FINALLY, something useful from the Federal Gov't, a wall to keep out the crazies and illegal aliens.... hurry up with that wall, I see more crazies on the horizon!!
"All that's required is the technology necessary to make taking that right/freedom/sanctity away feasible."
Which is why it's all the more important for both individuals, and state/local gov'ts, to *proactively* protect those freedoms, with whatever refusal to play Big Brother they can manage.
Ah. Tho rather an assumption about the elderly -- frex, here you can get free tax service, but you have to be 65 or older. Leaves rather a gap for most people!
Guess I need to change my birthday so I'll go directly from 52 to 65;)
Ah yes, I'd forgotten the backstory on this. I totally agree -- the gov't should have said tough shit, it's not *our* job to make customers for you. Offer value-added services, such as accepting liability for mistakes, if you want folks' business.
But in most cases the young and elderly do NOT get free filing -- the free-file-eligible age range is usually from 20 to 57 (with the upper age limit varying from 50 to 70) and if you're older or younger than that, you have to pay. So the people LEAST likely to make a good income are most likely to be required to pay for efiling -- WTF??!
Expulsion certainly doesn't teach kids anything. It just gives them a lot of free time to become worse punks than they were to start with.
Trouble is, it's now politically incorrect to suggest smacking the little bastards into shape. Funny how in the schools I went to, where you WOULD get paddled for being an ass or a bully, bullying and hazing were almost unknown, and expulsions were vanishingly rare (required actual and repeated criminal behaviour in the school venue).
Parents no longer set boundaries; schools are afraid to enforce boundaries; kids ALWAYS push the limits until they hit a hard boundary on their behaviour, that's just normal kid stuff. Since boundaries no longer exist or are no longer enforced, kids push a lot further than they used to. And then schools overreact in their fervor to protect...er, mostly themselves from liability lawsuits.
Crap, now I don't remember where I'd intended to take this:)
Here in the States, if you go to IRS.GOV, the very first link on the page is to the "free e-file" info (http://www.irs.gov/efile/article/0,,id=118986,00. html) or you can go directly to http://www.irs.gov/app/freeFile/jsp/index.jsp?ck.
Generally if you made under $52k you can get free federal tax-prep and efiling, and about half the states are in on the free prep/efile thing too. Some companies have restrictions based on your age, why I have no idea.
Note: you MUST go from the IRS site to the free efiling site to get the cheap/free rate. If you just go directly to the tax-prep site without going to IRS.GOV first, some will charge you the full regular price.
Any idea what the load distribution among the various online tax prep outfits might be? would be interesting to see, for sure.
For the 2nd year in a row I found myself using TaxAct (type the obvious) as it had all the forms, none of the "sell you something on every page" BS, their server performed fairly well (even tho I was probably among a large late crowd, on Sunday night), and they were in the low range for the filing fee.
In my observation it's ignorance, and the desire to remain big fish in a little pond. Deliberate malice isn't usually a factor, tho as someone's tagline here says, "any sufficiently-advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice".:/
Complicated, annoying, and a PITA, but better than letting them get away with it!
Seems if you have a choice, under that system you'd want credit card and bank to be two different entities (rather than having the CC from your bank), so the one can't defend the other.
Actually what I'd noticed was blood leaking between the stitches that now hold your forehead together, not to mention chips of brick embedded in your skull:)
A hypothetical "but someone *might* be left out" is increasingly used as an excuse to prohibit programs that for whatever reason don't have an Official Blessing. Your example of tech-challenged elderly is a good one -- it completely ignores the fact that tuning in to internet radio can be *made* absurdly simple, if only one already has a PC and an internet connection. "Go to this web page, click that link" and some sort of check for what player is available on their system would do it. (And that latter could be as simple as "if this link doesn't work, try that one".) But NOOOO, someone might not be able to do that!! I guess they think all seniors are stupid, as well as tech-impaired.
We ran into something similar with our local PC user group. We'd collected a bunch of PCs with the goal of setting up a network at the Senior Center (where we regularly meet) that would be set up so even the most tech-impaired senior could have basic web and email access -- we were even going to provide free classes to teach 'em how to do basic operations. After almost two years of missed communications, changes of Center directors, and wrangling, we've finally given up on the project. Meanwhile, the county's own proposed similar system has failed to materialize.
