I apologize that you got modded down (though since you posted AC, I don't suppose it matters much to you except in hiding your words) - Thank you for the correction!
Though in fairness, I would say it doesn't dilute my intended meaning too much - Still a country we would consider a modern western democracy.
They are blocking free speech by users. Surely there must be some "twinge" in their brains that says, "This is wrong to take down people's posts."
The US arrests people for slashfic of the Simpsons. Surely there must be some "twinge" in their brains that says, "This is wrong to conflate cartoons with exploited children."
Every culture has their sacred cows. Come too close, and you get kicked.
Fact: The NSA has shown itself, historically, to have knowledge and technology 20-30 years ahead of that available to the rest of the human race (case in point, their suggestion to modify DES' S-boxes to strengthen it against differential cryptanalysis, an attack using math no one had even heard of until almost 30 years later).
Fact: A general purpose quantum computer makes all commonly used encryption algorithms worthless (though a number of quantum-resistant algorithms have started to appear, such as http://tbuktu.github.com/ntru/).
Fact: Countless research programs have demonstrated the viability of quantum computing, and you can even buy a 128 bit quantum computer today.
Likely: The NSA already has the quantum equivalent of a Beowulf cluster of these, if not something much, much better.
Conclusion: Using encryption trusts the single least-trustable entity on the planet not to already have the ability to turn it into Swiss cheese. That said, the NSA doesn't give two damns about the "little" things like copyright infringement, kiddy porn, or terrorist plots, so most of us have no reason to care about this. The local doughnut-eaters still have no ability to read your encrypted emails.
It just seems like(or, at least, online) atheism is a lot louder about it's beliefs or with its objections to things.
I'll take "louder" over "punishable by death", TYVM.
And honestly, this whole vocal-atheist thing? I just haven't seen it. Yes, they have a few talking heads that occasionally get attention in the press; How many dozens of Jesse Jacksons / Fred Phelps / dead Dutch cartoonists / burned African witches, do we hear about for every public appearance by Richard Dawkins?
Atheists in most of the western world finally feel moderately safe to have a voice at all; The zealots still hold the crown for volume.
All a geek should need to know is "externalize PCIe". All the speed of an internal bus (and more) without having to physically put the card into the machine, and even being able to do it at a distance.
You left out "insanely expensive active cabling, safely locked up under patent for its entire realistic lifetime".
This will survive right up until people actually take notice, buy something using it, then shit a uranium brick when they go to buy a longer cord.
Actually, stores aren't required to take returns - if an item is defective it's the manufacturer's responsibility to honor the warranty.
Most US states have non-disclaimable "warrant of merchantability" laws for anything represented as "new" - Which means, in summary, that the store guarantees that they have sold you new, fully-functional merchandise. So yes, they have to take it back, end of story.
That said, good luck getting that enforced this without paying more in court costs than most consumer goods.
You're right, it is a shame that there is no "1040 YOU" form
You keep deliberately avoiding the merit of what I said in favor of attacking minutiae and strawmen. Whether someone enters six or sixty numbers; whether or not someone fills in nothing but a 1040EZ, or has 30 pages of esoteric tax documents even the beancounters don't often see...
Those have no impact on the merit of having a form automatically do basic input validation, purely-internal-calculations, and cross-form propagation.
So... We done here? Thanks for the dance, friend, but I'll sit the next one out if you don't mind.
First, this sounds great - Cheaper and better (plus the "Now with Graphene(tm)" factor), what not to like?
That said, we've heard about dozens of better way to cool chips, from chips where the heat sink passes through the die, to silicon with fluid channels, to built-in peltiers, to microturbines, etc.
These all have the potential to dramatically improve cooling while reducing the cost to do so... And they all have the same glaring flaw - Where do I buy one?
If you have only six tax-related figures to input and you aren't filing the 1040 EZ form (free to do on TaxAct, Turbotax, HRblock, and others) then you already messed up. Go back to the start and try again.
