I don't know that Star Wars (ep 4) had any... yet they remain icons of the Sci-Fi film industry to this day.
Yes, it had some CGI. In one notable scene there were literally dozens (and that was a gasp-inducing number back in the day) of CGI elements on screen, in this case spaceships. The first time I saw that scene in a theater, I remember thinking how bad the CGI work was. There was one ship that started to come into view then disappeared. It was such a HUGE glaring error I figured everyone would be talking about it the next day. No one was. No one else had seen it. In fact, over time my geek friends managed to convince me I'd imagined it.
Cut to just a few years ago. I was highly gratified to catch an interview on TV with someone involved in the re-release who was talking about the big screwup in the big space battle scene. He opined that probably nobody even noticed.
Well, some of us did. If computer advancement will help that kind of stuff to not happen, little anal-retentive, highly attentive geeks like I was will be highly appreciative.
I rather liked your article and thought it fairly right-on. When I wanted to get my mom on a computer, I knew all she needed was Yahoo mail, a bit of web browsing, and solitaire. This was a while back, so I bought her a ThinkNIC.
God, I love that machine. No maintenance. Setup is as easy as pie; anyone can do it. Crashes rare as hen's teeth.
But things have changed since then. Now we have live Linux CDs that far surpass what ThinkNIC did. Now we have online storage space that is cheap and accessible enough to be truly useful. Those were the things that, to my mind, held the ThinkNIC back. Nowadays, I could envision that the ThinkNIC could be far surpassed by a gadget the size of a pack of cigs. So I'm prompted to ask - Do you think a modern iteration of the ThinkNIC could succeed?
Don't ever mess with payroll taxes, by the way. As a company, you can get away with not paying your bills, or not paying your employees, or even not paying the bank. But if you ever miss paying your payroll tax deposit, they will throw you under the jail.
I wish you were correct. I really do.
The bad thing about not paying your payroll taxes is this: You're keeping your business running by stealing from your employees. As a business owner, the employee contribution to payroll taxes (known as the "trust fund" portion of the taxes) ISN'T YOUR MONEY! It's money that's been earned by your employees but that they let you hold onto because you've promised to send it in to the government on their behalf. (See? That's why it's called "trust fund" money; your employees trust you to send *their* money to the govt.)
If you don't pay your payroll taxes, you're a thief. Plain and simple.
If you ever hear that your employer is in trouble to non-payment of payroll taxes, look for another job immediately. Your destiny in your current position is too highly influenced by a lying crook.
Now, as for your "under the jail" comment - it's just not true. Employers can get pretty darn delinquent on payroll taxes before the IRS notices. When they do notice, you can drag out the collection process to a ridiculous degree thanks to the neutering the agency got as a result of all that bogus testimony to Congress back in 1998. The resulting statute, RRA98, provides so many mandatory administrative reviews and expanded taxpayer rights (rights to throw a monkey wrench into the machinery of legitimate tax collection, that is) that a smart lawyer can buy you ages before the government comes and shuts you down.
It happens eventually, but that "throw you under the jail" comment is a tad overstated.
Seeing eye dogs, to use the old language, are what most people think of when they think of service dogs. However, "hearing ear" dogs that are trained to assist the deaf are afforded the same protections and privileges under the law. And they are frequently small dogs that are painfully visible all the time. They have to be visible and active since their job is to touch or otherwise alert their owner to sounds. That means they can run to the door of the office when someone knocks, for example.
Some people might find that annoying. I had a deaf friend some years ago with a poorly trained assistance dog who also barked (a ridiculous oversight on the part of the training organization) at the door and would run at visitors when their body language indicated they wanted to communicate with the owner. I understood what was going on; the dog was just focusing attention on me so that the owner would know I was trying to communicate. Nevertheless, some people found the animal annoying and refused to visit this woman for that reason.
To them, I say the same thing I said to myself at the time. "Suck it up." I was being over-sensitive and that woman's need for that dog outweighs my right to be undisturbed.
We already allow flamethrowers. They are virtually unregulated in the U.S.
What about weapons with a large "field of effect"?
You're gonna have to define that a bit further. We already allow (again, subject to some tracking) dynamite to be privately purchased, stored and used. Did you have something else in mind?
Should automatic handguns be allowed?
We already do. Semi-automatics are allowed as normal firearms. Full-auto handguns are allowed subject to normal Class III restrictions. I'm not sure what you're asking about.
The line is very hard to draw.
Maybe, but I didn't have much trouble with the examples you threw out. Clarify that "field of effect" question and I can probably bat a thou on questions like these.:-)
You're saying that two different FFL holders engaged behavior so massively stupid and illegal it beggars description. Absent proof, there's just no way I can accept that.
OTOH, if you're just repeating a story told to you by your buddy (Did you ever shoot this AK? Ever even see it? And would you know what you were seeing if you did?) then I hate to tell you, dude, but your buddy is FOS, big time.
That's a half-truth.
Would you be saying the same if a privately-owned tax firm were doing the tax prep?
No, I wouldn't say the same thing about private preparers. They're in it for profit. The folks at the IRS are in it for a paycheck and, organizationally, to serve the public.
...the IRS agents don't make any explicit profit off of doing your taxes. So there are 2 possible arguments, hence the "half-truth" nature of your claim:
1) if they *don't* care what you owe, then they're not going to care much whether you get the loopholes available to you
Bingo. You hit the nail on the head. In fact, I think that's basically what I said when I originally stated that they didn't really dig for deductions. CPAs would call the returns they prepare "extremely conservative." Lots of people with simple returns are quite happy to have them prepared in an extremely conservative fashion. People who don't like that are happy to pay the money to CPAs to dig for deductions.
