Notice that this all relates to property. Now this is a very important word, as interpreted in the strictest sense, virtual items are not property.
Don't tell that to to shareholders of Google stock. They really think that piece of paper they have is worth $400, and so does the FL government. It's not of course, as the book value of Google is very low (on a per-share basis), and that's the only part of it that is actual "property".
Disclaimer: I don't think Windows on the OLPC is a good idea. Check that, I think it's a Bad Idea (TM).
That said, there are just as many apps out there that will run on windows and install within a DVD-space with windows, if imaged properly. If you happen not to like the "embeded" apps (wordpad, paint, integral burning, explorer), or want more capability you can grab lots of open source stuff on the 'net. But why bother? Microsoft would happily (gleefully) include a copy of OfficePro, IIS, etc. - all for "free". Base price ahs nothing to do with it. The base price of WinXP is infinitely larger than Linux, so what's 2 or 3 or 4 times infinity? The fact is that they would bundle those apps - for education use only - at no cost to the project.
Why? Because, as the dealer on the corner will tell you, the first hit is always on the house.
Florida's intangible personal property tax is an annual tax based on the current market value, as of January 1, of intangible personal property owned, managed, or controlled by Florida residents or persons doing business in Florida. (empahsis mine)
Now, currently, intangible property is limited to stocks, bonds, etc., but there's no reason that the state couldn't extend that to property in a game (though it's unlikely). Remember, too, that businesses are often taxed on business property, which is valued every year at current market value or at depreciated value, depending on the type.
There are lots of pitfalls in the way things are taxed - mostly to get around people who try and get around the system, or to extract revenue from other/new sources (FL has lots of retirees, retirees have low incomes but high net worths - intangibles is a way to get at that money).
Somebody might get the bright idea to tax your in-world posessions as intangibles. Several states have such a tax - though not mine, so I don't know all the details. It may not stop at "income" taxes.
I noticed that in the summary (didn't rtfa...got to get some real work done today). What is the validity of using the "this law has never been applied before" argument? Clearly, the selective and occasional application of laws is pretty commonplace (speeding citiations, for example). To have a significant history of publically "known" instances, none of which have been prosecuted - does that offer any real defense in a criminal case? Does the court look upon the defendent as a persecuted individual, or is the response simply, "sucks to be you."
In a clear cut violation - a letter of the law case - I would anticipate the latter response, but maybe where there is significant lattitude in interpretation the (lack of) precident may hold water.
(see, once we know you know what you're talking about, you'll never rest here on slashdot;-)
Oh, don't get me started. I decided a long time ago that a flat tax on all income (call it a "gross receipts" tax) with no exemptions or deductions is the way we should go. Deciding to have children is a conscious choice (or should be) - just as deciding not to have them is a conscious choice. If you can't afford them, don't ask for a "tax break" because they're so expensive - you should have known that cost before your came. Do you buy a car without asking what it will cost to maintain? Not unless you're rich enough that it doesn't matter.
Better stop now, or I'll get nothing done today.
PS - think about it: 3% on every penny you receive. Sell a stock, play 3%. Sell you house, pay 3% (you're already giving the RE broker 6). Exercise those back-dated stock options and cash out - pay 3%. Corporations, too. Inheritance? 3%. Court settlement? 3%. Insurance? 3%. If you receive a dollar, you send 3 cents to Uncle sam.
Of course, I will break my own rule and admit that I am for a single deduction, though. Every legal resident with a TIN (Taxpayer ID number, aka SSN, but not an EIN - Employer Id Number, used for corporations) gets a single deduction of 2087xFederal Minimum Wage against receipts. If you're making minimum wage, even I am willing to give you a pass. (yes, S-corps, including myself, would pay double taxes. Protection costs money - if you don't like it, become a sole proprietor).
Nowadays, almost all professionals (yes, I include teachers) need continuing education credits, and there are very few employers who cover the costs for licensing sake. Having taken classes all of my life, I can't imagine living without them (I have about 180 credits in undergrad work, and about 80 in masters/doctorate level work).
5-6 weeks as vacation, plus Christmas week, a few days at Easter, plus federal holidays? Even the Federal government doesn't offer that much, and they have about the best leave in the US (5.5 weeks of annual leave after 12 years of service). Most corporations start you out at 2 (yes, two) weeks of leave and you work up at about one day per year until you hit 3-4 weeks maximum. Those who have combined sick/vacation ("Personal Time Off") start at three weeks, but still tend to peak at four. I don't know a single US company that offers it's "regular" white collar employees 8 weeks of vacation per year. I'm happy to be proven wrong, of course - and if you find one, let me know and I'll polish up my resume.;-)
There are outliers in every profession. That's usually one of the things that sets the best apart from the rest. For whatever reason, most of the teachers I know are grade school. They normally complain about ever extra minute spent on school work outside of the mandatory time in school, and there's about two weeks of griping in earnest prior to the end of summer break (I hear about their bitch sessions at the pool though others, where they spend most of the day trying to maximize their tanning time). The ones who care put in the hours, and - interestingly - seem to be the ones least concerned about the salary. The ones who just have a "job" teaching seem to find no end to their injustice, even if they just work to contract.