Excluding the details of my actual trade-log (which I download as an already-done 8959 from my broker and it distills down to two numbers on a Schedule D), I literally only had to provide eight me-specific numbers to fill in my 1040 and schedules SE, A, C, D, and SE. I technically had to enter two more (that had really, really obvious default values) on my 5405 just because the IRS insists you go through a bizarre set of steps to end up at the amount of "$500" that I knew before even looking at the form.
I then had to add, subtract, multiply, compare, and look-up those values over and over and over to arrive at the big "I get back this much" number. Funny, but computers add, subtract, multiply, compare, and look-up very, very well. Better than humans, even.
So you can now choose to save face by calling my trade log "dozens of inputs" rather than two. My main point still stands, though - 99% of the work could happen automatically as a cascade of calculations, with zero math or transcription errors in the final result.
What BS? I was talking about making tax software, not filing your own taxes. When you're making tax software it needs to account for all possible scenarios, and it needs to be kept up to date.
Except, you don't need to handle everything - You just need to know the program's limitations, state the big ones up front, and alert the user when they run into one of the less common ones.
I suppose this may count as a matter of interpretation, but I didn't take the FP's question to mean "why can't IBM file its taxes in 46 countries using free software", but rather as "why does the typical American have to pay the Intuit tax just to stay legal?"
The IRS does make you do the math yourself, but I am sure you can find an open source calculator to help with that, right?
Year after year, the IRS lists simple math errors (including transposition errors) as the single most common problem they encounter with returns.
Given that PDFs can have semi-active content (Hell, they support full-blown Javascript) for input validation, why not USE that feature to reduce their most common problem?
Going further, why not include all the common tax forms in one file, so it can update fields between those forms as you go, and exclude the blank ones at print-time? So far, talking about nothing more complex than one-line triggers on a few key fields. Bam, enter a half-dozen numbers in the right places, and hit "print". Total prep time, 30 seconds.
You might well ask, then, why they can't add a simple wizard to semi-intelligently ask for those half-dozen numbers - But to answer that will cost you $40, payable to Intuit.
Seriously, this is the kind of product that is done with help of lawyers and accountants, because it is really complicated.
BS. I have a 9-to-5, have a mortgage, play in the stock market, do contracting on the side, and do my own taxes. And I'd say I've just described more than what 90% of US taxpayers need to file. And seriously? Mind-numbingly easy. Painfully easy. Embarrassing-that-professionals-do-that-for-a-living easy.
Doing ones own taxes involves nothing harder than "add up all the box 2s on your W2s and box 4s on your 1099s and enter that total on line 62 of your 1040". Totally mechanical crap that doesn't require the least bit of thought or familiarity with tax law. When it comes to deductions, you just ask yourself the four or five applicable "nope, can't take that" questions, and throw away those that fail. Only the IRS's annoying insistence on rearranging the damned forms every year makes automating all that crap non-trivial.
Hell, it annoys me that most of us even need to file, since the IRS already knows everything we tell them. We should only need to file a Schedule A come April, and even that only if we wouldn't have otherwise taken the standard deduction. By the end of May, they could just send us a bill or a check, or rarely, a request for more information. Done.
Yes, if you run an S-Corp with substantial foreign assets, you'll probably want to talk to a expert. For the rest of us, don't try to make this sound harder than the reality. Plug and frickin' chug, baby!
Did GPS phone home? Was it "sealing our doom and handing the keys over to a new elite"?
Um, yes, actually - Subpoenaing cell phone records (for the few providers that don't just hand them over to any moron that asks) has become standard practice for legal cases ranging from murder to plain ol' divorce, and Zeus help you if you just happen to have taken a scenic route on the "wrong" day.
Seriously, what does this chip have to do with what youre talking about?
GPS can only reliably track you in the open - As soon as you go into a building, if you have any signal, you can count on it having an error larger than the building itself.
