And in the end, it really doesn't matter to the Google executives and the long term investors. Google already received its investment. Going forward it's just a matter of a zero-sum game among the traders (actually less than zero-sum if you include commissions).
For the long term investor, this quarter to quarter stuff is meaningless anyway. Where is Google going to be in 10, 20, 50 years. That's what matters to the long-term investor, and that's what the Google executives want their investors to focus on. Hey, it works for Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway (Buffet most likely being the influence for this decision as well as the decision not to split).
"And when a CEO makes a pronouncement--even one that's largely based on hopes and guesses--employees will use whatever means necessary to make it come true. If earnings are supposed to be $1 a share, they will be, even if it takes some creative accounting. That's one reason Warren Buffett refuses to provide financial guidance at Berkshire Hathaway and why he has encouraged other companies on whose boards he sits, such as Coca-Cola, to give up the practice." - http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2 _archive/2005/11/01/8362824/index.htm
I can sort of understand why some people thought they might do something wonderful early on, but come on. It's been too long and they have virtually nothing to show for it other than grandeous rumors from morons like Cringely that never materialize.
You're right. You need to be able to follow instructions, and ask help when you don't understand. Doing one's own taxes requires the dramatic requirement of a high school degree.
C'mon now, a high school degree doesn't mean anything these days. Have you ever seen what happens at your local fast food place when the computers go down? There are plenty of high school graduates that don't even know how to use a calculator. And just because you *can* read the tax forms doesn't mean it's in your best interest to do so. If you want to be fairly certain you didn't miss anything, we're talking about a lot of reading. I think you're overestimating the skill level of the average high school graduate. And I also think you're underestimating the value of most people's time. A number of my college educated friends gladly pay me $50 to fill out their short forms even though I've offered to look them over for free if they fill them out themselves.
As for homeowners and business owners -- yes, a whole lot of people own their home. But homeownership isn't even close to 50% nationwide -- more people rent or lease than own, and there's no special deduction for that.
According to the other poster it's over 50%. I don't know if that's true or not, but more to the point, 30% of taxpayers itemize deductions.
And most of us who don't own a home have no easy way to start a business large enough for the IRS to care about.
I really don't know why you'd say that. Anyone with half a brain can start a business quite easily. Might not want to, but it's not a hard thing to do.
Yep. I hate the W-4, and the pre-calculator way income taxes are withheld in general. (Why not a flat percentage of gross wages, after a deduction equal to the taxpayer's expected deduction divided bu the number of paychecks?)
Because the income tax system is graduated, not flat. But otherwise, that's basically how it works. The tables are just a simplification. (That said, the actual amount of the allowances isn't set up exactly correctly, in part because the standard deduction doesn't equal the standard exemption. And for people with a more complicated return than one person with earned income, taking the standard deduction, it's pretty much impossible to get it right using a simple formula anyway). All of this said, the purpose of withholding goes beyond just being a way to make it so you don't owe money at the end of the year. The arguably more important purpose is that it puts a lot of the burden of tax collection on the employer instead of on the government. So it's in the government's best interest to err on the side of having the employer collect too much.
But I also know people who would go to H&R block if I didn't urge them not to--mostly by checking their taxes and showing them how little a refund they're going to get.
On the flip side, I know people who have tried to do their taxes themselves and have gotten it wrong. I just helped someone fill out an amendment for 2004 because they didn't claim the retirement savings credit. So that's $200 coming to them that they wouldn't have gotten on their own, and the problem wasn't lack of education or inability to deal with numbers, the return was originally filled out by a relative who's a math teacher.
H&R Block and a lot of the other places usually run a deal in late April and May where they'll check your return for free and help you file an amendment (for a fee) if you missed something. So if you're willing to take advantage of that (or otherwise know someone in the know who will look at your return for you), then maybe it's not so bad if you try to do it yourself.
Also, for those who aren't afraid of computers or the Internet, TaxAct has free software that'll efile and everything for free. That's what I used this year. Got my refund in less than 2 weeks. Another reason why refund anticipation loans are a horrible deal. Unless you have absolutely horrible credit, there's surely a way you can get a 2 week loan for less money than H&R Block (or any of the others) will charge you.
The ONLY three reasons to have a "professional" do your taxes are (1) you're getting a sizable refund and want a RAL
I guess we're not talking about *good* reasons, because RALs from H&R Block are *never* a good deal. Seriously, never. There's *always* a better alternative. (If nothing else, a RAL from someone other than H&R Block, but usually there's an ever better alternative than that).
(2) You're of below-average ability when it comes to numbers, and need someone else to do them
Not just numbers, but tax law... It's also a matter of whether or not you have the time to carefully read the forms. Actually, how good you are with numbers is pretty irrelevant, just use a computer or a calculator. And merely being "above average" probably isn't enough. I've done taxes for a lot of intelligent people who have made major mistaken assumptions about how to fill out a tax form. Hell, about half the people who are the primary income maker for a family probably think they're "head of houshold".