As I said, I would take a $6/hr job stocking Wal-Mart before I'd want a class full of eight year olds for 180 days a year. But kids aren't my "thing."
I think someone is releasing a 250GB 2.5" drive early next year,
Oh, don't tease. I actually was thinking that a graphic artist/photog or video producer could really eat up the space on a hard drive, though I would expect someone with those needs to have a stationary machine with real horsepower, and an external drive array. I've got about 2TB in a firewire tower in my basement. I've been slowly ripping my 250DVD collection to it, along with a bunch of stuff I've pulled off my TiVo, and the requisite home DV. My personal photography has also started to fill up space, but I'm not doing much fine art stuff anymore, so I don't have RAW images (all my old stuff is on 35mm and med format).
It's a simple fact that I will never have enough space to do everything I want. BR/HD-DVD will not help, once those formats are mainstream and are cracked.
Yikes. Are the listening though soup cans connected to the source with yarn?
Seriously, I did this to see where I couldn't discern artifacts. I did the testing though my pc (not exactly the best equipment), with Sony MDR-V6 circumaural headphones (high quality for the dollar spent, but very little snake oil factor), and I found the breakpoint about 224kb/s with the Lame encoder. Now, I'm sort of picky, but I listen mostly to pop/rock stuff - nothing out of the ordinary. I did, however, listen to "difficult" passages one after the other until I couldn't hear specific artifacts, so maybe that's a bit stringent. I recently got some intraaureals (Shure E3cs), and 128kb is acceptable only when I'm mowing the lawn or blowing leaves.
FWIW, I'm almost as happy running zip cord (of equivalent gauge) to my speakers as OFC, so it's not like I'm really that insane, but I'll admit to choosing 30 gauge strands over 22 gauge for a few cents a foot, given the choice - even if I can't really tell the difference.
Thanks for the tip, I'll give it a shot. The offending file is an extraction from a HD TiVo, so it's MPEG2, but in a funky AR (1280x1088), and lord only knows what they do with the audio (I'm pretty certain it's AC3). DiVX (the official encoder) managed to waste 8 hours "processing" the file before going toes up with a "missing codec" error right at the end. Go figure. If it works, I'll post back.
Oh, I'm with you on the debt part. I'm significantly out of step with most of my clients on the capital assessment taxes. I feel that you should pay for the increase in capital expenditures you create. Property taxes should be used to operate and maintain the facilities you have (including necessary upgrades/rebuilds), not to fund new projects made necessary by growth. Am I biased? Sure, I bought a 1960's ranch instead of building a new home, I only have one child, I make more than the median income. Overall, I pay more into the system than I get out of it, but at least I'm honest. Many of the builders don't want to pay for new roads, sidewalks, police stations, firehouses, libraries, or schools, because then they couldn't provide "affordable" housing. Those same builders are only selling homes in price ranges which are "affordable" to 20% of the population. *shrug*
BTW - $18/sf is on the high end of commerical RE prices in S/W Virginia, but you can't rent standard commercial space for a gymnasium, and it won't come with a track or soccer/football/baseball fields behind the building. I tried to hit a rough average, knowing there were going to be outliers. If I remember, about 1/4-1/3 of school budgeting comes from local dollars here in my part of VA, with the balance from state funds. My assessment went up about 40% in the last three years, and they jacked the rate at the same time. They've also raised the sales tax and allowed additional piggy-back taxes (prepared meals are taxed at 10% now, I think).
Our public school teachers make in the mid- to upper-30s, for the younger set (say, under 40). It's actually not bad, considering the cost of living, but they still complain. I have a lot of friends who are teachers, and I can never quite work myself up to their level of outrage. I don't have too much sympathy, as I see them off on government holidays, snow days, the entire week at Chrismas and spring break, and for 2.5 months in the summer (exuse me, only 9 weeks, as they have to spend a week before classes start to get ready for school, plus three days after the "last day" to clean up their rooms). They get a retirement plan, full 12 month benefits, and are in school from 8am - 3pm. They complain that they don't get paid for time they spend working on class assignment while out of school. Cry me a river - I work 7am-5pm, 5 days a week. I get zero paid holidays. I do work in the evenings and weekends - mostly proposals - for which I don't get paid. Most people who work professional jobs have to do overtime, and many times it is not paid. Hour for hour, teaching is farily well compensated. Me? No, I couldn't deal with a class of 30 eight year olds, but most teachers couldn't sit at my desk and figure stresses and moment diagrams and load paths for 9 hours straight. You do what you're good at. (wow, I'm really rambling...sorry.)
