Back in the early 80's I worked for a company that did third-party service for all sorts of computer-related stuff. We serviced at least two different lines of ATM machines, for competing companies. We had test machines in our training center for the service guys to play with.
Hardware wise, they were the most complicated, Rube-Goldberg-esque contraptions you can imagine. The card readers and bill handlers were the worst. The bill handlers had to be calibrated using real money, so the repair center kept several hundred dollars in cash locked in a safe at all times, and replaced it weekly (the handlers didn't like old bills).
The group I was in was responsible for tracking the software problem reports that came in from the field, and forwarding them to the manufacturers. While I found some of the bugs downright hysterical, or just plain bizarre, others were scary enough to make you consider avoiding the machines alltogether.
Doesn't look like they've learned anything in 20 years.
A couple of swarthy guys in ill-fitting pinstriped suits in the offices of Amazon.com:
"Gee, Mr. Bezos, it would really be a shame if the response time to your servers was to get SO much worse, but after all, bn.com is paying us to make sure their customers get good response, and the bandwidth they need has to come from SOMEWHERE. Now if you were to make a small contribution to our "infrastructure fund", we can see if there's anything we can do to prevent that..."
I had a friend who was about as anti-regulation as one can get, and even he had to admit that a free market can turn to extortion very quickly without at least basic rules to make sure everyone has access to a level playing field.
Concert seats are a fixed supply, so traditional economics apply. The point where the demand drops off is the proper price point. If that's $100, $200, $300, it doesn't matter. Basic economics.
But these rules don't apply to music downloads, where the supply is infinite. THERE, the idea is to sell for as little as possible to cover your costs, and profit based on quantity.
This DOES tie back to the concert sales, but not like they're claiming. The more copies of your song there are floating around, the more people are going to hear it, and maybe want to see you perform live. That translates into HIGHER demand for those scarce concert tickets, which drives the price up.
Subsidising the concert ticket prices with CD sales just skews the model. Let 'em charge what they can get, and the market will sort it all out.
I'm not sure exactly who made the system in my new Honda, but in the six months I've had it, I've found at least four fairly major errors. The one in the article would have been easy to solve though: There's a button on mine labeled "detour" that calculates an alternate route if you can't follow the suggested one.
As for updating the database, well, the company has a mechanism for reporting errors, but they only distribute new DVDs once a year or so, and they charge $180. They don't give discounts if you find bugs in their product.
Never mind that the theater isn't a practical option for some people. My wife is disabled (arthritis), and theater seats aren't comfortable for her. She also can't walk easily from the car all the way to the last theater at the local googol-plex (which is where the movie we want to see invariably is). She doesn't like using a wheelchair unless it's absolutely necessary. We have a nice setup at home that allows her to watch movies in comfort, so we almost always end up waiting for movies to come to PPV or DVD to see them.
..."Limited audience", high cost of publishing, and "ROI" stuff. For volatile subject matter, it makes some sense. My Windows 2000 MCSE books cost like $60 each, but they're large hardcover books with a useful life of maybe 2 years. Any left over are going to be like two year old calendars. Essentially no value, even on the discount table.
But "The C programming language", written in 1978, and (according to Amazon) last updated in 1998, is a 274 page paperback. It has, no doubt, sold THOUSANDS (millions?) of copies over the years, and easily paid off it's production and update costs.
But Amazon is still charging $44.20 for it. I wonder how much Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie get out of it.
This is just plain greed on the part of the publisher. They charge what they can get, partly because they know it's usually employers that buy the books and write them off, or students who have no choice.
It's certainly going to get harder. I live in New Jersey, and own a business. Every year I have to file a report with the state, and in the past it went on a paper form with my tax return. This year, it was filed online. ONLY online. No other option. I also do my sales tax reporting online, and the state has stopped sending me paper forms, so it looks like that's going to be mandatory too.
I've been renewing my car registrations via the web for several years. I wonder how long before they make that the standard too.
My son goes to Centennary College in NJ, and they hand out laptops to all incoming students before the first day of class. He happened to get a Thinkpad, but his friend got an HP. The whole place is wired/unwired. Don't know if it helps their learning, but it does seem to make it easier to swap email and do reports in a consistent (M$) manner.
Which basically says Apple hasn't done anything wrong. All right, you can't play WMA tunes on other devices, but you CAN play MP3's on iPod, and you can use RealPlayer to manage it in addition to iTunes.
