Check any Home Depot / Lowes or other hardware store for a concrete nail gun.
No permits required, use black powder, primer-actuated.22 /.27 caliber rounds to drive a projectile into concrete.
Variable loads (powder content) are definitely available, different gauges may be - I never looked that closely.
It just seems silly that in the most-regulated gun states, you can effectively buy a gun , as long as you call it a "tool" and sell it at a non-"gun" store.
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Hilti-DX-36-0-27-Caliber-Semi-Automatic-Powder-Actuated-Tool-384033/100527172
The evidence in this particular case was specifically the metadata collected by the phone company; metadata involving terror suspects outside the US. That metadata led the NSA to tip the FBI -
" the investigation you dropped in 2008.. well it appears your subject is now connected with a 'hot' number in Somalia (strongly implicated in terror activities). "
That led to the FBI re-opening their investigation with this added lead, and through normal channels they escalated to wiretaps and physical searches.
The metadata was part of discovery, and pretty much looks like a phonebill that would have been mailed to the subject anyhow. ( last pages of the referenced PDF filing.)
This ruling ( appears to me, IANAL).. is already supported by several prior cases that say
1) your records of doing business with a 3rd party are not protected; you know the 3rd party needs the info to bill you, and you consented to them maintaining those records.
2) if we ask ( or subpeona) the 3rd party for business records of theirs, customers of that 3rd party don't own the records.. the 3rd party biz is the record owner.
3) I read the court document twice, and I don't see any reference to " you can't defend yourself" or " if we can collect data on anybody.. this meanz u!".. of course, that may have been redacted. I do see phrases close to that referenced in the second article, where an EFF staff attorney is making his case using hyperbole for the press... don't get me wrong. I support most of what EFF stands for, and I don't appreciate the erosion of our rights. However, I do believe that raising legitimate arguments to my elected officials, or to proxy lobbying groups if we must.. is the way to address these things. FUD doesn't work in the long run, because it is too easily dismissed.
If someone could take some of the grant/SBA loan money designed to provide rural phone service/ last mile high-bandwidth internet, and introduce a model with privacy built-in, that's a product I'd be willing to switch to, and let my marketplace dollars do the talking.
Not withstanding the obvious " witch trial " jokes that should follow here,
TFA states charges of... “obstruction of an agency proceeding” charge,... and... a [wire fraud] “scheme” that helped applicants get jobs by making “false and fraudulent statements.” Dixon could have faced up to five years in prison for the obstruction charge and up to 20 years for the wire fraud charge.
If prosecutors can make these charges stand with a jury, I have 99 Senators ( NJ is short 1) I a couple of hundred others who are obstructing agency proceedings through "sequester", and have used various wires, internet, television and other media to perpetrate “scheme[s]” that helped applicants get jobs by making “false and fraudulent statements.”
I was gonna rant about refunding the estate for the residual value of his contract, and for the 5 year domain registration.. or at least transfer it to his estate..
BUT..
Yahoo's TOS specifically deals with death.
"No Right of Survivorship and Non-Transferability. You agree that your Yahoo! account is non-transferable and any rights to your Yahoo! ID or contents within your account terminate upon your death. Upon receipt of a copy of a death certificate, your account may be terminated and all contents therein permanently deleted."
Allegedly, this was in effect for a while.. the page http://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/utos/utos-173.html says it was last updated March 16, 2012.
For a man who made a living with his words, maybe he should have read the TOS ( short by some comparison).
Or, maybe like the false 'treasure hunt', he knew Yahoo would cancel his account, and through both methods he gains some post-mortem notoriety.
Either way.. I hope he gets some pleasure out of all this attention to his life being generated today.
With the conservative life span of current magnetic media at between 10-20 years, and (average) optical CD/ DVDs considerably less, the NSA has begun a pilot program code named "Faa love Pa"
While the acronym is not clear, the Senate Intel Cmte. lauded this as a "green" initiative, and is encouraging tuna fisheries to collect living dolphins for use in the project.
Dolphin memory lasts 20 years or more, reducing the need for additional rare-earth metals and greatly reduced electricity consumption. Dolphin memory is self-replicating, tolerant to mild EMF and power fluctuations, and primarily only requires renewable resources such as salt water and baitfish.
The only technical hurdles researchers see are effectively encoding/decoding the massive amounts of illegally gathered data into dolphin-discrete packages, and the bandwidth needed to read/write operations. Researchers have not yet determined the optimal facility size, nor how the pods will best perform in cohesive groups. Dolphins are also ill-suited for complex elliptic-curve cryptography, opting instead for elliptic-curve swimming.
Dolphin computing is not new. Natural behaviors include computing standards like PUSH and JUMP, and many have been trained to perform parallel operations.
Those animals sourced from Chinese waters will be culled from the "pool" for security reasons.
Another feature is the reduced disposal requirements. When the new dolphin media is replaced, old media is effectively rendered useless to forensic recovery techniques, and can be disposed of to feed other animals or in simple 'compost' rather than more costly recycling efforts.
Crack the numbers correctly, too.
the MMR vaccine and autism are your variables - where are all the controls, and how are you going to get human trials on this?
The parent is making health decisions for the child; a parent who would choose - on the continuum of risk vs. reward - to deny the vaccine in order to lessen the chance of autism is going to make a lot of life-decisions for that child. Someone with the resources of Jenny McC can afford to put her child in a less-densely populated school, fresh fruits and vegetables, weeks of vacation to spend bonding with the child(-ren).. where the average, city-dwelling parent is working 2 jobs; cannot afford to shop at Whole Foods, and especially cannot afford the annual tuition of a 4-door sedan per year of PreSchool through 8th grade.
How does these numbers change when your primary food market is a bodega / deli within walking distance; your air quality is polluted by transit and/or industry, your teenage child is raising your 7 and 8 year-olds, or , more suburban (or in Greely, Colorado) your water quality, (and base noise level) is affected by all those fracking wells down the road?
