and the great debates over virii and viruses. usually viruses as applied to the cyber world.
So, why do we still use "worm"? It is not latiny scientific-geeky enough. We should be saying "vermis" singular and "vermi" plural, well, I think so anyway...
well, you have video on demand already, it's just not real time streaming, and it's mostly in the form of copyright ignoring. But with broadband and the p2p networks and ideas like bit torrent, it's much closer than it was even two years ago for joe average. The big companies though have lagged behind in doing it economically,they are stuck on the few copies for massive profits mindset, and until they change that mindset it won't happen legally, but the tech ishere, it exists now. with audio and relatively small file sizes, the people just did it. Video is getting there as we speak. The big companies have somewhat caught up with legal music downloads, video merely lags time wise, and people will not put up with excessive fees, so it's up to the big companies to go for mass quantities and miniscule profit margins if they want to make a go of it and not constantly engage in cyber warfare over it. The ball is in their court to do the right thing now, and stop being jerks over it..
using that as a search term, you get 18,800 hits on google. And here is a New Scientist reference about rechargeable implantable batteries, that are recharged from inside the body using your body heat. This is a small copy/paste from that article: "The "biothermal battery" under development by Biophan Technologies of West Henrietta, will generate electricity using arrays of thousands of thermoelectric generators built into an implantable chip. These generators exploit the well-known thermocouple effect, in which a small voltage is generated when two of the junctions between two dissimilar materials are kept at different temperatures."
Seems like the "limitations" of range and power to RFID tags that people kept saying would make them impractical for mass universal chipping are being overcome at a fast rate.
Well, the article says as he goes about the city. I imagine the chip readers are installed at the doors to various governmental buildings. Between that and tracking his official car, they can follow his whereabouts pretty effectively.
As to range, I keep reading people saying it's only a very short distance, yet I have heard they have some good rfid now they can place on goods inside of steel locked containers and read them effectively outside the container. That's decent range and power, and I am sure they probably have much better ones that aren't common public knowledge yet. And yes, using the skin as the antenna and part of the transmitting power source would be effective, you would imagine.
... everyone to get the chip obviously. They know in advance it would be resisted, so to mitigate that, they have to first chip the ones who will be enforcing the mass chipping. That means the paramilitary the overt military and the police, and they have to start at the top in those orgs so that the orders will be followed. Every step of the mass chipping has to be taken precisely. They scare the parents into chipping the youngest. They force the highest levels in government to get the chip. The police and military get it, so that they can say "what citizen, you rdfuse the chip? WE got the chip, so if we can do it, you can do it", along those lines. We've seen the plans coming soon to chip cops hands so that that chip will activate their "smart" guns, so only the cop can use them. Special forces in the military are the first to be getting the chip. Criminals will be getting the chip soon, to track them inside the jail, then outside forever. As they enforce the chips in these unique areas, eventually enough of the population will have them so that the rest may be mandated to get them, perhaps to tie in with a universal ID system.
One step at a time, how they do most things.
This topcop down there being chipped might be related to corruption in mexico, no idea, seems reasonable enough though. It is obvious that we are seeing an outright complete merging of the countries, any sort of "border" now is becoming moot, so perhaps they will be trying out the more extreme measures down in mexico first, to work out the bugs, see what sort of techniques are more efficient.
Ok, now I contemplate "what if" I still had them.. keep them, or sell them?.. hmmm
probably keep a few of them for arte du nostalgia objects, sell the rest, buy some hard shiny yellow metal disks with the loot, then wait for the real estate bubble to pop, then get land with the hard shiny disks.