This really isn't much different from Palm devices and the Palm Desktop.
A number of years ago, I worked for a fairly prestigious research hospital, and we had a handful of highly paid doctors and researchers. Like most large companies, we had a mainframe-based commercial payroll system. We also had a SECOND payroll system, just for the highest-paid researchers. It seemed that due to tax law changes, some of the deduction fields in the files weren't large enough to cope with the amounts. It was a source of some amusement, and a little resentment, among the tech staff.
Eventually, they converted to a more current product, and the second system was eliminated.
In these days of relational databases and abstracted fields/elements, I can't see this being an issue, but you never know.
I still have mine, hidden away in a padded case in a closet. Far as I know, it still works, and I still have most of the games.
When Intellivision first came out, I worked for the company that repaired them. (We also repaired the Colecovision.) Those controllers were a NIGHTMARE, always failing, although mine behaved perfectly.
Re:Keep in mind your personal liability
on
Is a Weblog a Business?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I only found an accountant AFTER I set up my S-Corp, and he told me I'd done it slightly wrong. He actually recommended an "LLP", which is a new type of business, although I don't know all of the details.
The problem with going down this road is that (like I said in my other post) it opens up a whole new level of paperwork.
The idea, like he says above, is to limit your "liability", so if someone sues the blog, they (theoretically) can't take your house, but in practice, if things aren't set up EXACTLY right, they can "pierce the shield", and get you anyway.
I have a friend who ran a successful computer service business as a Sole Proprietorship for YEARS. He avoided the liability issue by doing whatever he had to to keep his customers happy. In the long run, he found it was less expensive than trying to protect himself by incorporating.
I don't know where you live, but that number sounds awfully high. I pay an annual fee (like $50) in New Jersey for my S-Corporation, and that's it. Unless you have a storefront, need permits, etc., there shouldn't be any other periodic fees to the state or town. You register the DBA/Fictitious Name with the state, they send you a letter saying it's been done, and you go to the bank. If your town has screwy rules, go to a bank in a different town.
The only time this becomes a problem is if you're running an OBVIOUS business out of your house in a residential area, or if one of your neighbors gets mad at you and reports you.
But for a Blog business? If it's an issue, get a PO box (NOT at a Post office) in a cooperative town, and use it as the official address.
YMMV though, I can't speak for all of the screwy rules around the country.
First of all, there really isn't any such thing as a "Licensed Business". Not in IT, in any state I know of anyway. Anyone can do work and get paid, as long as they report the income. Anyone can register a "Fictitious Name", open a bank account, and collect money. Licensing only comes into it when your business is regulated in some way, and then it's usually the "instance" (store, bar, restaurant, etc.) that's licensed. The business itself isn't.
If you SELL STUFF, you have to register with your state to collect sales tax, and (in my state, anway) submit periodic reports on how much you're collecting. If you collect it, you have to send it to the state either quarterly or monthly, depending on how much is involved. In my state, services aren't taxable, so I rarely collect sales tax, but I do occasionally sell stuff, so I'm properly registered, and collect and forward the proper taxes.
Someone else mentioned Estimated Taxes, and that's a good point. If you're making more than a certain amount either unreported, or on 1099, you should make quarterly payments. Otherwise, the IRS will assess an "underpayment penalty" when you file. The leading personal tax programs can help you figure this out.
If your advertisers issue checks directly to you, in your name, you really don't have to do anything except report the income on your personal income tax return. Even if they don't issue you 1099s, you should do this. They pretty much HAVE to issue the 1099s though, in order to write off the expense. It's a sort of cross-check, see?
If they're happy working this way, going farther is more up to you.
If you want them to issue the checks to a separate entity, like a company, you have to go through some additional hoops. You have to register the company name ("Fictitious Name") with the state, and then go to your bank and set up a Business checking account to receive the money. It's still YOU, YOUR income, you're just providing a separate pocket to drop the cash into so you can keep track of it.
The next set of levels come up if you want further separation of the company from you, if there is more than one person involved (partnership), or if you want to protect yourself from being sued. Then you need something like an LLP or a Corporation. Some companies won't deal with individuals or Sole Proprietorships because they don't like the trouble of issuing 1099s, so they will require you to set up a corporation. Reporting income from Corp-to-Corp payments is the responsiblity of the receiving party, so the payer can just issue the check and be done with it.