Now "they" can not only tell where you went in terms of address, but a play-by-play of every step you take. Every move you make. Someone will be watching you.
I generally hate it when people don't answer the "real" question posted to an online forum, so for starters: Jabber and rdesktop, and at every turn, promote the use of Google's online collaboration tools if they don't already use them heavily (they actually don't suck, but I wouldn't run a company depending on Google to say non-evil).
That said, you have asked the wrong question. You need to start with "I make my living serving people using X but don't want to use X, should I drink the Xool-ade or risk losing my shirt?"
And if you don't already know the answer to that question, we can't help you.
I bet it honestly never occured to the guys who did this thing that someone might use it for creepy stuff.
I bet it honestly never occurred to all the narcissists posting their current fucking location to a publicly accessible social networking site that maybe, just maybe, someone with less honorable intentions than their BFF-of-the-week might end up seeing that information.
Wake up call, folks - This app came down because the dev needed to obey Apple's policies (ie, use a semi-legitimate means of getting to Foursquare and Facebook rather than just scraping them without permission). Some less legitimate dev could quietly recreate this exact app outside the Apple food-chain, and no one would even know about it.
Obviously if my dislike of TSA policies doesn't overcome my love of my family, there must not be a real issue to begin with. That's logic.
Actually, yes. I agree with you completely in spirit, but as long as enough of us keep putting up with it by flying rather than either driving or skipping the trip, we have passively given our personal (and financial) standing ovation to the current security theatre system.
You want to make a difference? Make the process take as long as possible (if you really must fly). Insist on a pat-down over the pornoscanner. Deliberately set the metal detectors off with harmless-but-embarassing (for the agents) personal items... Like nipple rings. Make sure that you can take a later flight and it won't make much difference - And let the government molesters know as much. Bring a variety of items with you (of no real personal value and that technically pass TSA rules) that will confuse the hell out of them as to whether or not you can take them through security (hint - TSA agents know nothing about electronics - Try taking an old video card in your carry-on and watch them twitch).
The problem there, it annoys all the sheep who just want to get hurry up and get groped so they can visit Grandma. If enough people actually cared enough to act, instead of bitch, just 10% of us holding up the screening process could bring commercial aviation in the US to a screeching halt. Instead, the very, very few of us who do care simply get pulled to the side to enjoy the accusatory glares of our fellow travelers.
I prefer not to have my anus or ass crack or even my scalp explored by curious, impatient, eager fingers. I honestly don't understand people who are willing to be sexually violated in order to avoid losing a few hundred dollars or being seriously inconvenienced.
You apparently misunderstand the situation...
You have paid for that "agent" to fondle you. Enjoy it. And try to moan loudly, it makes them feel like they've done a good job.
However, large oaks that require permits to trim partially shade my roof.
And people ask me why on Earth I chose to move to the middle of nowhere...
/ Finishes sharpening the chainsaw blade and heads back out to drop another three cord // To burn in my totally unregulated outdoor wood-fired boiler next winter /// Actually 11:30pm local, so this will have to wait until morning - But no local noise ordinances would actually prevent me from doing it right now //// Enjoy your HOA.
I don't reveal confidential company information to anyone outside the company nor anyone inside the company without an immediate need to know, and my SSN is just that sort of information.
"Speaking of which, here, Juan, you can fill out your W2 now... What, something wrong? Hey, I can't make you fill it out, but I can't hire you if you don't. See ya!"
Slashdot Mirror
This isn't the south.
:p
True.
In the South, everyone lives in the slums. Anyone who can afford it moves to gated communities either on the coast or up North.
That was actually Australia, not the US.
I apologize that you got modded down (though since you posted AC, I don't suppose it matters much to you except in hiding your words) - Thank you for the correction!
Though in fairness, I would say it doesn't dilute my intended meaning too much - Still a country we would consider a modern western democracy.
