Everyone knows you have to file a tax return every year.
Actually you don't have to file a return every year. If you don't have gross income above some amount (I forget what, and it probably changes every year) you don't have to file.
Of course, if your net income is below that level, but your gross is not, you have to file to show how the deductions and exemptions reduce your income below the cutoff.
If you've been subject to withholding, however, you have to file to get anything back if you are entitled to get it back.
If you dig up gold in your back yard, you have increased the supply of available gold in the world. If demand remains the same as before you got busy with your shovel, then the "price", and therefore the "worth" of gold decreases (provided that you would have had the same demand for gold even if it weren't available right outside your back door). Perhaps only by an almost infinitesimal sliver of a cent per ounce, depending on just how much you dug up, but it decreases just the same.
If you still had a need for gold, to build electronics or solar collectors or whatever, but there was none available in your back yard, you would have to go buy it from someone else. This would be an increase in demand with a non-increased supply, which would cause a price increase, although possibly one too small to notice, depending on just how much you wanted to buy.
The law of supply and demand may not be as much of a law as the law of gravity, but it's pretty close. That's why, when the supply of a particular currency goes up, the value per unit of that particular currency goes down, which is why printing money eventually makes it worthless.
Just how many years of not filing are we talking about here?
I'm pretty sure the IRS has a statute of limitations that, after a few years, lets them tell you that it's too late to file and you aren't getting anything back.
I never got all of my W-2s from 1975, so I never filed for that year. I have a vague memory of asking them about it a few years later and being told that I was out of luck.
Of course if you owe them money I'm sure it works differently.
Just as life insurance pays off if you fail to live when you're supposed to, i.e., when you're young and able to bring home a paycheck, death insurance pays off when you fail to be dead when you're supposed to, i.e., when you are too old or too disabled to bring home a paycheck.
Anyone who starts in about how some other retirement savings program should be substituted for Social Security isn't worth listening to, because they don't understand the issue, which is an insurance program, not a retirement program.
Current moving along (or through) a wire generates a magnetic field. If you coil up the wire you increase its inductance and that makes the field stronger by concentrating it in a smaller area.
If you move a magnetic field along that wire you generate a current in it. If you hold the field still and move the wire, same thing.
If I were looking to invent something I might look into how much current I could get by having a person carry a coil in their pocket as they move relative to the earth's magnetic field. In other words, moving around would recharge your cell phone. The question is how much moving around in how a long a period of time would be necessary.
For induction, frequency affects the overall number of turns required. A 50Hz transformer that copes with 300W is the size of a shoe box, but for a switchmode power supply at 100KHz it's the size of a match box.
It's not so much the number of turns as it is how much metal you need as the transformer's core. That's why aircraft used 400 Hz generators and/or alternators instead of 50 or 60 Hz, because transformers and inductive filters could be made with less metal, which meant not just cheaper, but, of prime importance, lighter.
"* Say we have a residents meeting at my dorm, and someone suggests we buy a Wii for our basement lounge. Later, I see an encrypted message between the dorm chairman and SomeWiiShop.dk. I know my dorm chairman is not a gamer, so my natural assumption is that she's..."
Frequently key to NASA success? I'd say it's almost always key to NASA's success, otherwise it'd be known as the National Staying Right Here On The Ground, Thank You Very Much, Administration.
Aplologies for a belated reply. I brought a new piece of computer hardware into the house, and everything I already had got jealous and started acting up in protest, so I've been offline mostly this past week.
Most of what I know on the subject I learned over many pre-internet years from a number of different sources, such as the magazines Stereo Review, High Fidelity, Audio, Radio-Electronics, Popular Electronics, various broadcasting trade magazines, et cetera, as well as a little from "psych 101" type courses at various times during my rather checkered higher education experience.
Basically, people don't really see and hear stuff, physical phenomena affect the eyes and the ears, which results in nerve impulses being sent to the brain, and the brain does a lot of work to figure them out. Lots and lots of "pattern matching", or, more likely, "almost matching". I saw an old Bausch and Lomb ad some 30 or 40 years ago which said the using your eyes accounts for 25 per cent of the energy your body expends.
You know what people voices sound like. Once a commercial's audio has been "processed", there's a part of your brain that's trying to decode it while thinking that "even allowing for the guy being in 'announcer mode', this just doesn't sound quite like a human voice is supposed to, but it doesn't quite match any other sounds in memory either". So it wears you out.