The problem with doing this, is it opens you up to a whole new level of paperwork and reporting for very little good reason. (One friend of mine ran an extremely successful and profitable computer service business as a sole proprietorship for YEARS because he just didn't want to bother with the paperwork.)
Rule of thumb: Do as little as your customers will accept and you feel comfortable with. As long as you pay the proper taxes on the income, generally speaking, nobody will bother you, and even if the IRS comes calling, you can show them you've followed the rules.
DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer or accountant, but I've had my own consulting business (S-Corporation) for close to ten years now, and I have friends and associates who also run their own businesses in various forms, so I have some familiarity with the ins and outs.
Every Pratchett fan knows that light slows down if you apply a strong Magical field...
Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it's wrong. No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.
The relevant page from the article is here described in the heading as "improbable", but the article text says "impossible". Obviously the author doesn't read Slashdot.
Couple months back, I read an article about various aspects of Star Wars Science, and how plausible each was thought to be. Curiously, thin-air holograms were at or near the top of the list as "probably impossible".
... made by their company, Astronomers have now decided that the Milky Way galaxy is shaped like a giant Cinnabon .
Remember, whatever you do will be obsolete quickly
on
Creating a Clever Home?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I've been into this for close to 30 years now. I've been in my current house for 17 years, and I've rewired FOUR TIMES as the technology has changed.
I can absolutely tell you that the most important thing you can provide is ACCESS. Several others have mentioned conduits and wiring channels, and I can't overemphasize how much I agree with that. The only thing that's saved me is the suspended ceiling downstairs, and the clear opening between there and the attic. You don't want to be opening walls a year or two down the road because you need a new kind of wire somewhere.
X10 is great when it works, but it's inherently limited. Unfortunately, the alternatives are WAY more expensive. You can do a really cool setup with a couple hundred dollars worth of X10 stuff, and old Linux PC, and a web app from Freshmeat. Start off simple, you can always add wireless tablets as touch screens down the road when someone is selling them off cheap.
Slashdot Mirror
Will he go after monks and nuns next?
No, I suppose not.
Back in the early 80's I worked for a company that did third-party service for all sorts of computer-related stuff. We serviced at least two different lines of ATM machines, for competing companies. We had test machines in our training center for the service guys to play with.
Hardware wise, they were the most complicated, Rube-Goldberg-esque contraptions you can imagine. The card readers and bill handlers were the worst. The bill handlers had to be calibrated using real money, so the repair center kept several hundred dollars in cash locked in a safe at all times, and replaced it weekly (the handlers didn't like old bills).
The group I was in was responsible for tracking the software problem reports that came in from the field, and forwarding them to the manufacturers. While I found some of the bugs downright hysterical, or just plain bizarre, others were scary enough to make you consider avoiding the machines alltogether.
Doesn't look like they've learned anything in 20 years.
Picture if you will..
A couple of swarthy guys in ill-fitting pinstriped suits in the offices of Amazon.com:
"Gee, Mr. Bezos, it would really be a shame if the response time to your servers was to get SO much worse, but after all, bn.com is paying us to make sure their customers get good response, and the bandwidth they need has to come from SOMEWHERE. Now if you were to make a small contribution to our "infrastructure fund", we can see if there's anything we can do to prevent that..."
I had a friend who was about as anti-regulation as one can get, and even he had to admit that a free market can turn to extortion very quickly without at least basic rules to make sure everyone has access to a level playing field.
Maybe global warming is causing an increase in the sponge population.
Were you, by any chance, at the same EMC forum session I was in NY on 6/6? You sound just like the presenter there..
Or, look at it this way:
Concert seats are a fixed supply, so traditional economics apply. The point where the demand drops off is the proper price point. If that's $100, $200, $300, it doesn't matter. Basic economics.
But these rules don't apply to music downloads, where the supply is infinite. THERE, the idea is to sell for as little as possible to cover your costs, and profit based on quantity.
This DOES tie back to the concert sales, but not like they're claiming. The more copies of your song there are floating around, the more people are going to hear it, and maybe want to see you perform live. That translates into HIGHER demand for those scarce concert tickets, which drives the price up.
Subsidising the concert ticket prices with CD sales just skews the model. Let 'em charge what they can get, and the market will sort it all out.