I never learned to program a lick, beside basic html web pages, real simple stuff. I know I either have the tools installed, or they are right here on the disks, but dang if there's much of any instructions with them. I can scare bash into once in awhile doing something, that's about it.
but ya, would be nice if programming was more universal with computers, it just has to be a lot easier. Programming is a heavy hobby or a career, it's a lot of work for people already doing other stuff. It's also easier I bet the younger you start..some days I got no idea what freekin MONTH it is........
we were moving when I was a kid. My dad made me GIVE AWAY my entire comic book and mad magazine stash going back to the early 50's, because he didn'twant to pay freight on the bigass moving van, they charged by the pound I guess. I had most marvel first additions then -> on to like spidey,thor, fantastic 4, hulkster, x-dudes, yada yada,you name it, and a lot of DC comics as well, stuporman, ratman, green lantern...aww geez... Boxes of them. I could just snivel and whine now...all that stuff gotta be worth 6 figures I bet....and that don't count all the ace doubles neither......:(
A guy I used to work for accumulated old mainframes and cards with the gold on them, he had a big garage full. Eventually he sold it someplace where they recover the gold (using nasty chemicals I guess) and he got close to 10 grand for it, hmm, mid 80s gold prices.
oh well, at least you got to play and have some fun. Makes for a good story later on.
I had a similar but work related deal, an even split. Many years ago I go out to the cotton bowl in texas to work a rolling stones gig as a steel climber. I am promised my gas reimbursed, and the lodging, and etc, then the pay. I drive all the way out there, find out NO paid lodging or gas,(7 tanks one way in my van). Man was I steamed and I was STUCK, I had to work the gig just to make enough to get back home to atlanta. Cheapest dudes I ever met, no wonder they are millionaires. I worked one more teardown in new orleans because it was sorta on the way back and at least I made it home with a few bucks, but that was the nastiest hardest work for the cheapest pay I did since I was a kid working on farms piecework.
Like for real,I have 2 questions, how did you do prize-wise, and, more importantly, is Vanna hot in person? Had to be a cool fun experience no matter what.
FWIW, I once had a string where I played along at home with jeopardy for roughly six weeks, nailed a pseudo win all but two nights. Of course I know that wouldn't translate to a similar deal live on stage, not for me anyway, I'd get flustered and get an attack of the nervous dumbs.... like Cliffy on Cheers did.
Anyone else here ever play along for a long time and keep track of it?
walmart dot com online sells various computers with alternatives to XP pre installed, some quite inexpensive like the ones from microtel starting at around 200 dollars, but I am not aware they do this in their brick and mortar stores. They may some places, but I haven't seen it. I always look, too, in the last two years I have been in 3 regular walmarts and two walmart supercenters, all I saw was XP, and the cheapest on the shelf was closer to 500$ at the low end.
... consumer level desktop,at least now they don't, they offer a *corporate* desktop designed to be used by employees and installed and run and kept fixed and updated by professional sysadmins. Fedora is a hobbiest/developer community distro, it's not pushed at all as an entry level mom and pop and sis and junior distro either. I don't know about suse or any of the others. How many actual true beginners level distros are there in *fact* as opposed to *slashdot theory*, anyway? Linspire, xandros, what else? As far as I know, that's about it.
The others can get *close*, but close ain't good enough, it has to really be there to be offered as an entry level beginners distro, the stuff has to work first time, every time, no CLI tweaking should be necessary to fit that bill. It doesn't matter if you can, what matters is if you *have to*, to set it up and run it effectively, and that means, sound has to work, media apps have to work, your display should work, you should be able to get online easy, etc, etc. The desktop competition is windows, and apple, and say what you want about them, good and bad, you don't have to touch a command line or know what to type on the command line to get all that stuff to work with those two companies products. Any linux home consumer desktop has to match or exceed that. So, how many distros fit the bill then?
Computers are great for creativity! Suppose you are a writer. Good writers not only can use sentence structure and imagery, but they also research the topics they write about. The computer and the net makes this research much easier, more intensive, better all around. Picture artists have always embraced newer techniques, from mud on the cave wall, through various pigment technologies and brushes, to now they can create great images using a keyboard and a mouse with the appropriate programs. Inventors of gadgets are able to use designing programs that can speed up and enhance their efforts. Musicians, the same. And it's all on one machine that anyone can own for a nominal fee, and you can get as good at it as your native ability allows. What's not to like about it, or how has it failed? Better tools allow you to be more creative, it's always been this way. In that sense, it allows people to rise above any previous efforts they might have been capable of, let alone having more freetime to do this in, we no longer have to do drudge work for a bare minimal existence, and computers helped there as well.
