This is SO EU. The EU is an organization of European states brought together through a mechanism of consensus-at-all-costs and an incredible aversion to conflict, which perhaps may appropriate since the entire reason for this economic and now political grouping is to prevent conflict on the continent. Recall, these are the people who support two seats for their EU parliament, transporting the entire body and entourage to and fro at great expense and inconvenience, for nothing other than propping up the vanity of a once-powerful and once-consequential large member nation that speaks a precious form of gutter Latin.
There are things in this world which are not open to, and should not be open to, consensus. An insane aversion to conflict may work well in Europe, but not in all things. Not all viewpoints are valid. Some are wrong, and should be called wrong, right in the viewpoint-holder's face.
Take Iran. Iran wants to build nuclear weapons. Pretty much everybody involved believes that. The United States doesn't want Iran to build them, nor does the EU. Iran does. The EU believes that through the amazing magic of seemingly endless dialogue, they will create an understanding and consensus, and, with the aid of mucho bribery of course, convince Iran to no longer desire to acquire nuclear weapons and continue on its course to become a major regional player and power broker. But what they are being dragged to realize, kicking and screaming and violently shaking their heads from side to side somewhat like my one year old son, is that Iran wants nuclear weapons. The EU and the US do not want that. Iran wants those weapons and endless dialogue and mucho bribery aside, at the end of the day, Iran wants those weapons. Of course the EU being the EU, they'll likely in the end throw their hands up in the air and state that "We did EVERYTHING humanly possible! We held meetings and listened to them, we attempted to achieve consensus, we talked (and dragged huge heavy bags overflowing with gold and "development aid" behind us OF COURSE), and talked and talked during our international dialogue sessions... well, I guess we'll just have to live with Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. Well. Not all is lost. Perhaps we can sell them some components now."
If China, Brazil and Iran don't like the Internet being open and free, if they don't like the Internet being used to support and promote viewpoints dangerous to their despotic rule, the civilized and appropriate response is TOUGH FUCKING SHIT. Not an attempt to wrest control of an incredibly liberal and liberating technology from the sole global superpower which is dedicated to 100% free political expression and is your long-time military, social and political ally, to throw that control to the vagaries of "international" consensus in an attempt to curry favor with despotic and fundamentally WRONG regimes.
If this is the reason that the EU has publicly trotted out for their attempt to forcibly remove control of ICANN from the United States, then the EU should be vilified for far more than being "splitters" or "malcontents." If the EU really wishes to push this, perhaps in a fundamentally misguided notion that we can be understood as like Europeans who will be amendable in the end to some type of compromise decision reached through dialogue, then I imagine I speak for most Americans when I say "here we come splits-ville!" Americans don't take well this type of brinksmanship.
I'd always do an S-corp, because to me the additional "burden" is no big deal, and because it is cheaper. The LLC is basically a sole proprietorship/partnership with a liability shield, and my understanding is that it is structured in the same way as regards profits. There are no shares and no dividends, and apparently you may not be able to escape payroll taxes on any profit. For me that is a big advantage of a standard corporation, whether or not it takes the S election: I can pay a salary, plus dividends/profit, which are not subject to payroll taxes. I also believe that an LLC is more expensive to form initially in many states, and to operate. Here in Illinois it costs $150 to incorporate, and $75 + franchise tax annually. For most small businesses, the franchise tax is just $25. An LLC though costs $300 to form, and $250 a year for the annual report.
My own boss: I pay about $773/yr in workman's comp insurance. Another $338 for business liability. I pay another $567 for the year in unemployment insurance. Taxes == 2x medicare and social security.
I pay myself a salary of about $45k a year. Everything else I pay out as corporate dividends. Those dividends are taxed at 5%, with NO payroll taxes: no medicare, no social security, no unemployment. My effective tax rate is quite a bit less than if I were a regular employee bringing home a paycheck with the same base salary+dividends I earn now.
As for the contract house employee bringing home 50 - 30% of the client bill rate... that may be so for some. But when I've gone through a contract house, my take home percentage, as a W-2 in the past, was more like 60 - 65%. But now when I do that, and I don't like to, it is business-to-business, not W-2, and I take home about 75% or more of the client bill rate.
2. mediocre health insurance not including dental or eye for whole family: $430/month near chicago area, other posters might also give some rates.
We live in Chicago. About $350/mo for BCBS HSA insurance. High deductible.
3. Bookkeeping will be a pain: educate yourself on estimating and making quarterly tax payments or just opting to pay penalty, keep record and receipts, know tax laws for business expensing, entertainment expense, and use of vehicle, which is complicated. Tax software for the self-employed helps a great deal, highly reccomended.
All you need is Quickbooks or similar, and the aptitude to read the IRS instructions and relevant publications and bulletins. It takes some time initially, but it's not bad. Making the tax payments is trivial, if you use payroll software to track tax liability. It can all be done online now through ACH transactions from your corp account. Just make sure you watch your balance sheet to see future liabilities, and keep cash in the bank to pay for those. I sometimes need to loan money to my business short-term to cover obligations, while waiting for clients to pay.
That's the second biggest pain -- slow paying clients. The first is finding the clients, slow paying or not.
Regarding taxes, buy Quickbooks or some such, it's easy to track it all then. My S corp pays me a W-2 salary, and I withhold taxes. Every month, I pay the IRS via the EFTPS web site -- online tax payments. Make sure your company banks enough to pay the taxes -- watch your balance sheet. I take distributions as well (dividend payments) and must make quarterly estimated tax payments on those. Thanks to Bush though the tax rate on those is great.
Retirement: There's the SEP-IRA. Very easy to set up. I use Vanguard. My company pays 10% of my salary into the fund, and I can do my own $3000 yearly IRA contribution as well. The limit on a SEP-IRA is 25% of salary. Note that if you have employees, as I do, the SEP-IRA contribution level must be the same for all. You can't pay yourself 25% and your employee(s) 5%.
Also, you should always incorporate. It makes sense legally, you can pay dividends and avoid payroll taxes (so long as you draw a "reasonable" salary), and it is generally easy to do on your own. Here in Illinois it takes a one page form plus filing fee. The annual filing fee is $100 then.
I have a cool educational concept to sell you. It is called reading comprehension. It appears it is something your education was lacking.
Heavy braking is not the same as excessive braking. Heavy braking is as opposed to light braking. So, again Einstein, how does braking heavily versus lightly affect fuel economy? Or are you discussing an entirely different topic, braking excessively, requiring fuel to accelerate again immediately? Personally, I only brake heavily. I try to leave space between cars. If I have to slow down a little, I take my foot off the throttle peddle. If I need to slow down more than that, I downshift. And if I really have to slow down, I apply the brakes. When those red lights behind my car light up, you better be prepared to actually slow down. That is my definition of 'heavy' braking: making the car really slow down when you apply the brakes.
