I use TurboTax, and have for many years. Instead of paying the extortion for online filing, I just print out the forms and mail them in. Sure it takes a little longer to get your refund, but you get $30 or so more back.
Jeez, and the linux shell won't do this? The shell looks at the magic number (and the executable bit) and then runs the file with the appropriate interpreter (perl, sh, python, yada yada yada). In Unix(es) the file extension means *nothing*.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the WPA support now seems to work properly (I was never able to successfully use the the one in SP1) so I don't need to use the crappy Netgear utility anymore.
I haven't had any problems with Ad-Aware and SbyBot. The google toolbar works fine, although the popup blocker included with the new version of IE6 works better. I just disabled the popup blocking in the goolge toolbar. You should not need a software firewall solution since SP2 includes a good one. I use Norton AV with one of my systems and McAfee with the other. Both seem to work fine.
I've been using SP2 RC2 for over a month now and have been quite happy with it. There are a ton of improvements which block holes in IE and OE and seems to be locked up tighter than Guinivere's chastity belt out of the box. This is all good stuff.
Talk with your opthamologist/optomitrist first. I had it done and had a pretty bad prescription +5/+5.5 and a large amount of astigmatism. The results for me were good enough (20/40 with both eyes, some residual astigmatism). I went for several years w/o glasses, but evenutally went back to using them. I can function fine w/o glasses, but fine work (tying a #22 fly on a 5x leader) was more difficult than when I was using glasses, which gave me 20/20 vision.
If you are farsighted, you can expect some regression over the first couple of weeks and your vision will not be "oh my god!" great just after surgery. You should be sure that your doctor is experienced and well qualified, especially if you are a difficult case. A difficult case is defined as very farsighted and/or lots of astigmatism. People who are nearsighted tend to have better results.
You should also be sure that your doctor measures your corneal thickness -- some of the cheesier (read cheaper) ones will take practically anyone and insufficient corneal thickness is a receipe for disaster. Also, the size of your pupil in low light should be measured. If your pupil is too large when fully opened you will have problems with your vision in low light. This can be corrected with glasses for night vision and is not an uncommon side effect of the surgery.
The fact that I can read, drive and generally function quite well w/o glasses is a real blessing. The thing that drove me to get glasses again was the eye strain associated with long hours at the computer. All in all it was worth it and I would do it again, especially since the techniques for the surgery have improved since I had it about four years ago.
I have long suspected that the only way out of the global warming conundrum is expanded use of nukes, combined with aggressive conservation programs. Quite frankly I find the possiblity of a meltdown in an American design light water reactor much less frightening than the prospect of continued use of fossil fuels to power the world economy. Since we have been slacking on research into alternative power solutions since the beginning of the Reagan administration we have wasted twenty years when we could have been developing photovoltaics for use in distributed generation schemes (my favorite mostly green solution). We have also squandered chances for higher efficiency technologies for heating, cooling, lighting, etc. We have also mostly given up on higher CAFE requierments for vehicles.
It seems to me that we have backed ourselves into a corner where increased use of nukes, especially nukes to manufacture the electricity needed to crack hydrogen from more complex molecules. Long term storage of wastes remains a problem, but I think it is less of an engineering problem than a political problem. Whatever happens, we cannot continue of the course we have been following.
I was quite disappointed when ICANN did not set up a ".xxx" domain. The purveyors of smut in the past has gladly taken up the X or XXX rating so that customers could be sure of the quality of the product that they were getting. I am sure that the internet generation would be more than happy to do the same thing because the.xxx domain would tend to drive traffic to their sites.
I don't think that this will require code rewrites. They will just have to add page protection bits which prevent execution in data pages. Currently the permission are read/execute and write, changing them to read, execute and write will allow relatively minor changes in the OS to provide this protection.
This article does not tell everything...
on
Working Hard?
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· Score: 2, Informative
The problem with this article is that it does not reveal all of the changes that the Bush administration is planning on making to the FLSA. In a column by Molly Ivins published in the middle of last month (unfortunately I can't find a link to it at her site at www.creators.com, nor is there a link at www.sacbee.com where I normally read her column) she described a bill making it's way through Congress which will allow employers to give TOIL (time off in lieu) rather than paying overtime. This bill will also allow employers to defer awarding the TOIL for up to a year.