I think maybe he's not seeing what has happened clearly enough.
unless joe user sees a 3 ghz AMD for 500$, or a 1.5 ghz Via for 350$, and bothers to read the fine print on the back of the box that shows hundreds of installed apps with the linux variants as opposed to a dozen with the windows machines. But that won't happen unless all the stores carry them.
A lot of people, like is said, are still running an old box with 32 or 64 megs of ram running sub 1 ghz and like 98. And they paid (and they remember this part) well over a thousand dollars for those machines, and are still annoyed they are almost being forced to upgrade. They get confused over broken software versus broken hardware all thee time, it's "the same thing" to them, as in "computer works/doesn't work" binary observation. This is puzzling to people, and most annoying. When they see they can get a much cheaper machine that apparently doubles or triples what they have now, in terms of processor speed, installed ram, and number of easy applications, they *could* decide on the cheaper versions, I know I would think about it. They just have to be right on the shelf there side by side with the other machines to look at, all running with the same bandwith if they are net connected, for the real world testdrive.
That's the part that is hard, because you just don't see it, a lot of these places only show the higher end stuff on the shelf, and definetly not all three major operating systems. For instance, in my area (granted, semi rural, but only one hour from atlanta) there are half a dozen places that sell computers, none of them carry any macs or anything that doesn't have XP on them. Let me see, there's an office despot, walmart, a k-mart, and three whitebox shops. No macs, no linux that I see, not even any boxed software for the two alternative systems.
You get just a fraction outside the major cities, and the *apparent* choices drop dramatically. If all you see is a belchfire motors car dealership, most people in the area will be driving belchfires.
I really don't understand why the bosses just don't get it. A lot of them stay fixated on "owning" rather than "everyone owns it but you can use it to build or service your widgets, and profit from that".
...how long these magnetic reversals take to happen? Is carbon dating or whatnot whatever the heck they use that accurate now that they can measure that precisely? Or is this 150 years figure just a WAG? Maybe it's 15 years, or 1500 years?
I don't know, maybe there's someone here into this science.
I really had no idea that MS was in the unix business at this point. And after RTFA, I still don't quite understand what exactly is going on here. You run windows, and with this one app, you run unix apps on top of it? Is this like WINE or something like that? I thought MS either had coded the basic stuff and offers it themselves, or relied on/courts third party developers to make them. So what's this with unix jazz, I thought they deprecated other operating systems?
It is human nature. People reach a threshold of awareness,based on the accumulation of factors like past data aquistion, native ability to reason, societal norms, etc, etc, and even contemplating anything past that point triggers almost instantaneous cognitive dissonance, with the most probable result of disbelief, as in "well, I just don't believe that, so you must be wrong". Not a refutation of the data or analysis of the accumulated data-merely a "belief". I can think of two very good topics-which I avoid on this forum just from this reason- that if attempted to be discussed here will trigger immediate "beliefs" type statements over just plain jane looking at the data and analytical statements.
You can show them all the data that's out there, which would lead to a most probable and inescapable conclusion, but if that conclusion falls outside their pre conceived and comfort level psychological and intellectual "pain" threshold, what they can handle psychologically, like when "good germans" refused to believe they were actually getting on cattle cars when just a few months previous they were leading apparently normal lives- they will resort-drop back to- a belief system that is more a religious or cult-like type response over a logicistical system.
What has happened to you makes it easier for you to see potential wrongness in the making on some subjects. Same thing here, makes it easier to see, therefore you tend to react swifter and stronger, especially with warnings to others, because "been there, done that, seen that" is a powerful teacher and will drag you past your pain/comfort threshold level pretty effectively, and once you've been dragged past that point you can never go back to a previous level.
It's not that people can't see natively, they could, just no actual frame of reference yet, and it's just that all people have a threshold past which they will-not see, so that turns it into a can-not see. Everyone's threshold is different, and on different subjects.
On really, really big and easy ones though, yes, you got to wonder sometimes why these thresholds are apparently so abysmally low.
Charities May Not Engage in Political Campaign Activities
IR-2004-59, April 28, 2004
WASHINGTON -- Charities should be careful that their efforts to educate voters comply with the Internal Revenue Code requirements concerning political campaign activities, the tax agency said today in a presidential election-year advisory.
