From the article: "Not since June 1987 has the moon been this low in the sky, accentuating the illusion even further."
Huh? What in the world does "this low in the sky" mean? Can it get any lower than "right on the horizon?" That happens each and every day/night and when it's sitting right on the horizon, it's no lower or higher than when it was sitting right on the horizon every day since 1987.
And you can measure the moon and see it's the same size when it's right on the horizon as when it's high in the sky, so how do they come off saying that it's "lower" (or larger) than at any point since June 1987?
In short, what in the world are they talking about???
PS--To be fair, we saw the moon coming up last night over some local mountains and both my wife and I said "Whoaa." The color and apparent size were quite striking. But neither of us went off writing articles saying the moon was bigger than any time in the last 18 years.
This means that I will stop using Hotmail -- go figure!
No kidding. This is a big gamble on Microsoft's part. While they may think that everyone will bow to their standards, people might just ignore them. Then the users of Hotmail will wonder why so much good email is being considered spam and will look for other alternatives. And there is no shortage of alternative free mail providers.
Personally, I don't plan on upgrading/changing my mail server just so I can contact people at Hotmail. If it was an industry-wide move, sure, you have no choice. But just Hotmail? Nor worth it.
Gosh you're a cynic and naive. Typical. Anything that promotes global warming is correct, anything that denies global warming is bought and paid for by interests.
I suspect you are right. I also look forward to the day that "embedded" again means a highly-optimized, power-efficient processor or controller doing a specific task. This "new embedded" definition that basically says "If it's small, it's embedded... even if it's running Linux or Windows" is a joke.
If you're doing Windows or Linux development, it's almost definitely not embedded. You might have a really small form factor, but calling it embedded is stretching things. But some people think it sounds cool to say "I'm an embedded developer" when what they really mean is "I'm a Windows developer that writes code that runs on really physically small computers."
Write firmware for hardware that runs on a single 6V battery for 6 months, has no operating system, taking measurements once per minute and connecting to the Internet via a wireless GPRS modem connection to upload its data once per day, and with a unit cost of about $25 (plus the modem)... Do that and with available code memory of 32k* and then you're a friggin' embedded developer.:)
* For extra credit, write it in assembly and you can get it done in 16k.
The person that can do both is the one that can truly live as the first post described. If you enjoy both, by all means do both. Even if you don't get two degrees, teach yourself whichever discipline you don't decide to pursue as a full-on degree.
I'm not saying that it's incredibly controversial, but there probably are some people that could be offended by it.
I'm not offended by it because of the imagery, but it did seem to be a pretty cheesy and slutty image they're making for their company and simply in bad taste. Unless their target market is 15-year olds, I'm not sure the commercial was well-targeted.
GoDaddy is extremely aggressive about pushing things people don't need, in my opinion... For example, there are sometimes as many as 30 ads on a GoDaddy screen at one time, so many it is difficult to navigate.
I agree. It wasn't like that in the beginning, but last time I went to register a domain name I was blown away by all the excessive "suggestive selling." I've even written their customer service that they need to get that under control because it does make their site less user-friendly.
I'm not to the point of transferring all my domains away from Godaddy yet, but if I were a new user I would probably abandon the registration process due to the excessive ads long before I got to the point where I enter my credit card information.
I don't think that anyone else will follow that suit, not even Boeing, because lots of industry experts claim that the economies of scale and the demand in the superjumbo jet market are such that only one model can survive on that market profitably and Airbus came first.
A lot of industry experts don't even think one model will survive. The recent trend is more smaller aircraft transporting a modest number of people. Their PR department suggests they have 149 firm orders and they should be profitable by 2008, but keep in kind that's their PR department talking.
There's also the point that most airports in the world can't handle an aircraft that large which limits the possible routes the aircraft can fly. While obviously this airplane isn't designed to carry people from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, it remains to be seen whether it will even be profitable for Airbus. Keep in mind that an airline very well may do better with multiple smaller flights between, say, Dallas and London than a single flight with one of these suckers. Who wants to fly into Dallas and wait around until 5pm when the daily superjumbo flight is scheduled to leave?
And I hate to be the one to say it, but such a large aircraft sure looks like a juicy target for a terrorist that wants to get his money's worth out of the anti-aircraft missile he has stored in his closet.