Don't get me wrong - I don't think the Medical establishment has the only right answer.. just a good approximation of what is available, combined with economic and social pressures. My "western-trained" doctor recommended that I follow a diet inspired by Gary Null http://prn.fm/tag/gary-null/ over 30 years ago; he even offered me a hand-me-down juicer because his wife just bought him a new one. I practice meditation, and I see many yoga techniques adopted in modern physical therapy. I also think that most parents have the right to decide what is best for their offspring.
However - I want to know if I'm sending my kid to school and a few of his classmates were never immunized for life-threatening diseases.
One last philosophy question: which is more valued to society? preserving the mind of a child who might get autism from a vaccine, or the life of a child who dies from exposure to disease from a non-vaccinated peer?
Tracking info, no. But static location info is not protected.
Red light camera footage is routinely archived and saved - even posted on YouTube as "safety" messages, or info-ads for the camera mfrs.
This archiving is against the law.(But no penalty is in place to enforce the data destruction!) http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2018570960_redlightcameras01m.html http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/2008/Bills/PL09/52_.HTM
Police vehicles are routinely outfitted with plate-recognition devices. Parking authorities use them to identify scofflaws; Routine police investigations will canvas the area of a crime, recording plates in order to develop a list of potential witnesses/suspects; patrol cars use them to alert on any match with stolen car registries or amber/silver alerts.
With many hundreds of static collection locations, it becomes easy to infer the general paths taken between these points. The tracking device becomes a redundant dongle - adding expense to the motorist who ultimately has to pay for all this added technology, and inviting tinkering/hacking to provide unreliable data back to the collectors.
+1's
The older tech was a lot easier to track.
Basic stuff I did to my babysitters/brother at around 7 years of age:.. on the typewriter carriage, imprints and ink carry through, especially if you have a letter like "o" or "p" that can cut through paper on a hard mechanical stroke... read back the ribbon (sometimes 2-color red/black), sometimes even a correction white ribbon.
>> destroy or one-time use ribbons Sure, until the budget gets tight, then those ribbons get re-wound.
Depending on the importance of the document, corrections may not be permissable = hard copy in the trash or shredder
Later stuff, and law enforcement lernin'.. carbon paper or similar material if in use by user..
NCR copies ( those multi-part forms that say "press hard" so your writing goes through several copies) are all different colors. Most places give up on trying to stock white, canary, blue, and pink correction fluids.
-- replace or modify carriage pad (rubber roll) with something like carbon paper or piezo-electric layer
-- sound / visual cues to typewriter actions.
-
I haven't tried this.. but it should work, too
- VanEyck.. power at the outlet and field generated by relays and movement all vary measurably.
- laser pointer on glass to listen to sounds
Plus all the other "spy" gear.. hidden cameras, passive sound resonators, HUMINT, etc.
Incidentally - I have been to both sides.. the Canadian side is commercial, but not polluted. Compared to the Buffalo side, it is like paradise. I am surprised that the Canadians haven't had to put up a Texas-style fence to keep the impoverished locals from crossing the border to flee and find work. Lots of agriculture and food service jobs right on the other side of the river, and many safer places to cross than right at the falls.
If the US has it as a national park, the others will likely be polite enough to avoid trashing it.
How naive...
This is how America falls... via people so disconnected from reality..
Parent+1 : So true.
Look at how wonderfully American interests are preserving land in the sq. mile around Niagara Falls National Park http://www.nps.gov/nifa/index.htm. The visuals of the local neighborhoods are stunning - especially just behind the treeline as you follow the river into America (not!) (map)
http://goo.gl/4B5Rc
Or, New Jersey's new " Great Falls National Park" - recently named ( even with sequestration, and no budget to fund any facility there).. it seems beautiful, just don't stray too far north along the river into the decaying structures.. or into the nearby neighborhoods. (map) http://goo.gl/D5QlW
From USA Today:
It will take several years and millions of dollars before Great Falls looks like a national park; there won't even be ranger programs until next year. Since the designation, though, the site has received many more visitors.
Robert Marshall, a retired public works director from a nearby suburb, had often driven past the falls, but until last month he'd never seen it up close.
"I didn't know you could park and walk around here," he says, standing on the footbridge across from the falls. Then Marshall professed confusion over the national park designation: "The park service seems to be talking about laying people off, and they're adding a park here."
As if to illustrate the debate, along came Hamid Amer, his wife and three kids. All seemed mesmerized by the falls. None had ever set foot in a national park. Amer, a Palestinian barber who moved his family to the USA five years ago from the West Bank, voiced concern over the amount of trash on the ground and in the water and said he thought the Park Service could clean it up."
If anybody has any sense.. they won't let our elected leaders pollute and commodify one of the last places we haven't destroyed yet.
Should visiting the moon become an attainable vacation destination - let's try and put some real environmental laws in place; with sufficient funding and real enforcement.
( I think that should sufficiently exclude the Koch bros. from even entering lunar orbit.)
Probably outsourced to WalMart, anyhow. Even a communist space agency has a budget, and why not use OTS spare parts from one of the American Government's largest suppliers?
Agreed (+1 parent).. and also agree with later post about semantics/ navajo translation.
We BELIEVED there was privacy, because the Government told us about the protection, and the media supported them. The olde-tyme radio cops got away with what society thought was fair.. today, Law and Order:(n) or CSI:(m) would at least make a 'big deal' about a sketchy search without PC, or when handling a suspect who hasn't been properly Mirandized.
Until relatively recent credit card legislation, citizens had no expectation of privacy against data collection ( selective surveillance) by non-government agencies.
This surveillance has been happening since before most of us were even born. It is not new.. but the media has ignited the flames of FUD, and the methods for collecting, analyzing , and distributing information have grown exponentially as a result of computers and the changes they bring to society.
In 1897 or so, S&H Green stamps started a " marketing loyalty program". Your grocer ( gas station, Sears & Roebuck) could influence your purchases by adjusting the 'bonus levels' of green stamps you received in return for a purchase. When they chose to, they could also watch meta-trends, or even specific consumer behavior changes, because all the stamps were serial-numbered. S&H, when they received the redeemed booklets, could measure the effectiveness.. which retailers were distributing more, which customers were collecting & returning more, how many just got lost or never filled a book?
The company changed over time.. and never really returned to the giant stature they had after the 1970's inflation/stagflation.. but they still exist, and offer web-based purchase premiums.