The problem then is that if we pay IRS agents based on performance, then they wind up demanding more money as their performance increases, which winds up costing more to the taxpaying public.
Wow. There are so many misperceptions in that sentence it's tough to parse 'em all out.
First, they aren't agents. Their job tatle is usually "Tax Specialist" and they are informally referred to as "Assistors."
Second, they aren't paid on performance. (Neither are Agents, Special Agents, or Officers.) They're paid a flat hourly wage. Their performance is recorded and has a great bearing on promotions and even the occasional pitifully small bonus, but in the sense that most people would use the language, they aren't paid based on performance.
Third, in general and in this case, government employees don't demand more money when they perform highly. They use their good evaluations to get better jobs, but there's no such thing, in practical terms, as asking for a raise because you do a better job than your co-workers. There used to be something called a Sustained Superior Performance award that was, basically, a raise. Recent changes in our work contract have essentially killed the SSP.
So, basically, pretty much all of the assumptions underpinning your arguments are wrong.
I suppose these 500,000 people who went to the free IRS help got quality service?
They got pretty good service.
Or maybe the 19 out of 23 IRS preparers (also mentioned at that URL) were wrongfully-accused of making mistakes?:-)
No, not exactly. But if you've ever stood behind the counter and listened to people ask questions, like I have, you'd get a different impression of the whole situation. Taxpayers don't get wrong answers so much as they ask the wrong questions. Yes, technical mistakes get made but the often total disconnect between the words that come out of a taxpayers mouth and the information he actually needs is often mind-boggling. I'm the first one to scream that the tax code is over-complex and those error rates are proof I'm right.
...except to take in more revenue for the government, thereby being able to help ensure the govn't gets more money, and then later have their agency leader press Congress for increased salaries for the "poor, overworked and underpaid" IRS employees.
I don't know how to say this any more clearly. The assistors at the front counter of your local IRS office don't give two shits about increasing government revenue or helping the Commissioner testify before Congress. To the assistor, their job is helping the poor sod in front of them make sense of complex rules, thereby making life a little easier for everyone. All that other stuff is so far removed from their existence it does
You have to draw the line of what "arms" means somewhere,...
You're trolling, of course, but it's a good troll because it exploits a gap in knowledge most people arguing this issue aren't even aware of.
Without taking time to go into a long reply with many examples, suffice it to say that the Framers knew very well the difference between "arms" and "artillery." They specified "arms." Typical military rifles (a flintlock back in the day, an assault rifle today) are fine. Military weapons of serious, if not mass, destruction (a cannon back in the day, a nuke today) are not fine.
There can be some reasonable disagreement about where, exactly, to draw the line. In the old days, all artillery required horses to drag it and a crew to serve it. Nowadays, an RPG is a one-person weapon. Thus, the old criteria of "man-portability" may no longer be relied on to draw a bright line between arms and artillery. Where the line is to be drawn is a fine thing for politicians to debate into the wee hours, but it doesn't inform this discussion. FWIW, I think we do a very good job of drawing that line, today. Automatic weapons are very heavily regulated and taxed and the owners are seriously investigated before being given permission to acquire them. Less militarily-capable weapons get less regulation. More capable weapons draw more scrutiny. (Hell, if you want it and can afford it, you can, as a private citizen, own, operate, and shoot out of a fully-operational fighter plane with multiple functional machine guns. But you'd better be rich and have plenty of time and patience to jump through all the bureaucratic hoops.)
Other than a brief mention of "virtual fill flash" from Nikon, I don't see anything in any of these articles about flash capabilities. I don't care about the built-in flash, but having an external, powerful, fully integrated flash unit sitting a foot above my lens, held by a high-quality bracket, is extremely important to me. My Nikon F5 is almost never used without the SB28 flash unit (I tend to shoot people, indoors) and the combination is *SO* much more than the sum of the parts.
So here's my question and one of my big selection criteria: What non-interchangeable lens digital cameras are available with highly integrated and powerful external flash systems? All the usual requirement of a good lens, etc., also apply. Anybody have any experience/knowledge to share?
Even if they're under warranty (and needs to be returned to be honored) we don't. We buy a new drive and that's it!
Sometimes it's really nice to work for a large federal agency. We have enough clout with our suppliers that we don't have to return dead hard drives. When we call in a bad hard drive for warrantied replacement, it's in our suppliers contract that they don't get the defective drive back. When they send a replacement drive, we return a short signed statement swearing that we've destroyed the original drive. That's all there is to it. Dell and Compaq, our two most recent suppliers, will happily cut deals like that for people who buy 30,000 computers a year.
And no, before anybody gets suspicious, nobody I've ever heard of has exploited this procedure to steal hard drives. It could be done, of course, but losing a good job, benefits, and your pension sure as hell ain't worth a free hard drive.
With the 'Rise of Oil and Canvas' I suspect we will also see the 'Rise of the Dodgy Oil Painting'. As oils, brushes, and canvas get in the hands of more and more amateur painters there will be more and more average paintings cluttering the walls of the world. Already there must be millions of self portraits (complete with double chins), countless pictures of Aunt Mildred (cut off at the knees) and just as many poorly drawn renderings of everyday objects in the living rooms of new painters too lazy to move from the couch. Its time to learn how to make good art before its too late! Drawing and Painting Composition Tips aims to teach the world a few basic guidelines for improving painter's skills everywhere.