Re:more censorship, unimpressed
on
Google TrustRank
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· Score: 1
The fact is, spam filtering is inherently censorship. This kind of interference will always have a negative impact on the marketplace of ideas that is the modern internet.
The question is, will the lack of spam filtering leave the results so contaminated with useless pages that someone will not be able to find what they're looking for? I believe so and that's no better a situation than filtering spam out. Either way the potential user is going to miss potentially useful content.
The truth is, this kind of thing is going to make Google more usable for the vast majority of people. And, knowing Google, there'll be a link or an option somewhere that says "Execute search without TrustRank" so you can see the real ugly stuff if you want.
I also expect that sooner or later we're going to see Google index Blogs separately so you'll be able to click on the top at Web/News/Groups/Images/Blogs, etc. As useful as some people think blogs are, I seldom am interested in them. If I want to see blog opinions, I'll happily click on a link so Google can give me blog results. But if I'm not specifically looking for them I'd just assume that massive online stores and blogs are not included in the main results.
Even though I like to slam Microsoft as much as the next guy, I thought the exact same thing. Especially that this could be evidence that Google is discriminating against IIS.
Not that I actually believe that... But without quite a bit more research it's impossible to conclude what's going on here.
It's been downhill from there, with the build-up of the military-industrial complex and all...
... As well as the build-up of the socialistic wealth redistribution system which consumes about 4 times as much money as the military-industrial complex.
The federal government has gotten to big, that's the problem in a nutshell. An additional problem is everyone has their pet project or department which they don't want to give up, which explains why it remains so big.
While a government without politically parties would be a nice utopia, the reality is that people tend to group together with people that think alike. Since most people do share common beliefs, the evolution of political parties is all but inevitable.
Disk times would probably be sufficient for the type of work that a single processor system could handle.
Disk times would be "sufficient" because most people define what a single processor system could handle based on a disk-based, OS-based system. A RAM-based system is entirely different.
You'd be absolutely amazed at how much computing power we already have available on our single-processor systems. Get rid of Windows and, yes, even Linux and the sheer speed and power available is quite mind-boggling.
In most cases, the practical need for additional processors is not so much a limitation of the processor--which is lightning fast already--but of the operating systems that just consume so much resources to do what they do. And that's not a slam. The OS serves a very necessary purpose. But do some work on embedded systems and you'll realize just how much power there really is under the hood of even a consumer PC.
And when I say embedded, I don't mean the new definition of "embedded" that seems to be putting Windows or Linux in a small form factor but, otherwise, just a normal PC. Embedded used to mean getting into the nuts and bolts with a program that does its job and nothing more. No OS overhead, just pure code and hardware. That's embedded. And when you work at that level for awhile, you really begin to appreciate how much of a hit performance takes for the flexibility of running under an OS.
Sinclair is using airwaves that belong to the people to broadcast their claptrap. The New York Times pays to print theirs, and then pays to drive all over the planet distributing it. After Sinclair releases their lips from the nipple of public support, they can enjoy all the freedoms of the New York Times.
I believe Sinclair is advertising supported in much the same way the New York Times is. The New York Times pays its printing costs, Sinclair pays the licensing costs of the airwaves that they are essentially renting from us. Just as landlords cannot legally discriminate based on the race, religion, etc. of their tennants, the government (in the name of "we the people") should not be able to legally censor the tennants of the airwaves just because their viewpoints aren't popular or are disliked by the liberal left.
The media has been dominated by the left for decades. A little pendulum swing to the right is not necessarily a bad thing. Don't worry, it'll swing left again sooner or later. In the meantime, welcome to the frustration that conservatives have felt for decades!:)
Not sure it would make any difference. America (specifically the currdent administration) seems to be spending more money than they take in from taxes anyway.
True, but the only reason they can do that is because they have future tax revenue as a guarantee to pay for the money they borrow. If tax revenue was being withheld by the citizens, they wouldn't have that guaranteed source of income and no-one would loan the government money.
And how are we planning to raise money to pay for it? Tax cuts.
Taxes decrease efficiency of the market. As you lower taxes, the economy becomes more efficient which generates more economic activity which in the end can generate more taxes in absolute terms (even though the percentage may be less).
I have been self employed, and the only thing I felt when I wrote check, aside from the twinge that I may have not fully accounted for the expense, which is my fault, is pride that I was contributing to this great country, and pride that I lived in a place where I was allowed to have the opportunity to suceed.
