It would probably be better to make it deductible up to a point. Small brands and new businesses need advertising to stay afloat and have people know they exist.
The most obnoxious advertising is, for the most part, being used by the largest companies, so putting an arbitrary cap on deducting advertising expenses (like $100k or something) would enable small businesses to grow while still shutting out a lot of the most intrusive ads.
I haven't traded any computer services to other people, but I have traded artwork to other people who have fixed my computer or done small programming favours for me and the like.
'Course none of that was as good as having my own programmer boyfriend, but the current one has his own redeeming qualities too... Perl is just not one of them. =)
You should try to catch it again if they repeat it... it was interesting enough that even my "is this one of those science show thingies you like???" boyfriend managed to enjoy it. =)
This is interesting... I have heard other explanations for Atlantis... but the best one I've heard was on a Discovery channel (I think) special a few weeks ago. Apparently there is an island in the Meditterranean that was highly volcanic at one point, and kind of imploded on itself and caused massive tidal waves and such in the area... I think there's evidence in the surrounding area, but at the time of the documentary they hadn't managed to explore the crater yet. There was news of a rather advanced civilzation there for the time; running water, indoor plumbing, the kind of thing that would be rare in the ancient world -- not spaceships or anything. I tried to find an article on it online, but didn't come up with anything. I wonder if these news items are related (it seemed a very recently made documentary). The articles are rather light on info. Anyone else see this thing or know what I'm talking about? It could've been on one of the History channels too, because I watch those about 90% of the time.
It's not just you. I looooove Star Trek, but that always bugged the crap out of me too. It wasn't quite so bad in TNG on out, but that sort of thing is one of the things that makes TOS so painful to watch (and delightfully campy =P0.
A lot of people (myself included, for a long time) were put off by the perceived arrogance of its hardcore fans, and statements like that, i.e. if a guy like that watches that show, then I probably wouldn't be interested... it had nothing to do with not really understanding science. One of the reasons I can't stand Star Wars is because the rabid fans have just completely ruined any enjoyment I got out of the films by almost making a religion out of it (Matrix was another one.)
A lot of people perceive sci-fi as the domain of nerds and weirdos that dress up like characters from the movie/tv show/whatever, and in enough cases they're right. If it had the appearance of even being more accessible to the average viewer, I'm sure it would get higher ratings.
I think the fact that my TV gets about six different Discovery channels, two History channels and a Biography channel proves that there is a large portion of the population that is, in fact, interested in science. (Again, myself included, though I'm less interested in speculative science... a.k.a. sci-fi, because of the "fi" part.)
I really don't like the attitude I see more and more towards the "average joe" on this site, as if to imply some kind of moral superiority. Everyone has different interests and just because something doesn't appeal to the majority of the population, doesn't mean it's stupid or they're afraid of it or don't understand it. It just means they don't like it. Same as art, same as music, same as everything else.
It was pretty thoroughly and harshly debunked within a few months afterwards by most experts in dating, and deemed a forgery to some extent, but there are still people who refuse to accept that explanation.
They have been debating the "dark splotches" in photos on top of that mountain for years now. I'm fairly certain at one point they even dated samples, and it wasn't old enough, but I'm not positive on that. I know there have been many, many photo expeditions there before.
That was a good documentary... they also recently aired a newer one about evidence of a regional flood that they think may have some connections to the ancient flood myths in that region, and may have possibly created the Black Sea. It aired in the last couple of weeks on one of the Discovery channels, if you can find some past listings, though they usually rerun their programming enough so you may be able to catch it.
From the most recent information I've come across, they believe that the tale of Noah's Ark is just a later version of a similar flood-myth that was held by many ancient cultures, including the Sumerians (where Gilgamesh was the builder of the boat). This is very possible, and they're also currently investigating man-made artifiacts they suspect in the bottom of the Black Sea, searching for evidence of a flood in ancient history.
I don't have a link to the information about the research being done in the Black Sea, but there are some good websites about the connection between the Bible flood-myth and the flood-myths of other near Eastern cultures if you do a Google search. The truth is probably that there was probably some sort of real flood, and there may have even been a boat of before unheard-of proportions, but there isn't any geological evidence for a "world-wide" flood. The people living at the time may have believed their world was covered in water, but it was very likely just a regional thing, and a story that got passed down from generation to generation orally in different forms before finding its way into the Bible in the form of Noah's Ark.