They are blocking free speech by users. Surely there must be some "twinge" in their brains that says, "This is wrong to take down people's posts."
The US arrests people for slashfic of the Simpsons. Surely there must be some "twinge" in their brains that says, "This is wrong to conflate cartoons with exploited children."
Every culture has their sacred cows. Come too close, and you get kicked.
Say, have you heard? Hu Jintao came out as a closet furry today! Shhh, don't tell anyone!
Oh yeah, and for some reason we have tanks rolling toward a bunch of hippies in Tiananmen square or something like that. Whatever.
Trust no one. Encrypt everything.
Fact: The NSA has shown itself, historically, to have knowledge and technology 20-30 years ahead of that available to the rest of the human race (case in point, their suggestion to modify DES' S-boxes to strengthen it against differential cryptanalysis, an attack using math no one had even heard of until almost 30 years later).
Fact: A general purpose quantum computer makes all commonly used encryption algorithms worthless (though a number of quantum-resistant algorithms have started to appear, such as http://tbuktu.github.com/ntru/).
Fact: Countless research programs have demonstrated the viability of quantum computing, and you can even buy a 128 bit quantum computer today.
Likely: The NSA already has the quantum equivalent of a Beowulf cluster of these, if not something much, much better.
Conclusion: Using encryption trusts the single least-trustable entity on the planet not to already have the ability to turn it into Swiss cheese. That said, the NSA doesn't give two damns about the "little" things like copyright infringement, kiddy porn, or terrorist plots, so most of us have no reason to care about this. The local doughnut-eaters still have no ability to read your encrypted emails.
It just seems like(or, at least, online) atheism is a lot louder about it's beliefs or with its objections to things.
I'll take "louder" over "punishable by death", TYVM.
And honestly, this whole vocal-atheist thing? I just haven't seen it. Yes, they have a few talking heads that occasionally get attention in the press; How many dozens of Jesse Jacksons / Fred Phelps / dead Dutch cartoonists / burned African witches, do we hear about for every public appearance by Richard Dawkins?
Atheists in most of the western world finally feel moderately safe to have a voice at all; The zealots still hold the crown for volume.
All a geek should need to know is "externalize PCIe". All the speed of an internal bus (and more) without having to physically put the card into the machine, and even being able to do it at a distance.
You left out "insanely expensive active cabling, safely locked up under patent for its entire realistic lifetime".
This will survive right up until people actually take notice, buy something using it, then shit a uranium brick when they go to buy a longer cord.
Easy solution - don't buy product from there
FTFY.
Actually, stores aren't required to take returns - if an item is defective it's the manufacturer's responsibility to honor the warranty.
Most US states have non-disclaimable "warrant of merchantability" laws for anything represented as "new" - Which means, in summary, that the store guarantees that they have sold you new, fully-functional merchandise. So yes, they have to take it back, end of story.
That said, good luck getting that enforced this without paying more in court costs than most consumer goods.
You're right, it is a shame that there is no "1040 YOU" form
You keep deliberately avoiding the merit of what I said in favor of attacking minutiae and strawmen. Whether someone enters six or sixty numbers; whether or not someone fills in nothing but a 1040EZ, or has 30 pages of esoteric tax documents even the beancounters don't often see...
Those have no impact on the merit of having a form automatically do basic input validation, purely-internal-calculations, and cross-form propagation.
So... We done here? Thanks for the dance, friend, but I'll sit the next one out if you don't mind.
First, this sounds great - Cheaper and better (plus the "Now with Graphene(tm)" factor), what not to like?
That said, we've heard about dozens of better way to cool chips, from chips where the heat sink passes through the die, to silicon with fluid channels, to built-in peltiers, to microturbines, etc.
These all have the potential to dramatically improve cooling while reducing the cost to do so... And they all have the same glaring flaw - Where do I buy one?
If you have only six tax-related figures to input and you aren't filing the 1040 EZ form (free to do on TaxAct, Turbotax, HRblock, and others) then you already messed up. Go back to the start and try again.