Do you really believe that? Do you really believe that if push came to shove, if arguments came to missiles and bombs, that the United States would be incapable of taking over the oil fields of a major producer, and then securing production and delivery? I guarantee that the military has a large number of plans for just that. It needn't be out of our own hemisphere even. Chavez is probably correct in his fears that we do have plans to take over "his" oil fields, not that we have any plan to do so immediately.
Debt is bits and paper. If it came to war, real war, not just a luke-warm conflict, do you really doubt that the United States, nearly an entire continent with vast resources, would be unable to maintain the military machine, produce weapons and ammunition, and fight our possible enemies, be they Chinese, Arab, or, um, French? WWII was a mechanized conflict, with an incredible number of men and (far less efficient) machines in combat. The United States successfully prosecuted that war, and it wasn't an importer (of any consequence) of oil at the time. Our supply chain came from the United States outward.
This isn't bravado. War, real war, would not be subject to the niceties of making debt payments and arranging import duties and cartel prices for oil. China isn't going to come and repossess our tanks and B1 bombers if the Feds stop paying off bonds. The loss of overseas oil isn't going to stop the American military from prosecuting war and securing necessary resources to do so. If it comes to an us versus them conflict, Americans will surely employ whatever means are necessary to make sure it is us who remain on top. It sure as hell would be messy after such a war, but the world has been through that scenario before, and yet here we cozily sit talking about how impossible it would be to do it again.
Lots of braking = heat on the discs, therefore worse milage.
Uh, no. Heat on discs is the kinetic energy of the vehicle being bled away via friction. The discs absorb and radiate it, the tires absorb and radiate it, the air inside expands. That energy dissipation has nothing to do with mileage. Agreed though that heavy braking can be indicative of poor vehicle operation, e.g. excessive throttle application. However, I do not believe that heavy braking itself has anything to do directly with mileage -- the quantity of fuel consumed per mile traveled.
Speaking for myself though, I don't generally jump off the line at a light. But my brakes are set up for the track, with agressive street pads for daily driving. When I touch my brake pedal and the tail lights up, it means the car is going to slow down and stop, quickly. I hate those drivers who coast along with their brake lights on, yet don't actually slow down. Or worse, the cabbies here who accelerate, heavily, with brake lights on.
As for your ideas on coasting... try those in Chicago with other cars around! Your nice and open space will quickly fill with other cars (if you are on a multi-lane road, or at least one wide enough). Hell, people here get pissed if you leave 1/2 car length between you and the car in front. Just the other day I had a guy swerving behind me thinking about jumping around me because I left space between myself and the car in front of me. People are stupidly aggressive. They hate being behind me in stop and go traffic, because I try to coast along in 1st or 2nd gear and engine brake to maintain decent space. Drives people nuts. Everybody wants to be up everybody else's ass.
These people who are getting crappy mileage in their cars are bad drivers.
Bad vehicle operator != bad driver. Most drivers out there are pretty bad, even if they do a fine job of operating the clunker, getting good mileage and avoiding going bump. I get not-so-good city mileage, but I am a rather good driver IMNSHO... I always do quite well in track events. My bad mileage is no mystery to me, I like to keep the revs up to maintain torque and be able to respond quickly.
As for being 'hard on the brakes' causing bad mileage or being indicative of bad driving -- never understood that. How so? Clutch out, deep on the brakes, engine is at idle (unless you are keeping it up to slide into gear downshifting out of a curve or such). The engine is going to idle whether you putz your way to a stop, or screach your way there. Moreover, grandma-ing the brakes will glaze them and destroy the pads. All pads need heat, some more than others. Mine are carbon-kevlar, the hotter they get the better they work. The people out there who are being 'good' to their brakes and 'babying' them are doing themselves and the people around them no favors.
I do agree that the bad operators get bad mileage, pushing the accelerator to the floor at every green, opening the throttle wide and flooding the cylinders with fuel. But I'm convinced that the fault lies not just with the drivers, but with the typically horrid vehicle controls -- your automatic transmission equipped people-mover with mushy nasty throttle response/feedback, excessive boosting of brakes/steering. Those crap-mobiles train drivers to treat their throttle as an on-off go-button and provide precious little feedback while driving.
Um. I use nvi. And I've developed some really large projects in my almost 20 years of professional development, though admittedly scarcely any with a front-end user GUI. Remember, we developers managed just fine before all these GUI IDEs came along to hold our hands. The only IDE I have ever really used was Borland Turbo C back in the 80s under DOS. However, I may have reason to use Visual Studio on an upcoming project. Is there a vi keybinding for its editor, or do you have to use the f'ing arrow keys and mouse all the time?
Give me a break. Did they declare jihad and plan massive attacks on Assad for Hama? Hussein for Kuwait, for the Marsh Arabs, for the Kurdish Muslims, for the Iran-Iraq war, all that he did? India for the Muslims killed in Kashmir, to this very day? The terrorists don't give a rat's ass for the dead Palestinians.
Why do they hate us? Essentially, because we won and they lost. What did we win? The battle of civilizations. The Islamic world was once pre-eminent. Muslim armies had conquered all the way into Spain. Muslim science and learning was supreme. Ever hear of the Ottoman Empire? And then what? Decline. Failure. Defeat. Poverty. Oppression by homegrown tyrants (yes, often backed by Britain, France, and the United States among others). If not for oil and the infrastructure the Western powers built and then handed over to the Arabs, they would be even more pathetic than they are now.
Now they have to live with a band of lowly Jews, kicked out of Judea 2000 years ago by Vespasian and his son, scattered, nearly exterminated by Hitler, robbed of their property and wealth, who in their own midst came back to their ancient home and created a powerful, successful democratic nation. Right in their own back yard. Showing up just how low the Arab Islamic world has fallen. When all the Arab Muslim nations ganged up on them in 1948 to drive every last Jew into the sea, what happened? The evil Zionists defeated them ALL, and took *more* land. Another war, and another Muslim defeat, and yet *more* land captured. Including *all* of Jerusalem.
And as for the poor, poor oppressed Palestinians. Offered the vast majority of what they demanded in exchange for peace, Arafat walked away. Anything less than 100% isn't good enough. Let us get this straight: Arabs declare war, attack Israel, Israel kicks their asses TWICE and takes some of their land as spoils, and now Arabs whine "give us back all of our land, not fair, wah wah." It reminds me of Xenophon, when "the King" demanded the weapons of the Greeks, and Proxenus the Theban responded "For my part, Phalinus, I wonder whether the King is asking for our arms on the assumption that he is victorious, or simply as gifts, on the assumption that we are his friends. For if he asks for them as victor, why need he ask for them, instead of coming and taking them? But if he desires to get them by persuasion, let him set forth what the soldiers will receive in case they do him this favor."