I think the resentment here stems from the fact that there aren't any Sumerians out digging around trying to "prove" their myths. You know as well as any that somehow if they DO find a huge, ancient boat, that it will spawn thousands of "believers" who will use this as some sort of scientific proof that their religion was right all along, neener-neener-neener. When the ancient Mayans start trying to push their religious beliefs on me and using coincidental evidence as "proof," well, I'll be cranky about them too. =P
I'd like to see a GOOD Final Fantasy movie based on one of the actual games. Six has always been my favourite, I'm sure the story is strong enough to be made into a good movie, but there's so much to it that two hours may not be enough. It might make a good two-part or three-part movie like LOTR, though, I doubt it has enough audience to have anyone know what the Hell it was.
I'd wager to say most movies made from games in the past (like the awful Streetfighter movie and Super Mario Bros) are just trying to capitalize on the name. I did like the first Mortal Kombat movie, though, and Tomb Raider was silly but at least entertaining.
Maybe we need more movies made from RPGs, they seem to have more in the way of actual plot to begin with.
Right now I keep everything backed up to a second hard-drive and on disk... it doesn't have to last forever, but if CDs randomly go bad with no way to tell, and after three hard drive crashes this year alone I have little faith in them lasting... are there any other good long-term ways to store large amounts of data, other than what I'm already doing? (In my case, huge scans of image files.)
Since reading a previous story I already make sure I store all my CDs horizontally, and use the good, more expensive ones for anything I'm archiving for the long term.
LOL... well that was basically the point I was making. I meant more like if you have 8 hours of work but spend two hours picking your nose and it ends up taking you 10, well then (at least if you're honest) you'd only bill for the 8 hours you SHOULD have been working. I know lots of people surf the net and stuff like that at their job -- I'm just a now self-employed ex-retail custom framer so I've never had a job with a desk or a computer.
No it doesn't. If you're self-employed you get whatever you ask for your work. I work about 50-60 hours a week, but I also make things that eventually I'll get paid for when they sell. I'm not working extra hours that I don't get paid for at all, as you would in the case of an outside employer that gives you extra work then refuses to pay you for additional time.
If you're self-employed and do 8 hours work, you charge for 8 hours work. If you do 10, you charge for 10. If it takes you to 10 hours to do 8 hours of work, well, that's your fault. OTOH, if you finish 8 hours of work in 8 hours and an employer asks you to do two more unpaid hours of additional work -- that's unpaid overtime.
Also, when you're self-employed, you choose your hours and what you're willing to work for and how much you're willing to do it. It's a whole different beast from having to suck up to a demanding boss and do what's demanded of you or else be fired.
Of course, I'm a bigger hardass on myself than any employer ever was, but then, I'm just a lowly grunt not an IT worker, and I've always been paid for my overtime, on the rare occasions they let me have it.
For all the difficulty and struggle that comes with it, it's a good time to be a contractor or self-employed.
They (some dept. in the govmn't) also put out a press-release type thing months ago instructing employers how to avoid overtime pay under general circumstances. Maybe someone could help me out and dig it up...
Your government, always fighting for the little guy instead of big business. Gotta love it.
Same here -- I've had my domain name for about 4-5 years now, and while it wasn't bad for a long time because I was careful to always muddle up my address, at some point this year my address got on some big spammer's lists and that was it. My catchall default account for non-existent addresses and the "default" address gets around 300 pieces of junk mail a day, and that's constantly increasing, and SpamAssassin catches another 300-500 a day over and above that. It's awful. When I first installed SpamAssassin it did a good job of cutting down my spam to 3-4 making it to my actual Inbox a day, but now the volume has gotten so high that I'm starting to get about a dozen or two making it through, and that's just getting worse.
It isn't as simple as changing addresses... I have a business people need to contact me for, business cards, letterhead, and everything has my email address on it. On my site for every 1 real email I get there's at least a dozen spams. What is going to happen when 50 or 75% of ALL email is spam?? Filters just aren't cutting it anymore... if I am losing legitimate business mail in my filters there's no way to know it. The volume of filtered mail is too great to check one by one, and without the filters, my entire email is virtually worthless.
Slashdot Mirror
Technically, pidgeons are rock doves, I believe, so you should be in the clear.
It would probably be better to make it deductible up to a point. Small brands and new businesses need advertising to stay afloat and have people know they exist.
The most obnoxious advertising is, for the most part, being used by the largest companies, so putting an arbitrary cap on deducting advertising expenses (like $100k or something) would enable small businesses to grow while still shutting out a lot of the most intrusive ads.
I haven't traded any computer services to other people, but I have traded artwork to other people who have fixed my computer or done small programming favours for me and the like.