But you'd be a fool to go to the IRS and ask them how much you owe them... Let's not have foxes guard henhouses, k?:-)
You jest, I know, but just in case anyone thinks this is a serious point I should point out that the people who prepare your returns at the IRS don't care one whit how much you owe. They won't dig for deductions but they won't throw any away, either, assuming you've got your paperwork in order and they can identify said deductions without spending hours digging. The preparing folks aren't the same as the auditing folks or the collecting folks. The preparing folks want to do a good job and prepare a good return for you. Their performance is graded not only on accuracy but on the customers perception of the service provided, so IRS return preparers have no motivation whatsoever to prepare a return any way except accurately and with the best interest of the taxpayer in mind.
Skepticism is a good thing, usually, but in this case it's misplaced.
Heck, go to your closest walk-in IRS office during tax season and an IRS employee will do your taxes for you, for free. Of course, if you've no real need for help (either because you made enough money to easily afford someone to prepare them for you or you are easily able to do your short form yourself) they'll decline to prepare your return. But people with a genuine need and the foresight to make an appointment get helped.
Good God, what a wimpy battery. It looks like something from a motorcycle, and a small one at that.
When I was in high school during the height of the CB craze, a kid I knew wired up a full-size truck battery to a CB, mounted it all on a gigantic aluminum backpack frame, and topped it off with a 12-foot whip antenna. The whole contraption probably weighed fifty pounds and brought him all the attention he presumably wanted as he wandered around baseball games wearing the thing, talking on the radio.
The funniest thing? That skinny little kid was about 5 foot nothin' and weighed maybe 90 pounds. The whole rig looked like it was wearing him.
I didn't mean to say that digital was better than analog. That's not the case, but re-reading my post I can see how the wording is unclear. Allow me to clarify.
Obviously, professional cameras in larger formats than 35mm will be around for a long time. Digital can't produce that quality in a comparably convenient form factor. 35mm will continue, too, for pros who need the advantages of 35mm equipment and the better image quality of 35mm film. Digital ain't there yet, either.
BUT...for the pros who are already shooting digital, folks who need speed more than image quality, digital technology changes the way you think about your camera. If you're shooting for the local newspaper and 3 megapixels is crappy but good enough when combined with the speed and economy of a digital camera, then why spend $3200 for a Nikon D1h? It's just a computer; get a new one, use it a while, and replace it because what's going to come on the market in a year is far better than what you've currently got.
In other cases, such as wedding photography, digital is terribly marginal quality-wise. Yet, because of the speed and economy, some photographers are shooting weddings with digital SLRs. For those guys, a 4-5 megapixel "pro" digital SLR is just barely passable and they'd do well to dump the things as soon as a cheaper 8 megapixel camera becomes available. Personally, I think anyone that shoots weddings with most current digital SLRs is severely limited in what they can do as far as ultimate quality but they've made the decision that their customers will pay for that level of quality. That's their decision. But I still think they'd do well to upgrade asap. I think they'd do well to treat their cameras more as "disposable," to be used for a little while and then discarded in favor of a newer and better little computer, than as "heirlooms," cameras meant to last forever and be willed to your heirs. I think that for a growing segment of pros, digital is forcing them to view their cameras as tools instead of art objects. Yes, good photographers already think that way, but this will be a tough pill to swallow for the hardware fetishists who seem to make up the overwhelming majority of photographers.
When things will get *really* interesting is when affordable, field-appropriate, pro-level digital cameras break through whatever megapixel/quality barrier marks the beginning of 6x7 cm film quaity. When that point is reached, I believe that the lingering advantages of film for any format smaller than 4x5 inches will be abandoned by the market.
As for me, I picked up a lovely Nikon S2 with three lenses last week. Shooting with a Speed Graphic (I can't really justify a proper view camera) and contact printing to printing-out paper is something I love (though I haven't done it in a long while...I need to get back to it). I'll still be shooting film for a long while.
...from the message wands that were sold as toys starting, oh, about 30 YEARS ago?
I made a total dork out of myself back then when I bought one and took it to a Heart concert. Every time Nancy Wilson got close to where I was sitting, I'd madly wave the thing in the air spelling out "I LOVE YOU."
It's nice to see that the supply of dorks in this world is sufficient to support sales of an updated version of that ancient device. It's too bad they haven't figured out that most people can already figure out they're dorks and that they don't need to flail their arms about to draw attention to that fact.
Oddly enough, I was thinking about this topic just this morning. My Nikon F5 was worth the multi-kilobuck price tag because it was built like a tank. It'll last for thousands and thousands of rolls of film. But it won't take any better pictures than the cheapest 35mm that Nikon makes.
Pros have always accepted this. A good photographer can take a cheap camera and turn out the same wonderful work he can do with an expensive camera. The difference is that the more expensive camera makes things more convenient and is built better to last longer under the rough conditions pros must endure.
That's why pro cameras are more expensive. They don't *really* have any secret technology that makes better pictures. They're just tougher and more capable of accomplishing a given task more readily under deadline.
But digital changes all that.
When the Nikon D70 appeared, Nikon officially said it wouldn't replace the prosumer D100. However, the D100 immediately dropped out of the sales catalog of several large camera vendors. They know that the cheaper camera will cannibalize the sales of the more expensive one because the cheaper camera, while probably less well built and slightly less convenient, has better image capturing hardware and software. And that's the one thing that will make a pro change cameras faster than you change your shirt; Show 'em something that takes better prictures and everything else be damned, they'll go for the better output quality.