(3) you're a homeowner, a business owner, or make enough to hit the A.M.T.
Just on the first two you've included a whole lot of people. And just making a lot of money is almost never going to make you "hit the AMT". The most common way to "hit the AMT" is to have a lot of employee business deductions, and the majority of the time that only is going to be a consideration if you're a homeowner (the standard deduction is quite large).
Oh, and it's easy to pay 500% for a RAL. All you need is a refund of less than $10 -- and it's all too easy to wind up with that.
Why would someone get a RAL for a refund of less than $10? I don't even think most H&R Block employees are sleazy enough to let someone do that.
In fact, if you did your W-4 and kin right, that SHOULD be what you get.
If you (and your wife, if you're married) have one job, no other income, and are eligible for zero credits, maybe. Otherwise it's actually pretty difficult to get it right. And it's almost never done. People give me strange looks when I tell them I filled out my W-4 with 8 exemptions (and my household has only 2 people in it). But even with that, I still managed to get a sizeable refund. Bush has been really gracious to us below-average income taxpayers.
Well, the APR that's usually calculated is based solely on the fee for the RAL. And if you call it an APR there's nothing voodoo about the math, that's how an APR is calculated.
Yes, H&R Block will often get people more money, even after fees, than they would have gotten on their own. But they're still sleazy people for the most part. I took the H&R Block tax class, though I wound up working for myself and now for a CPA firm. The woman who taught the class told us about how she would help the people prepare their W-4s (for a fee), and would basically trick the customers into withholding too much. To which I responded "so you charge people to tell them to give too much money to the government, and then you charge them again to get their own money back faster?" She didn't like that comment, but I still did wind up getting an "A". I didn't bother applying for a job with them, though.
And it's not like H&R Block doesn't screw up people's returns. I've done many amendments for people who came to me or my employer after going to H&R Block, and I've gotten them thousands of dollars in refunds that H&R Block missed. And yes, I'm sure I've missed things myself too, but if you want competance H&R Block probably isn't the best place to go. "Take it to a pro"? Sure. But when you go to H&R Block you're paying nearly as much as you'd pay to a CPA or enrolled agent and you're paying it to someone who is essentially nothing more than an educated salesperson (employees are paid on commission and get special bonuses for all the RALs and other scams they sell people, in fact we were told flat out even before getting hired that pushing the "rapid refund" and "peace of mind" crap was mandatory).
If you're spending $200 on $50 software (or free, if your AGI is less than 50k) then I don't want fiscal advice from you!
I believe he was referring to preparer software after re-reading what he wrote. What he's saying is that any Yahoo can pay $200 for software and prepare a bunch of people's 1040-EZs.
I usually get my refund back in less than 2 weeks, this year I got it in less than 5 days, which is the fastest I've ever seen it come back.
E-file batches are processed on Thursday. If your e-file is accepted in the Thursday batch you should get your direct deposit by the next Friday. There's a table in this publication.
No problem, we could switch over to the Flat Tax very quickly. Take your income, subtract your personal and dependent deductions (well over $40K for a family of four), and pay a percentage of what's left (usually 17% in American proposals). Besides saving $billions in labor, it will likely increase compliance as it will be less worthwhile to dodge it.
A graduated tax is not really any more complicated than a flat tax. OK, you need to make 3 calculations instead of one (or use a table), but that's really not a big deal. You still have to define "income", which I suppose you'll define as equivalent to what is currently called "gross income". Now to be fair you should probably move some of the itemized deductions up into the gross income calculation - after all it's not fair to tax people when they make capital gains on (for instance) their house unless you give them a deduction for all that interest they paid on it. Of course, maybe you just want to define "income" as "earned income". I dunno, you tell me.
So you get rid of most of the deductions and replace them with a (presumably bigger) standard deduction. And then you get rid of all the tax credits. In effect you replace the income tax with the AMT.
The thing is, you haven't really simplified all that much. You still have all the rules about depreciation and amortization and imputed wages and barter income and loan tracing. You still have to put large companies on the accrual system so that they can't abuse the system by delaying cash payments. Of the 8000 sections of the tax code you've eliminated maybe 200. Of the case law and regulations you've eliminated an even smaller portion. And on top of all that, you have to phase this in in some way that's fair to people who were already promised some sort of benefits from the old system.
The flat tax isn't really about simplification. It's about removing the concept of progressive taxation.
Unfortunately, reformers are split between the Flat Tax and Fair Tax, aka national sales tax. The problem with the Fair Tax plan is that it will require the repeal of the income tax amendment, which will take years under the best circumstances. The Flat Tax requires no constitutional changes.
Huh? Why does the "Fair Tax" *require* a repeal of the 16th Amendment? The 16th Amendment merely *allows* congress to tax incomes, it doesn't *force* them to do so.