'Course none of that was as good as having my own programmer boyfriend, but the current one has his own redeeming qualities too... Perl is just not one of them. =)
Oh... that makes sense. Thought maybe they were hiding Jimmy Hoffa and those things that make crop circles down there too, or something. =D
Everyone knows that hot chick and Leonard Nemoy live there. =)~
Is (was) there any reason that they give, why they won't allow divers there??
You should try to catch it again if they repeat it... it was interesting enough that even my "is this one of those science show thingies you like???" boyfriend managed to enjoy it. =)
Oooh... it was bugging me, so I looked some more; this isn't from the documentary but I'm pretty sure they're talking about the same place:
http://www.aarp.org/destinations/Articles/a2002-05 -22-destinations_santorini.html
This is interesting... I have heard other explanations for Atlantis... but the best one I've heard was on a Discovery channel (I think) special a few weeks ago. Apparently there is an island in the Meditterranean that was highly volcanic at one point, and kind of imploded on itself and caused massive tidal waves and such in the area... I think there's evidence in the surrounding area, but at the time of the documentary they hadn't managed to explore the crater yet. There was news of a rather advanced civilzation there for the time; running water, indoor plumbing, the kind of thing that would be rare in the ancient world -- not spaceships or anything. I tried to find an article on it online, but didn't come up with anything. I wonder if these news items are related (it seemed a very recently made documentary). The articles are rather light on info. Anyone else see this thing or know what I'm talking about? It could've been on one of the History channels too, because I watch those about 90% of the time.
It's not just you. I looooove Star Trek, but that always bugged the crap out of me too. It wasn't quite so bad in TNG on out, but that sort of thing is one of the things that makes TOS so painful to watch (and delightfully campy =P0.
A lot of people (myself included, for a long time) were put off by the perceived arrogance of its hardcore fans, and statements like that, i.e. if a guy like that watches that show, then I probably wouldn't be interested... it had nothing to do with not really understanding science. One of the reasons I can't stand Star Wars is because the rabid fans have just completely ruined any enjoyment I got out of the films by almost making a religion out of it (Matrix was another one.)
A lot of people perceive sci-fi as the domain of nerds and weirdos that dress up like characters from the movie/tv show/whatever, and in enough cases they're right. If it had the appearance of even being more accessible to the average viewer, I'm sure it would get higher ratings.
I think the fact that my TV gets about six different Discovery channels, two History channels and a Biography channel proves that there is a large portion of the population that is, in fact, interested in science. (Again, myself included, though I'm less interested in speculative science... a.k.a. sci-fi, because of the "fi" part.)
I really don't like the attitude I see more and more towards the "average joe" on this site, as if to imply some kind of moral superiority. Everyone has different interests and just because something doesn't appeal to the majority of the population, doesn't mean it's stupid or they're afraid of it or don't understand it. It just means they don't like it. Same as art, same as music, same as everything else.
Whoops, my mistake...*blush*
Sure thing:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/science/06/18/jesus.b ox/
Of this, a couple of years ago:
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/10/21/jesus.It was pretty thoroughly and harshly debunked within a few months afterwards by most experts in dating, and deemed a forgery to some extent, but there are still people who refuse to accept that explanation.
They have been debating the "dark splotches" in photos on top of that mountain for years now. I'm fairly certain at one point they even dated samples, and it wasn't old enough, but I'm not positive on that. I know there have been many, many photo expeditions there before.
That was a good documentary... they also recently aired a newer one about evidence of a regional flood that they think may have some connections to the ancient flood myths in that region, and may have possibly created the Black Sea. It aired in the last couple of weeks on one of the Discovery channels, if you can find some past listings, though they usually rerun their programming enough so you may be able to catch it.
From the most recent information I've come across, they believe that the tale of Noah's Ark is just a later version of a similar flood-myth that was held by many ancient cultures, including the Sumerians (where Gilgamesh was the builder of the boat). This is very possible, and they're also currently investigating man-made artifiacts they suspect in the bottom of the Black Sea, searching for evidence of a flood in ancient history.
I don't have a link to the information about the research being done in the Black Sea, but there are some good websites about the connection between the Bible flood-myth and the flood-myths of other near Eastern cultures if you do a Google search. The truth is probably that there was probably some sort of real flood, and there may have even been a boat of before unheard-of proportions, but there isn't any geological evidence for a "world-wide" flood. The people living at the time may have believed their world was covered in water, but it was very likely just a regional thing, and a story that got passed down from generation to generation orally in different forms before finding its way into the Bible in the form of Noah's Ark.