Good grief, how many documents are your writing? I've got a 100GB laptop drive for work, and I mirror every document, file, CAD drawing, etc I've created in 4 years of business on it (~20GB). I also have 9 years of building codes, the entire manual of concrete practive (all 60lb of dead tree worth), and most of the vendor catalogs on it. And all of my email from the past 8 years (yes, locally - I use POP). Plus the full XPpro installion disc. Plus all the software for all the analyis programs (including the Excel spreadsheets I've built). Plus three versions of AutoCAD. And a 2GB hibernation file.
And I still have about 55GB free. Okay, 50GB, but 5GB of that is an hour of HD video on my desktop that I haven't figured how to convert to DiVX or VOB yet, so I wan't going to count it.
Absolutely. That's the fallacy of the "10k per pupil" costs. That's not the cost of the n+1 pupil. On the micro level, that's probably around $1000 per pupil (incremental cost for 1 additional student in a 1000 student school). On an intermediate level (say, 50 extra students in 1000 student school) it's probably about $2000. On the macro level (doubling of student body), I'm going to guess it's closer to $4000-$5000. Those are off the top of my head, but I would be suprised if I was off by more than 30% or so. On the single student level - even up to a 5% change - the cash back, after processing, verification, and policing/standards monitoring, might not break even. If the school system had to spend three man-days per year, per pupil, to account, track,..., for vouchers it would wipe out practically all the savings.
I don't care how good your source is. If you're listening to 192kb rips, you're likely not going to be able to tell the difference. It's hard for most consumer equipment to bring out the difference between regular CDs and SACDs/DVD-A. Intellectionally, I agree with you. I'd love to have all my music in the best lossless form I can, but for the gear I use - money spent on quality higher than about 256kb is wasted to me. FWIW - my ears and gear break somewhere between 224 and 256kb/s with LAME vbr. I store in FLAC so that I can recode at any point without having to rerip the original, or suffer decode-recode artifacts.
The sibling post has a good point about re-mastering in studio for the target form. I believe (right or wrong) that the final product of a compressed track will be more affected by the encoder than by tricks done on the master - or at least on the same order of magnitude. I guess I'd rather have the lossless mastered for lossless, and accept the hit for recoded stuff on my end than have the best possible (studio created) lossy version as my master.
If you're talking real people with real collections, I think we're there. If you're talking about p2p regulars, we're probably not. I would expect most people's collections to fit on a 100GB drive (laptops got to about 160 now, iirc) as lossless. That's somewhere in the neighborhood of 450CDs worth of albums. That's real albums, bought with cash in nice plastic cases - not 450x700MB @2:1 compression. I have, among my "friends," both now and historic, a "large" collection. It's not that large (~300 CDs), but I'd venture to say it's well above the median in the US.
Multi-channel music has come and gone twice. For portables, multichannel music is really only a theoretcial novelty, as you'd probably have to go to five nines before you found people playing music off a portable into more than two discrete, full range speaker channels (headphones, automotive). I'll go out on a limb here and predict that multi-channel audio will not become dominant (= outselling 2 channel audio) in the next 2 decades - and by then we'll easily have the storage to accomodate it.
WAV? He uses WAV? Why on god's green earth would you bother using WAV to listed to your music when there are a plethora of lossless codecs out there? You can get roughtly 2:1 compression with any of the codecs - heck he could even use wavpack if he was so stuck on having wav in the name. Heck, most audiophiles worth their $3000 interconnects are appalled at the harsheness and "cold, digital" feel of that 44.1khz/16 bit crap that was forced on the public when we got CDs.
Lossless is coming soon to most of us. With the 5.5g iPod at 80GB and the Zune hackable to 80GB as well, all but the top 3-4% of all consumers can fit their entire (legal) collection on a single portable device in lossless compression. I've got about 6500 tracks, most as FLAC rips, and I'm right about 81GB (plus about 40GB in books, but those are all low-bitrate). If I jettisoned the extra downloded stuff I have that I didn't like (but didn't get around to deleting), I'd probably drop to 75GB or so. I suspect that my entire family (three of us) buys less than 5GB worth of content each year. There's no reason to expect that the size of the players, in capacity, will not continue to decrease. As for those with bigger collections...well, just get more portables, or learn to live with a smaller subset on your player (or a higher compression).
As long as the high-qualtiy masters are available, portables can become a calculated compromise. Since my threshhold for accuracy happens to be at about 256kb/s LAME, that's where I transcode my FLAC library for my portable. If I had a car player, it would probably be more like 160kb. Heck, it's practically impossible to hear artifacts at 128kb in my Pilot at 70mph at a normal volume. My wife's 8GB flash player will be encoded in the 160-192 range, becuase I know she doesn't have the gear to hear much more, and she's just not that picky. With good music managers, you can automagically sync and transcode at the same time (I use mediamonkey). Transodeing is a bit slow right now, but as PCs get faster, the sync/transcode process will get better and better.