At the very least the Flat Tax could be used as a stopgap measure. Then there's the slight problem of Congress losing the ability to sell tax loopholes to lobbyists (awww). Personally I think wiping out the source of much of the corruption in Washington is a Good Thing.
The vast majority of the tax code has absolutely nothing to do with loopholes given to lobbyists. And the progressivity of the tax system is in no way a loophole - it's an explicity design in the tax system. And actually, your implementation of the so called "flat tax" isn't even flat. It has two levels, 0% and 17% (*). A progressive tax could actually be implemented using exactly the same number of calculations. You'd just have to look up the amount to subtract in a table with the same number of entries as the number of tax brackets.
(*) Which is way too little to be considered equivalent to the current system. The AMT alone has a rate of 26-28%.
Something like "plug in total assets and total change in assets since last year, and find tax".
...which probably wouldn't have helped out H&R Block at all, because they miscalculated their liabilities (which I assume you're going to have to subtract from assets anyway).
Congress could certainly simplify the tax code in a few ways (get rid of the credits and some of the more esoteric deductions, move the rest "above the line", eliminate the phaseouts, and then probably raise the standard deduction and/or exemption to compensate). But a lot, probably the majority, of the tax code is fairly necessary if you're going to have a meaningful taxation of income.
Your suggestion is comparatively simple (somewhat), but (even adjusted to make sense) it probably wouldn't be considered very fair. If Bill Gates makes $1 billion and spends all of it, he'd pay no tax under that system, while anyone saving money for the future, no matter how little they actually made, would. So then you have to decide what types of spending are deductible, and what isn't.
Simplifying the tax code without opening up loopholes or other unintended consequences is difficult. Doing so while pleasing your constituents is nearly impossible.
The fact is that up until recently the vast majority of folks willingly complied with copyright laws, probably because they thought they were a pretty fair deal.
When is recently? I'm only 28, but my entire life my experience has been that the only reason people follow copyright laws is because they are too lazy to break them or too afraid of getting caught. Now, granted, maybe you're talking about decades ago, but I have absolutely no evidence to believe that it was any different back then. Maybe you do have some, and can point to it.
About the biggest change during my lifetime is that what used to be a civil infraction became a criminal matter - small scale copyright infringement for personal purposes. But that was always a law, it just wasn't a criminal law. So in a sense maybe you're right. Maybe people *are* willing to accept copyright laws which are only applied to people out to profit off of the works of others. Maybe this disconnect *is* a recent thing. It would explain the popularity of licenses such as CC-BY-NC, among other things.
The reason to be opposed to DRM isn't that it totally prevents you from doing things. It doesn't totally prevent it, it just gives you a worse selection of choices in terms of cost, ease, and quality. The real reason to be opposed to DRM is that it moves us further and further down the slippery slope to a world in which there is no commons, and it takes control of technology out of the hands of individuals and puts it in the hands of big corporations that buy a politician like I buy a quart of milk.
That's the pessimistic view. Call me an optimistist, but I think exactly the opposite is what's going to happen. Supposedly Abraham Lincoln said that "the best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly", and I think that's a very true statement. The only reason copyright has survived up to this point is because it's so damn easy to get away with violating it. The purpose of DRM is to change that equation, and to the extent that it succeeds people are going to seek better products.
I really don't mind DRM, the technology, in itself. I try to stick to using free content whenever possible anyway, so DRM doesn't really affect me directly (*). And indirectly, DRM technologies give others incentives to switch to free alternatives, which in turn tends to improve the quality of those free alternatives.
(*) Yes, DRM can be used to protect free and even public domain content in theory, but in reality I don't think that'll be much of a problem, because it only takes one person to spend the time or money to make a high quality copy and the content is freed from the technical protections.
So use mailinator and give a fake phone number (pick some fax machine at work or something). Every once in a while you'll get something in the mail, which they had to pay to send you. That's worth 99 cents in my book. Throwing away snail mail is easy.
A TiVo that can automatically skip ads based on a program's break time schedule is equivalent to AdBlock; the difference is that in one, you know when the ads are coming, and in the other you know where they are coming from.
Carrying the analogy further, what KFC is doing is equivalent to linking one of those blinking "YOU ARE A WINNER" ads to an online coupon.
I'm not completely against KFC and what they are doing, I just think it's done in the wrong way. What's wrong with just putting the word normally? I also know that another point is to create brand recognition, which they seem to be doing quite nicely (despite all the website problems they've been having with age and whatnot).
Eh, whatever. It's a gimmick. It got the company some free publicity in Slashdot. It got some people talking about the company. I wouldn't expect it to become a big thing, but it'll probably be successful at least this once.
Yeah, some people are getting the code off of Slashdot. Does that mean the commercial failed? On the contrary. The gimmick probably got at least one Slashdotter to buy a KFC sandwich when they otherwise wouldn't have, without even watching the commercial.