Having had my tinfoil hat properly refitted, I realise this isn't some grand conspiracy, but rather a combination of legal liability issues seen by the county, and the fact that our area is where the county frequently Peter-Principles (new verb) incompetent personnel. But the upshot is that seniors here are still doing without.
BTW here's wishing you success; it sounds like you've got a most worthy program there, if only the Gov't Blessing Fairy would wave her wand over it!!
Even when the script monkey DOES know what he's doing, very often the terms of his employment state that he WILL follow the script no matter what. The CSR can get in a lot of trouble or even fired for going off-script without permission from a supervisor.
I agree this does nothing for the quality of service, since it prevents a knowledgeable CSR from actually helping a customer that doesn't fall within the parameters of the almighty script.:(
One reason this is done, tho, is because 3rd party support outfits (frex, EDS) often charge THEIR customers (the vendor you buy stuff from, frex, HP) by the minute, and following the script guarantees that the support center can charge the OEM the maximum amount for each call.
This largely explains why customer service always takes a nose-dive the moment it's outsourced.
When I investigate a new vendor, one question I ask is "Is your tech support in-house or outsourced?" If the answer is "outsourced," I respond, "Oh, NO tech support."
I don't know how it works in the UK, but in the US, if a bank or credit card does something fraudulent, it's amazing how fast it gets rectified if one threatens to haul the case in front of the state banking commission.
Yeah, I remember how it took KGLT a lot of wrangling even to start a *closed circuit* radio station, back about four decades, and what a big deal it was when a broadcast permit was acquired, along with legal access to a transmitter tower. It's not just "throw up a transmitter, broadcast stuff". Like everything else, I'm sure that lo these many years later, the regulations have done nothing but become more complex and harder to comply with.:(
So when a community *internet* radio station is lost -- you can't count on getting a broadcast replacement for it.
And while the major current motivation is all the fantasy money the music cartel thinks they can suck out of it -- I think you may have a valid point that to some degree it's about preventing new voices of opposition, even if that's merely opposition to mainstream advertising-driven culture. But it could easily grow to counter voices in other areas, too (politics, religion, whatever). In short, even if it's presently just an unintentional side effect, this royalty hike does serve to silence opposing voices.
That's a good point. Local radio isn't just about entertainment. It's also about communication within a community. (Note the common root word there)
Yeah, you could have internet radio that's all talk and no music, and that could be "community radio" and serve the purpose of political activism or whatever suchlike was required. But a community is also about its culture, both shared and eclectic. And if music stations are lost, a community's window into its own culture, and the broader culture around it, is also closed.
Yeah, community radio can go back to the broadcast tower, but that's increasingly costly and impractical, and by its very nature is purely localized. Conversely, before the royalty change, anyone with an internet connection could choose to open a window, however small, into their particular part of the world -- that anyone worldwide could peek into.
Yeah, talk about "who the hell?" -- looked thru the Radio1190 playlist and didn't see a single name I recognised, which as you say is often a very *good* thing! First song that went by didn't catch me, but the schedule looks sufficiently eclectic that at least some will appeal to me -- rather like KGLT (Montana State U), where I used to DJ:)
KEXP -- first song I heard was by Harvey Danger, which instantly endeared 'em to me:)
Couldn't get a feed from any of the ?MP3? streams on PenguinRadio (and this machine doesn't do WMP) but the choices do look interesting; will try again later.
Don't worry about the hiphip/R&B link, my ears tend to run away screaming when I hear it:)
Just a howdy and thanks for plugging yourself... I tried your station, and -- good job! Nice balance and selection. And mayhaps future sales to artists I'd never heard of.:)
I don't know if it's the exact same petition/letter campaign that was at capwiz a couple weeks ago, but at the time Soma-FM and Radio Paradise had links up (Soma on their front page, RP by way of some group IR blog) directing people to capwiz for this very purpose.
So what's needed is a *different* agency, to collectively negotiate rights for non-SoundExchange artists.