I do agree that it is a travesty that the online services will not offer home-archival-quality tracks, but I'm probably a top-10% listening geek. I buy all my music on CD, and rip to FLAC. Okay, okay - I've bought some at AllOfMp3.com, too, but I can get lossless there. The key is that the studios will continue to have qualtiy masters - but will they be willing to sell that quality to the public?
Private individual, of age, displaying a "slogan", on non-school property.
The only issue here is whether or not he was under the jusrisdiction of the school at the time. By the reading, the event was "school sponsored" - i.e., students were under the supervision of school officials, and were the resposibility of said school officials at the time. Now, the student was apparently not present at school that day (for whatever reason), so was he under their supervision?
Everything else is clear cut - if it had been a non-student, there would have been no recourse for the school. The only question I see is whether a student absent from school who is proximate to a school group function is automatically under the jurisdiction and responsibility of the school. Personally, if I were a school official, I would sure as hell not want this district to win, as it might create some real liability headaches.
Actually, you're pretty far off. The $80k-$100 you plan on spending on your MS/PhD will be closer to $130k-$150k once you account for benefits and G&A costs - and that's in a pretty efficient company. Presuming you're providing music, art, and gym, you will need about 200 SF per pupil* at the secondary level. Now, that's only about $90,000k at moderate commercial rates ($18 SF/yr). Remember - you don't get the holidays and summer vacation for free in commercial space; you pay for the year whether you use it or not. You'll have to condition and light that space too, along with the requisite water/sewer and misc. charges - I'll be kind and let you go at $2/sf - about $10k. Now, you'll need captial to upfit for your application - you could go minimalist and get away with about $15-$20/sf if you're really careful, and they've alread provided grid and lighting. So you'll need $100,000 before you open the doors.
Lets see, I get $130,000 for your teacher (including benes and fractional admin costs), $90,000 for the raw space, and $10k to keep the lights on. If you borrow your upfit money, you can probably capitalize the renovations at $15k ($3/SF/yr). Hmmmmm....you're at $255,000 - $5000 per year over budget - and you haven't bought a single book, leased a copier, or accounted for any extracurricular activities (like coachs and equipment).
The school system is not a bastian of efficiency, but you will learn very quickly that it is hard to beat their prices using a "commercial" model. A near-top google link here shows the private school rates for somewhere in Mass. The median private school charged 3x the median public per-pupil rate.
By the way - if you want to know why we borrow money for schools, talk to your local Home Builders Association. Most people don't realize that it costs about $20k-$35k per pupil to build a school, and each child will need three schools before he/she exits the education system. The HBAs spend a lot of money and effort to defeat assessments on new homes, claiming they will be unaffordable if they have to capitalize all of the costs for services which their housing adds to the community. That is probably true, but that money will be spent, and the costs past on to everyone in the community in the form of bond fees. That's why schools have to take out bonds to build new schools - becuase the people who are increasing the school age population (people moving into a town, not the builders), are relying on everyone else to foot the bill. If you want to pay for it up front, add that tax to the new homes built. Heck, you could even offer a credit back to people who tear an old home down (since it takes that "residence" out of the mix) - so rebuilding on an old lot would not be subject to the tax (and would also need no new roads, schools, sidewalks, etc.). If you manage to get them to pay, let us know how you did it - there will be communities knocking down your door to pay your $1000/hr consulting fees;-)
*I am an architectural engineer, and I have designed schools, and these numbers come straight from local projects which are not "showpieces".
So, which portion of my tax dollars do I get back if I don't have children? Can I now opt out of my real estate taxes and about 1/2 of my state income taxes?
You see, the tax dollars you spend goes to a basic need. If you choose to not use it, you are still free to do so, but your tax money gets spent to create the infrastructure and keep the machine running. The government doesn't pay you to buy a Segue just because you're not using your portion of the automotive roadways. You arean't going to get "book vouchers" or "internet service credit vouchers" if you choose not to go to your local library. And you're not going to raid public education funds to send your kids to private school - they money doesn't magically reappear if you take your kid out.
If you're named George W Bush, there's nothing wrong with that. If you tell them that your address is 1600 Penn. Ave in D.C, and you're not the president, then you're providing fraudulent information.
When is using a fradulent information to get something you're not normally entitled to have not fraud?
More commonly referred to as the "Golden Rule" where he who has the gold, makes the rules.
The amazing thing here is that unanimous support for an obvious bill (which probably didn't need to be written as long as fraud is already illegal) changed so dramitically with the application of cash. The lobbiests are usually on top of these things a little better so that it's not quite as blatent.
The question you should ask is: who, in the media, will expose this travesty?
Really, I would presume if you said "I'm George W Bush," and you're not, that would be fraud. Pretexting is a very specific case of fraud (using a fraudulent or "stolen" identity, in nowspeak, to obtain information which is not otherise available to you). Pretexting is fraud, but not all fraud is pretexting.
Slashdot Mirror
Notice that this all relates to property. Now this is a very important word, as interpreted in the strictest sense, virtual items are not property.