Around 1920, Al Neilsen got tired with his day job, and decided to create A.C. Neilsen ; to rate how well radio advertisers were doing. The company is still around today, trying to measure DVR and Netflix data, too. This was probably one of the original "crowdsourced" industries.. I mean, if you get "selected" today, they only pay you a dollar a week - if your data is on-time.
Criminal records, property records, articles of incorporation, lawsuits.. all were considered public record at one level or another. I was taught how to search all that paper at my local County Courthouse back in the mid- 1980s. At the time, only criminal records actually required that you produce ID and a legitimate reason to ask. My sister was in an auto accident last summer. Before the local police were ready with a report "...10 business days, lady..."; she received a letter from an attorney - with a copy of the accident report, asking if she needed any legal advice or representation.
Also, NJ State law about "Red Light Cameras" requires that the footage recorded is destroyed within 60 days - if nothing is illegal, or no charges filed; and within 90 days after the matter is settled ( if you are charged, and just pay the ticket) . Another case of nobody watching.. search YouTube and find at least 5, probably a dozen NJ Red Light Cam videos.. posted as marketing from the camera company! Big brother ( d/b/a private contractor) is watching, recording, and had their fingers crossed when they promised to destroy the footage.
It was around 1902-1904 that the Northeast's major Life & Medical insurers got together and built what we now call the MIB ( Medical Information Bureau). Any insurer.. and lots of other "qualified participants" ( =$ ?) can add, edit, or search these records about every one of us. Every time an insurance company paid a claim (or messed up a claim) medically, that info was added to the collection. Today, we just call this a database.
Again.. no protection here. Last time I checked, the MIB was voluntarily adopting a model similar to credit reporting agencies.. they would provide an individual with a personal report ( minus trade-secrets and scoring), and give the individual some righ
Maybe this'll help..
http://goo.gl/Z1MVu - google shortened primary link
(no cache yet)
Original source: http://localforums.org/westorange/forum/index.php?topic=55.0
or short link http://goo.gl/MniNu (small site is crying 'uncle' under the/. load)
Try to search for the lawyer involved, Stephen B. Kaplitt should get you a few dozen links - you are bound to get something through your firewall.
Agreed. Domain squatting + evading 'due process' on his tax issue + conspiracy of the parties to do (a) & (b) .
Even more specific, how come nobody ( even all you spell-checkers) even bothered to cite RFC 1480, the "right way" to name a web domain for a government entity?
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1480
Mattyj and a few others had some good info.
Use analogies, but tailor them to stuff your faculty/admins are familiar with; grades, exams,meeting minutes, billing , other frequently-touched projects.
and ABSOLUTELY, document costs.
if possible, show what you can project costs are for NOT using it - based on some tangible event or cost.
Hardware: needs storage, and if a dedicated server you can help harden it by keeping it on private address space. Plus, many mgrs like fully-contained costs, not a partial share of use/maintenance on a shared box. Warranty or service contract, installation (if racked), and costs if you need to shift/share costs with telecom/network for campus, new/repurposed electrical feed, UPS & backup systems.
Operating System: license & support costs if any, and human time to train up, and document, backup, train others
Software, lots of open source stuff - weigh the support ( even poor support is better than a project that gets abandoned) cost and support to learn/almost master that particular application.. and document and train..
Projected Lifecycle: how long will this be viable, before it needs to be replaced or moved to a new OS/ new piece of hardware?
-- will your data be in a simple-to-migrate form (txt, csv, xml).. even 10 yrs or so from now?
--- forecast interim upgrades, failed hard disks, and other 'reasonable to expect' products
-- what happens to old data from old code projects? secure storage and old storage on this box is wiped? or will everythnig stay as long as hard drives can hold it?
Universities don't have anywhere near the perceived resources that some have said.
Student labor is rare - especially in a job where they do more than answer phones between facebook and homework.
Spare equipment is becoming the standard equipment.. I haven't been able to test a new server OS for 3+ years. All live deployments on the only equipt. available.
amen.. in the big picture - yes, if anyone wants something like change bad enough they will find a way to make it happen... but losing your life in the process isn't a really promising way of change. If I die, I don't benefit, and I won't be able to protect my children from any blowback.
apathy, or at least 'keeping your head down' has become a way of dealing with government all over the world. Even in a relatively ok system of government, if you do decide to get involved, you will be branded as "anti-something-emotional" by your friends and others who disagree with you.
When fighting to change government, ( our own or someone else's with/without consent)... usually we are sending young men to die in these kinds of things.. so we wipe out a good deal of that generation we started the fight for in the first place.
and yes to other poster, the internet definitely isn't getting a revolution going for, when so many other things are ranked higher on Maslow's reference.
Between the arguments here, and recently watching Niall Ferguson's PBS special (http://video.pbs.org/program/civilization-west-and-rest-niall-ferguson/) about immigration's relationship to economic growth.. it seems we have a lot of 'rednecks' and trolls on/.
The argument that
" mexicans don't pay taxes" > "mexicans work for less" > "mexican labor takes jobs away from US citizens" sounds an awful lot - to me - like
" I download free music" > " I don't have money to pay for all the music I want" > " stealing music is okay, because I wouldn't buy it anyway"
Most Americans that I find don't want to work as laborers, even at double what the immigrant laborer makes... and in my area, "Mexican" is a rarity.. I see many more Dominicans, Guatemalans, and South Americans.
I personally have been trying to 'recruit' carpenters, electricians, plumbers and others to do work around my house, and for my Dad in the back country.. for a cash wage of $200 per day,.. at Dad's it is a guarantee of 2 weeks work ( 2400 cash for 2- 6 day weeks), options for more.. not counting room & board,either in the (finished) basement of the house, or a hotel 9 miles down the road.
I've had a few takers.. all checked out as US contractors with insurance and proper corporate paperwork. Most worked one or two days, took down payment for supplies / permits, then gave me one excuse or another why they won't be back for a week, a few days.. or more. The few who did call back after that wanted access to reclaim tools, or wanted to know why I stopped the check for supplies. They had 'bigger' or 'more important ' jobs that had just come up.