So if you're a pro and you're shooting digital, what do you do? Stick with the better made, more convenient pro cameras? Or just buy the latest cheap thing because it has more megapixels and better quality? The answer is that better quality almost always wins. (Yes, in some situations speed is important and pros will use a lower megazixel count if they get faster shutter response, but that is becoming less and less of an issue every day. Consequently, the Nikon D1 series that was built to capitalize on that need is being marginalized.)
Now, with film, output quality was a constant and pretty static, to boot. Therefore, it made sense for pros to get a camera built to last forever and paying through the nose for it was no big deal. With digital, though, the camera that will be introduced next year will have better image quality than whatever you're holding in your hands now. So what's the point of paying for high-quality construction made to last 20 years? You're gonna wanna dump your camera in two years, tops, to get the better image quality of the new gear.
This turns the whole professional camera selection criteria on its ear. I predict that "pro" digital cameras will soon come to be treated by their users as virtually disposable, something to be used hard for a year and then upgraded. When that happens, pros won't want to pay as much so they'll just buy one more spare than usual.
In the future, cameras will come to be treated as what they have become: computers. The pro photo industry has always taken great pride in their well-built cameras that were made to last a lifetime. (Hell, I still love my Nikon F.) That attitude arose because mechanical refinement was the only market differentiator when everyone uses the same film and gets close to the same output quality. But now digital has changed the rate of change. Now cameras will be obsoleted in months instead of decades. How will the industry adapt? How willing will pros be to give up the snob appeal of their ridiculously expensive cameras and use the same equipment as regular folks? Or will they be so wedded to the need to pay extra money for prestige brands and models that they will continue to pony up big bucks for ridiculously small differences between models?
These are highly interesting times in the photo world. I'm not willing to predict the death of the pro camera, but I predict the pro digital camera of the future will be far close to the what regular consumers use than has previously been the case. And that's a big change.
Thanks. I needed a laugh today. Dr. Ron Paul really needs to stress that title because borderline nutjobs like him need something to remind us that even borderline nutjobs can have titles in front of their names.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying you shouldn't listen to the guy. He's smart and he's done a good job of thinking some things through. But, criminy, I'll never forgetting sitting at a party with one of his aides twenty years ago in Houston and being told, in hushed and fervent tones, how Paul had called together his inner circle for a critical briefing and given them the inside story on the giant conspiracy at the highest levels of government to change the money from green to red and yellow; how the new money was going to be issued in a surprise move in less than three months; how everyone would be forced to use the new scrip because greenbacks would be declared worthless a few days later; how it was all a multinational/Illuminati/Jewish/whatever plot to drive all hidden assets into the open to make it easy for our coming communist overlords to redistribute wealth.
The guy's not stupid, but he's out there. And he associates with people who are stupid and are WAY out there.
I *really* like this solution. Those handsets feel so right and are easy to use. They have plenty of room inside for several different approaches to the problem. But I see one problem.
Nowadays, you're going to have to deal with phobic people who will complain that having the same piece of equipment touching the ears of everyone who walks by simply *must* be a health issue. Nevermind that public phones worked fine and didn't spread disease; public phones are becoming extinct in the U.S. People today are accustomed to having something that is exclusively theirs. They are also paranoid about the transmission of disease.
I'm not saying these complaints are legit. I'm saying that if you use this solution, you're going to have to think out a strategy ahead of time for dealing with the silly people. If you're cool with that, the old-style handsets seem to me to be the way to go.
Cool idea. Congrats to parent to thinking it up.
The public should take note, too.
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Camera Phone Tips
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· Score: 2, Interesting
It's not just employees. At most federal buildings in the U.S., camera phones are forbidden. You pass it throught the x-ray machine, it gets found, and the guards tell you to take it back to your car and leave it there. If you traveled by public transport, you can take it home or anywhere else, but you just can't bring it in. I've seen one half of a couple wait outside the building for lengthy periods of time, holding the cell phone, while the other half takes care of business.
I'm an employee and I'll get stopped if I have a camera, something I occasionally carry in to document the state of a comm closet or for other business-related reasons. From me, they'll accept "I need it for work today." From the public, they'll entertain no excuses.
General rule for U.S. federal buildings: If the building is big enough to have full time guards, metal detectors, and an xray machine, leave the camera phone (and digital voice recorder, too) in the car.
It's an abnormal request - a student doesn't have an obvious need for information about the tunnels at his school.
You're kidding, right? You've never played D&D-like games in real life?
When I attended college, we had a sizable group of folks who haunted the steam tunnels under the college. They stayed warm crossing campus in the winter, could smoke funny cigarettes with far less chance of getting caught, and played elaborate hide-and-seek games for diversion down there. The maintenance staff thought them a nuisance but nobody really cared.
Yes, there are needs, needs that are obvious to me and also completely benign, for a student to have this sort of information about his school.
Hell, I own more than 500 of the buggers. The sleeve artwork is also often way cooler than with CD's. But "just listen to music"? I don't think so.
Well, I own more than 25,000 of 'em and I love the sleeve artwork, too. One of these days I'll frame a few of my favorites.
It pains me to admit that you're right on with your comment about LPs not being for just listening to the music. Yes, they still tend to sound better than CDs, but if the highest of fidelity was the only thing guiding my choice of music formats, I'd use reel-to-reel. I still have several hundred of those. No, I find that as I get older I have little tolerance for the rituals necessary to clean microscopic cat dander out of the grooves. It wasn't so long ago that I saw a calculation that given the cost of an extremely high-end phono cartridge and the frighteningly fast rate at which they wear out, you could literally hire classical musicians, in small groups and as soloists, to come to your house and play more hours of music than you could get from the damn cartridge. The only good reason to use LPs is for the superior sound but the maintenance and expense to maintain that superiority is just too much of a pain in the ass for me to continue to use them.