Don't tell that to to shareholders of Google stock. They really think that piece of paper they have is worth $400, and so does the FL government. It's not of course, as the book value of Google is very low (on a per-share basis), and that's the only part of it that is actual "property".
...could you turn the temperature down just a bit so I can get used to it before you make it any hotter.
Thanks,
Kermit
Disclaimer: I don't think Windows on the OLPC is a good idea. Check that, I think it's a Bad Idea (TM).
That said, there are just as many apps out there that will run on windows and install within a DVD-space with windows, if imaged properly. If you happen not to like the "embeded" apps (wordpad, paint, integral burning, explorer), or want more capability you can grab lots of open source stuff on the 'net. But why bother? Microsoft would happily (gleefully) include a copy of OfficePro, IIS, etc. - all for "free". Base price ahs nothing to do with it. The base price of WinXP is infinitely larger than Linux, so what's 2 or 3 or 4 times infinity? The fact is that they would bundle those apps - for education use only - at no cost to the project.
Why? Because, as the dealer on the corner will tell you, the first hit is always on the house.
From the FL dept of revenue:
What is Intangible Personal Property Tax?
Florida's intangible personal property tax is an annual tax based on the current market value, as of January 1, of intangible personal property owned, managed, or controlled by Florida residents or persons doing business in Florida. (empahsis mine)
Now, currently, intangible property is limited to stocks, bonds, etc., but there's no reason that the state couldn't extend that to property in a game (though it's unlikely). Remember, too, that businesses are often taxed on business property, which is valued every year at current market value or at depreciated value, depending on the type.
There are lots of pitfalls in the way things are taxed - mostly to get around people who try and get around the system, or to extract revenue from other/new sources (FL has lots of retirees, retirees have low incomes but high net worths - intangibles is a way to get at that money).
Somebody might get the bright idea to tax your in-world posessions as intangibles. Several states have such a tax - though not mine, so I don't know all the details. It may not stop at "income" taxes.
I noticed that in the summary (didn't rtfa...got to get some real work done today). What is the validity of using the "this law has never been applied before" argument? Clearly, the selective and occasional application of laws is pretty commonplace (speeding citiations, for example). To have a significant history of publically "known" instances, none of which have been prosecuted - does that offer any real defense in a criminal case? Does the court look upon the defendent as a persecuted individual, or is the response simply, "sucks to be you."
;-)
In a clear cut violation - a letter of the law case - I would anticipate the latter response, but maybe where there is significant lattitude in interpretation the (lack of) precident may hold water.
(see, once we know you know what you're talking about, you'll never rest here on slashdot
Oh, don't get me started. I decided a long time ago that a flat tax on all income (call it a "gross receipts" tax) with no exemptions or deductions is the way we should go. Deciding to have children is a conscious choice (or should be) - just as deciding not to have them is a conscious choice. If you can't afford them, don't ask for a "tax break" because they're so expensive - you should have known that cost before your came. Do you buy a car without asking what it will cost to maintain? Not unless you're rich enough that it doesn't matter.
Better stop now, or I'll get nothing done today.
PS - think about it: 3% on every penny you receive. Sell a stock, play 3%. Sell you house, pay 3% (you're already giving the RE broker 6). Exercise those back-dated stock options and cash out - pay 3%. Corporations, too. Inheritance? 3%. Court settlement? 3%. Insurance? 3%. If you receive a dollar, you send 3 cents to Uncle sam.
Of course, I will break my own rule and admit that I am for a single deduction, though. Every legal resident with a TIN (Taxpayer ID number, aka SSN, but not an EIN - Employer Id Number, used for corporations) gets a single deduction of 2087xFederal Minimum Wage against receipts. If you're making minimum wage, even I am willing to give you a pass. (yes, S-corps, including myself, would pay double taxes. Protection costs money - if you don't like it, become a sole proprietor).
Nowadays, almost all professionals (yes, I include teachers) need continuing education credits, and there are very few employers who cover the costs for licensing sake. Having taken classes all of my life, I can't imagine living without them (I have about 180 credits in undergrad work, and about 80 in masters/doctorate level work).
;-)
5-6 weeks as vacation, plus Christmas week, a few days at Easter, plus federal holidays? Even the Federal government doesn't offer that much, and they have about the best leave in the US (5.5 weeks of annual leave after 12 years of service). Most corporations start you out at 2 (yes, two) weeks of leave and you work up at about one day per year until you hit 3-4 weeks maximum. Those who have combined sick/vacation ("Personal Time Off") start at three weeks, but still tend to peak at four. I don't know a single US company that offers it's "regular" white collar employees 8 weeks of vacation per year. I'm happy to be proven wrong, of course - and if you find one, let me know and I'll polish up my resume.
There are outliers in every profession. That's usually one of the things that sets the best apart from the rest. For whatever reason, most of the teachers I know are grade school. They normally complain about ever extra minute spent on school work outside of the mandatory time in school, and there's about two weeks of griping in earnest prior to the end of summer break (I hear about their bitch sessions at the pool though others, where they spend most of the day trying to maximize their tanning time). The ones who care put in the hours, and - interestingly - seem to be the ones least concerned about the salary. The ones who just have a "job" teaching seem to find no end to their injustice, even if they just work to contract.