This country was built on cheap labor - and continues to thrive on it today. (learned from Ferguson)
I don't want to be at the bottom of the economic ladder.. so somebody else has to be. ( personal prejudice)
Heck yes - the system has lots of flaws, and badly needs cleaning up. Hating the folks who immigrated here after us (or our ancestors, pardon to the real Native Americans) - is not productive. If you want someone to hate - look at your elected officials that don't change the laws until they have to.. or until it is an election-time advantage.
But inevitably, what the building offers will lag behind in quality, cost, and speed, compared to what individual unit owners can contract directly with ISPs.
A lot of HOAs already have this problem with CableTV. They're stuck with an old, restricted, expensive service package, and individual homeowners go out and get their own DirecTV or similar.
My recommendation (as a member of my own HOA's board) is to stay out of this. Draft rules for what homeowners can do individually for visible wiring, antennas, etc, but don't try for building-wide internet access.
This is the exact reason why in a corporate building, you'll see scattered utility rooms with conduits between. This way, tenants can run their own network needs, and simply contract individually with ISPs for installation.
Echo last few comments -
HOAs have enough trouble with the 'normal' maintenance costs & all that goes into collecting, paying, and accounting for that money. If you start to become a middle-man, the HOA may become an ISP, with all the fun responsibilities like answering DMCA complaints and disconnecting the creepy guy in Apt 4C who keeps torrenting Kenny G's latest single and a few 'interesting' pictures of his 'nephews'.
How anyone thinks this will be the end of traffic is beyond me. and +1 insightful for first 2 or 3 that if this happens, it will be the end of personally-owned vehicles.
Traffic is a result of ( volume of cars) > (capacity of road). Unless these driverless cars can also change work schedules, the majority of people will still be hitting the roads at the same time. Heck, we can see this now. In any larger city, we all know how internet performance degrades after 4PM when the tweens & teens get home from school, and on weekends when the rest of us are fragging those little buggers online. Wait for next Sunday (Mother's Day, at least in US) when all the Skype, oovoo, and other voip calls are getting placed. If the algorithms that govern ethernet collisions have not eliminated "traffic" delays, how is Google going to eliminate traffic with reality-based steel& rubber boxes that cannot be resent if the 'packet' doesn't reach a destination address?
Besides, I take my "it will happen in the future" clues from the Sci-Fi of today. I haven't seen anything with (plentiful cars) && (no traffic)
- Blade Runner, Futurama, The Fifth Element, Dr.Who" gridlock", Total Recall, and probably many more. Traffic may be more organized, but it will still be dense traffic.
echo all the "Costco " posts; several other chains are adequate too.
However, as parent points out, you can request a photobook, canvas, etc.
(mod parent +1 informative)
My biggest issue with hard-copy photos & other data is storage & retrieval. If you want to have a hard-copy around in 20 years to hand to your son, immediately put the photos into a book or other format designed for long-er term storage, and for occasional handling. Plastic covers or sleeves are nice, but nearly all I have seen eventually change chemically; the ink gets stuck to resins in the plastic, the plastic cracks from light or oxidization, or they just alter the color of the photo, requiring the photo to be touched repeatedly and replaced in the holder.
Consider your options, and at least separate pages with acid-free paper or tissue paper.
Books are easier to keep organized and more easily put somewhere & retrieved when you want it. -- unless your world isn't like mine, with envelopes & small boxes of developed 35mm film, photos, 2nd copies of photos, half-finished photo albums, even Dad's old Kodak slide projector hidden somewhere in the eaves of the garage.
Echo: Bravo - Sierra Publicity / maybe a local story "with legs"
BN sells books on Metaspolit, wardriving, and even "Steal magazines.
Idea: maybe if one or two complaints causes this kind of reaction, imagine if their phones were to experience the/. phenomenon and just 0.05% of us complained, say about the sadism and child abuse in "The Hunger Games", or the mediocrity of the last Moby album?
Can we use the power of/. for the good of society? !
Nah.. nevermind.. no profit involved. Bask to work.
BS. I have a 9-to-5, have a mortgage, play in the stock market, do contracting on the side, and do my own taxes. And I'd say I've just described more than what 90% of US taxpayers need to file. And seriously? Mind-numbingly easy. Painfully easy. Embarrassing-that-professionals-do-that-for-a-living easy.... Doing ones own taxes involves nothing harder than "add up all the box 2s on your W2s and box 4s on your 1099s and enter that total on line 62 of your 1040". Totally mechanical crap that doesn't require the least bit of thought or familiarity with tax law....... For the rest of us, don't try to make this sound harder than the reality. Plug and frickin' chug, baby!
@pla: +1 because you are a 1%-er. ( intended as a wake up; I can't afford the 1% moniker, maybe I'm in the top 10)
Sure, for the/. audience, the "algorithm" of following the instructions, including branches.. plugging & chugging when we fill in variables, and making an informed decision on deductibles - is all likely within our grasp.
However, look around at the rest of the country. Most Americans cannot balance a checkbook [1], [2].
The basic tax guide "Publication 17" is over 300 pages long. [3] The instructions for the basic 1040 form is at 100 pages [4].
Just answering the questions "What's New?", "Do I have to file", and "Where do I file" ( [4] pages 6-7) incorporate 4 more pages of tables and worksheets referenced in the text ( pp 8-11), and suggest the taxpayer review 10 separate publications for clarifications, outside the 'core' paperwork of Pub 17 and 1040 instructions.
point: it is complex, even to "just follow the instructions". Not everyone is the sort who just jumps in, presses ON, and only looks for manuals after it doesn't work. ( I am.. but not everyone is.)
If you are lucky enough to have a job, and a mortgage, play in the stock market, and do contracting on the side.. you are a pretty smart and fairly motivated person. You can multitask. You can prioritize tasks, and see projects through to the finish. Only 58% of the US population is employed.. or 42% is not. [5] - BLS report " population/employment ratio".. when it comes to the word "unemployed", the US Govt needs to take a lesson from Inigo Montoya, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means”
Never mind making educated decisions about deductions like work expenses and medical costs. I don't think the average American could fill out the typical medical insurance claim form, never mind read one and extract information for tax purposes.