I'm not sure exactly who made the system in my new Honda, but in the six months I've had it, I've found at least four fairly major errors. The one in the article would have been easy to solve though: There's a button on mine labeled "detour" that calculates an alternate route if you can't follow the suggested one.
As for updating the database, well, the company has a mechanism for reporting errors, but they only distribute new DVDs once a year or so, and they charge $180. They don't give discounts if you find bugs in their product.
Never mind that the theater isn't a practical option for some people. My wife is disabled (arthritis), and theater seats aren't comfortable for her. She also can't walk easily from the car all the way to the last theater at the local googol-plex (which is where the movie we want to see invariably is). She doesn't like using a wheelchair unless it's absolutely necessary. We have a nice setup at home that allows her to watch movies in comfort, so we almost always end up waiting for movies to come to PPV or DVD to see them.
..."Limited audience", high cost of publishing, and "ROI" stuff. For volatile subject matter, it makes some sense. My Windows 2000 MCSE books cost like $60 each, but they're large hardcover books with a useful life of maybe 2 years. Any left over are going to be like two year old calendars. Essentially no value, even on the discount table.
But "The C programming language", written in 1978, and (according to Amazon) last updated in 1998, is a 274 page paperback. It has, no doubt, sold THOUSANDS (millions?) of copies over the years, and easily paid off it's production and update costs.
But Amazon is still charging $44.20 for it. I wonder how much Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie get out of it.
This is just plain greed on the part of the publisher. They charge what they can get, partly because they know it's usually employers that buy the books and write them off, or students who have no choice.
From the reporting site:
Note: This application works best with Netscape (version 7 or higher) or Internet Explorer (version 5.5 or higher)
It's certainly going to get harder. I live in New Jersey, and own a business. Every year I have to file a report with the state, and in the past it went on a paper form with my tax return. This year, it was filed online. ONLY online. No other option. I also do my sales tax reporting online, and the state has stopped sending me paper forms, so it looks like that's going to be mandatory too.
I've been renewing my car registrations via the web for several years. I wonder how long before they make that the standard too.
My son goes to Centennary College in NJ, and they hand out laptops to all incoming students before the first day of class. He happened to get a Thinkpad, but his friend got an HP. The whole place is wired/unwired. Don't know if it helps their learning, but it does seem to make it easier to swap email and do reports in a consistent (M$) manner.
Which basically says Apple hasn't done anything wrong. All right, you can't play WMA tunes on other devices, but you CAN play MP3's on iPod, and you can use RealPlayer to manage it in addition to iTunes.
This really isn't much different from Palm devices and the Palm Desktop.
A number of years ago, I worked for a fairly prestigious research hospital, and we had a handful of highly paid doctors and researchers. Like most large companies, we had a mainframe-based commercial payroll system. We also had a SECOND payroll system, just for the highest-paid researchers. It seemed that due to tax law changes, some of the deduction fields in the files weren't large enough to cope with the amounts. It was a source of some amusement, and a little resentment, among the tech staff.
Eventually, they converted to a more current product, and the second system was eliminated.
In these days of relational databases and abstracted fields/elements, I can't see this being an issue, but you never know.
I still have mine, hidden away in a padded case in a closet. Far as I know, it still works, and I still have most of the games.
When Intellivision first came out, I worked for the company that repaired them. (We also repaired the Colecovision.) Those controllers were a NIGHTMARE, always failing, although mine behaved perfectly.
I only found an accountant AFTER I set up my S-Corp, and he told me I'd done it slightly wrong. He actually recommended an "LLP", which is a new type of business, although I don't know all of the details.
The problem with going down this road is that (like I said in my other post) it opens up a whole new level of paperwork.
The idea, like he says above, is to limit your "liability", so if someone sues the blog, they (theoretically) can't take your house, but in practice, if things aren't set up EXACTLY right, they can "pierce the shield", and get you anyway.
I have a friend who ran a successful computer service business as a Sole Proprietorship for YEARS. He avoided the liability issue by doing whatever he had to to keep his customers happy. In the long run, he found it was less expensive than trying to protect himself by incorporating.
YMMV.
I don't know where you live, but that number sounds awfully high. I pay an annual fee (like $50) in New Jersey for my S-Corporation, and that's it. Unless you have a storefront, need permits, etc., there shouldn't be any other periodic fees to the state or town. You register the DBA/Fictitious Name with the state, they send you a letter saying it's been done, and you go to the bank. If your town has screwy rules, go to a bank in a different town.