I've been a lot happier with my music since I gave up on trying to outrace the audiophile treadmill. CDs are pretty good. MP3s and streaming formats are good enough when I'm not listening carefully. And tickets to the symphony are cheap; as an added benefit, they get me out of the house.
I love my listening room. I've got wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling custom shelving on all four walls stuffed solid with more LPs than most people have ever seen in one place at one time. But it's time to take it apart and turn it back into the master bedroom the architect of the house envisioned. Yes, I sleep in a secondary bedroom because I converted the master suite into a dedicated listening room many years ago.
So it's time to let go. I know I should. But I just can't bring myself to start pulling those beautiful discs off the shelves. Is there a support group for people like me?
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks. I always wanted more details and I appreciate the info.
Yes, it had some CGI. In one notable scene there were literally dozens (and that was a gasp-inducing number back in the day) of CGI elements on screen, in this case spaceships. The first time I saw that scene in a theater, I remember thinking how bad the CGI work was. There was one ship that started to come into view then disappeared. It was such a HUGE glaring error I figured everyone would be talking about it the next day. No one was. No one else had seen it. In fact, over time my geek friends managed to convince me I'd imagined it.
Cut to just a few years ago. I was highly gratified to catch an interview on TV with someone involved in the re-release who was talking about the big screwup in the big space battle scene. He opined that probably nobody even noticed.
Well, some of us did. If computer advancement will help that kind of stuff to not happen, little anal-retentive, highly attentive geeks like I was will be highly appreciative.
I rather liked your article and thought it fairly right-on. When I wanted to get my mom on a computer, I knew all she needed was Yahoo mail, a bit of web browsing, and solitaire. This was a while back, so I bought her a ThinkNIC.
God, I love that machine. No maintenance. Setup is as easy as pie; anyone can do it. Crashes rare as hen's teeth.
But things have changed since then. Now we have live Linux CDs that far surpass what ThinkNIC did. Now we have online storage space that is cheap and accessible enough to be truly useful. Those were the things that, to my mind, held the ThinkNIC back. Nowadays, I could envision that the ThinkNIC could be far surpassed by a gadget the size of a pack of cigs. So I'm prompted to ask - Do you think a modern iteration of the ThinkNIC could succeed?
I wish you were correct. I really do.
The bad thing about not paying your payroll taxes is this: You're keeping your business running by stealing from your employees. As a business owner, the employee contribution to payroll taxes (known as the "trust fund" portion of the taxes) ISN'T YOUR MONEY! It's money that's been earned by your employees but that they let you hold onto because you've promised to send it in to the government on their behalf. (See? That's why it's called "trust fund" money; your employees trust you to send *their* money to the govt.)
If you don't pay your payroll taxes, you're a thief. Plain and simple.
If you ever hear that your employer is in trouble to non-payment of payroll taxes, look for another job immediately. Your destiny in your current position is too highly influenced by a lying crook.
Now, as for your "under the jail" comment - it's just not true. Employers can get pretty darn delinquent on payroll taxes before the IRS notices. When they do notice, you can drag out the collection process to a ridiculous degree thanks to the neutering the agency got as a result of all that bogus testimony to Congress back in 1998. The resulting statute, RRA98, provides so many mandatory administrative reviews and expanded taxpayer rights (rights to throw a monkey wrench into the machinery of legitimate tax collection, that is) that a smart lawyer can buy you ages before the government comes and shuts you down.
It happens eventually, but that "throw you under the jail" comment is a tad overstated.
Pity, that.
Some people might find that annoying. I had a deaf friend some years ago with a poorly trained assistance dog who also barked (a ridiculous oversight on the part of the training organization) at the door and would run at visitors when their body language indicated they wanted to communicate with the owner. I understood what was going on; the dog was just focusing attention on me so that the owner would know I was trying to communicate. Nevertheless, some people found the animal annoying and refused to visit this woman for that reason.
To them, I say the same thing I said to myself at the time. "Suck it up." I was being over-sensitive and that woman's need for that dog outweighs my right to be undisturbed.
Subject to Class III restriction, I'd say yes.
We already allow flamethrowers. They are virtually unregulated in the U.S.
You're gonna have to define that a bit further. We already allow (again, subject to some tracking) dynamite to be privately purchased, stored and used. Did you have something else in mind?
We already do. Semi-automatics are allowed as normal firearms. Full-auto handguns are allowed subject to normal Class III restrictions. I'm not sure what you're asking about.
Maybe, but I didn't have much trouble with the examples you threw out. Clarify that "field of effect" question and I can probably bat a thou on questions like these. :-)
I call BS.
You're saying that two different FFL holders engaged behavior so massively stupid and illegal it beggars description. Absent proof, there's just no way I can accept that.
OTOH, if you're just repeating a story told to you by your buddy (Did you ever shoot this AK? Ever even see it? And would you know what you were seeing if you did?) then I hate to tell you, dude, but your buddy is FOS, big time.
If I could moderate in this discussion, I'd throw a point your direction.
No, I wouldn't say the same thing about private preparers. They're in it for profit. The folks at the IRS are in it for a paycheck and, organizationally, to serve the public.
Bingo. You hit the nail on the head. In fact, I think that's basically what I said when I originally stated that they didn't really dig for deductions. CPAs would call the returns they prepare "extremely conservative." Lots of people with simple returns are quite happy to have them prepared in an extremely conservative fashion. People who don't like that are happy to pay the money to CPAs to dig for deductions.
