you attack its syntax... Here's a newsflash: not everyone here is a native English speaker. So most reasonable posters show some grammatical leniency and instead focus on the author's intent.
The parent was undoubtedly referring to the pitiful state of printer support Linux at the time of the Windows 2000 launch in March 2000. At launch, Win2k had support for thousands of printers inbox. But with Linux, unless you had a fairly standard postscript or PCL4/5 compatible printer, printing was usually not even an option except in text mode.
My guess is it probably took about 4 years for the parent's printer to receive support. Although a large number of inkjet printers have been added via either CUPS raster drivers or GIMP-print, it has been a slow and arduous process, and many are still unsupported.
I'd say the 4 year figure may be about accurate.
The reason these tests ARE relevant is that the vast majority of users do not run Linux on their Macs, nor do they run BSD on their PCs.
The tests are pitting the common OS on each platform against each other. That is a fine comparison, because it represents the basic choice that people face when they want to choose a platform.
You just have to be careful how you interpret the results. Since neither the hardware nor the software are held in common as a "control" variable, there is no way to compare System A's software against system B's, or System A's hardware against System B's.
The best conclusion you can draw from a system level comparison like this one is that, given the test environment, System A was faster than System B overall.
And in this case, it looks like the G5-OSX combo is "System B"...