The only time this becomes a problem is if you're running an OBVIOUS business out of your house in a residential area, or if one of your neighbors gets mad at you and reports you.
But for a Blog business? If it's an issue, get a PO box (NOT at a Post office) in a cooperative town, and use it as the official address.
YMMV though, I can't speak for all of the screwy rules around the country.
First of all, there really isn't any such thing as a "Licensed Business". Not in IT, in any state I know of anyway. Anyone can do work and get paid, as long as they report the income. Anyone can register a "Fictitious Name", open a bank account, and collect money. Licensing only comes into it when your business is regulated in some way, and then it's usually the "instance" (store, bar, restaurant, etc.) that's licensed. The business itself isn't.
If you SELL STUFF, you have to register with your state to collect sales tax, and (in my state, anway) submit periodic reports on how much you're collecting. If you collect it, you have to send it to the state either quarterly or monthly, depending on how much is involved. In my state, services aren't taxable, so I rarely collect sales tax, but I do occasionally sell stuff, so I'm properly registered, and collect and forward the proper taxes.
Someone else mentioned Estimated Taxes, and that's a good point. If you're making more than a certain amount either unreported, or on 1099, you should make quarterly payments. Otherwise, the IRS will assess an "underpayment penalty" when you file. The leading personal tax programs can help you figure this out.
If your advertisers issue checks directly to you, in your name, you really don't have to do anything except report the income on your personal income tax return. Even if they don't issue you 1099s, you should do this. They pretty much HAVE to issue the 1099s though, in order to write off the expense. It's a sort of cross-check, see?
If they're happy working this way, going farther is more up to you.
If you want them to issue the checks to a separate entity, like a company, you have to go through some additional hoops. You have to register the company name ("Fictitious Name") with the state, and then go to your bank and set up a Business checking account to receive the money. It's still YOU, YOUR income, you're just providing a separate pocket to drop the cash into so you can keep track of it.
The next set of levels come up if you want further separation of the company from you, if there is more than one person involved (partnership), or if you want to protect yourself from being sued. Then you need something like an LLP or a Corporation. Some companies won't deal with individuals or Sole Proprietorships because they don't like the trouble of issuing 1099s, so they will require you to set up a corporation. Reporting income from Corp-to-Corp payments is the responsiblity of the receiving party, so the payer can just issue the check and be done with it.
The problem with doing this, is it opens you up to a whole new level of paperwork and reporting for very little good reason. (One friend of mine ran an extremely successful and profitable computer service business as a sole proprietorship for YEARS because he just didn't want to bother with the paperwork.)
Rule of thumb: Do as little as your customers will accept and you feel comfortable with. As long as you pay the proper taxes on the income, generally speaking, nobody will bother you, and even if the IRS comes calling, you can show them you've followed the rules.
DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer or accountant, but I've had my own consulting business (S-Corporation) for close to ten years now, and I have friends and associates who also run their own businesses in various forms, so I have some familiarity with the ins and outs.
Every Pratchett fan knows that light slows down if you apply a strong Magical field...
Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it's wrong. No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.
- Reaper Man
The relevant page from the article is here described in the heading as "improbable", but the article text says "impossible". Obviously the author doesn't read Slashdot.
Couple months back, I read an article about various aspects of Star Wars Science, and how plausible each was thought to be. Curiously, thin-air holograms were at or near the top of the list as "probably impossible".
... made by their company, Astronomers have now decided that the Milky Way galaxy is shaped like a giant Cinnabon .
I've been into this for close to 30 years now. I've been in my current house for 17 years, and I've rewired FOUR TIMES as the technology has changed.
I can absolutely tell you that the most important thing you can provide is ACCESS. Several others have mentioned conduits and wiring channels, and I can't overemphasize how much I agree with that. The only thing that's saved me is the suspended ceiling downstairs, and the clear opening between there and the attic. You don't want to be opening walls a year or two down the road because you need a new kind of wire somewhere.
X10 is great when it works, but it's inherently limited. Unfortunately, the alternatives are WAY more expensive. You can do a really cool setup with a couple hundred dollars worth of X10 stuff, and old Linux PC, and a web app from Freshmeat. Start off simple, you can always add wireless tablets as touch screens down the road when someone is selling them off cheap.
Which member of the Discovery crew was that again? I don't have a picture handy. (GD&R)