Organizations described in section 501(c)(3) of the Code that are exempt from federal income tax are prohibited from participating or intervening in any political campaign on behalf of, or in opposition to, any candidate for public office. Charities, educational institutions and religious organizations, including churches, are among those that are tax-exempt under this code section.
These organizations cannot endorse any candidates, make donations to their campaigns, engage in fund raising, distribute statements, or become involved in any other activities that may be beneficial or detrimental to any candidate. Even activities that encourage people to vote for or against a particular candidate on the basis of nonpartisan criteria violate the political campaign prohibition of section 501(c)(3).
Whether an organization is engaging in prohibited political campaign activity depends upon all the facts and circumstances in each case. For example, organizations may sponsor debates or forums to educate voters. If the debate or forum shows a preference for or against a certain candidate, however, it becomes a prohibited activity.
The federal courts have upheld this prohibition on political campaign activity, most recently in Branch Ministries v. Rossotti, 211 F.3d 137 (D.C. Cir. 2000). The courts have held that it is not unconstitutional for the tax law to impose conditions, such as the political campaign prohibition, upon exemption from federal income tax.
If the IRS finds a section 501(c)(3) organization engaged in prohibited campaign activity, the organization could lose its tax-exempt status and it could be subject to an excise tax on the amount of money spent on that activity.
In cases of flagrant violation of the law, the IRS has specific statutory authority to make an immediate determination and assessment of tax. Also, the IRS can ask a federal district court to enjoin the organization from making further political expenditures.
In addition, contributions to organizations that lose their section 501(c)(3) status because of political activities are not deductible by the donors for federal income tax purposes.
The political campaign prohibition as it applies to churches is discussed in Publication 1828, Tax Guide for Churches and Religious Organizations. This publication, along with other information about the political campaign prohibition, is available on IRS.gov at www.irs.gov/eo.
The IRS issued similar election-year advisories to charities in 1992, 1996 and 2000.
Related Items:
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Publication 1828, Tax Guide for Churches and Religious Organizations. (PDF 1.3MB)
*
Political and Lobbying Activities
--there are some circumvention efforts, and they are selectively enforced and on shaky ground. The law is vague enough, yet detailed enough, so that they can just assert you are doing something wrong, and you have to prove you aren't, similar to the other backwards rules relating to the IRS, for instance, they can and do seize peoples bank accounts without any court judgement in their favor. Basically it's a club they can use when they choose to use it, that's why I think it's a better idea to just not sign the contract with them. You have waived your rights in advance, in exchange for an arbitrary tax exempt status, that they can revoke on just their say so,and charge you with a crime then, and you then have to go to court to prove they are wrong. In the meantime, they win, you l
Didn't happen with the red cross. after 9-11 they were accepting donations for the victims and survivors. A whole heaping boat load of that money DIDN'T go to the victims and survivors, it went to a lot of other weird stuff though, like anti guns rights orgs for instance.
there are a lot of hidden gotchas once you have that status, many of them political. For instance, say you had candidate A who really supported open source, and a candidate B who wanted to restrict heck out of it. Moz . org could no longer issue press releases or endorse candidate A officially about it. It's hit a lot of not for profits lately. A lot of churches now for instance are abandoning their 501 c 3 status because of those restrictions. The government can legally outlaw some things a preacher might preach about if they are incorporated under 501 c 3. It applies to any org like that, not just churches. I'd have to google to go find all the exact particulars, but I know there's a lot.
A good rule of thumb (well, IMO anyway) is, DON'T sign a contract with the government or any of it's agencies or bureaus if you absolutely do not have to. Every time you "voluntarily" sign something with them, it's always in their favor in the fine print.
That's the point, they could. We already saw the case where the guy lost in court using a lease car that recorded speed, etc. Heck, an insurance company could dissalow any warranty claim if the engine/car had been operated above the maximum posted speed limit anywhere the car might have been used inside the US for instance.
It's a slippery slope that has just had a nice coating of teflon applied to it.
I think we might even see it becoming almost impossible legally to work on your computer (or any computerised gadget) at all in the near future. The mobo will have propietary stuff, every device in it, etc,every chip on it, etc, etc and they could mandate by law those are the only ones that may be manufactured/sold/imported in.