Wow. There are so many misperceptions in that sentence it's tough to parse 'em all out.
First, they aren't agents. Their job tatle is usually "Tax Specialist" and they are informally referred to as "Assistors."
Second, they aren't paid on performance. (Neither are Agents, Special Agents, or Officers.) They're paid a flat hourly wage. Their performance is recorded and has a great bearing on promotions and even the occasional pitifully small bonus, but in the sense that most people would use the language, they aren't paid based on performance.
Third, in general and in this case, government employees don't demand more money when they perform highly. They use their good evaluations to get better jobs, but there's no such thing, in practical terms, as asking for a raise because you do a better job than your co-workers. There used to be something called a Sustained Superior Performance award that was, basically, a raise. Recent changes in our work contract have essentially killed the SSP.
So, basically, pretty much all of the assumptions underpinning your arguments are wrong.
They got pretty good service.
No, not exactly. But if you've ever stood behind the counter and listened to people ask questions, like I have, you'd get a different impression of the whole situation. Taxpayers don't get wrong answers so much as they ask the wrong questions. Yes, technical mistakes get made but the often total disconnect between the words that come out of a taxpayers mouth and the information he actually needs is often mind-boggling. I'm the first one to scream that the tax code is over-complex and those error rates are proof I'm right.
I don't know how to say this any more clearly. The assistors at the front counter of your local IRS office don't give two shits about increasing government revenue or helping the Commissioner testify before Congress. To the assistor, their job is helping the poor sod in front of them make sense of complex rules, thereby making life a little easier for everyone. All that other stuff is so far removed from their existence it does
You're trolling, of course, but it's a good troll because it exploits a gap in knowledge most people arguing this issue aren't even aware of.
Without taking time to go into a long reply with many examples, suffice it to say that the Framers knew very well the difference between "arms" and "artillery." They specified "arms." Typical military rifles (a flintlock back in the day, an assault rifle today) are fine. Military weapons of serious, if not mass, destruction (a cannon back in the day, a nuke today) are not fine.
There can be some reasonable disagreement about where, exactly, to draw the line. In the old days, all artillery required horses to drag it and a crew to serve it. Nowadays, an RPG is a one-person weapon. Thus, the old criteria of "man-portability" may no longer be relied on to draw a bright line between arms and artillery. Where the line is to be drawn is a fine thing for politicians to debate into the wee hours, but it doesn't inform this discussion. FWIW, I think we do a very good job of drawing that line, today. Automatic weapons are very heavily regulated and taxed and the owners are seriously investigated before being given permission to acquire them. Less militarily-capable weapons get less regulation. More capable weapons draw more scrutiny. (Hell, if you want it and can afford it, you can, as a private citizen, own, operate, and shoot out of a fully-operational fighter plane with multiple functional machine guns. But you'd better be rich and have plenty of time and patience to jump through all the bureaucratic hoops.)
In summary, then:
There's a right to bear arms.
There's no right to bear artillery.
Simple, huh?
Other than a brief mention of "virtual fill flash" from Nikon, I don't see anything in any of these articles about flash capabilities. I don't care about the built-in flash, but having an external, powerful, fully integrated flash unit sitting a foot above my lens, held by a high-quality bracket, is extremely important to me. My Nikon F5 is almost never used without the SB28 flash unit (I tend to shoot people, indoors) and the combination is *SO* much more than the sum of the parts.
So here's my question and one of my big selection criteria: What non-interchangeable lens digital cameras are available with highly integrated and powerful external flash systems? All the usual requirement of a good lens, etc., also apply. Anybody have any experience/knowledge to share?
Poke around at the Internal Revenue Service and you'll stumble across a few CPA programmers.
Sometimes it's really nice to work for a large federal agency. We have enough clout with our suppliers that we don't have to return dead hard drives. When we call in a bad hard drive for warrantied replacement, it's in our suppliers contract that they don't get the defective drive back. When they send a replacement drive, we return a short signed statement swearing that we've destroyed the original drive. That's all there is to it. Dell and Compaq, our two most recent suppliers, will happily cut deals like that for people who buy 30,000 computers a year.
And no, before anybody gets suspicious, nobody I've ever heard of has exploited this procedure to steal hard drives. It could be done, of course, but losing a good job, benefits, and your pension sure as hell ain't worth a free hard drive.
With the 'Rise of Oil and Canvas' I suspect we will also see the 'Rise of the Dodgy Oil Painting'. As oils, brushes, and canvas get in the hands of more and more amateur painters there will be more and more average paintings cluttering the walls of the world. Already there must be millions of self portraits (complete with double chins), countless pictures of Aunt Mildred (cut off at the knees) and just as many poorly drawn renderings of everyday objects in the living rooms of new painters too lazy to move from the couch. Its time to learn how to make good art before its too late! Drawing and Painting Composition Tips aims to teach the world a few basic guidelines for improving painter's skills everywhere.
You jest, I know, but just in case anyone thinks this is a serious point I should point out that the people who prepare your returns at the IRS don't care one whit how much you owe. They won't dig for deductions but they won't throw any away, either, assuming you've got your paperwork in order and they can identify said deductions without spending hours digging. The preparing folks aren't the same as the auditing folks or the collecting folks. The preparing folks want to do a good job and prepare a good return for you. Their performance is graded not only on accuracy but on the customers perception of the service provided, so IRS return preparers have no motivation whatsoever to prepare a return any way except accurately and with the best interest of the taxpayer in mind.
Skepticism is a good thing, usually, but in this case it's misplaced.
Nope.
Unless you're making plenty enough money to either do or have your taxes done, these guys will prepare your tax return for free.