I think the resentment here stems from the fact that there aren't any Sumerians out digging around trying to "prove" their myths. You know as well as any that somehow if they DO find a huge, ancient boat, that it will spawn thousands of "believers" who will use this as some sort of scientific proof that their religion was right all along, neener-neener-neener. When the ancient Mayans start trying to push their religious beliefs on me and using coincidental evidence as "proof," well, I'll be cranky about them too. =P
or at least a really, really long time, if I promise I'll never reproduce (and voluntarily undergo surgery to make sure of it?)
I'm not afraid of dying, but I am afraid of not getting to do everything I wanted to before it happens.
I'd like to see a GOOD Final Fantasy movie based on one of the actual games. Six has always been my favourite, I'm sure the story is strong enough to be made into a good movie, but there's so much to it that two hours may not be enough. It might make a good two-part or three-part movie like LOTR, though, I doubt it has enough audience to have anyone know what the Hell it was.
I'd wager to say most movies made from games in the past (like the awful Streetfighter movie and Super Mario Bros) are just trying to capitalize on the name. I did like the first Mortal Kombat movie, though, and Tomb Raider was silly but at least entertaining.
Maybe we need more movies made from RPGs, they seem to have more in the way of actual plot to begin with.
Right now I keep everything backed up to a second hard-drive and on disk... it doesn't have to last forever, but if CDs randomly go bad with no way to tell, and after three hard drive crashes this year alone I have little faith in them lasting... are there any other good long-term ways to store large amounts of data, other than what I'm already doing? (In my case, huge scans of image files.)
Since reading a previous story I already make sure I store all my CDs horizontally, and use the good, more expensive ones for anything I'm archiving for the long term.
It's a glue dispensing robot, which means that it will be followed where-ever it goes by kids in Slipknot t-shirts pestering you for change.
On the plus side, it will make it rather easy for these rampant glue-junkies to be brought to justice, making the streets safer for us all.
LOL... well that was basically the point I was making. I meant more like if you have 8 hours of work but spend two hours picking your nose and it ends up taking you 10, well then (at least if you're honest) you'd only bill for the 8 hours you SHOULD have been working. I know lots of people surf the net and stuff like that at their job -- I'm just a now self-employed ex-retail custom framer so I've never had a job with a desk or a computer.
No it doesn't. If you're self-employed you get whatever you ask for your work. I work about 50-60 hours a week, but I also make things that eventually I'll get paid for when they sell. I'm not working extra hours that I don't get paid for at all, as you would in the case of an outside employer that gives you extra work then refuses to pay you for additional time.
If you're self-employed and do 8 hours work, you charge for 8 hours work. If you do 10, you charge for 10. If it takes you to 10 hours to do 8 hours of work, well, that's your fault. OTOH, if you finish 8 hours of work in 8 hours and an employer asks you to do two more unpaid hours of additional work -- that's unpaid overtime.
Also, when you're self-employed, you choose your hours and what you're willing to work for and how much you're willing to do it. It's a whole different beast from having to suck up to a demanding boss and do what's demanded of you or else be fired.
Of course, I'm a bigger hardass on myself than any employer ever was, but then, I'm just a lowly grunt not an IT worker, and I've always been paid for my overtime, on the rare occasions they let me have it.
Ah, here it is:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/ 2001830565_overtime06.html
That's an article about it, I used to have a copy of the actual document they're referring to.
For all the difficulty and struggle that comes with it, it's a good time to be a contractor or self-employed.
They (some dept. in the govmn't) also put out a press-release type thing months ago instructing employers how to avoid overtime pay under general circumstances. Maybe someone could help me out and dig it up...
Your government, always fighting for the little guy instead of big business. Gotta love it.
Same here -- I've had my domain name for about 4-5 years now, and while it wasn't bad for a long time because I was careful to always muddle up my address, at some point this year my address got on some big spammer's lists and that was it. My catchall default account for non-existent addresses and the "default" address gets around 300 pieces of junk mail a day, and that's constantly increasing, and SpamAssassin catches another 300-500 a day over and above that. It's awful. When I first installed SpamAssassin it did a good job of cutting down my spam to 3-4 making it to my actual Inbox a day, but now the volume has gotten so high that I'm starting to get about a dozen or two making it through, and that's just getting worse.
It isn't as simple as changing addresses... I have a business people need to contact me for, business cards, letterhead, and everything has my email address on it. On my site for every 1 real email I get there's at least a dozen spams. What is going to happen when 50 or 75% of ALL email is spam?? Filters just aren't cutting it anymore... if I am losing legitimate business mail in my filters there's no way to know it. The volume of filtered mail is too great to check one by one, and without the filters, my entire email is virtually worthless.