Slashdot Mirror
and the great debates over virii and viruses. usually viruses as applied to the cyber world.
So, why do we still use "worm"? It is not latiny scientific-geeky enough. We should be saying "vermis" singular and "vermi" plural, well, I think so anyway...
... that WMD is pretty funny!
well, you have video on demand already, it's just not real time streaming, and it's mostly in the form of copyright ignoring. But with broadband and the p2p networks and ideas like bit torrent, it's much closer than it was even two years ago for joe average. The big companies though have lagged behind in doing it economically,they are stuck on the few copies for massive profits mindset, and until they change that mindset it won't happen legally, but the tech ishere, it exists now. with audio and relatively small file sizes, the people just did it. Video is getting there as we speak. The big companies have somewhat caught up with legal music downloads, video merely lags time wise, and people will not put up with excessive fees, so it's up to the big companies to go for mass quantities and miniscule profit margins if they want to make a go of it and not constantly engage in cyber warfare over it. The ball is in their court to do the right thing now, and stop being jerks over it..
Seems like the "limitations" of range and power to RFID tags that people kept saying would make them impractical for mass universal chipping are being overcome at a fast rate.
Well, the article says as he goes about the city. I imagine the chip readers are installed at the doors to various governmental buildings. Between that and tracking his official car, they can follow his whereabouts pretty effectively.
As to range, I keep reading people saying it's only a very short distance, yet I have heard they have some good rfid now they can place on goods inside of steel locked containers and read them effectively outside the container. That's decent range and power, and I am sure they probably have much better ones that aren't common public knowledge yet. And yes, using the skin as the antenna and part of the transmitting power source would be effective, you would imagine.
... everyone to get the chip obviously. They know in advance it would be resisted, so to mitigate that, they have to first chip the ones who will be enforcing the mass chipping. That means the paramilitary the overt military and the police, and they have to start at the top in those orgs so that the orders will be followed. Every step of the mass chipping has to be taken precisely. They scare the parents into chipping the youngest. They force the highest levels in government to get the chip. The police and military get it, so that they can say "what citizen, you rdfuse the chip? WE got the chip, so if we can do it, you can do it", along those lines. We've seen the plans coming soon to chip cops hands so that that chip will activate their "smart" guns, so only the cop can use them. Special forces in the military are the first to be getting the chip. Criminals will be getting the chip soon, to track them inside the jail, then outside forever. As they enforce the chips in these unique areas, eventually enough of the population will have them so that the rest may be mandated to get them, perhaps to tie in with a universal ID system.
One step at a time, how they do most things.
This topcop down there being chipped might be related to corruption in mexico, no idea, seems reasonable enough though. It is obvious that we are seeing an outright complete merging of the countries, any sort of "border" now is becoming moot, so perhaps they will be trying out the more extreme measures down in mexico first, to work out the bugs, see what sort of techniques are more efficient.
I'll think about it. Probably some online tutorials for it.
WAAAAH!
Ok, now I contemplate "what if" I still had them.. keep them, or sell them?.. hmmm
probably keep a few of them for arte du nostalgia objects, sell the rest, buy some hard shiny yellow metal disks with the loot, then wait for the real estate bubble to pop, then get land with the hard shiny disks.
I never learned to program a lick, beside basic html web pages, real simple stuff. I know I either have the tools installed, or they are right here on the disks, but dang if there's much of any instructions with them. I can scare bash into once in awhile doing something, that's about it.
but ya, would be nice if programming was more universal with computers, it just has to be a lot easier. Programming is a heavy hobby or a career, it's a lot of work for people already doing other stuff. It's also easier I bet the younger you start..some days I got no idea what freekin MONTH it is........
we were moving when I was a kid. My dad made me GIVE AWAY my entire comic book and mad magazine stash going back to the early 50's, because he didn'twant to pay freight on the bigass moving van, they charged by the pound I guess. I had most marvel first additions then -> on to like spidey,thor, fantastic 4, hulkster, x-dudes, yada yada,you name it, and a lot of DC comics as well, stuporman, ratman, green lantern...aww geez... Boxes of them. I could just snivel and whine now...all that stuff gotta be worth 6 figures I bet....and that don't count all the ace doubles neither...... :(
A guy I used to work for accumulated old mainframes and cards with the gold on them, he had a big garage full. Eventually he sold it someplace where they recover the gold (using nasty chemicals I guess) and he got close to 10 grand for it, hmm, mid 80s gold prices.
oh well, at least you got to play and have some fun. Makes for a good story later on.