It occurs to me that an outfit like CDBaby, already set up to pay artists for CDs sold, might serve quite well as a royalties broker for independent artists and songwriters (remember there are two parts to that side of the equation).
Once the base rate has been set (and it could be instantly defined as "just like it was before the new rules") it would be a matter of getting the word out, letting artists trickle in on their own, and creating a central database of music covered by the new "indie royalties agreement". The new royalties agency would take a cut (doubtless much smaller than what the current regime takes -- is it 80%?? anyone know for sure?), and distribute the artists' portions in the same way as they currently distribute artists' portions of CDs sold.
In fact, this could extend to any outfit that's set up for it -- the only hard requirement is that everyone must use the same central database, so all the internet radio stations can know positively, in one step and without having to chase anyone around, what music is covered by the indie-royalties-agreement and therefore free of the usorious new cartel rates.
I did find it interesting that even Clear Channel is on our side -- they're probably the ONLY radio voice loud enough to be heard in Congress. Goes to show that even as entrenched in realspace radio as they are, even Clear Channel recognises that the internet is the future of radio broadcasting -- particularly as station equipment ages out and they find it vastly cheaper to replace transmitters and towers with MP3s and bandwidth.
Oh yes, I hate that too. Especially when since I have the full version of Acrobat installed -- so THAT is what loads to view the PDF. Causes swearing every time I don't notice the.PDF extension until after I click the link!
My attitude has become... "Requires flash? oh well, I don't need to see/hear it that bad after all."
This has even affected stuff like my favourite bands on Garageband -- even tho they have ALREADY established themselves in my mind as "worth my time" (and sometimes my money, too) -- if I have to install some proprietary flash player to listen to their new songs, I just don't bother. Screwing around with some player I dislike is just not worth it.
Same with YouTube. Nothing there is worth the trouble.
Slashdot Mirror
FINALLY, something useful from the Federal Gov't, a wall to keep out the crazies and illegal aliens.... hurry up with that wall, I see more crazies on the horizon!!
"All that's required is the technology necessary to make taking that right/freedom/sanctity away feasible."
Which is why it's all the more important for both individuals, and state/local gov'ts, to *proactively* protect those freedoms, with whatever refusal to play Big Brother they can manage.
When I lived in MT, there was a One Strike law re drunk driving -- you lost your license on the FIRST offense.
Ah. Tho rather an assumption about the elderly -- frex, here you can get free tax service, but you have to be 65 or older. Leaves rather a gap for most people!
;)
Guess I need to change my birthday so I'll go directly from 52 to 65
Ah yes, I'd forgotten the backstory on this. I totally agree -- the gov't should have said tough shit, it's not *our* job to make customers for you. Offer value-added services, such as accepting liability for mistakes, if you want folks' business.
But in most cases the young and elderly do NOT get free filing -- the free-file-eligible age range is usually from 20 to 57 (with the upper age limit varying from 50 to 70) and if you're older or younger than that, you have to pay. So the people LEAST likely to make a good income are most likely to be required to pay for efiling -- WTF??!
Expulsion certainly doesn't teach kids anything. It just gives them a lot of free time to become worse punks than they were to start with.
...er, mostly themselves from liability lawsuits.
:)
Trouble is, it's now politically incorrect to suggest smacking the little bastards into shape. Funny how in the schools I went to, where you WOULD get paddled for being an ass or a bully, bullying and hazing were almost unknown, and expulsions were vanishingly rare (required actual and repeated criminal behaviour in the school venue).
Parents no longer set boundaries; schools are afraid to enforce boundaries; kids ALWAYS push the limits until they hit a hard boundary on their behaviour, that's just normal kid stuff. Since boundaries no longer exist or are no longer enforced, kids push a lot further than they used to. And then schools overreact in their fervor to protect
Crap, now I don't remember where I'd intended to take this
Here in the States, if you go to IRS.GOV, the very first link on the page is to the "free e-file" info (http://www.irs.gov/efile/article/0,,id=118986,00. html) or you can go directly to http://www.irs.gov/app/freeFile/jsp/index.jsp?ck.
Generally if you made under $52k you can get free federal tax-prep and efiling, and about half the states are in on the free prep/efile thing too. Some companies have restrictions based on your age, why I have no idea.