Excluding the details of my actual trade-log (which I download as an already-done 8959 from my broker and it distills down to two numbers on a Schedule D), I literally only had to provide eight me-specific numbers to fill in my 1040 and schedules SE, A, C, D, and SE. I technically had to enter two more (that had really, really obvious default values) on my 5405 just because the IRS insists you go through a bizarre set of steps to end up at the amount of "$500" that I knew before even looking at the form.
I then had to add, subtract, multiply, compare, and look-up those values over and over and over to arrive at the big "I get back this much" number. Funny, but computers add, subtract, multiply, compare, and look-up very, very well. Better than humans, even.
So you can now choose to save face by calling my trade log "dozens of inputs" rather than two. My main point still stands, though - 99% of the work could happen automatically as a cascade of calculations, with zero math or transcription errors in the final result.
What BS? I was talking about making tax software, not filing your own taxes. When you're making tax software it needs to account for all possible scenarios, and it needs to be kept up to date.
Except, you don't need to handle everything - You just need to know the program's limitations, state the big ones up front, and alert the user when they run into one of the less common ones.
I suppose this may count as a matter of interpretation, but I didn't take the FP's question to mean "why can't IBM file its taxes in 46 countries using free software", but rather as "why does the typical American have to pay the Intuit tax just to stay legal?"
The IRS does make you do the math yourself, but I am sure you can find an open source calculator to help with that, right?
Year after year, the IRS lists simple math errors (including transposition errors) as the single most common problem they encounter with returns.
Given that PDFs can have semi-active content (Hell, they support full-blown Javascript) for input validation, why not USE that feature to reduce their most common problem?
Going further, why not include all the common tax forms in one file, so it can update fields between those forms as you go, and exclude the blank ones at print-time? So far, talking about nothing more complex than one-line triggers on a few key fields. Bam, enter a half-dozen numbers in the right places, and hit "print". Total prep time, 30 seconds.
You might well ask, then, why they can't add a simple wizard to semi-intelligently ask for those half-dozen numbers - But to answer that will cost you $40, payable to Intuit.
Doesn't her broker offer downloads of an automagically filled-in form 8949 (nee Schedule D1), no fuss no muss?
If not - She need a new broker. You don't need TurboTax to fill in what amounts to a simple spreadsheet with a one-line summary.
Seriously, this is the kind of product that is done with help of lawyers and accountants, because it is really complicated.
BS. I have a 9-to-5, have a mortgage, play in the stock market, do contracting on the side, and do my own taxes. And I'd say I've just described more than what 90% of US taxpayers need to file. And seriously? Mind-numbingly easy. Painfully easy. Embarrassing-that-professionals-do-that-for-a-living easy.
Doing ones own taxes involves nothing harder than "add up all the box 2s on your W2s and box 4s on your 1099s and enter that total on line 62 of your 1040". Totally mechanical crap that doesn't require the least bit of thought or familiarity with tax law. When it comes to deductions, you just ask yourself the four or five applicable "nope, can't take that" questions, and throw away those that fail. Only the IRS's annoying insistence on rearranging the damned forms every year makes automating all that crap non-trivial.
Hell, it annoys me that most of us even need to file, since the IRS already knows everything we tell them. We should only need to file a Schedule A come April, and even that only if we wouldn't have otherwise taken the standard deduction. By the end of May, they could just send us a bill or a check, or rarely, a request for more information. Done.
Yes, if you run an S-Corp with substantial foreign assets, you'll probably want to talk to a expert. For the rest of us, don't try to make this sound harder than the reality. Plug and frickin' chug, baby!
Citations, or simple conspiracy?
More common than you might think.
Did GPS phone home? Was it "sealing our doom and handing the keys over to a new elite"?