And if you're low-income and have problems with English, these guys will do your taxes for free.
Heck, go to your closest walk-in IRS office during tax season and an IRS employee will do your taxes for you, for free. Of course, if you've no real need for help (either because you made enough money to easily afford someone to prepare them for you or you are easily able to do your short form yourself) they'll decline to prepare your return. But people with a genuine need and the foresight to make an appointment get helped.
Good God, what a wimpy battery. It looks like something from a motorcycle, and a small one at that.
When I was in high school during the height of the CB craze, a kid I knew wired up a full-size truck battery to a CB, mounted it all on a gigantic aluminum backpack frame, and topped it off with a 12-foot whip antenna. The whole contraption probably weighed fifty pounds and brought him all the attention he presumably wanted as he wandered around baseball games wearing the thing, talking on the radio.
The funniest thing? That skinny little kid was about 5 foot nothin' and weighed maybe 90 pounds. The whole rig looked like it was wearing him.
I didn't mean to say that digital was better than analog. That's not the case, but re-reading my post I can see how the wording is unclear. Allow me to clarify.
Obviously, professional cameras in larger formats than 35mm will be around for a long time. Digital can't produce that quality in a comparably convenient form factor. 35mm will continue, too, for pros who need the advantages of 35mm equipment and the better image quality of 35mm film. Digital ain't there yet, either.
BUT...for the pros who are already shooting digital, folks who need speed more than image quality, digital technology changes the way you think about your camera. If you're shooting for the local newspaper and 3 megapixels is crappy but good enough when combined with the speed and economy of a digital camera, then why spend $3200 for a Nikon D1h? It's just a computer; get a new one, use it a while, and replace it because what's going to come on the market in a year is far better than what you've currently got.
In other cases, such as wedding photography, digital is terribly marginal quality-wise. Yet, because of the speed and economy, some photographers are shooting weddings with digital SLRs. For those guys, a 4-5 megapixel "pro" digital SLR is just barely passable and they'd do well to dump the things as soon as a cheaper 8 megapixel camera becomes available. Personally, I think anyone that shoots weddings with most current digital SLRs is severely limited in what they can do as far as ultimate quality but they've made the decision that their customers will pay for that level of quality. That's their decision. But I still think they'd do well to upgrade asap. I think they'd do well to treat their cameras more as "disposable," to be used for a little while and then discarded in favor of a newer and better little computer, than as "heirlooms," cameras meant to last forever and be willed to your heirs. I think that for a growing segment of pros, digital is forcing them to view their cameras as tools instead of art objects. Yes, good photographers already think that way, but this will be a tough pill to swallow for the hardware fetishists who seem to make up the overwhelming majority of photographers.
When things will get *really* interesting is when affordable, field-appropriate, pro-level digital cameras break through whatever megapixel/quality barrier marks the beginning of 6x7 cm film quaity. When that point is reached, I believe that the lingering advantages of film for any format smaller than 4x5 inches will be abandoned by the market.
As for me, I picked up a lovely Nikon S2 with three lenses last week. Shooting with a Speed Graphic (I can't really justify a proper view camera) and contact printing to printing-out paper is something I love (though I haven't done it in a long while...I need to get back to it). I'll still be shooting film for a long while.
...from the message wands that were sold as toys starting, oh, about 30 YEARS ago?
I made a total dork out of myself back then when I bought one and took it to a Heart concert. Every time Nancy Wilson got close to where I was sitting, I'd madly wave the thing in the air spelling out "I LOVE YOU."
It's nice to see that the supply of dorks in this world is sufficient to support sales of an updated version of that ancient device. It's too bad they haven't figured out that most people can already figure out they're dorks and that they don't need to flail their arms about to draw attention to that fact.
Oddly enough, I was thinking about this topic just this morning. My Nikon F5 was worth the multi-kilobuck price tag because it was built like a tank. It'll last for thousands and thousands of rolls of film. But it won't take any better pictures than the cheapest 35mm that Nikon makes.
Pros have always accepted this. A good photographer can take a cheap camera and turn out the same wonderful work he can do with an expensive camera. The difference is that the more expensive camera makes things more convenient and is built better to last longer under the rough conditions pros must endure.
That's why pro cameras are more expensive. They don't *really* have any secret technology that makes better pictures. They're just tougher and more capable of accomplishing a given task more readily under deadline.
But digital changes all that.
When the Nikon D70 appeared, Nikon officially said it wouldn't replace the prosumer D100. However, the D100 immediately dropped out of the sales catalog of several large camera vendors. They know that the cheaper camera will cannibalize the sales of the more expensive one because the cheaper camera, while probably less well built and slightly less convenient, has better image capturing hardware and software. And that's the one thing that will make a pro change cameras faster than you change your shirt; Show 'em something that takes better prictures and everything else be damned, they'll go for the better output quality.
So if you're a pro and you're shooting digital, what do you do? Stick with the better made, more convenient pro cameras? Or just buy the latest cheap thing because it has more megapixels and better quality? The answer is that better quality almost always wins. (Yes, in some situations speed is important and pros will use a lower megazixel count if they get faster shutter response, but that is becoming less and less of an issue every day. Consequently, the Nikon D1 series that was built to capitalize on that need is being marginalized.)
Now, with film, output quality was a constant and pretty static, to boot. Therefore, it made sense for pros to get a camera built to last forever and paying through the nose for it was no big deal. With digital, though, the camera that will be introduced next year will have better image quality than whatever you're holding in your hands now. So what's the point of paying for high-quality construction made to last 20 years? You're gonna wanna dump your camera in two years, tops, to get the better image quality of the new gear.