Then there is this latest "intifada." What do the Palestinians trot out as their justification for killing, blowing up, murdering? The fact that Sharon when somewhere holy to Jews. Not that Sharon killed anybody (at least not that day I suppose), not that Sharon when and spit on a Koran. No, he went somewhere and prayed. And in that, the Palestinians see justification for KILLING. "But Sharon, he actually *WENT* to a wall!! We have to kill!" Uncivilized barbarians.
Yes, Israel treats the Palestinians very badly. But they could have had peace years ago, and they have rejected it. They could have taken routes other than murder of civilians, suicide bombings, throwing crippled Americans off of cruise ships, murdering Olympic athletes. They could recognize that the Jews have an equally valid, if not even more valid, claim to Jerusalem. They could refrain from making even archaeology a political issue because it shows that Jews, incredibly obvious it may be, were there long before Muslims. The Palestinians are far from innocent in this conflict, and don't seem too interested in ending it on any realistic basis. They aren't going to get back Jerusalem, and they aren't going to get every inch of land back to the 1969 border. It isn't going to happen. And until they recognize reality and deal with it, I have a hard time being sympathetic for their overall situation. The Arabs lost that land due to their war of aggression against Israel. It is gone. The Jews are there, Israel is there, the Zionists are there, and they aren't going away.
Have you ever read the US Constitution? In Article II, Section 8, enumerating the powers of Congress, Clause 8 states:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries
Although that doesn't mention sound recordings or some other post late-1700s inventions, the intent is clear and has been applied as such. The biggest issue is "limited time" since Congress keeps extending copyright via the Disney laws. I hope the Supremes do address that someday. However, our Founders most certainly did intend for the United States to grant copyright and patent protections, from Day One.
The last Supreme Court ruling to directly address the Second Amendment was in the 1930s in the Miller case. The Supremes ruled that the Federal government could ban sawed-off shotguns. The reasoning was that Miller did not demostrate (because he never showed up in court apparently) that sawed-off shotguns were then used by the United States Army infantry, their benchmark. That's the operative, albeit old, precedent.
As for purchasing a tank, I know private collectors with operational tanks. Apparently it isn't illegal. But I'm sure you couldn't buy an M1 in the US at least, due more to contractual limitations and the Army not selling them.
Back when liberal meant defender of liberty. The modern, statist Democratic party, which would happily erase the entire enumerated powers aspect of Article II of the United States Constitution and the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, has painfully little in common with those Founding Fathers. The Bill of Rights is not the US Constitution, it's merely a backstop against the fears that our government would do precisely what it has done, find unlimited government power within a document written specifically to limit the power of government.
Not that the Republicans are any better, but at least a strict constructionist reading of the US Constitution would prevent atrocities like what happened today. 20th century "liberals" hate strict construction, because they don't want to go through the hoops involved in actually amending our Constitution. They would rather have judges grant "good" powers to the government by fiat, or by the horrid doctrine of utter legislative deference (except of course when the Bill of Rights and other special rights (14th) are concerned -- minus the Takings Clause, the Second Amendment, and the Ninth and Tenth Amendments). Heaven forbid we actually treat our Constitution like law, and actually go through the process of getting 3/4 of the states to approve handing more and more power to the Congress and President.
I don't know whether you noticed, but nowhere did I mention MBs or GHz. Apple sells a strongly branded, integrated product. Apple prices its products based on the strength of its brand and the willingness of its target market to pay the price. Not based on GHz and MB and FPS and blah blah.
Jaguar is owned by Ford, and uses Ford components found in *much* less expensive cars. People aren't buying the Ford control arm and bushings; they are buying a Jaguar. The Porsche Cayenne is built on a VW Touareg. Audi uses VW components. $120 blue jeans and $30 jeans use fabric from the same loom. People buy brands and perceptions, and integrated products which are more than the sum of their physical components.
Again: the Macintosh is not a PC. It is an integrated product which includes more than the mere component hardware. Intel/POWER/whatever.
We all have our biases. You appear to want the Apple Mac OS, but you don't want the Apple Mac product. So far as Apple is concerned, that is like wanting the Sony television user interface software, but wanting it to work with your Chinese knock-off TV, which may even use the exact same hardware underneath. More power to Apple, so long as their market continues to let them be profitable and innovative.
I consult for a living, and let me tell you, more and more of my small business clients are SERIOUSLY looking at switching to Macs in their businesses, PRECISELY because it is a tightly integrated supported product perceived to have fewer problems than the open PC platform.
As for biases, you think people are foolish to purchase Mac hardware when they can get PC equivalent for less. I don't really care about computer hardware bits and pieces, but I happen to think that people who drive automatics are pussies; real cars have clutch pedals. My 26' sailboat has no motor, and I think that people who can't manage to sail onto a mooring can in 25+ knot winds and fetch the pendant have no business on the water. Slips are for pussies too. Oh, and vi is the only real editor, all others are crap. Speaking of crap, Microsoft is one of the absolute worst things to ever happen to computing, due to their brainwashing a generation that computers are unreliable, crashing, virus laden blue screen generators, through no fault of the innovative, brilliant, customer-driven Microsoft of course, and that's just the way it is. Sickening.
But, different strokes for different folks. The Mac is not a PC, and the comparison is daft.
Don't bet on it. Apple sells a product, containing many components. The operating system is one of those components. Apple's product, though, is an easy-to-use, reliable, supported computer. You buy an Apple computer, and you get one phone number to call, one source of support, because they are responsible for every last bit of it. While the analogy is extremely imperfect: would you expect Sony to sell you the software for their televisions to run on some other vendor's television? Sony televisions are an integrated product, and that is how Apple sells their products. They've been quite happy to be a profitable company, doing cool things, selling solid products, for many years, and are doing quite well with their business model, especially expanding into consumer products ala Sony to take advantage of their brand. I don't expect them to change their model drastically any time soon.
The Macintosh is a not a "crippled PC" because it is not a PC. It is a Mac. Being a Mac means more than the brand/vendor of the individual components inside the box, whether the CPU is sourced from Intel or IBM. The Mac is a strongly branded integrated product, which includes the computer, peripherals, the operating system, additional software, and support. Apple never had any interest in being a seller of generic commodities, and still has no interest. If you don't want that product, fine. But a Mac is not a PC, some low margin commodity to be produced and sold at the cheapest possible price like a pair of generic Malaysian-made jeans sold by Wal-mart. The target market for a Mac versus a generic PC is akin to the target market of "Seven for All Mankind" jeans versus Wal-mart jeans.