Note: you MUST go from the IRS site to the free efiling site to get the cheap/free rate. If you just go directly to the tax-prep site without going to IRS.GOV first, some will charge you the full regular price.
Any idea what the load distribution among the various online tax prep outfits might be? would be interesting to see, for sure.
For the 2nd year in a row I found myself using TaxAct (type the obvious) as it had all the forms, none of the "sell you something on every page" BS, their server performed fairly well (even tho I was probably among a large late crowd, on Sunday night), and they were in the low range for the filing fee.
In my observation it's ignorance, and the desire to remain big fish in a little pond. Deliberate malice isn't usually a factor, tho as someone's tagline here says, "any sufficiently-advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice". :/
Complicated, annoying, and a PITA, but better than letting them get away with it!
Seems if you have a choice, under that system you'd want credit card and bank to be two different entities (rather than having the CC from your bank), so the one can't defend the other.
Actually what I'd noticed was blood leaking between the stitches that now hold your forehead together, not to mention chips of brick embedded in your skull :)
A hypothetical "but someone *might* be left out" is increasingly used as an excuse to prohibit programs that for whatever reason don't have an Official Blessing. Your example of tech-challenged elderly is a good one -- it completely ignores the fact that tuning in to internet radio can be *made* absurdly simple, if only one already has a PC and an internet connection. "Go to this web page, click that link" and some sort of check for what player is available on their system would do it. (And that latter could be as simple as "if this link doesn't work, try that one".) But NOOOO, someone might not be able to do that!! I guess they think all seniors are stupid, as well as tech-impaired.
We ran into something similar with our local PC user group. We'd collected a bunch of PCs with the goal of setting up a network at the Senior Center (where we regularly meet) that would be set up so even the most tech-impaired senior could have basic web and email access -- we were even going to provide free classes to teach 'em how to do basic operations. After almost two years of missed communications, changes of Center directors, and wrangling, we've finally given up on the project. Meanwhile, the county's own proposed similar system has failed to materialize.
Having had my tinfoil hat properly refitted, I realise this isn't some grand conspiracy, but rather a combination of legal liability issues seen by the county, and the fact that our area is where the county frequently Peter-Principles (new verb) incompetent personnel. But the upshot is that seniors here are still doing without.
BTW here's wishing you success; it sounds like you've got a most worthy program there, if only the Gov't Blessing Fairy would wave her wand over it!!
Even when the script monkey DOES know what he's doing, very often the terms of his employment state that he WILL follow the script no matter what. The CSR can get in a lot of trouble or even fired for going off-script without permission from a supervisor.
:(
I agree this does nothing for the quality of service, since it prevents a knowledgeable CSR from actually helping a customer that doesn't fall within the parameters of the almighty script.
One reason this is done, tho, is because 3rd party support outfits (frex, EDS) often charge THEIR customers (the vendor you buy stuff from, frex, HP) by the minute, and following the script guarantees that the support center can charge the OEM the maximum amount for each call.
This largely explains why customer service always takes a nose-dive the moment it's outsourced.
When I investigate a new vendor, one question I ask is "Is your tech support in-house or outsourced?" If the answer is "outsourced," I respond, "Oh, NO tech support."
I don't know how it works in the UK, but in the US, if a bank or credit card does something fraudulent, it's amazing how fast it gets rectified if one threatens to haul the case in front of the state banking commission.
Yeah, I remember how it took KGLT a lot of wrangling even to start a *closed circuit* radio station, back about four decades, and what a big deal it was when a broadcast permit was acquired, along with legal access to a transmitter tower. It's not just "throw up a transmitter, broadcast stuff". Like everything else, I'm sure that lo these many years later, the regulations have done nothing but become more complex and harder to comply with. :(
So when a community *internet* radio station is lost -- you can't count on getting a broadcast replacement for it.
And while the major current motivation is all the fantasy money the music cartel thinks they can suck out of it -- I think you may have a valid point that to some degree it's about preventing new voices of opposition, even if that's merely opposition to mainstream advertising-driven culture. But it could easily grow to counter voices in other areas, too (politics, religion, whatever). In short, even if it's presently just an unintentional side effect, this royalty hike does serve to silence opposing voices.