This turns the whole professional camera selection criteria on its ear. I predict that "pro" digital cameras will soon come to be treated by their users as virtually disposable, something to be used hard for a year and then upgraded. When that happens, pros won't want to pay as much so they'll just buy one more spare than usual.
In the future, cameras will come to be treated as what they have become: computers. The pro photo industry has always taken great pride in their well-built cameras that were made to last a lifetime. (Hell, I still love my Nikon F.) That attitude arose because mechanical refinement was the only market differentiator when everyone uses the same film and gets close to the same output quality. But now digital has changed the rate of change. Now cameras will be obsoleted in months instead of decades. How will the industry adapt? How willing will pros be to give up the snob appeal of their ridiculously expensive cameras and use the same equipment as regular folks? Or will they be so wedded to the need to pay extra money for prestige brands and models that they will continue to pony up big bucks for ridiculously small differences between models?
These are highly interesting times in the photo world. I'm not willing to predict the death of the pro camera, but I predict the pro digital camera of the future will be far close to the what regular consumers use than has previously been the case. And that's a big change.
Thanks. I needed a laugh today. Dr. Ron Paul really needs to stress that title because borderline nutjobs like him need something to remind us that even borderline nutjobs can have titles in front of their names.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying you shouldn't listen to the guy. He's smart and he's done a good job of thinking some things through. But, criminy, I'll never forgetting sitting at a party with one of his aides twenty years ago in Houston and being told, in hushed and fervent tones, how Paul had called together his inner circle for a critical briefing and given them the inside story on the giant conspiracy at the highest levels of government to change the money from green to red and yellow; how the new money was going to be issued in a surprise move in less than three months; how everyone would be forced to use the new scrip because greenbacks would be declared worthless a few days later; how it was all a multinational/Illuminati/Jewish/whatever plot to drive all hidden assets into the open to make it easy for our coming communist overlords to redistribute wealth.
The guy's not stupid, but he's out there. And he associates with people who are stupid and are WAY out there.
I *really* like this solution. Those handsets feel so right and are easy to use. They have plenty of room inside for several different approaches to the problem. But I see one problem.
Nowadays, you're going to have to deal with phobic people who will complain that having the same piece of equipment touching the ears of everyone who walks by simply *must* be a health issue. Nevermind that public phones worked fine and didn't spread disease; public phones are becoming extinct in the U.S. People today are accustomed to having something that is exclusively theirs. They are also paranoid about the transmission of disease.
I'm not saying these complaints are legit. I'm saying that if you use this solution, you're going to have to think out a strategy ahead of time for dealing with the silly people. If you're cool with that, the old-style handsets seem to me to be the way to go.
Cool idea. Congrats to parent to thinking it up.
It's not just employees. At most federal buildings in the U.S., camera phones are forbidden. You pass it throught the x-ray machine, it gets found, and the guards tell you to take it back to your car and leave it there. If you traveled by public transport, you can take it home or anywhere else, but you just can't bring it in. I've seen one half of a couple wait outside the building for lengthy periods of time, holding the cell phone, while the other half takes care of business.
I'm an employee and I'll get stopped if I have a camera, something I occasionally carry in to document the state of a comm closet or for other business-related reasons. From me, they'll accept "I need it for work today." From the public, they'll entertain no excuses.
General rule for U.S. federal buildings: If the building is big enough to have full time guards, metal detectors, and an xray machine, leave the camera phone (and digital voice recorder, too) in the car.
It's an abnormal request - a student doesn't have an obvious need for information about the tunnels at his school.
You're kidding, right? You've never played D&D-like games in real life?
When I attended college, we had a sizable group of folks who haunted the steam tunnels under the college. They stayed warm crossing campus in the winter, could smoke funny cigarettes with far less chance of getting caught, and played elaborate hide-and-seek games for diversion down there. The maintenance staff thought them a nuisance but nobody really cared.
Yes, there are needs, needs that are obvious to me and also completely benign, for a student to have this sort of information about his school.
Well, I own more than 25,000 of 'em and I love the sleeve artwork, too. One of these days I'll frame a few of my favorites.
It pains me to admit that you're right on with your comment about LPs not being for just listening to the music. Yes, they still tend to sound better than CDs, but if the highest of fidelity was the only thing guiding my choice of music formats, I'd use reel-to-reel. I still have several hundred of those. No, I find that as I get older I have little tolerance for the rituals necessary to clean microscopic cat dander out of the grooves. It wasn't so long ago that I saw a calculation that given the cost of an extremely high-end phono cartridge and the frighteningly fast rate at which they wear out, you could literally hire classical musicians, in small groups and as soloists, to come to your house and play more hours of music than you could get from the damn cartridge. The only good reason to use LPs is for the superior sound but the maintenance and expense to maintain that superiority is just too much of a pain in the ass for me to continue to use them.
I've been a lot happier with my music since I gave up on trying to outrace the audiophile treadmill. CDs are pretty good. MP3s and streaming formats are good enough when I'm not listening carefully. And tickets to the symphony are cheap; as an added benefit, they get me out of the house.
I love my listening room. I've got wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling custom shelving on all four walls stuffed solid with more LPs than most people have ever seen in one place at one time. But it's time to take it apart and turn it back into the master bedroom the architect of the house envisioned. Yes, I sleep in a secondary bedroom because I converted the master suite into a dedicated listening room many years ago.
So it's time to let go. I know I should. But I just can't bring myself to start pulling those beautiful discs off the shelves. Is there a support group for people like me?