The chipset, which is what the original article commented upon, is not the processor; it is the glue between the processor and the rest of the system. Having said that, I have no idea whatsoever whether or not Apple did indeed design the Mac G5 chipset with a "superfast memory bus."
The original Porsche, the 356, actually used a Beetle engine, and other components, when built. Post-war, shortages made that the best/only option for Porsche to get a car into production. Not to mention that Porsche designed and built the Beetle.
$20/hr a major raise? And you're a developer? Good lord. Where are you? What's your education? My first full-time "Software Engineer" job out of college in '93 was $42500/yr, with full health care, 401k matching, other benefits, and (small) yearly bonus. My very first contract software job was at $35/hr W2. For over two years I billed out at about $78/hr W2, with a company which was NOT a.com and was not Internet related. I now operate my own consulting business, and my direct bill rate is $75/hr, though I did do a short term software job for $65/hr recently.
Are you hiring the brain, or the skills? I agree, the people you describe are being dishonest or disingenuous.
However, take me for example. I went to Purdue, home to one of the better CS programs. As a freshman, I "hacked" into the ARPAnet when it was still restricted, we students were on BITnet at the time. I have worked for Cray Research (pre SGI), Xerox, Motorola, SBC, and many others. Today I consult. And sail.
When I was in college, there was no Java. C++ wasn't taught officially, we picked it up on our own half way through the CS program. Design patterns? Didn't exist, in that name at least. However, given my experience, I'm sure I'd be able to pick up, or directly catch, whatever was thrown at me in a quite short amount of time. I'd likely be able to impart useful experience and wisdom to the kids who did pick up some of the more recent jargon/jibberish in school. However, if you asked me on an interview what a "Session Facade" is I would honestly tell you that I have no idea whatsover. Never heard of it. Once got asked what the "Waterfall" method of development was on an interview. No clue. Looked it up later, and it's some term applied to a terribly common method we have all used for decades. I do read texts, and try to keep up to date. I have a Design Patterns book in the pile to read.
However, it seems that little that is "new" is new beyond the name. I was at an ACM session a couple years ago, and some hotshot professor was giving his presentation. He was working with Fujitsu on some "new" top secret cool AI system. It seemed quite familiar. Afterward I spoke with him, after all the adoring 20-something kids, and mentioned that his work appeared quite similar to a mixture of Zork and Eliza. Ruffled his feathers. And just yesterday on NPR, they had a feature about some new AI program at some top university, which also sounded strikingly like Infocom's game engine combined with Eliza, only with a pretty talking graphical Eliza on a screen. Not to say that there isn't lots of new, cool, groundbreaking work done. But the nature of the industry is that what comes around, comes around again, and again, and again.
Back to employment... there is today a fundamental problem with the "IT" market and experienced people. Lots of heavily experienced people learned CS fundamentals, such as those you learn from Knuth. They were not educated during the period where one learned "extreme" programming, design patterns, use cases, UML and so on. Some of those concepts are actually anathema to the by-the-bootstrap type of person who entered CS years ago, as their goal is to create cogs in a machine. We learned algorithms, analysis, assembly language, C, how to emulate a CPU in software, how to develop languages, parsers and compilers, how to develop an operating system. I've developed a custom optimized database management system (at the very core, about thirty lines of highly optimized C pointer arithmetic) for a data warehouse because Oracle and Redbrick were too damn slow to join and denormalize the massive amounts of data. My experience is that off-the-shelf solutions (vendor products) are quite often inadequate in their genericalness, and the language of the "cog" often belies an inadequate understanding of the fundamentals. With all due respect to the usefulness of a common tongue and the understanding that imparts, these are still strange days when that language in and of itself somehow connotes expertise, in lieu of actual experience.
I believe in an economic system where government sets the rules and enforces a level playing field. Not one where the government gets involved in providing services to its citizens that could be just as ably provided by the private market. It is not the place of government to use its coercive power, *forcing* us to pay taxes with the threat of imprisonment, to provide such services. Our state and federal governments already do this too much.
Far better for them to regulate industry such that competition is fair and level. That is the true problem. The RBOCs (baby Bells, legacy telcos) inherited a fixed asset infrastructure which was the fruit and legacy of a government mandated and supported monopoly, and now claim that that infrastructure is theirs and theirs alone. If our legislators had balls, they would have forced the Bells to split into two companies: infrastructure, and services. The physical network should be shared among many service providers, and the cost of maintenance/upgrades/improvements shared. Cable and Bells both had government secured monopolies to guarantee a return on the capital expenditures of building their networks, and it is incredibly hypocritical to now tell potential competitors "sorry, you have to build out your own infrastructure on your own dime and at your own risk; the cable/telco networks, built with the protection of government coercion, are theirs alone."
In a just world, the former government-mandated monopoly telcos and cable companies would be banned from any lobbying whatsoever, as their entire goal is to hold back progress and protect their existing infrastructure from becoming obsolete. Wireless poses a great threat to those with expensive physical plants, and they will assuredly continue to fight anything that permits competition.
What municipalities should do is mitigate the advantage of incumbant physical plants by selling, at minimal and fair prices, rights to install wireless nodes on public land/property. Municipalities should not operate those networks nor use citizen's taxes to pay someone else to do so. Provide a fair playing field, and let the market operate.
That's the way it is these days. Coming from the age of old home computers, where opening up the box and soldering wires from pin X to pin Y, desoldering a chip to install a socket, making your own circuits to plug into the expansion bus (breadboard expansion cards rocked), etc. was relatively routine, modern mainstream geekery, consisting of plugging parts together, is pretty lame. Nowadays it seems that a kid considers himself a cool geek if he finds an obscure program online, downloads it, and installs it.
I've never been audited, but I have been told and read the same. You are expected to pay yourself a reasonable salary for the work you actually do for the corporation. As an/the owner, you are still an employee for the purposes of the work you do. When you own a corporation, you are not self-employed. You are an employee of the separate legal entity, your business, and you are a shareholder.
I pay myself a "reasonable" salary plus dividends for my work. However, as I have an employee, I take the profit I earn due to his work as pure dividends.
I definitely recommend going S corp, in particular if you have a head for doing the legal/accounting aspects of the business. It is a little more work than a sole proprietorship, but it gives great benefits. Except, you can't deduct your benefits (pun intended) such as health care as a business expense. You can however deduct most/all of it on your personal income taxes, which is where an S corp is taxed in reality. The S corp pays no income taxes to the federal government directly.