How many Americans - picked "at random" - would you trust to balance your checkbook, or to fill out your tax forms? Heck, I don't even trust a "jury of my peers" to render a sensible verdict. Most folks I have met can't follow a 2 -page recipe in a cookbook, or remember the plot to a 200-page novel unless the movie and/or starred Heath Ledger or Megan Fox.
If every citizen was encouraged to do their own taxes, imagine how much WE taxpayers would be paying to clean that mess up? Don't give people more credit than they deserve. Look at our last few elections.
@sjhillman.. "freedom edition" +1 informative @AC "FUD" -1 NOT @Loughlia "...can send you to jail".. You do realize it is much more likely that you'll just get an interest-bearing permanent debt.
The IRS and Student Loan providers will work backwards from your Social Security death benefit of $300-ish if they have to. Only in rare cases, where the headlines serve a purpose more than the recovery of the money, - or if there is malice or fraud, does someone actually get jailed on taxes.
"free" = at no additional costs to the taxes you already presumed to be paying --- If OP just wanted to fill in forms on a PDF manually - there are dozens of products, including tediously creating a text box in Open Office for each line and item. In fact, the IRS already makes the PDF forms fillable: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040.pdf
Actually doing the calculations is where the liability and problems come in.
In my limited experience, making a calculation error or omission on a return set off a chain of events; first, they re-calculate your taxes and settle up on their terms; then you are a whole lot more likely to be audited for the next 3-4 years.
Slashdot Mirror
Check any Home Depot / Lowes or other hardware store for a concrete nail gun. No permits required, use black powder, primer-actuated .22 / .27 caliber rounds to drive a projectile into concrete.
Variable loads (powder content) are definitely available, different gauges may be - I never looked that closely.
It just seems silly that in the most-regulated gun states, you can effectively buy a gun , as long as you call it a "tool" and sell it at a non-"gun" store.
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Hilti-DX-36-0-27-Caliber-Semi-Automatic-Powder-Actuated-Tool-384033/100527172
The evidence in this particular case was specifically the metadata collected by the phone company; metadata involving terror suspects outside the US. That metadata led the NSA to tip the FBI - " the investigation you dropped in 2008.. well it appears your subject is now connected with a 'hot' number in Somalia (strongly implicated in terror activities). " That led to the FBI re-opening their investigation with this added lead, and through normal channels they escalated to wiretaps and physical searches. The metadata was part of discovery, and pretty much looks like a phonebill that would have been mailed to the subject anyhow. ( last pages of the referenced PDF filing.) This ruling ( appears to me, IANAL).. is already supported by several prior cases that say 1) your records of doing business with a 3rd party are not protected; you know the 3rd party needs the info to bill you, and you consented to them maintaining those records. 2) if we ask ( or subpeona) the 3rd party for business records of theirs, customers of that 3rd party don't own the records.. the 3rd party biz is the record owner. 3) I read the court document twice, and I don't see any reference to " you can't defend yourself" or " if we can collect data on anybody.. this meanz u!".. of course, that may have been redacted. I do see phrases close to that referenced in the second article, where an EFF staff attorney is making his case using hyperbole for the press. .. don't get me wrong. I support most of what EFF stands for, and I don't appreciate the erosion of our rights. However, I do believe that raising legitimate arguments to my elected officials, or to proxy lobbying groups if we must.. is the way to address these things. FUD doesn't work in the long run, because it is too easily dismissed.
If someone could take some of the grant/SBA loan money designed to provide rural phone service/ last mile high-bandwidth internet, and introduce a model with privacy built-in, that's a product I'd be willing to switch to, and let my marketplace dollars do the talking.
Not withstanding the obvious " witch trial " jokes that should follow here, TFA states charges of ... “obstruction of an agency proceeding” charge, ... and ... a [wire fraud] “scheme” that helped applicants get jobs by making “false and fraudulent statements.” Dixon could have faced up to five years in prison for the obstruction charge and up to 20 years for the wire fraud charge.
If prosecutors can make these charges stand with a jury, I have 99 Senators ( NJ is short 1) I a couple of hundred others who are obstructing agency proceedings through "sequester", and have used various wires, internet, television and other media to perpetrate “scheme[s]” that helped applicants get jobs by making “false and fraudulent statements.”
I was gonna rant about refunding the estate for the residual value of his contract, and for the 5 year domain registration.. or at least transfer it to his estate.. BUT.. Yahoo's TOS specifically deals with death.
"No Right of Survivorship and Non-Transferability. You agree that your Yahoo! account is non-transferable and any rights to your Yahoo! ID or contents within your account terminate upon your death. Upon receipt of a copy of a death certificate, your account may be terminated and all contents therein permanently deleted."
Allegedly, this was in effect for a while.. the page
http://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/utos/utos-173.html
says it was last updated March 16, 2012.
For a man who made a living with his words, maybe he should have read the TOS ( short by some comparison). Or, maybe like the false 'treasure hunt', he knew Yahoo would cancel his account, and through both methods he gains some post-mortem notoriety. Either way.. I hope he gets some pleasure out of all this attention to his life being generated today.
With the conservative life span of current magnetic media at between 10-20 years, and (average) optical CD/ DVDs considerably less, the NSA has begun a pilot program code named "Faa love Pa" While the acronym is not clear, the Senate Intel Cmte. lauded this as a "green" initiative, and is encouraging tuna fisheries to collect living dolphins for use in the project. Dolphin memory lasts 20 years or more, reducing the need for additional rare-earth metals and greatly reduced electricity consumption. Dolphin memory is self-replicating, tolerant to mild EMF and power fluctuations, and primarily only requires renewable resources such as salt water and baitfish. The only technical hurdles researchers see are effectively encoding/decoding the massive amounts of illegally gathered data into dolphin-discrete packages, and the bandwidth needed to read/write operations. Researchers have not yet determined the optimal facility size, nor how the pods will best perform in cohesive groups. Dolphins are also ill-suited for complex elliptic-curve cryptography, opting instead for elliptic-curve swimming. Dolphin computing is not new. Natural behaviors include computing standards like PUSH and JUMP, and many have been trained to perform parallel operations. Those animals sourced from Chinese waters will be culled from the "pool" for security reasons. Another feature is the reduced disposal requirements. When the new dolphin media is replaced, old media is effectively rendered useless to forensic recovery techniques, and can be disposed of to feed other animals or in simple 'compost' rather than more costly recycling efforts.