As I said, I would take a $6/hr job stocking Wal-Mart before I'd want a class full of eight year olds for 180 days a year. But kids aren't my "thing."
I think someone is releasing a 250GB 2.5" drive early next year,
Oh, don't tease. I actually was thinking that a graphic artist/photog or video producer could really eat up the space on a hard drive, though I would expect someone with those needs to have a stationary machine with real horsepower, and an external drive array. I've got about 2TB in a firewire tower in my basement. I've been slowly ripping my 250DVD collection to it, along with a bunch of stuff I've pulled off my TiVo, and the requisite home DV. My personal photography has also started to fill up space, but I'm not doing much fine art stuff anymore, so I don't have RAW images (all my old stuff is on 35mm and med format).
It's a simple fact that I will never have enough space to do everything I want. BR/HD-DVD will not help, once those formats are mainstream and are cracked.
Yikes. Are the listening though soup cans connected to the source with yarn?
Seriously, I did this to see where I couldn't discern artifacts. I did the testing though my pc (not exactly the best equipment), with Sony MDR-V6 circumaural headphones (high quality for the dollar spent, but very little snake oil factor), and I found the breakpoint about 224kb/s with the Lame encoder. Now, I'm sort of picky, but I listen mostly to pop/rock stuff - nothing out of the ordinary. I did, however, listen to "difficult" passages one after the other until I couldn't hear specific artifacts, so maybe that's a bit stringent. I recently got some intraaureals (Shure E3cs), and 128kb is acceptable only when I'm mowing the lawn or blowing leaves.
FWIW, I'm almost as happy running zip cord (of equivalent gauge) to my speakers as OFC, so it's not like I'm really that insane, but I'll admit to choosing 30 gauge strands over 22 gauge for a few cents a foot, given the choice - even if I can't really tell the difference.
Thanks for the tip, I'll give it a shot. The offending file is an extraction from a HD TiVo, so it's MPEG2, but in a funky AR (1280x1088), and lord only knows what they do with the audio (I'm pretty certain it's AC3). DiVX (the official encoder) managed to waste 8 hours "processing" the file before going toes up with a "missing codec" error right at the end. Go figure. If it works, I'll post back.
Oh, I'm with you on the debt part. I'm significantly out of step with most of my clients on the capital assessment taxes. I feel that you should pay for the increase in capital expenditures you create. Property taxes should be used to operate and maintain the facilities you have (including necessary upgrades/rebuilds), not to fund new projects made necessary by growth. Am I biased? Sure, I bought a 1960's ranch instead of building a new home, I only have one child, I make more than the median income. Overall, I pay more into the system than I get out of it, but at least I'm honest. Many of the builders don't want to pay for new roads, sidewalks, police stations, firehouses, libraries, or schools, because then they couldn't provide "affordable" housing. Those same builders are only selling homes in price ranges which are "affordable" to 20% of the population. *shrug*
BTW - $18/sf is on the high end of commerical RE prices in S/W Virginia, but you can't rent standard commercial space for a gymnasium, and it won't come with a track or soccer/football/baseball fields behind the building. I tried to hit a rough average, knowing there were going to be outliers. If I remember, about 1/4-1/3 of school budgeting comes from local dollars here in my part of VA, with the balance from state funds. My assessment went up about 40% in the last three years, and they jacked the rate at the same time. They've also raised the sales tax and allowed additional piggy-back taxes (prepared meals are taxed at 10% now, I think).
Our public school teachers make in the mid- to upper-30s, for the younger set (say, under 40). It's actually not bad, considering the cost of living, but they still complain. I have a lot of friends who are teachers, and I can never quite work myself up to their level of outrage. I don't have too much sympathy, as I see them off on government holidays, snow days, the entire week at Chrismas and spring break, and for 2.5 months in the summer (exuse me, only 9 weeks, as they have to spend a week before classes start to get ready for school, plus three days after the "last day" to clean up their rooms). They get a retirement plan, full 12 month benefits, and are in school from 8am - 3pm. They complain that they don't get paid for time they spend working on class assignment while out of school. Cry me a river - I work 7am-5pm, 5 days a week. I get zero paid holidays. I do work in the evenings and weekends - mostly proposals - for which I don't get paid. Most people who work professional jobs have to do overtime, and many times it is not paid. Hour for hour, teaching is farily well compensated. Me? No, I couldn't deal with a class of 30 eight year olds, but most teachers couldn't sit at my desk and figure stresses and moment diagrams and load paths for 9 hours straight. You do what you're good at. (wow, I'm really rambling...sorry.)