The upshot of these two proposals is to deny more workers the right to overtime and to allow employers to pay straight time for those workers who are entitiled to overtime. When you consider that the overtime rules were passed to encourage employers to add more workers (creating more jobs) rather than forcing their workers into overtime, which has costs to the workers far beyond the mere hours worked. In the end, this will have negative consequences for employment and will exacerbate the growing rich-poor gap in the US. It is not good policy.
I've been using a Pronto since the first one came out in late '98. I have to say that this guy got it all wrong. He never even looked at the software for the Pronto, while he dealt extensively with the software for the Harmony.
Now I think that the Harmony is fine for people with reasonable systems once you get to the level of silliness I've long since achieved with my system, only a Pronto (or something even more expensive and complicated to set up) will do.
Why? The strength of the Pronto is the ability to program any button on the remote as a macro. Want a button which closes your motorized drapes? The Pronto can handle it. Want to dim the lights? The Pronto can handle it. Do you have a (possibly very) complex sequence of events necessary to set up your system to watch a DVD? The Pronto can handle it. It is truly the Turing machine of remotes.
Is it complex to set up? Sure, but we're all geeks here. What's a little programming between friends? Do you want to have a complete list of all the CD's in your system? People have written programs which will read your CD database and output a configuration file you can use which will provide a button for each CD. Push the button and you get the one you want. Some of these programs will even break CD's down to the track level. You can use the Pronto to integrate the remote with your PC using Girder. I'm currently working on something like this to allow me to control my PC which allows me to change internet radio station of my home theater control server. Can you do that UEI remotes? I think not.
Yes the software takes some knowledge to use. Yes it can take a certain (for the perfectionists amongst us infinite) time to program the remote. In the end you have a wonderfully easy to control system which DWIM.
BTW, I just recent got a TSU 3000 and although it is a public beta (or maybe an alpha at this point) it is a very nice remote which allows you to create activities which even your most technologically challenged frieds can use to operate your system. It is quite simply the best affordable remote control you can buy. Plus it is a blast to program, a dream for the true gadgethead.
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I use TurboTax, and have for many years. Instead of paying the extortion for online filing, I just print out the forms and mail them in. Sure it takes a little longer to get your refund, but you get $30 or so more back.
An important question which was not answered in the article.
Jeez, and the linux shell won't do this? The shell looks at the magic number (and the executable bit) and then runs the file with the appropriate interpreter (perl, sh, python, yada yada yada). In Unix(es) the file extension means *nothing*.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the WPA support now seems to work properly (I was never able to successfully use the the one in SP1) so I don't need to use the crappy Netgear utility anymore.
Good work Microsoft!
I haven't had any problems with Ad-Aware and SbyBot. The google toolbar works fine, although the popup blocker included with the new version of IE6 works better. I just disabled the popup blocking in the goolge toolbar. You should not need a software firewall solution since SP2 includes a good one. I use Norton AV with one of my systems and McAfee with the other. Both seem to work fine.
I've been using SP2 RC2 for over a month now and have been quite happy with it. There are a ton of improvements which block holes in IE and OE and seems to be locked up tighter than Guinivere's chastity belt out of the box. This is all good stuff.
Talk with your opthamologist/optomitrist first. I had it done and had a pretty bad prescription +5/+5.5 and a large amount of astigmatism. The results for me were good enough (20/40 with both eyes, some residual astigmatism). I went for several years w/o glasses, but evenutally went back to using them. I can function fine w/o glasses, but fine work (tying a #22 fly on a 5x leader) was more difficult than when I was using glasses, which gave me 20/20 vision. If you are farsighted, you can expect some regression over the first couple of weeks and your vision will not be "oh my god!" great just after surgery. You should be sure that your doctor is experienced and well qualified, especially if you are a difficult case. A difficult case is defined as very farsighted and/or lots of astigmatism. People who are nearsighted tend to have better results. You should also be sure that your doctor measures your corneal thickness -- some of the cheesier (read cheaper) ones will take practically anyone and insufficient corneal thickness is a receipe for disaster. Also, the size of your pupil in low light should be measured. If your pupil is too large when fully opened you will have problems with your vision in low light. This can be corrected with glasses for night vision and is not an uncommon side effect of the surgery. The fact that I can read, drive and generally function quite well w/o glasses is a real blessing. The thing that drove me to get glasses again was the eye strain associated with long hours at the computer. All in all it was worth it and I would do it again, especially since the techniques for the surgery have improved since I had it about four years ago.