Crack the numbers correctly, too. the MMR vaccine and autism are your variables - where are all the controls, and how are you going to get human trials on this? The parent is making health decisions for the child; a parent who would choose - on the continuum of risk vs. reward - to deny the vaccine in order to lessen the chance of autism is going to make a lot of life-decisions for that child. Someone with the resources of Jenny McC can afford to put her child in a less-densely populated school, fresh fruits and vegetables, weeks of vacation to spend bonding with the child(-ren) .. where the average, city-dwelling parent is working 2 jobs; cannot afford to shop at Whole Foods, and especially cannot afford the annual tuition of a 4-door sedan per year of PreSchool through 8th grade.
How does these numbers change when your primary food market is a bodega / deli within walking distance; your air quality is polluted by transit and/or industry, your teenage child is raising your 7 and 8 year-olds, or , more suburban (or in Greely, Colorado) your water quality, (and base noise level) is affected by all those fracking wells down the road?
Don't get me wrong - I don't think the Medical establishment has the only right answer.. just a good approximation of what is available, combined with economic and social pressures. My "western-trained" doctor recommended that I follow a diet inspired by Gary Null http://prn.fm/tag/gary-null/ over 30 years ago; he even offered me a hand-me-down juicer because his wife just bought him a new one. I practice meditation, and I see many yoga techniques adopted in modern physical therapy. I also think that most parents have the right to decide what is best for their offspring.
However - I want to know if I'm sending my kid to school and a few of his classmates were never immunized for life-threatening diseases.
One last philosophy question: which is more valued to society? preserving the mind of a child who might get autism from a vaccine, or the life of a child who dies from exposure to disease from a non-vaccinated peer?
Tracking info, no. But static location info is not protected.
Red light camera footage is routinely archived and saved - even posted on YouTube as "safety" messages, or info-ads for the camera mfrs.
This archiving is against the law.(But no penalty is in place to enforce the data destruction!)
http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2018570960_redlightcameras01m.html
http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/2008/Bills/PL09/52_.HTM
Police vehicles are routinely outfitted with plate-recognition devices. Parking authorities use them to identify scofflaws; Routine police investigations will canvas the area of a crime, recording plates in order to develop a list of potential witnesses/suspects; patrol cars use them to alert on any match with stolen car registries or amber/silver alerts.
With many hundreds of static collection locations, it becomes easy to infer the general paths taken between these points. The tracking device becomes a redundant dongle - adding expense to the motorist who ultimately has to pay for all this added technology, and inviting tinkering/hacking to provide unreliable data back to the collectors.
+1's The older tech was a lot easier to track. Basic stuff I did to my babysitters/brother at around 7 years of age: .. on the typewriter carriage, imprints and ink carry through, especially if you have a letter like "o" or "p" that can cut through paper on a hard mechanical stroke. .. read back the ribbon (sometimes 2-color red/black), sometimes even a correction white ribbon.
>> destroy or one-time use ribbons Sure, until the budget gets tight, then those ribbons get re-wound.
Depending on the importance of the document, corrections may not be permissable = hard copy in the trash or shredder
Later stuff, and law enforcement lernin' .. carbon paper or similar material if in use by user..
NCR copies ( those multi-part forms that say "press hard" so your writing goes through several copies) are all different colors. Most places give up on trying to stock white, canary, blue, and pink correction fluids.
-- replace or modify carriage pad (rubber roll) with something like carbon paper or piezo-electric layer
-- sound / visual cues to typewriter actions.
-
I haven't tried this.. but it should work, too
- VanEyck .. power at the outlet and field generated by relays and movement all vary measurably.
- laser pointer on glass to listen to sounds
Plus all the other "spy" gear.. hidden cameras, passive sound resonators, HUMINT, etc.
Incidentally - I have been to both sides.. the Canadian side is commercial, but not polluted. Compared to the Buffalo side, it is like paradise. I am surprised that the Canadians haven't had to put up a Texas-style fence to keep the impoverished locals from crossing the border to flee and find work. Lots of agriculture and food service jobs right on the other side of the river, and many safer places to cross than right at the falls.
If the US has it as a national park, the others will likely be polite enough to avoid trashing it.
How naive... This is how America falls... via people so disconnected from reality..
Parent+1 : So true. Look at how wonderfully American interests are preserving land in the sq. mile around Niagara Falls National Park
http://www.nps.gov/nifa/index.htm.
The visuals of the local neighborhoods are stunning - especially just behind the treeline as you follow the river into America (not!)
(map) http://goo.gl/4B5Rc
Or, New Jersey's new " Great Falls National Park" - recently named ( even with sequestration, and no budget to fund any facility there).. it seems beautiful, just don't stray too far north along the river into the decaying structures.. or into the nearby neighborhoods.
(map) http://goo.gl/D5QlW
From USA Today :
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/travel/destinations/2009-08-19-greatfalls_N.htm
http://www.nps.gov/pagr/planyourvisit/hours.htm
If anybody has any sense.. they won't let our elected leaders pollute and commodify one of the last places we haven't destroyed yet. Should visiting the moon become an attainable vacation destination - let's try and put some real environmental laws in place; with sufficient funding and real enforcement. ( I think that should sufficiently exclude the Koch bros. from even entering lunar orbit.)
http://www.theonion.com/articles/walmart-wants-republican-president,15517/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/dhs-teams-up-with-walmart,18722/
OR ( inclusive or) : over-educated engineers assumed the arrows were the spin state of the subatomic detectors inside. A quasi-random distribution of Up and Down would be required to determine the quantum state of orientation. http://news.phy.duke.edu/2012/02/spinning-quarks-yield-clues-to-orbital-motion/
We BELIEVED there was privacy, because the Government told us about the protection, and the media supported them. The olde-tyme radio cops got away with what society thought was fair.. today, Law and Order:(n) or CSI:(m) would at least make a 'big deal' about a sketchy search without PC, or when handling a suspect who hasn't been properly Mirandized.