No offense, but what are you? Some liberal poster child? You're the kind of robot drone that the government wants: Those that are eager to send them money.
The real patriot would contribute more to this country by not paying to reduce the cashflow the federal government has available and force it to make the "tough" decisions so that federal spending--and debt--could be reduced. Unfortunately, most of us aren't willing to go to jail for not paying our taxes even though it arguably would do more good than harm to withhold that money from the federal government.
If the system were more predictable (or there were no penalties for underpaying), I'd agree 100% in having less withheld from check to check. But since it's impossible to predict what you'll earn the entire year, it's nice to overpay a little every pay period and get some of it back at the end of the year.
The system is very predictable. Your income might not be, but you know how much you make when you make it. You should just set aside some of that extra income in an account for your taxes.
I'm self-employed overseas and while I should file quarterly, I don't. I hate paperwork. I do keep track of what I earn and set aside slightly more than I expect to pay and put that in a savings account. When tax time comes around, I do my 1040, figure in my deductions, and the amount I have to send in (plus the penalty/interest I later get charged by the IRS for not sending in estimated taxes throughout the year) is always less than what I set aside. Hence my "refund" is what's left over in my tax savings account after paying taxes and penalties.
No, I'm sure it doesn't make financial sense. Obviously the penalty eats up the interest I earned on the money. But my time is worth something to me, and time I don't have to spend doing tax-related paperwork is worth even more. And I still get that warm fuzzy feeling about getting a "refund"...the only difference is that I just transfer it from my tax savings account to my checking account. Bam, that's my "refund"--and it's just as real as the "refund" people get from the IRS. I just never sent it to them in the first place.
Exactly. I said the same thing elsewhere in this tread. I've never sent in estimated taxes. I just pay the penalty/interest, which is small, and thank God I only have to think about income taxes once per year.
That said, it does suck sending in that huge tax payment once per year. Perhaps it would hurt less if I sent in the estimated tax quarterly.
They actually charge you interest on your own money. How screwed up is that??
I'm not really defending the IRS here, but...
They only charge you interest on "your" money if you don't file by the due date. You're supposed to pay quarterly and if you do that, they'd be earning money as soon as you send the money in by the end of the quarter. So they charge you the interest that they didn't earn because you waited until the end of the year instead of the end of the quarter.
Personally, I'm self-employed overseas and should send in a quarterly estimated tax. I don't. I just wait until the end of the year, do my standard 1040 paperwork, find out how much I owe, and send it in. A few months later I get a bill for the interest (and a small penalty I think) for not having filed my quarterly taxes. As long as you file your annual 1040 on time, the actual interest/penalties for not having sent in quarterly estimated taxes is pretty small. At least it is for me since I'm not earning millions of dollars. Where you really get hit hard is if you don't file the 1040 on time.
With the amount of money I make and my general aversion to paperwork consuming my time throughout the year, and the cost to Fedex quarterly tax payments, I just find it easier to pay the interest/fine each year than dick around with income tax every quarter. Screw that.
In Mexico, e-filing is required and is free directly through the equivalent of the Mexican IRS. No third parties. The Mexican tax system is far more screwed up and confusing than the American system, but it's amazing they're light-years ahead of the U.S. when it comes to e-filing.
I see other amateur leftwing documentaries parked on various places on the net, and almost all of them are jokes--because of weak or nonexistent scripts.
While you may be right about the script being poor, don't ignore the fact that just about any "leftwing documentary" (read: propaganda) is a joke simply by nature.
Does anybody really use their last lot of domains, such as.info and.coop? I very, very rarely see either getting any use, to be honest.
Never seen.coop myself, but.biz and.info are in my spam filters as 100% blacklists. I've never actually run into one that wasn't spam related (though I see some examples in this thread, none have ever come close to applying to me).
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Sure there is, as much as many pro-global warming pundits would like the public to believe otherwise.
Huh? What in the world does "this low in the sky" mean? Can it get any lower than "right on the horizon?" That happens each and every day/night and when it's sitting right on the horizon, it's no lower or higher than when it was sitting right on the horizon every day since 1987.
And you can measure the moon and see it's the same size when it's right on the horizon as when it's high in the sky, so how do they come off saying that it's "lower" (or larger) than at any point since June 1987?
In short, what in the world are they talking about???