[goes to look] Man, that's a wild assortment on the schedule! worth a try. Thanks for the link.
That's a good point. Local radio isn't just about entertainment. It's also about communication within a community. (Note the common root word there)
Yeah, you could have internet radio that's all talk and no music, and that could be "community radio" and serve the purpose of political activism or whatever suchlike was required. But a community is also about its culture, both shared and eclectic. And if music stations are lost, a community's window into its own culture, and the broader culture around it, is also closed.
Yeah, community radio can go back to the broadcast tower, but that's increasingly costly and impractical, and by its very nature is purely localized. Conversely, before the royalty change, anyone with an internet connection could choose to open a window, however small, into their particular part of the world -- that anyone worldwide could peek into.
Thanks for the links!
:)
:)
:)i ngaudio.htm
:)
Yeah, talk about "who the hell?" -- looked thru the Radio1190 playlist and didn't see a single name I recognised, which as you say is often a very *good* thing! First song that went by didn't catch me, but the schedule looks sufficiently eclectic that at least some will appeal to me -- rather like KGLT (Montana State U), where I used to DJ
KEXP -- first song I heard was by Harvey Danger, which instantly endeared 'em to me
Added 'em both to my little list o'stations
http://home.earthlink.net/~thesandpit/misc/stream
Couldn't get a feed from any of the ?MP3? streams on PenguinRadio (and this machine doesn't do WMP) but the choices do look interesting; will try again later.
Don't worry about the hiphip/R&B link, my ears tend to run away screaming when I hear it
PS. Mondo kudos on adding the Celtic stuff. It fits in well and adds just enough variety. Tho I did about fall off my chair first time some went by :)
Just a howdy and thanks for plugging yourself... I tried your station, and -- good job! Nice balance and selection. And mayhaps future sales to artists I'd never heard of. :)
[pricking ears] Got a link?
:)
Happens I like Cynic Guru, so I noticed your post
Same with college radio.
I don't know if it's the exact same petition/letter campaign that was at capwiz a couple weeks ago, but at the time Soma-FM and Radio Paradise had links up (Soma on their front page, RP by way of some group IR blog) directing people to capwiz for this very purpose.
So what's needed is a *different* agency, to collectively negotiate rights for non-SoundExchange artists.
It occurs to me that an outfit like CDBaby, already set up to pay artists for CDs sold, might serve quite well as a royalties broker for independent artists and songwriters (remember there are two parts to that side of the equation).
Once the base rate has been set (and it could be instantly defined as "just like it was before the new rules") it would be a matter of getting the word out, letting artists trickle in on their own, and creating a central database of music covered by the new "indie royalties agreement". The new royalties agency would take a cut (doubtless much smaller than what the current regime takes -- is it 80%?? anyone know for sure?), and distribute the artists' portions in the same way as they currently distribute artists' portions of CDs sold.
In fact, this could extend to any outfit that's set up for it -- the only hard requirement is that everyone must use the same central database, so all the internet radio stations can know positively, in one step and without having to chase anyone around, what music is covered by the indie-royalties-agreement and therefore free of the usorious new cartel rates.
I did find it interesting that even Clear Channel is on our side -- they're probably the ONLY radio voice loud enough to be heard in Congress. Goes to show that even as entrenched in realspace radio as they are, even Clear Channel recognises that the internet is the future of radio broadcasting -- particularly as station equipment ages out and they find it vastly cheaper to replace transmitters and towers with MP3s and bandwidth.
Oh yes, I hate that too. Especially when since I have the full version of Acrobat installed -- so THAT is what loads to view the PDF. Causes swearing every time I don't notice the .PDF extension until after I click the link!
My attitude has become ... "Requires flash? oh well, I don't need to see/hear it that bad after all."
This has even affected stuff like my favourite bands on Garageband -- even tho they have ALREADY established themselves in my mind as "worth my time" (and sometimes my money, too) -- if I have to install some proprietary flash player to listen to their new songs, I just don't bother. Screwing around with some player I dislike is just not worth it.
Same with YouTube. Nothing there is worth the trouble.