If they just put in the word normally, they wouldn't have gotten this story in Slashdot or any of the other places the story has run. Good for them.
They don't have any experience in the specific field (database driven websites), or even in the general technologies (when to use a left join in SQL). At this point in the web's history, is it really too much to expect people who already know this stuff?
No, but the vast majority of those people (your site lists "4 years experience working on web based, database driven software") are either already in a good position or are seeking a short-term contract, not employment. If you want the best employee for long-term employment, you're probably going to have to take a chance on a young person, or else steal someone from another company by offering a really great salary (probably using a headhunter or something).
Most of us employees don't get paid enough to take such chances - it's generally up to the employers to do so (that's one of the main reasons you earn the profits).
On a related note, I wonder how long it'll be until the job recruiters are outsourcing their positions overseas so even THEY are barely involved. I hear capitalism works pretty well when jobs disappear and nobody can afford to buy anything.
If all the jobs disappear and nobody can afford to buy anything, then you didn't have capitalism in the first place.
I really would like to see some sort of combination of social networking and the kind of relationship analysis that dating sites are now embracing.
I think the exact same thing every time I see one of those eHarmony commercials. "eHarmony is the only relationship site on the web that creates compatible matches based on 29 dimensions scientifically proven to predict happier, healthier relationships." Maybe that's just a bunch of nonsense, I haven't actually tried any of those dating sites, but you know what, if a jobs site as big as eHarmony made a claim like that, I'd try it.
I've already found the perfect woman to share my life with, but I dread going in to work every day. And I don't think that's inevitable - there were some times during the dot com days, before everything collapsed, when I actually enjoyed putting in my 50, 60 hours a week.
Point being, dialup is fine for me until those prices come down.
Chances are in 15 years that'll happen. If not for you, certainly for most of the US, which is all I stated in my original post.
$70/month would get me a considerable amount of porn and music plus a nice subscription to Netflix, and really, what else do you need high-speed for? Having/. pages load in a split second as opposed to five would be nice, but it certainly would not be worth that price tag.
I find it to be invaluable, but I spend a lot of time online. 5 seconds times 100 pages a day times 25 days a month is 3.5 hours. At $20/hour I'd say it's worth it even without the other factors.
Of course, I don't have a land-based phone line (I pay $60/month for EVDO), so the cost of dialup for me would be in the $25/month range at the least. For the extra $35/month it's well worth it to me. YMMV, of course.
Most people don't require internet access at all, so I don't really agree. Always on (no need to wait to dial up), doesn't tie up the phone line, easy networking, and just plain faster. I think these reasons are enough to justify Verizon's $14.95/month plan. Now, granted, that plan isn't available to everyone yet, but as it does become available there's really no reason to stay on dialup.
Considering that my Broadband costs more than my cell phone bill every month it's a pretty expensive item to afford.
Verizon DSL starts at $15/month where I live. Surely in 15 years this price will be even closer to the price of dialup.
In fact, there's a pretty good chance, at least in the US, that dialup will be gone from most areas in 15 years. It doesn't seem to me that it costs much more, if at all, to maintain a DSL line than to run a regular phone line (in theory DSL might even be cheaper since there's no need to maintain the filters). I guess the end equipment costs a little more, and of course the lines to get outside the CO are limited in bandwidth. But as long as you consider rate-limited broadband to still be broadband, I really don't see how it makes sense to keep dialup, as long as you're within the distance limitations of the CO.
The GFDL has a similar clause though, saying that you have to provide a machine readable "transparent" copy of the text. "If you publish or distribute Opaque copies of the Document numbering more than 100, you must either include a machine-readable Transparent copy along with each Opaque copy, or state in or with each Opaque copy a computer-network location from which the general network-using public has access to download using public-standard network protocols a complete Transparent copy of the Document, free of added material."
How is a "properly"-signed certificate any less vulnerable to MITM attacks than a self-signed one, if the MITM himself can get a "properly"-signed one?
It is extremely difficult to get a "properly" signed certificate for someone else's website. It'd be even more difficult to get a "properly" signed certificate for a big name bank website - in fact, nowadays that'd almost surely have to be an inside job. The phisher in this story got a "properly" signed certificate for his own website. That, of course, is much easier. Trivial, even. I'd go so far as to say that self-signed SSL is essentially useless. It would protect against a passive attacker though - someone who can only "see" the traffic, and can't alter it.
Here's an idea, though. Use a drive-by download to implant a user's PC with a simple HTTPS proxy server.
All bets are off if you can run arbitrary code on the target's PC - that's pretty obvious.
Slashdot Mirror
And in the end, it really doesn't matter to the Google executives and the long term investors. Google already received its investment. Going forward it's just a matter of a zero-sum game among the traders (actually less than zero-sum if you include commissions).