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This is SO EU. The EU is an organization of European states brought together through a mechanism of consensus-at-all-costs and an incredible aversion to conflict, which perhaps may appropriate since the entire reason for this economic and now political grouping is to prevent conflict on the continent. Recall, these are the people who support two seats for their EU parliament, transporting the entire body and entourage to and fro at great expense and inconvenience, for nothing other than propping up the vanity of a once-powerful and once-consequential large member nation that speaks a precious form of gutter Latin.
There are things in this world which are not open to, and should not be open to, consensus. An insane aversion to conflict may work well in Europe, but not in all things. Not all viewpoints are valid. Some are wrong, and should be called wrong, right in the viewpoint-holder's face.
Take Iran. Iran wants to build nuclear weapons. Pretty much everybody involved believes that. The United States doesn't want Iran to build them, nor does the EU. Iran does. The EU believes that through the amazing magic of seemingly endless dialogue, they will create an understanding and consensus, and, with the aid of mucho bribery of course, convince Iran to no longer desire to acquire nuclear weapons and continue on its course to become a major regional player and power broker. But what they are being dragged to realize, kicking and screaming and violently shaking their heads from side to side somewhat like my one year old son, is that Iran wants nuclear weapons. The EU and the US do not want that. Iran wants those weapons and endless dialogue and mucho bribery aside, at the end of the day, Iran wants those weapons. Of course the EU being the EU, they'll likely in the end throw their hands up in the air and state that "We did EVERYTHING humanly possible! We held meetings and listened to them, we attempted to achieve consensus, we talked (and dragged huge heavy bags overflowing with gold and "development aid" behind us OF COURSE), and talked and talked during our international dialogue sessions... well, I guess we'll just have to live with Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. Well. Not all is lost. Perhaps we can sell them some components now."
If China, Brazil and Iran don't like the Internet being open and free, if they don't like the Internet being used to support and promote viewpoints dangerous to their despotic rule, the civilized and appropriate response is TOUGH FUCKING SHIT. Not an attempt to wrest control of an incredibly liberal and liberating technology from the sole global superpower which is dedicated to 100% free political expression and is your long-time military, social and political ally, to throw that control to the vagaries of "international" consensus in an attempt to curry favor with despotic and fundamentally WRONG regimes.
If this is the reason that the EU has publicly trotted out for their attempt to forcibly remove control of ICANN from the United States, then the EU should be vilified for far more than being "splitters" or "malcontents." If the EU really wishes to push this, perhaps in a fundamentally misguided notion that we can be understood as like Europeans who will be amendable in the end to some type of compromise decision reached through dialogue, then I imagine I speak for most Americans when I say "here we come splits-ville!" Americans don't take well this type of brinksmanship.
Larry
So, you bought one of the cheap models, eh? :-) I still have my Sony S7000, and still love it.
Larry
I'd always do an S-corp, because to me the additional "burden" is no big deal, and because it is cheaper. The LLC is basically a sole proprietorship/partnership with a liability shield, and my understanding is that it is structured in the same way as regards profits. There are no shares and no dividends, and apparently you may not be able to escape payroll taxes on any profit. For me that is a big advantage of a standard corporation, whether or not it takes the S election: I can pay a salary, plus dividends/profit, which are not subject to payroll taxes. I also believe that an LLC is more expensive to form initially in many states, and to operate. Here in Illinois it costs $150 to incorporate, and $75 + franchise tax annually. For most small businesses, the franchise tax is just $25. An LLC though costs $300 to form, and $250 a year for the annual report.
Larry
My own boss: I pay about $773/yr in workman's comp insurance. Another $338 for business liability. I pay another $567 for the year in unemployment insurance. Taxes == 2x medicare and social security.
I pay myself a salary of about $45k a year. Everything else I pay out as corporate dividends. Those dividends are taxed at 5%, with NO payroll taxes: no medicare, no social security, no unemployment. My effective tax rate is quite a bit less than if I were a regular employee bringing home a paycheck with the same base salary+dividends I earn now.
As for the contract house employee bringing home 50 - 30% of the client bill rate... that may be so for some. But when I've gone through a contract house, my take home percentage, as a W-2 in the past, was more like 60 - 65%. But now when I do that, and I don't like to, it is business-to-business, not W-2, and I take home about 75% or more of the client bill rate.
Larry
2. mediocre health insurance not including dental or eye for whole family: $430/month near chicago area, other posters might also give some rates.
We live in Chicago. About $350/mo for BCBS HSA insurance. High deductible.
3. Bookkeeping will be a pain: educate yourself on estimating and making quarterly tax payments or just opting to pay penalty, keep record and receipts, know tax laws for business expensing, entertainment expense, and use of vehicle, which is complicated. Tax software for the self-employed helps a great deal, highly reccomended.
All you need is Quickbooks or similar, and the aptitude to read the IRS instructions and relevant publications and bulletins. It takes some time initially, but it's not bad. Making the tax payments is trivial, if you use payroll software to track tax liability. It can all be done online now through ACH transactions from your corp account. Just make sure you watch your balance sheet to see future liabilities, and keep cash in the bank to pay for those. I sometimes need to loan money to my business short-term to cover obligations, while waiting for clients to pay.
That's the second biggest pain -- slow paying clients. The first is finding the clients, slow paying or not.
Larry
Regarding taxes, buy Quickbooks or some such, it's easy to track it all then. My S corp pays me a W-2 salary, and I withhold taxes. Every month, I pay the IRS via the EFTPS web site -- online tax payments. Make sure your company banks enough to pay the taxes -- watch your balance sheet. I take distributions as well (dividend payments) and must make quarterly estimated tax payments on those. Thanks to Bush though the tax rate on those is great.
Retirement: There's the SEP-IRA. Very easy to set up. I use Vanguard. My company pays 10% of my salary into the fund, and I can do my own $3000 yearly IRA contribution as well. The limit on a SEP-IRA is 25% of salary. Note that if you have employees, as I do, the SEP-IRA contribution level must be the same for all. You can't pay yourself 25% and your employee(s) 5%.
Also, you should always incorporate. It makes sense legally, you can pay dividends and avoid payroll taxes (so long as you draw a "reasonable" salary), and it is generally easy to do on your own. Here in Illinois it takes a one page form plus filing fee. The annual filing fee is $100 then.
Larry
I have a cool educational concept to sell you. It is called reading comprehension. It appears it is something your education was lacking.
Heavy braking is not the same as excessive braking. Heavy braking is as opposed to light braking. So, again Einstein, how does braking heavily versus lightly affect fuel economy? Or are you discussing an entirely different topic, braking excessively, requiring fuel to accelerate again immediately? Personally, I only brake heavily. I try to leave space between cars. If I have to slow down a little, I take my foot off the throttle peddle. If I need to slow down more than that, I downshift. And if I really have to slow down, I apply the brakes. When those red lights behind my car light up, you better be prepared to actually slow down. That is my definition of 'heavy' braking: making the car really slow down when you apply the brakes.