...10 business days, lady..."; she received a letter from an attorney - with a copy of the accident report, asking if she needed any legal advice or representation.
Also, NJ State law about "Red Light Cameras" requires that the footage recorded is destroyed within 60 days - if nothing is illegal, or no charges filed; and within 90 days after the matter is settled ( if you are charged, and just pay the ticket) . Another case of nobody watching.. search YouTube and find at least 5, probably a dozen NJ Red Light Cam videos.. posted as marketing from the camera company! Big brother ( d/b/a private contractor) is watching, recording, and had their fingers crossed when they promised to destroy the footage.
Until relatively recent credit card legislation, citizens had no expectation of privacy against data collection ( selective surveillance) by non-government agencies. This surveillance has been happening since before most of us were even born. It is not new.. but the media has ignited the flames of FUD, and the methods for collecting, analyzing , and distributing information have grown exponentially as a result of computers and the changes they bring to society.
In 1897 or so, S&H Green stamps started a " marketing loyalty program". Your grocer ( gas station, Sears & Roebuck) could influence your purchases by adjusting the 'bonus levels' of green stamps you received in return for a purchase. When they chose to, they could also watch meta-trends, or even specific consumer behavior changes, because all the stamps were serial-numbered. S&H, when they received the redeemed booklets, could measure the effectiveness.. which retailers were distributing more, which customers were collecting & returning more, how many just got lost or never filled a book? The company changed over time.. and never really returned to the giant stature they had after the 1970's inflation/stagflation.. but they still exist, and offer web-based purchase premiums.
Around 1920, Al Neilsen got tired with his day job, and decided to create A.C. Neilsen ; to rate how well radio advertisers were doing. The company is still around today, trying to measure DVR and Netflix data, too. This was probably one of the original "crowdsourced" industries.. I mean, if you get "selected" today, they only pay you a dollar a week - if your data is on-time.
Criminal records, property records, articles of incorporation, lawsuits.. all were considered public record at one level or another. I was taught how to search all that paper at my local County Courthouse back in the mid- 1980s. At the time, only criminal records actually required that you produce ID and a legitimate reason to ask.
My sister was in an auto accident last summer. Before the local police were ready with a report "
It was around 1902-1904 that the Northeast's major Life & Medical insurers got together and built what we now call the MIB ( Medical Information Bureau). Any insurer.. and lots of other "qualified participants" ( =$ ?) can add, edit, or search these records about every one of us. Every time an insurance company paid a claim (or messed up a claim) medically, that info was added to the collection. Today, we just call this a database.
Again.. no protection here. Last time I checked, the MIB was voluntarily adopting a model similar to credit reporting agencies.. they would provide an individual with a personal report ( minus trade-secrets and scoring), and give the individual some righ
Maybe this'll help.. http://goo.gl/Z1MVu - google shortened primary link (no cache yet) Original source: http://localforums.org/westorange/forum/index.php?topic=55.0 or short link http://goo.gl/MniNu (small site is crying 'uncle' under the /. load)
Try to search for the lawyer involved, Stephen B. Kaplitt should get you a few dozen links - you are bound to get something through your firewall.
Agreed. Domain squatting + evading 'due process' on his tax issue + conspiracy of the parties to do (a) & (b) . Even more specific, how come nobody ( even all you spell-checkers) even bothered to cite RFC 1480, the "right way" to name a web domain for a government entity? http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1480
Mattyj and a few others had some good info. Use analogies, but tailor them to stuff your faculty/admins are familiar with; grades, exams,meeting minutes, billing , other frequently-touched projects. and ABSOLUTELY, document costs. if possible, show what you can project costs are for NOT using it - based on some tangible event or cost. Hardware: needs storage, and if a dedicated server you can help harden it by keeping it on private address space. Plus, many mgrs like fully-contained costs, not a partial share of use/maintenance on a shared box. Warranty or service contract, installation (if racked), and costs if you need to shift/share costs with telecom/network for campus, new/repurposed electrical feed, UPS & backup systems. Operating System: license & support costs if any, and human time to train up, and document, backup, train others Software, lots of open source stuff - weigh the support ( even poor support is better than a project that gets abandoned) cost and support to learn/almost master that particular application.. and document and train.. Projected Lifecycle: how long will this be viable, before it needs to be replaced or moved to a new OS/ new piece of hardware? -- will your data be in a simple-to-migrate form (txt, csv, xml).. even 10 yrs or so from now? --- forecast interim upgrades, failed hard disks, and other 'reasonable to expect' products -- what happens to old data from old code projects? secure storage and old storage on this box is wiped? or will everythnig stay as long as hard drives can hold it? Universities don't have anywhere near the perceived resources that some have said. Student labor is rare - especially in a job where they do more than answer phones between facebook and homework. Spare equipment is becoming the standard equipment.. I haven't been able to test a new server OS for 3+ years. All live deployments on the only equipt. available.
amen.. in the big picture - yes, if anyone wants something like change bad enough they will find a way to make it happen. .. but losing your life in the process isn't a really promising way of change. If I die, I don't benefit, and I won't be able to protect my children from any blowback.
apathy, or at least 'keeping your head down' has become a way of dealing with government all over the world. Even in a relatively ok system of government, if you do decide to get involved, you will be branded as "anti-something-emotional" by your friends and others who disagree with you.
When fighting to change government, ( our own or someone else's with/without consent)...
usually we are sending young men to die in these kinds of things.. so we wipe out a good deal of that generation we started the fight for in the first place.
and yes to other poster, the internet definitely isn't getting a revolution going for, when so many other things are ranked higher on Maslow's reference.
Between the arguments here, and recently watching Niall Ferguson's PBS special (http://video.pbs.org/program/civilization-west-and-rest-niall-ferguson/) about immigration's relationship to economic growth.. /.
it seems we have a lot of 'rednecks' and trolls on
The argument that
" mexicans don't pay taxes" > "mexicans work for less" > "mexican labor takes jobs away from US citizens"
sounds an awful lot - to me - like
" I download free music" > " I don't have money to pay for all the music I want" > " stealing music is okay, because I wouldn't buy it anyway"
Most Americans that I find don't want to work as laborers, even at double what the immigrant laborer makes. .. and in my area, "Mexican" is a rarity.. I see many more Dominicans, Guatemalans, and South Americans.