You know what musical intstruments sound like, and you know what people singing sound like, but, when they compress the dynamic range down so that the entire CD lies between loud and very loud, your brain drives itself nuts trying to reconcile the difference.
From the headline I feared it might have been someone of a religion with strict dietary laws (there are two that come immediately to mind if you don't count the Baptist inclination towards pork products) who was going to destroy the restaurant as a protest against the serving of sausage. : - )
When people complain about the commercials being louder than the programs, they're told that the volume control is left in the same position for both (or the technical words electronic equivalent). Even when this is true, the commercials seem louder. This is also true. I was pointing out that the way both can be true is because of compression and limiting, and because "loudness" is a subjective judgement, and that any legislative attempt to deal with the problem will need to take all of that into account.
When you say that the commercials are louder because they turn them up, to which "they" do you refer? The people who actually produce the commercial and make the copies that go out to the networks and local stations? The people (or machine) running the control board at the network or local station that switches between the program and the commercials and the promos and the station IDs and such? The people (or machine) at the cable company that inserts local ads into the local avails?
Or the real plan is to turn it around to face the Earth and turn it into a "real" Universal Remote Control.
That's what really caused the FlashForward blackout, you know, the concussive effect from the "Whuuump" sound wave caused by every TV in the world changing the channel at the same time.
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you. Some days the eyeballs work, some days not so much.
I give up. What about that sentence is wrong?
Employers pay less for group insurance because the 'high risk' employees are offset by the 'low risk' employees.
Not quite. Employers pay less for group insurance because they're buying in bulk.
Everyone knows you have to file a tax return every year.
Actually you don't have to file a return every year. If you don't have gross income above some amount (I forget what, and it probably changes every year) you don't have to file.
Of course, if your net income is below that level, but your gross is not, you have to file to show how the deductions and exemptions reduce your income below the cutoff.
If you've been subject to withholding, however, you have to file to get anything back if you are entitled to get it back.
If you dig up gold in your back yard, you have increased the supply of available gold in the world. If demand remains the same as before you got busy with your shovel, then the "price", and therefore the "worth" of gold decreases (provided that you would have had the same demand for gold even if it weren't available right outside your back door). Perhaps only by an almost infinitesimal sliver of a cent per ounce, depending on just how much you dug up, but it decreases just the same.
If you still had a need for gold, to build electronics or solar collectors or whatever, but there was none available in your back yard, you would have to go buy it from someone else. This would be an increase in demand with a non-increased supply, which would cause a price increase, although possibly one too small to notice, depending on just how much you wanted to buy.
The law of supply and demand may not be as much of a law as the law of gravity, but it's pretty close. That's why, when the supply of a particular currency goes up, the value per unit of that particular currency goes down, which is why printing money eventually makes it worthless.
Just how many years of not filing are we talking about here?
I'm pretty sure the IRS has a statute of limitations that, after a few years, lets them tell you that it's too late to file and you aren't getting anything back.
I never got all of my W-2s from 1975, so I never filed for that year. I have a vague memory of asking them about it a few years later and being told that I was out of luck.
Of course if you owe them money I'm sure it works differently.
*Fun fact: early in the song, a "hot bowl of grits" is mentioned.
Are we talking Natalie Portman hot grits or Al Greene hot grits?
Well, why didn't you say upfront that you worked out a volunteer product tester post-retail quality-control arrangement?
Lilly Tomlin is not late, except perhaps for dinner.
Well, she did say that she tried to be cynical but couldn't keep up. :-)
Perhaps it is Ernestine who is no longer answering the bell.
Social Security is an insurance program.
Exactly. Specifically, it it death insurance.
Just as life insurance pays off if you fail to live when you're supposed to, i.e., when you're young and able to bring home a paycheck, death insurance pays off when you fail to be dead when you're supposed to, i.e., when you are too old or too disabled to bring home a paycheck.
Anyone who starts in about how some other retirement savings program should be substituted for Social Security isn't worth listening to, because they don't understand the issue, which is an insurance program, not a retirement program.
Current moving along (or through) a wire generates a magnetic field. If you coil up the wire you increase its inductance and that makes the field stronger by concentrating it in a smaller area.