You are off by an order of magnitude on the price.
I have long suspected that the only way out of the global warming conundrum is expanded use of nukes, combined with aggressive conservation programs. Quite frankly I find the possiblity of a meltdown in an American design light water reactor much less frightening than the prospect of continued use of fossil fuels to power the world economy. Since we have been slacking on research into alternative power solutions since the beginning of the Reagan administration we have wasted twenty years when we could have been developing photovoltaics for use in distributed generation schemes (my favorite mostly green solution). We have also squandered chances for higher efficiency technologies for heating, cooling, lighting, etc. We have also mostly given up on higher CAFE requierments for vehicles. It seems to me that we have backed ourselves into a corner where increased use of nukes, especially nukes to manufacture the electricity needed to crack hydrogen from more complex molecules. Long term storage of wastes remains a problem, but I think it is less of an engineering problem than a political problem. Whatever happens, we cannot continue of the course we have been following.
I was quite disappointed when ICANN did not set up a ".xxx" domain. The purveyors of smut in the past has gladly taken up the X or XXX rating so that customers could be sure of the quality of the product that they were getting. I am sure that the internet generation would be more than happy to do the same thing because the .xxx domain would tend to drive traffic to their sites.
Oh, well, another reason to get rid of ICANN.
I don't think that this will require code rewrites. They will just have to add page protection bits which prevent execution in data pages. Currently the permission are read/execute and write, changing them to read, execute and write will allow relatively minor changes in the OS to provide this protection.
That the K9 is gonna' be a dog....
The problem with this article is that it does not reveal all of the changes that the Bush administration is planning on making to the FLSA. In a column by Molly Ivins published in the middle of last month (unfortunately I can't find a link to it at her site at www.creators.com, nor is there a link at www.sacbee.com where I normally read her column) she described a bill making it's way through Congress which will allow employers to give TOIL (time off in lieu) rather than paying overtime. This bill will also allow employers to defer awarding the TOIL for up to a year.
The upshot of these two proposals is to deny more workers the right to overtime and to allow employers to pay straight time for those workers who are entitiled to overtime. When you consider that the overtime rules were passed to encourage employers to add more workers (creating more jobs) rather than forcing their workers into overtime, which has costs to the workers far beyond the mere hours worked. In the end, this will have negative consequences for employment and will exacerbate the growing rich-poor gap in the US. It is not good policy.
I've been using a Pronto since the first one came out in late '98. I have to say that this guy got it all wrong. He never even looked at the software for the Pronto, while he dealt extensively with the software for the Harmony. Now I think that the Harmony is fine for people with reasonable systems once you get to the level of silliness I've long since achieved with my system, only a Pronto (or something even more expensive and complicated to set up) will do. Why? The strength of the Pronto is the ability to program any button on the remote as a macro. Want a button which closes your motorized drapes? The Pronto can handle it. Want to dim the lights? The Pronto can handle it. Do you have a (possibly very) complex sequence of events necessary to set up your system to watch a DVD? The Pronto can handle it. It is truly the Turing machine of remotes. Is it complex to set up? Sure, but we're all geeks here. What's a little programming between friends? Do you want to have a complete list of all the CD's in your system? People have written programs which will read your CD database and output a configuration file you can use which will provide a button for each CD. Push the button and you get the one you want. Some of these programs will even break CD's down to the track level. You can use the Pronto to integrate the remote with your PC using Girder. I'm currently working on something like this to allow me to control my PC which allows me to change internet radio station of my home theater control server. Can you do that UEI remotes? I think not. Yes the software takes some knowledge to use. Yes it can take a certain (for the perfectionists amongst us infinite) time to program the remote. In the end you have a wonderfully easy to control system which DWIM. BTW, I just recent got a TSU 3000 and although it is a public beta (or maybe an alpha at this point) it is a very nice remote which allows you to create activities which even your most technologically challenged frieds can use to operate your system. It is quite simply the best affordable remote control you can buy. Plus it is a blast to program, a dream for the true gadgethead.