I had a similar but work related deal, an even split. Many years ago I go out to the cotton bowl in texas to work a rolling stones gig as a steel climber. I am promised my gas reimbursed, and the lodging, and etc, then the pay. I drive all the way out there, find out NO paid lodging or gas,(7 tanks one way in my van). Man was I steamed and I was STUCK, I had to work the gig just to make enough to get back home to atlanta. Cheapest dudes I ever met, no wonder they are millionaires. I worked one more teardown in new orleans because it was sorta on the way back and at least I made it home with a few bucks, but that was the nastiest hardest work for the cheapest pay I did since I was a kid working on farms piecework.
Like for real,I have 2 questions, how did you do prize-wise, and, more importantly, is Vanna hot in person? Had to be a cool fun experience no matter what.
FWIW, I once had a string where I played along at home with jeopardy for roughly six weeks, nailed a pseudo win all but two nights. Of course I know that wouldn't translate to a similar deal live on stage, not for me anyway, I'd get flustered and get an attack of the nervous dumbs.... like Cliffy on Cheers did.
Anyone else here ever play along for a long time and keep track of it?
walmart dot com online sells various computers with alternatives to XP pre installed, some quite inexpensive like the ones from microtel starting at around 200 dollars, but I am not aware they do this in their brick and mortar stores. They may some places, but I haven't seen it. I always look, too, in the last two years I have been in 3 regular walmarts and two walmart supercenters, all I saw was XP, and the cheapest on the shelf was closer to 500$ at the low end.
... consumer level desktop,at least now they don't, they offer a *corporate* desktop designed to be used by employees and installed and run and kept fixed and updated by professional sysadmins. Fedora is a hobbiest/developer community distro, it's not pushed at all as an entry level mom and pop and sis and junior distro either. I don't know about suse or any of the others. How many actual true beginners level distros are there in *fact* as opposed to *slashdot theory*, anyway? Linspire, xandros, what else? As far as I know, that's about it.
The others can get *close*, but close ain't good enough, it has to really be there to be offered as an entry level beginners distro, the stuff has to work first time, every time, no CLI tweaking should be necessary to fit that bill. It doesn't matter if you can, what matters is if you *have to*, to set it up and run it effectively, and that means, sound has to work, media apps have to work, your display should work, you should be able to get online easy, etc, etc. The desktop competition is windows, and apple, and say what you want about them, good and bad, you don't have to touch a command line or know what to type on the command line to get all that stuff to work with those two companies products. Any linux home consumer desktop has to match or exceed that. So, how many distros fit the bill then?
Computers are great for creativity! Suppose you are a writer. Good writers not only can use sentence structure and imagery, but they also research the topics they write about. The computer and the net makes this research much easier, more intensive, better all around. Picture artists have always embraced newer techniques, from mud on the cave wall, through various pigment technologies and brushes, to now they can create great images using a keyboard and a mouse with the appropriate programs. Inventors of gadgets are able to use designing programs that can speed up and enhance their efforts. Musicians, the same. And it's all on one machine that anyone can own for a nominal fee, and you can get as good at it as your native ability allows. What's not to like about it, or how has it failed? Better tools allow you to be more creative, it's always been this way. In that sense, it allows people to rise above any previous efforts they might have been capable of, let alone having more freetime to do this in, we no longer have to do drudge work for a bare minimal existence, and computers helped there as well.
I think maybe he's not seeing what has happened clearly enough.
unless joe user sees a 3 ghz AMD for 500$, or a 1.5 ghz Via for 350$, and bothers to read the fine print on the back of the box that shows hundreds of installed apps with the linux variants as opposed to a dozen with the windows machines. But that won't happen unless all the stores carry them.