Larry
Do you really believe that? Do you really believe that if push came to shove, if arguments came to missiles and bombs, that the United States would be incapable of taking over the oil fields of a major producer, and then securing production and delivery? I guarantee that the military has a large number of plans for just that. It needn't be out of our own hemisphere even. Chavez is probably correct in his fears that we do have plans to take over "his" oil fields, not that we have any plan to do so immediately.
Debt is bits and paper. If it came to war, real war, not just a luke-warm conflict, do you really doubt that the United States, nearly an entire continent with vast resources, would be unable to maintain the military machine, produce weapons and ammunition, and fight our possible enemies, be they Chinese, Arab, or, um, French? WWII was a mechanized conflict, with an incredible number of men and (far less efficient) machines in combat. The United States successfully prosecuted that war, and it wasn't an importer (of any consequence) of oil at the time. Our supply chain came from the United States outward.
This isn't bravado. War, real war, would not be subject to the niceties of making debt payments and arranging import duties and cartel prices for oil. China isn't going to come and repossess our tanks and B1 bombers if the Feds stop paying off bonds. The loss of overseas oil isn't going to stop the American military from prosecuting war and securing necessary resources to do so. If it comes to an us versus them conflict, Americans will surely employ whatever means are necessary to make sure it is us who remain on top. It sure as hell would be messy after such a war, but the world has been through that scenario before, and yet here we cozily sit talking about how impossible it would be to do it again.
Larry
Lots of braking = heat on the discs, therefore worse milage.
Uh, no. Heat on discs is the kinetic energy of the vehicle being bled away via friction. The discs absorb and radiate it, the tires absorb and radiate it, the air inside expands. That energy dissipation has nothing to do with mileage. Agreed though that heavy braking can be indicative of poor vehicle operation, e.g. excessive throttle application. However, I do not believe that heavy braking itself has anything to do directly with mileage -- the quantity of fuel consumed per mile traveled.
Speaking for myself though, I don't generally jump off the line at a light. But my brakes are set up for the track, with agressive street pads for daily driving. When I touch my brake pedal and the tail lights up, it means the car is going to slow down and stop, quickly. I hate those drivers who coast along with their brake lights on, yet don't actually slow down. Or worse, the cabbies here who accelerate, heavily, with brake lights on.
As for your ideas on coasting... try those in Chicago with other cars around! Your nice and open space will quickly fill with other cars (if you are on a multi-lane road, or at least one wide enough). Hell, people here get pissed if you leave 1/2 car length between you and the car in front. Just the other day I had a guy swerving behind me thinking about jumping around me because I left space between myself and the car in front of me. People are stupidly aggressive. They hate being behind me in stop and go traffic, because I try to coast along in 1st or 2nd gear and engine brake to maintain decent space. Drives people nuts. Everybody wants to be up everybody else's ass.
Larry
These people who are getting crappy mileage in their cars are bad drivers.
Bad vehicle operator != bad driver. Most drivers out there are pretty bad, even if they do a fine job of operating the clunker, getting good mileage and avoiding going bump. I get not-so-good city mileage, but I am a rather good driver IMNSHO... I always do quite well in track events. My bad mileage is no mystery to me, I like to keep the revs up to maintain torque and be able to respond quickly.
As for being 'hard on the brakes' causing bad mileage or being indicative of bad driving -- never understood that. How so? Clutch out, deep on the brakes, engine is at idle (unless you are keeping it up to slide into gear downshifting out of a curve or such). The engine is going to idle whether you putz your way to a stop, or screach your way there. Moreover, grandma-ing the brakes will glaze them and destroy the pads. All pads need heat, some more than others. Mine are carbon-kevlar, the hotter they get the better they work. The people out there who are being 'good' to their brakes and 'babying' them are doing themselves and the people around them no favors.
I do agree that the bad operators get bad mileage, pushing the accelerator to the floor at every green, opening the throttle wide and flooding the cylinders with fuel. But I'm convinced that the fault lies not just with the drivers, but with the typically horrid vehicle controls -- your automatic transmission equipped people-mover with mushy nasty throttle response/feedback, excessive boosting of brakes/steering. Those crap-mobiles train drivers to treat their throttle as an on-off go-button and provide precious little feedback while driving.
Larry
Um. I use nvi. And I've developed some really large projects in my almost 20 years of professional development, though admittedly scarcely any with a front-end user GUI. Remember, we developers managed just fine before all these GUI IDEs came along to hold our hands. The only IDE I have ever really used was Borland Turbo C back in the 80s under DOS. However, I may have reason to use Visual Studio on an upcoming project. Is there a vi keybinding for its editor, or do you have to use the f'ing arrow keys and mouse all the time?
Larry
Give me a break. Did they declare jihad and plan massive attacks on Assad for Hama? Hussein for Kuwait, for the Marsh Arabs, for the Kurdish Muslims, for the Iran-Iraq war, all that he did? India for the Muslims killed in Kashmir, to this very day? The terrorists don't give a rat's ass for the dead Palestinians.
Why do they hate us? Essentially, because we won and they lost. What did we win? The battle of civilizations. The Islamic world was once pre-eminent. Muslim armies had conquered all the way into Spain. Muslim science and learning was supreme. Ever hear of the Ottoman Empire? And then what? Decline. Failure. Defeat. Poverty. Oppression by homegrown tyrants (yes, often backed by Britain, France, and the United States among others). If not for oil and the infrastructure the Western powers built and then handed over to the Arabs, they would be even more pathetic than they are now.
Now they have to live with a band of lowly Jews, kicked out of Judea 2000 years ago by Vespasian and his son, scattered, nearly exterminated by Hitler, robbed of their property and wealth, who in their own midst came back to their ancient home and created a powerful, successful democratic nation. Right in their own back yard. Showing up just how low the Arab Islamic world has fallen. When all the Arab Muslim nations ganged up on them in 1948 to drive every last Jew into the sea, what happened? The evil Zionists defeated them ALL, and took *more* land. Another war, and another Muslim defeat, and yet *more* land captured. Including *all* of Jerusalem.
And as for the poor, poor oppressed Palestinians. Offered the vast majority of what they demanded in exchange for peace, Arafat walked away. Anything less than 100% isn't good enough. Let us get this straight: Arabs declare war, attack Israel, Israel kicks their asses TWICE and takes some of their land as spoils, and now Arabs whine "give us back all of our land, not fair, wah wah." It reminds me of Xenophon, when "the King" demanded the weapons of the Greeks, and Proxenus the Theban responded "For my part, Phalinus, I wonder whether the King is asking for our arms on the assumption that he is victorious, or simply as gifts, on the assumption that we are his friends. For if he asks for them as victor, why need he ask for them, instead of coming and taking them? But if he desires to get them by persuasion, let him set forth what the soldiers will receive in case they do him this favor."