Good grief, how many documents are your writing? I've got a 100GB laptop drive for work, and I mirror every document, file, CAD drawing, etc I've created in 4 years of business on it (~20GB). I also have 9 years of building codes, the entire manual of concrete practive (all 60lb of dead tree worth), and most of the vendor catalogs on it. And all of my email from the past 8 years (yes, locally - I use POP). Plus the full XPpro installion disc. Plus all the software for all the analyis programs (including the Excel spreadsheets I've built). Plus three versions of AutoCAD. And a 2GB hibernation file.
And I still have about 55GB free. Okay, 50GB, but 5GB of that is an hour of HD video on my desktop that I haven't figured how to convert to DiVX or VOB yet, so I wan't going to count it.
Absolutely. That's the fallacy of the "10k per pupil" costs. That's not the cost of the n+1 pupil. On the micro level, that's probably around $1000 per pupil (incremental cost for 1 additional student in a 1000 student school). On an intermediate level (say, 50 extra students in 1000 student school) it's probably about $2000. On the macro level (doubling of student body), I'm going to guess it's closer to $4000-$5000. Those are off the top of my head, but I would be suprised if I was off by more than 30% or so. On the single student level - even up to a 5% change - the cash back, after processing, verification, and policing/standards monitoring, might not break even. If the school system had to spend three man-days per year, per pupil, to account, track,..., for vouchers it would wipe out practically all the savings.
I don't care how good your source is. If you're listening to 192kb rips, you're likely not going to be able to tell the difference. It's hard for most consumer equipment to bring out the difference between regular CDs and SACDs/DVD-A. Intellectionally, I agree with you. I'd love to have all my music in the best lossless form I can, but for the gear I use - money spent on quality higher than about 256kb is wasted to me. FWIW - my ears and gear break somewhere between 224 and 256kb/s with LAME vbr. I store in FLAC so that I can recode at any point without having to rerip the original, or suffer decode-recode artifacts.
The sibling post has a good point about re-mastering in studio for the target form. I believe (right or wrong) that the final product of a compressed track will be more affected by the encoder than by tricks done on the master - or at least on the same order of magnitude. I guess I'd rather have the lossless mastered for lossless, and accept the hit for recoded stuff on my end than have the best possible (studio created) lossy version as my master.
If you're talking real people with real collections, I think we're there. If you're talking about p2p regulars, we're probably not. I would expect most people's collections to fit on a 100GB drive (laptops got to about 160 now, iirc) as lossless. That's somewhere in the neighborhood of 450CDs worth of albums. That's real albums, bought with cash in nice plastic cases - not 450x700MB @2:1 compression. I have, among my "friends," both now and historic, a "large" collection. It's not that large (~300 CDs), but I'd venture to say it's well above the median in the US.
Multi-channel music has come and gone twice. For portables, multichannel music is really only a theoretcial novelty, as you'd probably have to go to five nines before you found people playing music off a portable into more than two discrete, full range speaker channels (headphones, automotive). I'll go out on a limb here and predict that multi-channel audio will not become dominant (= outselling 2 channel audio) in the next 2 decades - and by then we'll easily have the storage to accomodate it.
WAV? He uses WAV? Why on god's green earth would you bother using WAV to listed to your music when there are a plethora of lossless codecs out there? You can get roughtly 2:1 compression with any of the codecs - heck he could even use wavpack if he was so stuck on having wav in the name. Heck, most audiophiles worth their $3000 interconnects are appalled at the harsheness and "cold, digital" feel of that 44.1khz/16 bit crap that was forced on the public when we got CDs.
Lossless is coming soon to most of us. With the 5.5g iPod at 80GB and the Zune hackable to 80GB as well, all but the top 3-4% of all consumers can fit their entire (legal) collection on a single portable device in lossless compression. I've got about 6500 tracks, most as FLAC rips, and I'm right about 81GB (plus about 40GB in books, but those are all low-bitrate). If I jettisoned the extra downloded stuff I have that I didn't like (but didn't get around to deleting), I'd probably drop to 75GB or so. I suspect that my entire family (three of us) buys less than 5GB worth of content each year. There's no reason to expect that the size of the players, in capacity, will not continue to decrease. As for those with bigger collections...well, just get more portables, or learn to live with a smaller subset on your player (or a higher compression).
As long as the high-qualtiy masters are available, portables can become a calculated compromise. Since my threshhold for accuracy happens to be at about 256kb/s LAME, that's where I transcode my FLAC library for my portable. If I had a car player, it would probably be more like 160kb. Heck, it's practically impossible to hear artifacts at 128kb in my Pilot at 70mph at a normal volume. My wife's 8GB flash player will be encoded in the 160-192 range, becuase I know she doesn't have the gear to hear much more, and she's just not that picky. With good music managers, you can automagically sync and transcode at the same time (I use mediamonkey). Transodeing is a bit slow right now, but as PCs get faster, the sync/transcode process will get better and better.