PS--To be fair, we saw the moon coming up last night over some local mountains and both my wife and I said "Whoaa." The color and apparent size were quite striking. But neither of us went off writing articles saying the moon was bigger than any time in the last 18 years.
No kidding. This is a big gamble on Microsoft's part. While they may think that everyone will bow to their standards, people might just ignore them. Then the users of Hotmail will wonder why so much good email is being considered spam and will look for other alternatives. And there is no shortage of alternative free mail providers.
Personally, I don't plan on upgrading/changing my mail server just so I can contact people at Hotmail. If it was an industry-wide move, sure, you have no choice. But just Hotmail? Nor worth it.
Disgusting liberal blindness.
It most definitely is. I'm enjoying it thoroughly.
If you're doing Windows or Linux development, it's almost definitely not embedded. You might have a really small form factor, but calling it embedded is stretching things. But some people think it sounds cool to say "I'm an embedded developer" when what they really mean is "I'm a Windows developer that writes code that runs on really physically small computers."
Write firmware for hardware that runs on a single 6V battery for 6 months, has no operating system, taking measurements once per minute and connecting to the Internet via a wireless GPRS modem connection to upload its data once per day, and with a unit cost of about $25 (plus the modem)... Do that and with available code memory of 32k* and then you're a friggin' embedded developer. :)
* For extra credit, write it in assembly and you can get it done in 16k.
I'm not offended by it because of the imagery, but it did seem to be a pretty cheesy and slutty image they're making for their company and simply in bad taste. Unless their target market is 15-year olds, I'm not sure the commercial was well-targeted.
I agree. It wasn't like that in the beginning, but last time I went to register a domain name I was blown away by all the excessive "suggestive selling." I've even written their customer service that they need to get that under control because it does make their site less user-friendly.
I'm not to the point of transferring all my domains away from Godaddy yet, but if I were a new user I would probably abandon the registration process due to the excessive ads long before I got to the point where I enter my credit card information.
A lot of industry experts don't even think one model will survive. The recent trend is more smaller aircraft transporting a modest number of people. Their PR department suggests they have 149 firm orders and they should be profitable by 2008, but keep in kind that's their PR department talking.
There's also the point that most airports in the world can't handle an aircraft that large which limits the possible routes the aircraft can fly. While obviously this airplane isn't designed to carry people from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, it remains to be seen whether it will even be profitable for Airbus. Keep in mind that an airline very well may do better with multiple smaller flights between, say, Dallas and London than a single flight with one of these suckers. Who wants to fly into Dallas and wait around until 5pm when the daily superjumbo flight is scheduled to leave?
And I hate to be the one to say it, but such a large aircraft sure looks like a juicy target for a terrorist that wants to get his money's worth out of the anti-aircraft missile he has stored in his closet.
The question is, will the lack of spam filtering leave the results so contaminated with useless pages that someone will not be able to find what they're looking for? I believe so and that's no better a situation than filtering spam out. Either way the potential user is going to miss potentially useful content.
The truth is, this kind of thing is going to make Google more usable for the vast majority of people. And, knowing Google, there'll be a link or an option somewhere that says "Execute search without TrustRank" so you can see the real ugly stuff if you want.
I also expect that sooner or later we're going to see Google index Blogs separately so you'll be able to click on the top at Web/News/Groups/Images/Blogs, etc. As useful as some people think blogs are, I seldom am interested in them. If I want to see blog opinions, I'll happily click on a link so Google can give me blog results. But if I'm not specifically looking for them I'd just assume that massive online stores and blogs are not included in the main results.
Not that I actually believe that... But without quite a bit more research it's impossible to conclude what's going on here.
The federal government has gotten to big, that's the problem in a nutshell. An additional problem is everyone has their pet project or department which they don't want to give up, which explains why it remains so big.
Lose a decade and you'll be in the right neighborhood.
Disk times would be "sufficient" because most people define what a single processor system could handle based on a disk-based, OS-based system. A RAM-based system is entirely different.
You'd be absolutely amazed at how much computing power we already have available on our single-processor systems. Get rid of Windows and, yes, even Linux and the sheer speed and power available is quite mind-boggling.
In most cases, the practical need for additional processors is not so much a limitation of the processor--which is lightning fast already--but of the operating systems that just consume so much resources to do what they do. And that's not a slam. The OS serves a very necessary purpose. But do some work on embedded systems and you'll realize just how much power there really is under the hood of even a consumer PC.