For the long term investor, this quarter to quarter stuff is meaningless anyway. Where is Google going to be in 10, 20, 50 years. That's what matters to the long-term investor, and that's what the Google executives want their investors to focus on. Hey, it works for Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway (Buffet most likely being the influence for this decision as well as the decision not to split).
"And when a CEO makes a pronouncement--even one that's largely based on hopes and guesses--employees will use whatever means necessary to make it come true. If earnings are supposed to be $1 a share, they will be, even if it takes some creative accounting. That's one reason Warren Buffett refuses to provide financial guidance at Berkshire Hathaway and why he has encouraged other companies on whose boards he sits, such as Coca-Cola, to give up the practice." - http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2 _archive/2005/11/01/8362824/index.htm
I can sort of understand why some people thought they might do something wonderful early on, but come on. It's been too long and they have virtually nothing to show for it other than grandeous rumors from morons like Cringely that never materialize.
That, and nearly $2 billion in profits, anyway.
You're right. You need to be able to follow instructions, and ask help when you don't understand. Doing one's own taxes requires the dramatic requirement of a high school degree.
C'mon now, a high school degree doesn't mean anything these days. Have you ever seen what happens at your local fast food place when the computers go down? There are plenty of high school graduates that don't even know how to use a calculator. And just because you *can* read the tax forms doesn't mean it's in your best interest to do so. If you want to be fairly certain you didn't miss anything, we're talking about a lot of reading. I think you're overestimating the skill level of the average high school graduate. And I also think you're underestimating the value of most people's time. A number of my college educated friends gladly pay me $50 to fill out their short forms even though I've offered to look them over for free if they fill them out themselves.
As for homeowners and business owners -- yes, a whole lot of people own their home. But homeownership isn't even close to 50% nationwide -- more people rent or lease than own, and there's no special deduction for that.
According to the other poster it's over 50%. I don't know if that's true or not, but more to the point, 30% of taxpayers itemize deductions.
And most of us who don't own a home have no easy way to start a business large enough for the IRS to care about.
I really don't know why you'd say that. Anyone with half a brain can start a business quite easily. Might not want to, but it's not a hard thing to do.
Yep. I hate the W-4, and the pre-calculator way income taxes are withheld in general. (Why not a flat percentage of gross wages, after a deduction equal to the taxpayer's expected deduction divided bu the number of paychecks?)
Because the income tax system is graduated, not flat. But otherwise, that's basically how it works. The tables are just a simplification. (That said, the actual amount of the allowances isn't set up exactly correctly, in part because the standard deduction doesn't equal the standard exemption. And for people with a more complicated return than one person with earned income, taking the standard deduction, it's pretty much impossible to get it right using a simple formula anyway). All of this said, the purpose of withholding goes beyond just being a way to make it so you don't owe money at the end of the year. The arguably more important purpose is that it puts a lot of the burden of tax collection on the employer instead of on the government. So it's in the government's best interest to err on the side of having the employer collect too much.
But I also know people who would go to H&R block if I didn't urge them not to--mostly by checking their taxes and showing them how little a refund they're going to get.
On the flip side, I know people who have tried to do their taxes themselves and have gotten it wrong. I just helped someone fill out an amendment for 2004 because they didn't claim the retirement savings credit. So that's $200 coming to them that they wouldn't have gotten on their own, and the problem wasn't lack of education or inability to deal with numbers, the return was originally filled out by a relative who's a math teacher.
H&R Block and a lot of the other places usually run a deal in late April and May where they'll check your return for free and help you file an amendment (for a fee) if you missed something. So if you're willing to take advantage of that (or otherwise know someone in the know who will look at your return for you), then maybe it's not so bad if you try to do it yourself.
Also, for those who aren't afraid of computers or the Internet, TaxAct has free software that'll efile and everything for free. That's what I used this year. Got my refund in less than 2 weeks. Another reason why refund anticipation loans are a horrible deal. Unless you have absolutely horrible credit, there's surely a way you can get a 2 week loan for less money than H&R Block (or any of the others) will charge you.
The ONLY three reasons to have a "professional" do your taxes are (1) you're getting a sizable refund and want a RAL
I guess we're not talking about *good* reasons, because RALs from H&R Block are *never* a good deal. Seriously, never. There's *always* a better alternative. (If nothing else, a RAL from someone other than H&R Block, but usually there's an ever better alternative than that).
(2) You're of below-average ability when it comes to numbers, and need someone else to do them
Not just numbers, but tax law... It's also a matter of whether or not you have the time to carefully read the forms. Actually, how good you are with numbers is pretty irrelevant, just use a computer or a calculator. And merely being "above average" probably isn't enough. I've done taxes for a lot of intelligent people who have made major mistaken assumptions about how to fill out a tax form. Hell, about half the people who are the primary income maker for a family probably think they're "head of houshold".
(3) you're a homeowner, a business owner, or make enough to hit the A.M.T.