A lot of people, like is said, are still running an old box with 32 or 64 megs of ram running sub 1 ghz and like 98. And they paid (and they remember this part) well over a thousand dollars for those machines, and are still annoyed they are almost being forced to upgrade. They get confused over broken software versus broken hardware all thee time, it's "the same thing" to them, as in "computer works/doesn't work" binary observation. This is puzzling to people, and most annoying. When they see they can get a much cheaper machine that apparently doubles or triples what they have now, in terms of processor speed, installed ram, and number of easy applications, they *could* decide on the cheaper versions, I know I would think about it. They just have to be right on the shelf there side by side with the other machines to look at, all running with the same bandwith if they are net connected, for the real world testdrive.
That's the part that is hard, because you just don't see it, a lot of these places only show the higher end stuff on the shelf, and definetly not all three major operating systems. For instance, in my area (granted, semi rural, but only one hour from atlanta) there are half a dozen places that sell computers, none of them carry any macs or anything that doesn't have XP on them. Let me see, there's an office despot, walmart, a k-mart, and three whitebox shops. No macs, no linux that I see, not even any boxed software for the two alternative systems.
You get just a fraction outside the major cities, and the *apparent* choices drop dramatically. If all you see is a belchfire motors car dealership, most people in the area will be driving belchfires.
OK, I get it better now.
I really don't understand why the bosses just don't get it. A lot of them stay fixated on "owning" rather than "everyone owns it but you can use it to build or service your widgets, and profit from that".
That's a funny page, BTW.
...how long these magnetic reversals take to happen? Is carbon dating or whatnot whatever the heck they use that accurate now that they can measure that precisely? Or is this 150 years figure just a WAG? Maybe it's 15 years, or 1500 years?
I don't know, maybe there's someone here into this science.
I really had no idea that MS was in the unix business at this point. And after RTFA, I still don't quite understand what exactly is going on here. You run windows, and with this one app, you run unix apps on top of it? Is this like WINE or something like that? I thought MS either had coded the basic stuff and offers it themselves, or relied on/courts third party developers to make them. So what's this with unix jazz, I thought they deprecated other operating systems?
I admit I R confuseth this time
It is human nature. People reach a threshold of awareness,based on the accumulation of factors like past data aquistion, native ability to reason, societal norms, etc, etc, and even contemplating anything past that point triggers almost instantaneous cognitive dissonance, with the most probable result of disbelief, as in "well, I just don't believe that, so you must be wrong". Not a refutation of the data or analysis of the accumulated data-merely a "belief". I can think of two very good topics-which I avoid on this forum just from this reason- that if attempted to be discussed here will trigger immediate "beliefs" type statements over just plain jane looking at the data and analytical statements.
You can show them all the data that's out there, which would lead to a most probable and inescapable conclusion, but if that conclusion falls outside their pre conceived and comfort level psychological and intellectual "pain" threshold, what they can handle psychologically, like when "good germans" refused to believe they were actually getting on cattle cars when just a few months previous they were leading apparently normal lives- they will resort-drop back to- a belief system that is more a religious or cult-like type response over a logicistical system.
What has happened to you makes it easier for you to see potential wrongness in the making on some subjects. Same thing here, makes it easier to see, therefore you tend to react swifter and stronger, especially with warnings to others, because "been there, done that, seen that" is a powerful teacher and will drag you past your pain/comfort threshold level pretty effectively, and once you've been dragged past that point you can never go back to a previous level.
It's not that people can't see natively, they could, just no actual frame of reference yet, and it's just that all people have a threshold past which they will-not see, so that turns it into a can-not see. Everyone's threshold is different, and on different subjects.
On really, really big and easy ones though, yes, you got to wonder sometimes why these thresholds are apparently so abysmally low.
direct from the irs, so we can all be on the same page here with what we are talking about:
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http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=122887
Charities May Not Engage in Political Campaign Activities
IR-2004-59, April 28, 2004
WASHINGTON -- Charities should be careful that their efforts to educate voters comply with the Internal Revenue Code requirements concerning political campaign activities, the tax agency said today in a presidential election-year advisory.