I do agree that it is a travesty that the online services will not offer home-archival-quality tracks, but I'm probably a top-10% listening geek. I buy all my music on CD, and rip to FLAC. Okay, okay - I've bought some at AllOfMp3.com, too, but I can get lossless there. The key is that the studios will continue to have qualtiy masters - but will they be willing to sell that quality to the public?
Private individual, of age, displaying a "slogan", on non-school property.
The only issue here is whether or not he was under the jusrisdiction of the school at the time. By the reading, the event was "school sponsored" - i.e., students were under the supervision of school officials, and were the resposibility of said school officials at the time. Now, the student was apparently not present at school that day (for whatever reason), so was he under their supervision?
Everything else is clear cut - if it had been a non-student, there would have been no recourse for the school. The only question I see is whether a student absent from school who is proximate to a school group function is automatically under the jurisdiction and responsibility of the school. Personally, if I were a school official, I would sure as hell not want this district to win, as it might create some real liability headaches.
Actually, you're pretty far off. The $80k-$100 you plan on spending on your MS/PhD will be closer to $130k-$150k once you account for benefits and G&A costs - and that's in a pretty efficient company. Presuming you're providing music, art, and gym, you will need about 200 SF per pupil* at the secondary level. Now, that's only about $90,000k at moderate commercial rates ($18 SF/yr). Remember - you don't get the holidays and summer vacation for free in commercial space; you pay for the year whether you use it or not. You'll have to condition and light that space too, along with the requisite water/sewer and misc. charges - I'll be kind and let you go at $2/sf - about $10k. Now, you'll need captial to upfit for your application - you could go minimalist and get away with about $15-$20/sf if you're really careful, and they've alread provided grid and lighting. So you'll need $100,000 before you open the doors.
;-)
Lets see, I get $130,000 for your teacher (including benes and fractional admin costs), $90,000 for the raw space, and $10k to keep the lights on. If you borrow your upfit money, you can probably capitalize the renovations at $15k ($3/SF/yr). Hmmmmm....you're at $255,000 - $5000 per year over budget - and you haven't bought a single book, leased a copier, or accounted for any extracurricular activities (like coachs and equipment).
The school system is not a bastian of efficiency, but you will learn very quickly that it is hard to beat their prices using a "commercial" model. A near-top google link here shows the private school rates for somewhere in Mass. The median private school charged 3x the median public per-pupil rate.
By the way - if you want to know why we borrow money for schools, talk to your local Home Builders Association. Most people don't realize that it costs about $20k-$35k per pupil to build a school, and each child will need three schools before he/she exits the education system. The HBAs spend a lot of money and effort to defeat assessments on new homes, claiming they will be unaffordable if they have to capitalize all of the costs for services which their housing adds to the community. That is probably true, but that money will be spent, and the costs past on to everyone in the community in the form of bond fees. That's why schools have to take out bonds to build new schools - becuase the people who are increasing the school age population (people moving into a town, not the builders), are relying on everyone else to foot the bill. If you want to pay for it up front, add that tax to the new homes built. Heck, you could even offer a credit back to people who tear an old home down (since it takes that "residence" out of the mix) - so rebuilding on an old lot would not be subject to the tax (and would also need no new roads, schools, sidewalks, etc.). If you manage to get them to pay, let us know how you did it - there will be communities knocking down your door to pay your $1000/hr consulting fees
*I am an architectural engineer, and I have designed schools, and these numbers come straight from local projects which are not "showpieces".
So, which portion of my tax dollars do I get back if I don't have children? Can I now opt out of my real estate taxes and about 1/2 of my state income taxes?
You see, the tax dollars you spend goes to a basic need. If you choose to not use it, you are still free to do so, but your tax money gets spent to create the infrastructure and keep the machine running. The government doesn't pay you to buy a Segue just because you're not using your portion of the automotive roadways. You arean't going to get "book vouchers" or "internet service credit vouchers" if you choose not to go to your local library. And you're not going to raid public education funds to send your kids to private school - they money doesn't magically reappear if you take your kid out.
If you're named George W Bush, there's nothing wrong with that. If you tell them that your address is 1600 Penn. Ave in D.C, and you're not the president, then you're providing fraudulent information.
When is using a fradulent information to get something you're not normally entitled to have not fraud?
More commonly referred to as the "Golden Rule" where he who has the gold, makes the rules.
The amazing thing here is that unanimous support for an obvious bill (which probably didn't need to be written as long as fraud is already illegal) changed so dramitically with the application of cash. The lobbiests are usually on top of these things a little better so that it's not quite as blatent.
The question you should ask is: who, in the media, will expose this travesty?
The GOP is in the pocet of big business
The DNC rolls over every time it's a fight over art and entertainment
Translation: They both agree that the consumer is going to bend over and take it on this one.
Really, I would presume if you said "I'm George W Bush," and you're not, that would be fraud. Pretexting is a very specific case of fraud (using a fraudulent or "stolen" identity, in nowspeak, to obtain information which is not otherise available to you). Pretexting is fraud, but not all fraud is pretexting.