If you move a magnetic field along that wire you generate a current in it. If you hold the field still and move the wire, same thing.
If I were looking to invent something I might look into how much current I could get by having a person carry a coil in their pocket as they move relative to the earth's magnetic field. In other words, moving around would recharge your cell phone. The question is how much moving around in how a long a period of time would be necessary.
For induction, frequency affects the overall number of turns required. A 50Hz transformer that copes with 300W is the size of a shoe box, but for a switchmode power supply at 100KHz it's the size of a match box.
It's not so much the number of turns as it is how much metal you need as the transformer's core. That's why aircraft used 400 Hz generators and/or alternators instead of 50 or 60 Hz, because transformers and inductive filters could be made with less metal, which meant not just cheaper, but, of prime importance, lighter.
That Dell was powered by a 300w PS...
Was that one of those "not quite ATX" supplies?
Is that a corollary of the love of money is the root of all religion?
...I think his point was that "Characters were not always 8-bit".
Quite true. I've known any number of two-bit characters.
"* Say we have a residents meeting at my dorm, and someone suggests we buy a Wii for our basement lounge. Later, I see an encrypted message between the dorm chairman and SomeWiiShop.dk. I know my dorm chairman is not a gamer, so my natural assumption is that she's..."
...getting a kickback.
There, jumped to an assumption for you. : - )
Launching Frequently Key To NASA Success
Frequently key to NASA success? I'd say it's almost always key to NASA's success, otherwise it'd be known as the National Staying Right Here On The Ground, Thank You Very Much, Administration.
Aplologies for a belated reply. I brought a new piece of computer hardware into the house, and everything I already had got jealous and started acting up in protest, so I've been offline mostly this past week.
Most of what I know on the subject I learned over many pre-internet years from a number of different sources, such as the magazines Stereo Review, High Fidelity, Audio, Radio-Electronics, Popular Electronics, various broadcasting trade magazines, et cetera, as well as a little from "psych 101" type courses at various times during my rather checkered higher education experience.
Basically, people don't really see and hear stuff, physical phenomena affect the eyes and the ears, which results in nerve impulses being sent to the brain, and the brain does a lot of work to figure them out. Lots and lots of "pattern matching", or, more likely, "almost matching". I saw an old Bausch and Lomb ad some 30 or 40 years ago which said the using your eyes accounts for 25 per cent of the energy your body expends.
You know what people voices sound like. Once a commercial's audio has been "processed", there's a part of your brain that's trying to decode it while thinking that "even allowing for the guy being in 'announcer mode', this just doesn't sound quite like a human voice is supposed to, but it doesn't quite match any other sounds in memory either". So it wears you out.
You know what musical intstruments sound like, and you know what people singing sound like, but, when they compress the dynamic range down so that the entire CD lies between loud and very loud, your brain drives itself nuts trying to reconcile the difference.
From the headline I feared it might have been someone of a religion with strict dietary laws (there are two that come immediately to mind if you don't count the Baptist inclination towards pork products) who was going to destroy the restaurant as a protest against the serving of sausage. : - )
And "Noone" is English as well.
As in Peter Noone, of Herman's Hermits. : - )
When people complain about the commercials being louder than the programs, they're told that the volume control is left in the same position for both (or the technical words electronic equivalent). Even when this is true, the commercials seem louder. This is also true. I was pointing out that the way both can be true is because of compression and limiting, and because "loudness" is a subjective judgement, and that any legislative attempt to deal with the problem will need to take all of that into account.
When you say that the commercials are louder because they turn them up, to which "they" do you refer? The people who actually produce the commercial and make the copies that go out to the networks and local stations? The people (or machine) running the control board at the network or local station that switches between the program and the commercials and the promos and the station IDs and such? The people (or machine) at the cable company that inserts local ads into the local avails?
There is so little good educational television that I really do need to let them know how much I appreciate it.
Thanks to them I, too, am now a much more informed washed-up spy/McGyver. : - )
...and call it the "Unary Track Inflection".
I hear those can take forever to clear up.
It's the open source GNU replacement for nat.
You know, like G-zip?
Or the real plan is to turn it around to face the Earth and turn it into a "real" Universal Remote Control.
That's what really caused the FlashForward blackout, you know, the concussive effect from the "Whuuump" sound wave caused by every TV in the world changing the channel at the same time.