Then there is this latest "intifada." What do the Palestinians trot out as their justification for killing, blowing up, murdering? The fact that Sharon when somewhere holy to Jews. Not that Sharon killed anybody (at least not that day I suppose), not that Sharon when and spit on a Koran. No, he went somewhere and prayed. And in that, the Palestinians see justification for KILLING. "But Sharon, he actually *WENT* to a wall!! We have to kill!" Uncivilized barbarians.
Yes, Israel treats the Palestinians very badly. But they could have had peace years ago, and they have rejected it. They could have taken routes other than murder of civilians, suicide bombings, throwing crippled Americans off of cruise ships, murdering Olympic athletes. They could recognize that the Jews have an equally valid, if not even more valid, claim to Jerusalem. They could refrain from making even archaeology a political issue because it shows that Jews, incredibly obvious it may be, were there long before Muslims. The Palestinians are far from innocent in this conflict, and don't seem too interested in ending it on any realistic basis. They aren't going to get back Jerusalem, and they aren't going to get every inch of land back to the 1969 border. It isn't going to happen. And until they recognize reality and deal with it, I have a hard time being sympathetic for their overall situation. The Arabs lost that land due to their war of aggression against Israel. It is gone. The Jews are there, Israel is there, the Zionists are there, and they aren't going away.
Now back to Bin Laden and so on. Why ar
Have you ever read the US Constitution? In Article II, Section 8, enumerating the powers of Congress, Clause 8 states:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries
Although that doesn't mention sound recordings or some other post late-1700s inventions, the intent is clear and has been applied as such. The biggest issue is "limited time" since Congress keeps extending copyright via the Disney laws. I hope the Supremes do address that someday. However, our Founders most certainly did intend for the United States to grant copyright and patent protections, from Day One.
Larry
The last Supreme Court ruling to directly address the Second Amendment was in the 1930s in the Miller case. The Supremes ruled that the Federal government could ban sawed-off shotguns. The reasoning was that Miller did not demostrate (because he never showed up in court apparently) that sawed-off shotguns were then used by the United States Army infantry, their benchmark. That's the operative, albeit old, precedent.
As for purchasing a tank, I know private collectors with operational tanks. Apparently it isn't illegal. But I'm sure you couldn't buy an M1 in the US at least, due more to contractual limitations and the Army not selling them.
Larry
Back when liberal meant defender of liberty. The modern, statist Democratic party, which would happily erase the entire enumerated powers aspect of Article II of the United States Constitution and the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, has painfully little in common with those Founding Fathers. The Bill of Rights is not the US Constitution, it's merely a backstop against the fears that our government would do precisely what it has done, find unlimited government power within a document written specifically to limit the power of government.
Not that the Republicans are any better, but at least a strict constructionist reading of the US Constitution would prevent atrocities like what happened today. 20th century "liberals" hate strict construction, because they don't want to go through the hoops involved in actually amending our Constitution. They would rather have judges grant "good" powers to the government by fiat, or by the horrid doctrine of utter legislative deference (except of course when the Bill of Rights and other special rights (14th) are concerned -- minus the Takings Clause, the Second Amendment, and the Ninth and Tenth Amendments). Heaven forbid we actually treat our Constitution like law, and actually go through the process of getting 3/4 of the states to approve handing more and more power to the Congress and President.
Larry
I don't know whether you noticed, but nowhere did I mention MBs or GHz. Apple sells a strongly branded, integrated product. Apple prices its products based on the strength of its brand and the willingness of its target market to pay the price. Not based on GHz and MB and FPS and blah blah.
Jaguar is owned by Ford, and uses Ford components found in *much* less expensive cars. People aren't buying the Ford control arm and bushings; they are buying a Jaguar. The Porsche Cayenne is built on a VW Touareg. Audi uses VW components. $120 blue jeans and $30 jeans use fabric from the same loom. People buy brands and perceptions, and integrated products which are more than the sum of their physical components.
Again: the Macintosh is not a PC. It is an integrated product which includes more than the mere component hardware. Intel/POWER/whatever.
We all have our biases. You appear to want the Apple Mac OS, but you don't want the Apple Mac product. So far as Apple is concerned, that is like wanting the Sony television user interface software, but wanting it to work with your Chinese knock-off TV, which may even use the exact same hardware underneath. More power to Apple, so long as their market continues to let them be profitable and innovative.
I consult for a living, and let me tell you, more and more of my small business clients are SERIOUSLY looking at switching to Macs in their businesses, PRECISELY because it is a tightly integrated supported product perceived to have fewer problems than the open PC platform.
As for biases, you think people are foolish to purchase Mac hardware when they can get PC equivalent for less. I don't really care about computer hardware bits and pieces, but I happen to think that people who drive automatics are pussies; real cars have clutch pedals. My 26' sailboat has no motor, and I think that people who can't manage to sail onto a mooring can in 25+ knot winds and fetch the pendant have no business on the water. Slips are for pussies too. Oh, and vi is the only real editor, all others are crap. Speaking of crap, Microsoft is one of the absolute worst things to ever happen to computing, due to their brainwashing a generation that computers are unreliable, crashing, virus laden blue screen generators, through no fault of the innovative, brilliant, customer-driven Microsoft of course, and that's just the way it is. Sickening.
But, different strokes for different folks. The Mac is not a PC, and the comparison is daft.
Larry
Don't bet on it. Apple sells a product, containing many components. The operating system is one of those components. Apple's product, though, is an easy-to-use, reliable, supported computer. You buy an Apple computer, and you get one phone number to call, one source of support, because they are responsible for every last bit of it. While the analogy is extremely imperfect: would you expect Sony to sell you the software for their televisions to run on some other vendor's television? Sony televisions are an integrated product, and that is how Apple sells their products. They've been quite happy to be a profitable company, doing cool things, selling solid products, for many years, and are doing quite well with their business model, especially expanding into consumer products ala Sony to take advantage of their brand. I don't expect them to change their model drastically any time soon.
Larry
The Macintosh is a not a "crippled PC" because it is not a PC. It is a Mac. Being a Mac means more than the brand/vendor of the individual components inside the box, whether the CPU is sourced from Intel or IBM. The Mac is a strongly branded integrated product, which includes the computer, peripherals, the operating system, additional software, and support. Apple never had any interest in being a seller of generic commodities, and still has no interest. If you don't want that product, fine. But a Mac is not a PC, some low margin commodity to be produced and sold at the cheapest possible price like a pair of generic Malaysian-made jeans sold by Wal-mart. The target market for a Mac versus a generic PC is akin to the target market of "Seven for All Mankind" jeans versus Wal-mart jeans.