Um, yes, actually - Subpoenaing cell phone records (for the few providers that don't just hand them over to any moron that asks) has become standard practice for legal cases ranging from murder to plain ol' divorce, and Zeus help you if you just happen to have taken a scenic route on the "wrong" day.
Seriously, what does this chip have to do with what youre talking about?
GPS can only reliably track you in the open - As soon as you go into a building, if you have any signal, you can count on it having an error larger than the building itself.
Now "they" can not only tell where you went in terms of address, but a play-by-play of every step you take. Every move you make. Someone will be watching you.
I generally hate it when people don't answer the "real" question posted to an online forum, so for starters: Jabber and rdesktop, and at every turn, promote the use of Google's online collaboration tools if they don't already use them heavily (they actually don't suck, but I wouldn't run a company depending on Google to say non-evil).
That said, you have asked the wrong question. You need to start with "I make my living serving people using X but don't want to use X, should I drink the Xool-ade or risk losing my shirt?"
And if you don't already know the answer to that question, we can't help you.
I bet it honestly never occured to the guys who did this thing that someone might use it for creepy stuff.
I bet it honestly never occurred to all the narcissists posting their current fucking location to a publicly accessible social networking site that maybe, just maybe, someone with less honorable intentions than their BFF-of-the-week might end up seeing that information.
Wake up call, folks - This app came down because the dev needed to obey Apple's policies (ie, use a semi-legitimate means of getting to Foursquare and Facebook rather than just scraping them without permission). Some less legitimate dev could quietly recreate this exact app outside the Apple food-chain, and no one would even know about it.
Don't worry, friend - I only broadcast using 45KV sparkgap, not some wussy soft-tunable USB dongle.
Obviously if my dislike of TSA policies doesn't overcome my love of my family, there must not be a real issue to begin with. That's logic.
Actually, yes. I agree with you completely in spirit, but as long as enough of us keep putting up with it by flying rather than either driving or skipping the trip, we have passively given our personal (and financial) standing ovation to the current security theatre system.
You want to make a difference? Make the process take as long as possible (if you really must fly). Insist on a pat-down over the pornoscanner. Deliberately set the metal detectors off with harmless-but-embarassing (for the agents) personal items... Like nipple rings. Make sure that you can take a later flight and it won't make much difference - And let the government molesters know as much. Bring a variety of items with you (of no real personal value and that technically pass TSA rules) that will confuse the hell out of them as to whether or not you can take them through security (hint - TSA agents know nothing about electronics - Try taking an old video card in your carry-on and watch them twitch).
The problem there, it annoys all the sheep who just want to get hurry up and get groped so they can visit Grandma. If enough people actually cared enough to act, instead of bitch, just 10% of us holding up the screening process could bring commercial aviation in the US to a screeching halt. Instead, the very, very few of us who do care simply get pulled to the side to enjoy the accusatory glares of our fellow travelers.
Baaaa!
I prefer not to have my anus or ass crack or even my scalp explored by curious, impatient, eager fingers. I honestly don't understand people who are willing to be sexually violated in order to avoid losing a few hundred dollars or being seriously inconvenienced.
You apparently misunderstand the situation...
You have paid for that "agent" to fondle you. Enjoy it. And try to moan loudly, it makes them feel like they've done a good job.
However, large oaks that require permits to trim partially shade my roof.
// To burn in my totally unregulated outdoor wood-fired boiler next winter
/// Actually 11:30pm local, so this will have to wait until morning - But no local noise ordinances would actually prevent me from doing it right now
//// Enjoy your HOA.
And people ask me why on Earth I chose to move to the middle of nowhere...
/ Finishes sharpening the chainsaw blade and heads back out to drop another three cord
I don't reveal confidential company information to anyone outside the company nor anyone inside the company without an immediate need to know, and my SSN is just that sort of information.
"Speaking of which, here, Juan, you can fill out your W2 now... What, something wrong? Hey, I can't make you fill it out, but I can't hire you if you don't. See ya!"