And when I say embedded, I don't mean the new definition of "embedded" that seems to be putting Windows or Linux in a small form factor but, otherwise, just a normal PC. Embedded used to mean getting into the nuts and bolts with a program that does its job and nothing more. No OS overhead, just pure code and hardware. That's embedded. And when you work at that level for awhile, you really begin to appreciate how much of a hit performance takes for the flexibility of running under an OS.
I believe Sinclair is advertising supported in much the same way the New York Times is. The New York Times pays its printing costs, Sinclair pays the licensing costs of the airwaves that they are essentially renting from us. Just as landlords cannot legally discriminate based on the race, religion, etc. of their tennants, the government (in the name of "we the people") should not be able to legally censor the tennants of the airwaves just because their viewpoints aren't popular or are disliked by the liberal left.
The media has been dominated by the left for decades. A little pendulum swing to the right is not necessarily a bad thing. Don't worry, it'll swing left again sooner or later. In the meantime, welcome to the frustration that conservatives have felt for decades! :)
True, but the only reason they can do that is because they have future tax revenue as a guarantee to pay for the money they borrow. If tax revenue was being withheld by the citizens, they wouldn't have that guaranteed source of income and no-one would loan the government money.
And how are we planning to raise money to pay for it? Tax cuts.
Taxes decrease efficiency of the market. As you lower taxes, the economy becomes more efficient which generates more economic activity which in the end can generate more taxes in absolute terms (even though the percentage may be less).
No offense, but what are you? Some liberal poster child? You're the kind of robot drone that the government wants: Those that are eager to send them money.
The real patriot would contribute more to this country by not paying to reduce the cashflow the federal government has available and force it to make the "tough" decisions so that federal spending--and debt--could be reduced. Unfortunately, most of us aren't willing to go to jail for not paying our taxes even though it arguably would do more good than harm to withhold that money from the federal government.
The system is very predictable. Your income might not be, but you know how much you make when you make it. You should just set aside some of that extra income in an account for your taxes.
I'm self-employed overseas and while I should file quarterly, I don't. I hate paperwork. I do keep track of what I earn and set aside slightly more than I expect to pay and put that in a savings account. When tax time comes around, I do my 1040, figure in my deductions, and the amount I have to send in (plus the penalty/interest I later get charged by the IRS for not sending in estimated taxes throughout the year) is always less than what I set aside. Hence my "refund" is what's left over in my tax savings account after paying taxes and penalties.
No, I'm sure it doesn't make financial sense. Obviously the penalty eats up the interest I earned on the money. But my time is worth something to me, and time I don't have to spend doing tax-related paperwork is worth even more. And I still get that warm fuzzy feeling about getting a "refund"...the only difference is that I just transfer it from my tax savings account to my checking account. Bam, that's my "refund"--and it's just as real as the "refund" people get from the IRS. I just never sent it to them in the first place.
That said, it does suck sending in that huge tax payment once per year. Perhaps it would hurt less if I sent in the estimated tax quarterly.
I'm not really defending the IRS here, but...
They only charge you interest on "your" money if you don't file by the due date. You're supposed to pay quarterly and if you do that, they'd be earning money as soon as you send the money in by the end of the quarter. So they charge you the interest that they didn't earn because you waited until the end of the year instead of the end of the quarter.
Personally, I'm self-employed overseas and should send in a quarterly estimated tax. I don't. I just wait until the end of the year, do my standard 1040 paperwork, find out how much I owe, and send it in. A few months later I get a bill for the interest (and a small penalty I think) for not having filed my quarterly taxes. As long as you file your annual 1040 on time, the actual interest/penalties for not having sent in quarterly estimated taxes is pretty small. At least it is for me since I'm not earning millions of dollars. Where you really get hit hard is if you don't file the 1040 on time.
With the amount of money I make and my general aversion to paperwork consuming my time throughout the year, and the cost to Fedex quarterly tax payments, I just find it easier to pay the interest/fine each year than dick around with income tax every quarter. Screw that.
While you may be right about the script being poor, don't ignore the fact that just about any "leftwing documentary" (read: propaganda) is a joke simply by nature.
Never seen .coop myself, but .biz and .info are in my spam filters as 100% blacklists. I've never actually run into one that wasn't spam related (though I see some examples in this thread, none have ever come close to applying to me).