Larry
Perhaps you should check out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chipset
The chipset, which is what the original article commented upon, is not the processor; it is the glue between the processor and the rest of the system. Having said that, I have no idea whatsoever whether or not Apple did indeed design the Mac G5 chipset with a "superfast memory bus."
Larry
The original Porsche, the 356, actually used a Beetle engine, and other components, when built. Post-war, shortages made that the best/only option for Porsche to get a car into production. Not to mention that Porsche designed and built the Beetle.
Larry
$20/hr a major raise? And you're a developer? Good lord. Where are you? What's your education? My first full-time "Software Engineer" job out of college in '93 was $42500/yr, with full health care, 401k matching, other benefits, and (small) yearly bonus. My very first contract software job was at $35/hr W2. For over two years I billed out at about $78/hr W2, with a company which was NOT a .com and was not Internet related. I now operate my own consulting business, and my direct bill rate is $75/hr, though I did do a short term software job for $65/hr recently.
Larry
Are you hiring the brain, or the skills? I agree, the people you describe are being dishonest or disingenuous.
However, take me for example. I went to Purdue, home to one of the better CS programs. As a freshman, I "hacked" into the ARPAnet when it was still restricted, we students were on BITnet at the time. I have worked for Cray Research (pre SGI), Xerox, Motorola, SBC, and many others. Today I consult. And sail.
When I was in college, there was no Java. C++ wasn't taught officially, we picked it up on our own half way through the CS program. Design patterns? Didn't exist, in that name at least. However, given my experience, I'm sure I'd be able to pick up, or directly catch, whatever was thrown at me in a quite short amount of time. I'd likely be able to impart useful experience and wisdom to the kids who did pick up some of the more recent jargon/jibberish in school. However, if you asked me on an interview what a "Session Facade" is I would honestly tell you that I have no idea whatsover. Never heard of it. Once got asked what the "Waterfall" method of development was on an interview. No clue. Looked it up later, and it's some term applied to a terribly common method we have all used for decades. I do read texts, and try to keep up to date. I have a Design Patterns book in the pile to read.
However, it seems that little that is "new" is new beyond the name. I was at an ACM session a couple years ago, and some hotshot professor was giving his presentation. He was working with Fujitsu on some "new" top secret cool AI system. It seemed quite familiar. Afterward I spoke with him, after all the adoring 20-something kids, and mentioned that his work appeared quite similar to a mixture of Zork and Eliza. Ruffled his feathers. And just yesterday on NPR, they had a feature about some new AI program at some top university, which also sounded strikingly like Infocom's game engine combined with Eliza, only with a pretty talking graphical Eliza on a screen. Not to say that there isn't lots of new, cool, groundbreaking work done. But the nature of the industry is that what comes around, comes around again, and again, and again.
Back to employment... there is today a fundamental problem with the "IT" market and experienced people. Lots of heavily experienced people learned CS fundamentals, such as those you learn from Knuth. They were not educated during the period where one learned "extreme" programming, design patterns, use cases, UML and so on. Some of those concepts are actually anathema to the by-the-bootstrap type of person who entered CS years ago, as their goal is to create cogs in a machine. We learned algorithms, analysis, assembly language, C, how to emulate a CPU in software, how to develop languages, parsers and compilers, how to develop an operating system. I've developed a custom optimized database management system (at the very core, about thirty lines of highly optimized C pointer arithmetic) for a data warehouse because Oracle and Redbrick were too damn slow to join and denormalize the massive amounts of data. My experience is that off-the-shelf solutions (vendor products) are quite often inadequate in their genericalness, and the language of the "cog" often belies an inadequate understanding of the fundamentals. With all due respect to the usefulness of a common tongue and the understanding that imparts, these are still strange days when that language in and of itself somehow connotes expertise, in lieu of actual experience.
Larry
I believe in an economic system where government sets the rules and enforces a level playing field. Not one where the government gets involved in providing services to its citizens that could be just as ably provided by the private market. It is not the place of government to use its coercive power, *forcing* us to pay taxes with the threat of imprisonment, to provide such services. Our state and federal governments already do this too much.
Far better for them to regulate industry such that competition is fair and level. That is the true problem. The RBOCs (baby Bells, legacy telcos) inherited a fixed asset infrastructure which was the fruit and legacy of a government mandated and supported monopoly, and now claim that that infrastructure is theirs and theirs alone. If our legislators had balls, they would have forced the Bells to split into two companies: infrastructure, and services. The physical network should be shared among many service providers, and the cost of maintenance/upgrades/improvements shared. Cable and Bells both had government secured monopolies to guarantee a return on the capital expenditures of building their networks, and it is incredibly hypocritical to now tell potential competitors "sorry, you have to build out your own infrastructure on your own dime and at your own risk; the cable/telco networks, built with the protection of government coercion, are theirs alone."
In a just world, the former government-mandated monopoly telcos and cable companies would be banned from any lobbying whatsoever, as their entire goal is to hold back progress and protect their existing infrastructure from becoming obsolete. Wireless poses a great threat to those with expensive physical plants, and they will assuredly continue to fight anything that permits competition.
What municipalities should do is mitigate the advantage of incumbant physical plants by selling, at minimal and fair prices, rights to install wireless nodes on public land/property. Municipalities should not operate those networks nor use citizen's taxes to pay someone else to do so. Provide a fair playing field, and let the market operate.
Larry
That's the way it is these days. Coming from the age of old home computers, where opening up the box and soldering wires from pin X to pin Y, desoldering a chip to install a socket, making your own circuits to plug into the expansion bus (breadboard expansion cards rocked), etc. was relatively routine, modern mainstream geekery, consisting of plugging parts together, is pretty lame. Nowadays it seems that a kid considers himself a cool geek if he finds an obscure program online, downloads it, and installs it.
Larry
I've never been audited, but I have been told and read the same. You are expected to pay yourself a reasonable salary for the work you actually do for the corporation. As an/the owner, you are still an employee for the purposes of the work you do. When you own a corporation, you are not self-employed. You are an employee of the separate legal entity, your business, and you are a shareholder.
I pay myself a "reasonable" salary plus dividends for my work. However, as I have an employee, I take the profit I earn due to his work as pure dividends.
I definitely recommend going S corp, in particular if you have a head for doing the legal/accounting aspects of the business. It is a little more work than a sole proprietorship, but it gives great benefits. Except, you can't deduct your benefits (pun intended) such as health care as a business expense. You can however deduct most/all of it on your personal income taxes, which is where an S corp is taxed in reality. The S corp pays no income taxes to the federal government directly.
Larry