Just on the first two you've included a whole lot of people. And just making a lot of money is almost never going to make you "hit the AMT". The most common way to "hit the AMT" is to have a lot of employee business deductions, and the majority of the time that only is going to be a consideration if you're a homeowner (the standard deduction is quite large).
Oh, and it's easy to pay 500% for a RAL. All you need is a refund of less than $10 -- and it's all too easy to wind up with that.
Why would someone get a RAL for a refund of less than $10? I don't even think most H&R Block employees are sleazy enough to let someone do that.
In fact, if you did your W-4 and kin right, that SHOULD be what you get.
If you (and your wife, if you're married) have one job, no other income, and are eligible for zero credits, maybe. Otherwise it's actually pretty difficult to get it right. And it's almost never done. People give me strange looks when I tell them I filled out my W-4 with 8 exemptions (and my household has only 2 people in it). But even with that, I still managed to get a sizeable refund. Bush has been really gracious to us below-average income taxpayers.
Well, the APR that's usually calculated is based solely on the fee for the RAL. And if you call it an APR there's nothing voodoo about the math, that's how an APR is calculated.
Yes, H&R Block will often get people more money, even after fees, than they would have gotten on their own. But they're still sleazy people for the most part. I took the H&R Block tax class, though I wound up working for myself and now for a CPA firm. The woman who taught the class told us about how she would help the people prepare their W-4s (for a fee), and would basically trick the customers into withholding too much. To which I responded "so you charge people to tell them to give too much money to the government, and then you charge them again to get their own money back faster?" She didn't like that comment, but I still did wind up getting an "A". I didn't bother applying for a job with them, though.
And it's not like H&R Block doesn't screw up people's returns. I've done many amendments for people who came to me or my employer after going to H&R Block, and I've gotten them thousands of dollars in refunds that H&R Block missed. And yes, I'm sure I've missed things myself too, but if you want competance H&R Block probably isn't the best place to go. "Take it to a pro"? Sure. But when you go to H&R Block you're paying nearly as much as you'd pay to a CPA or enrolled agent and you're paying it to someone who is essentially nothing more than an educated salesperson (employees are paid on commission and get special bonuses for all the RALs and other scams they sell people, in fact we were told flat out even before getting hired that pushing the "rapid refund" and "peace of mind" crap was mandatory).
If you're spending $200 on $50 software (or free, if your AGI is less than 50k) then I don't want fiscal advice from you!
I believe he was referring to preparer software after re-reading what he wrote. What he's saying is that any Yahoo can pay $200 for software and prepare a bunch of people's 1040-EZs.
I usually get my refund back in less than 2 weeks, this year I got it in less than 5 days, which is the fastest I've ever seen it come back.
E-file batches are processed on Thursday. If your e-file is accepted in the Thursday batch you should get your direct deposit by the next Friday. There's a table in this publication.
No problem, we could switch over to the Flat Tax very quickly. Take your income, subtract your personal and dependent deductions (well over $40K for a family of four), and pay a percentage of what's left (usually 17% in American proposals). Besides saving $billions in labor, it will likely increase compliance as it will be less worthwhile to dodge it.
A graduated tax is not really any more complicated than a flat tax. OK, you need to make 3 calculations instead of one (or use a table), but that's really not a big deal. You still have to define "income", which I suppose you'll define as equivalent to what is currently called "gross income". Now to be fair you should probably move some of the itemized deductions up into the gross income calculation - after all it's not fair to tax people when they make capital gains on (for instance) their house unless you give them a deduction for all that interest they paid on it. Of course, maybe you just want to define "income" as "earned income". I dunno, you tell me.
So you get rid of most of the deductions and replace them with a (presumably bigger) standard deduction. And then you get rid of all the tax credits. In effect you replace the income tax with the AMT.
The thing is, you haven't really simplified all that much. You still have all the rules about depreciation and amortization and imputed wages and barter income and loan tracing. You still have to put large companies on the accrual system so that they can't abuse the system by delaying cash payments. Of the 8000 sections of the tax code you've eliminated maybe 200. Of the case law and regulations you've eliminated an even smaller portion. And on top of all that, you have to phase this in in some way that's fair to people who were already promised some sort of benefits from the old system.
The flat tax isn't really about simplification. It's about removing the concept of progressive taxation.
Unfortunately, reformers are split between the Flat Tax and Fair Tax, aka national sales tax. The problem with the Fair Tax plan is that it will require the repeal of the income tax amendment, which will take years under the best circumstances. The Flat Tax requires no constitutional changes.
Huh? Why does the "Fair Tax" *require* a repeal of the 16th Amendment? The 16th Amendment merely *allows* congress to tax incomes, it doesn't *force* them to do so.
At the very least the Flat Tax could be used as a stopgap measure. Then there's the slight problem of Congress losing the ability to sell tax loopholes to lobbyists (awww). Personally I think wiping out the source of much of the corruption in Washington is a Good Thing.