Organizations described in section 501(c)(3) of the Code that are exempt from federal income tax are prohibited from participating or intervening in any political campaign on behalf of, or in opposition to, any candidate for public office. Charities, educational institutions and religious organizations, including churches, are among those that are tax-exempt under this code section.
These organizations cannot endorse any candidates, make donations to their campaigns, engage in fund raising, distribute statements, or become involved in any other activities that may be beneficial or detrimental to any candidate. Even activities that encourage people to vote for or against a particular candidate on the basis of nonpartisan criteria violate the political campaign prohibition of section 501(c)(3).
Whether an organization is engaging in prohibited political campaign activity depends upon all the facts and circumstances in each case. For example, organizations may sponsor debates or forums to educate voters. If the debate or forum shows a preference for or against a certain candidate, however, it becomes a prohibited activity.
The federal courts have upheld this prohibition on political campaign activity, most recently in Branch Ministries v. Rossotti, 211 F.3d 137 (D.C. Cir. 2000). The courts have held that it is not unconstitutional for the tax law to impose conditions, such as the political campaign prohibition, upon exemption from federal income tax.
If the IRS finds a section 501(c)(3) organization engaged in prohibited campaign activity, the organization could lose its tax-exempt status and it could be subject to an excise tax on the amount of money spent on that activity.
In cases of flagrant violation of the law, the IRS has specific statutory authority to make an immediate determination and assessment of tax. Also, the IRS can ask a federal district court to enjoin the organization from making further political expenditures.
In addition, contributions to organizations that lose their section 501(c)(3) status because of political activities are not deductible by the donors for federal income tax purposes.
The political campaign prohibition as it applies to churches is discussed in Publication 1828, Tax Guide for Churches and Religious Organizations. This publication, along with other information about the political campaign prohibition, is available on IRS.gov at www.irs.gov/eo.
The IRS issued similar election-year advisories to charities in 1992, 1996 and 2000.
Related Items:
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Publication 1828, Tax Guide for Churches and Religious Organizations. (PDF 1.3MB)
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Political and Lobbying Activities
--there are some circumvention efforts, and they are selectively enforced and on shaky ground. The law is vague enough, yet detailed enough, so that they can just assert you are doing something wrong, and you have to prove you aren't, similar to the other backwards rules relating to the IRS, for instance, they can and do seize peoples bank accounts without any court judgement in their favor. Basically it's a club they can use when they choose to use it, that's why I think it's a better idea to just not sign the contract with them. You have waived your rights in advance, in exchange for an arbitrary tax exempt status, that they can revoke on just their say so,and charge you with a crime then, and you then have to go to court to prove they are wrong. In the meantime, they win, you l
Didn't happen with the red cross. after 9-11 they were accepting donations for the victims and survivors. A whole heaping boat load of that money DIDN'T go to the victims and survivors, it went to a lot of other weird stuff though, like anti guns rights orgs for instance.
there are a lot of hidden gotchas once you have that status, many of them political. For instance, say you had candidate A who really supported open source, and a candidate B who wanted to restrict heck out of it. Moz . org could no longer issue press releases or endorse candidate A officially about it. It's hit a lot of not for profits lately. A lot of churches now for instance are abandoning their 501 c 3 status because of those restrictions. The government can legally outlaw some things a preacher might preach about if they are incorporated under 501 c 3. It applies to any org like that, not just churches. I'd have to google to go find all the exact particulars, but I know there's a lot.
A good rule of thumb (well, IMO anyway) is, DON'T sign a contract with the government or any of it's agencies or bureaus if you absolutely do not have to. Every time you "voluntarily" sign something with them, it's always in their favor in the fine print.
That's the point, they could. We already saw the case where the guy lost in court using a lease car that recorded speed, etc. Heck, an insurance company could dissalow any warranty claim if the engine/car had been operated above the maximum posted speed limit anywhere the car might have been used inside the US for instance.
It's a slippery slope that has just had a nice coating of teflon applied to it.
I think we might even see it becoming almost impossible legally to work on your computer (or any computerised gadget) at all in the near future. The mobo will have propietary stuff, every device in it, etc,every chip on it, etc, etc and they could mandate by law those are the only ones that may be manufactured/sold/imported in.