The vast majority of the tax code has absolutely nothing to do with loopholes given to lobbyists. And the progressivity of the tax system is in no way a loophole - it's an explicity design in the tax system. And actually, your implementation of the so called "flat tax" isn't even flat. It has two levels, 0% and 17% (*). A progressive tax could actually be implemented using exactly the same number of calculations. You'd just have to look up the amount to subtract in a table with the same number of entries as the number of tax brackets.
(*) Which is way too little to be considered equivalent to the current system. The AMT alone has a rate of 26-28%.
My preference would be to repeal the 16th Amendment and replace it with nothing.
Mine too.
Short of that this is the next best thing: http://www.fairtax.org/
I've thought and read a lot about the "Fair Tax" proposal, and I suspect it'd wind up being almost as complicated as the income tax system.
Something like "plug in total assets and total change in assets since last year, and find tax".
...which probably wouldn't have helped out H&R Block at all, because they miscalculated their liabilities (which I assume you're going to have to subtract from assets anyway).
Congress could certainly simplify the tax code in a few ways (get rid of the credits and some of the more esoteric deductions, move the rest "above the line", eliminate the phaseouts, and then probably raise the standard deduction and/or exemption to compensate). But a lot, probably the majority, of the tax code is fairly necessary if you're going to have a meaningful taxation of income.
Your suggestion is comparatively simple (somewhat), but (even adjusted to make sense) it probably wouldn't be considered very fair. If Bill Gates makes $1 billion and spends all of it, he'd pay no tax under that system, while anyone saving money for the future, no matter how little they actually made, would. So then you have to decide what types of spending are deductible, and what isn't.
Simplifying the tax code without opening up loopholes or other unintended consequences is difficult. Doing so while pleasing your constituents is nearly impossible.
The fact is that up until recently the vast majority of folks willingly complied with copyright laws, probably because they thought they were a pretty fair deal.
When is recently? I'm only 28, but my entire life my experience has been that the only reason people follow copyright laws is because they are too lazy to break them or too afraid of getting caught. Now, granted, maybe you're talking about decades ago, but I have absolutely no evidence to believe that it was any different back then. Maybe you do have some, and can point to it.
About the biggest change during my lifetime is that what used to be a civil infraction became a criminal matter - small scale copyright infringement for personal purposes. But that was always a law, it just wasn't a criminal law. So in a sense maybe you're right. Maybe people *are* willing to accept copyright laws which are only applied to people out to profit off of the works of others. Maybe this disconnect *is* a recent thing. It would explain the popularity of licenses such as CC-BY-NC, among other things.
The reason to be opposed to DRM isn't that it totally prevents you from doing things. It doesn't totally prevent it, it just gives you a worse selection of choices in terms of cost, ease, and quality. The real reason to be opposed to DRM is that it moves us further and further down the slippery slope to a world in which there is no commons, and it takes control of technology out of the hands of individuals and puts it in the hands of big corporations that buy a politician like I buy a quart of milk.
That's the pessimistic view. Call me an optimistist, but I think exactly the opposite is what's going to happen. Supposedly Abraham Lincoln said that "the best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly", and I think that's a very true statement. The only reason copyright has survived up to this point is because it's so damn easy to get away with violating it. The purpose of DRM is to change that equation, and to the extent that it succeeds people are going to seek better products.
I really don't mind DRM, the technology, in itself. I try to stick to using free content whenever possible anyway, so DRM doesn't really affect me directly (*). And indirectly, DRM technologies give others incentives to switch to free alternatives, which in turn tends to improve the quality of those free alternatives.
(*) Yes, DRM can be used to protect free and even public domain content in theory, but in reality I don't think that'll be much of a problem, because it only takes one person to spend the time or money to make a high quality copy and the content is freed from the technical protections.
So use mailinator and give a fake phone number (pick some fax machine at work or something). Every once in a while you'll get something in the mail, which they had to pay to send you. That's worth 99 cents in my book. Throwing away snail mail is easy.
Ovaltine? A crummy commercial? Son of a bitch!
A TiVo that can automatically skip ads based on a program's break time schedule is equivalent to AdBlock; the difference is that in one, you know when the ads are coming, and in the other you know where they are coming from.
Carrying the analogy further, what KFC is doing is equivalent to linking one of those blinking "YOU ARE A WINNER" ads to an online coupon.
I'm not completely against KFC and what they are doing, I just think it's done in the wrong way. What's wrong with just putting the word normally? I also know that another point is to create brand recognition, which they seem to be doing quite nicely (despite all the website problems they've been having with age and whatnot).
Eh, whatever. It's a gimmick. It got the company some free publicity in Slashdot. It got some people talking about the company. I wouldn't expect it to become a big thing, but it'll probably be successful at least this once.
Yeah, some people are getting the code off of Slashdot. Does that mean the commercial failed? On the contrary. The gimmick probably got at least one Slashdotter to buy a KFC sandwich when they otherwise wouldn't have, without even watching the commercial.
If they just put in the word normally, they wouldn't have gotten this story in Slashdot or any of the other places the story has run. Good for them.
They don't have any experience in the specific field (database driven websites), or even in the general technologies (when to use a left join in SQL). At this point in the web's history, is it really too much to expect people who already know this stuff?
No, but the vast majority of those people (your site lists "4 years experience working on web based, database driven software") are either already in a good position or are seeking a short-term contract, not employment. If you want the best employee for long-term employment, you're probably going to have to take a chance on a young person, or else steal someone from another company by offering a really great salary (probably using a headhunter or something).
Most of us employees don't get paid enough to take such chances - it's generally up to the employers to do so (that's one of the main reasons you earn the profits).
On a related note, I wonder how long it'll be until the job recruiters are outsourcing their positions overseas so even THEY are barely involved. I hear capitalism works pretty well when jobs disappear and nobody can afford to buy anything.
If all the jobs disappear and nobody can afford to buy anything, then you didn't have capitalism in the first place.
I really would like to see some sort of combination of social networking and the kind of relationship analysis that dating sites are now embracing.
I think the exact same thing every time I see one of those eHarmony commercials. "eHarmony is the only relationship site on the web that creates compatible matches based on 29 dimensions scientifically proven to predict happier, healthier relationships." Maybe that's just a bunch of nonsense, I haven't actually tried any of those dating sites, but you know what, if a jobs site as big as eHarmony made a claim like that, I'd try it.
I've already found the perfect woman to share my life with, but I dread going in to work every day. And I don't think that's inevitable - there were some times during the dot com days, before everything collapsed, when I actually enjoyed putting in my 50, 60 hours a week.
Point being, dialup is fine for me until those prices come down.
Chances are in 15 years that'll happen. If not for you, certainly for most of the US, which is all I stated in my original post.
$70/month would get me a considerable amount of porn and music plus a nice subscription to Netflix, and really, what else do you need high-speed for? Having /. pages load in a split second as opposed to five would be nice, but it certainly would not be worth that price tag.
I find it to be invaluable, but I spend a lot of time online. 5 seconds times 100 pages a day times 25 days a month is 3.5 hours. At $20/hour I'd say it's worth it even without the other factors.
Of course, I don't have a land-based phone line (I pay $60/month for EVDO), so the cost of dialup for me would be in the $25/month range at the least. For the extra $35/month it's well worth it to me. YMMV, of course.
You have to have a reason to require broadband.
Most people don't require internet access at all, so I don't really agree. Always on (no need to wait to dial up), doesn't tie up the phone line, easy networking, and just plain faster. I think these reasons are enough to justify Verizon's $14.95/month plan. Now, granted, that plan isn't available to everyone yet, but as it does become available there's really no reason to stay on dialup.
Considering that my Broadband costs more than my cell phone bill every month it's a pretty expensive item to afford.
Verizon DSL starts at $15/month where I live. Surely in 15 years this price will be even closer to the price of dialup.
In fact, there's a pretty good chance, at least in the US, that dialup will be gone from most areas in 15 years. It doesn't seem to me that it costs much more, if at all, to maintain a DSL line than to run a regular phone line (in theory DSL might even be cheaper since there's no need to maintain the filters). I guess the end equipment costs a little more, and of course the lines to get outside the CO are limited in bandwidth. But as long as you consider rate-limited broadband to still be broadband, I really don't see how it makes sense to keep dialup, as long as you're within the distance limitations of the CO.
The GFDL has a similar clause though, saying that you have to provide a machine readable "transparent" copy of the text. "If you publish or distribute Opaque copies of the Document numbering more than 100, you must either include a machine-readable Transparent copy along with each Opaque copy, or state in or with each Opaque copy a computer-network location from which the general network-using public has access to download using public-standard network protocols a complete Transparent copy of the Document, free of added material."
How is a "properly"-signed certificate any less vulnerable to MITM attacks than a self-signed one, if the MITM himself can get a "properly"-signed one?
It is extremely difficult to get a "properly" signed certificate for someone else's website. It'd be even more difficult to get a "properly" signed certificate for a big name bank website - in fact, nowadays that'd almost surely have to be an inside job. The phisher in this story got a "properly" signed certificate for his own website. That, of course, is much easier. Trivial, even. I'd go so far as to say that self-signed SSL is essentially useless. It would protect against a passive attacker though - someone who can only "see" the traffic, and can't alter it.
Here's an idea, though. Use a drive-by download to implant a user's PC with a simple HTTPS proxy server.
All bets are off if you can run arbitrary code on the target's PC - that's pretty obvious.
Well, if all your users are idiots, then I guess it doesn't help to have a certificate signed by a CA. But then, why bother having encryption at all?