I personally have been trying to 'recruit' carpenters, electricians, plumbers and others to do work around my house, and for my Dad in the back country.. for a cash wage of $200 per day, .. at Dad's it is a guarantee of 2 weeks work ( 2400 cash for 2- 6 day weeks), options for more.. not counting room & board ,either in the (finished) basement of the house, or a hotel 9 miles down the road.
I've had a few takers.. all checked out as US contractors with insurance and proper corporate paperwork.
Most worked one or two days, took down payment for supplies / permits, then gave me one excuse or another why they won't be back for a week, a few days.. or more. The few who did call back after that wanted access to reclaim tools, or wanted to know why I stopped the check for supplies. They had 'bigger' or 'more important ' jobs that had just come up.
I dare you to find 25 semi-skilled US-born Americans who will work for themselves and show up for hard labor work day after day for $200 ( coastal big cities)- knowing they have to report it all "on the books". ( send 4 or 5 my way if you do!)
The $80/ day immigrant laborer is also suffering from lack of work
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/nyregion/new-jersey/29colnj.html
http://articles.cnn.com/2007-10-02/us/sanchez.btsc_1_day-laborers-job-offer-immigrants?_s=PM:US
This country was built on cheap labor - and continues to thrive on it today. (learned from Ferguson)
I don't want to be at the bottom of the economic ladder.. so somebody else has to be. ( personal prejudice)
Heck yes - the system has lots of flaws, and badly needs cleaning up.
Hating the folks who immigrated here after us (or our ancestors, pardon to the real Native Americans) - is not productive.
If you want someone to hate - look at your elected officials that don't change the laws until they have to.. or until it is an election-time advantage.
But inevitably, what the building offers will lag behind in quality, cost, and speed, compared to what individual unit owners can contract directly with ISPs.
A lot of HOAs already have this problem with CableTV. They're stuck with an old, restricted, expensive service package, and individual homeowners go out and get their own DirecTV or similar.
My recommendation (as a member of my own HOA's board) is to stay out of this. Draft rules for what homeowners can do individually for visible wiring, antennas, etc, but don't try for building-wide internet access.
This is the exact reason why in a corporate building, you'll see scattered utility rooms with conduits between. This way, tenants can run their own network needs, and simply contract individually with ISPs for installation.
Echo last few comments -
HOAs have enough trouble with the 'normal' maintenance costs & all that goes into collecting, paying, and accounting for that money.
If you start to become a middle-man, the HOA may become an ISP, with all the fun responsibilities like answering DMCA complaints and disconnecting the creepy guy in Apt 4C who keeps torrenting Kenny G's latest single and a few 'interesting' pictures of his 'nephews'.
How anyone thinks this will be the end of traffic is beyond me.
and +1 insightful for first 2 or 3 that if this happens, it will be the end of personally-owned vehicles.
Traffic is a result of ( volume of cars) > (capacity of road).
Unless these driverless cars can also change work schedules, the majority of people will still be hitting the roads at the same time.
Heck, we can see this now. In any larger city, we all know how internet performance degrades after 4PM when the tweens & teens get home from school, and on weekends when the rest of us are fragging those little buggers online. Wait for next Sunday (Mother's Day, at least in US) when all the Skype, oovoo, and other voip calls are getting placed. If the algorithms that govern ethernet collisions have not eliminated "traffic" delays, how is Google going to eliminate traffic with reality-based steel& rubber boxes that cannot be resent if the 'packet' doesn't reach a destination address?
Besides, I take my "it will happen in the future" clues from the Sci-Fi of today.
I haven't seen anything with (plentiful cars) && (no traffic)
- Blade Runner, Futurama, The Fifth Element, Dr.Who" gridlock", Total Recall, and probably many more.
Traffic may be more organized, but it will still be dense traffic.
echo all the "Costco " posts; several other chains are adequate too.
However, as parent points out, you can request a photobook, canvas, etc.
(mod parent +1 informative)
My biggest issue with hard-copy photos & other data is storage & retrieval.
If you want to have a hard-copy around in 20 years to hand to your son, immediately put the photos into a book or other format designed for long-er term storage, and for occasional handling. Plastic covers or sleeves are nice, but nearly all I have seen eventually change chemically; the ink gets stuck to resins in the plastic, the plastic cracks from light or oxidization, or they just alter the color of the photo, requiring the photo to be touched repeatedly and replaced in the holder.
Consider your options, and at least separate pages with acid-free paper or tissue paper.
Books are easier to keep organized and more easily put somewhere & retrieved when you want it.
-- unless your world isn't like mine, with envelopes & small boxes of developed 35mm film, photos, 2nd copies of photos, half-finished photo albums, even Dad's old Kodak slide projector hidden somewhere in the eaves of the garage.
Echo: Bravo - Sierra
Publicity / maybe a local story "with legs"
BN sells books on Metaspolit, wardriving, and even "Steal magazines.
Idea: maybe if one or two complaints causes this kind of reaction, imagine if their phones were to experience the /. phenomenon and just 0.05% of us complained, say about the sadism and child abuse in "The Hunger Games", or the mediocrity of the last Moby album?
Can we use the power of /. for the good of society? !
Nah.. nevermind.. no profit involved. Bask to work.
BS. I have a 9-to-5, have a mortgage, play in the stock market, do contracting on the side, and do my own taxes. And I'd say I've just described more than what 90% of US taxpayers need to file. And seriously? Mind-numbingly easy. Painfully easy. Embarrassing-that-professionals-do-that-for-a-living easy.
Doing ones own taxes involves nothing harder than "add up all the box 2s on your W2s and box 4s on your 1099s and enter that total on line 62 of your 1040". Totally mechanical crap that doesn't require the least bit of thought or familiarity with tax law.
For the rest of us, don't try to make this sound harder than the reality. Plug and frickin' chug, baby!
@pla: +1 because you are a 1%-er. ( intended as a wake up; I can't afford the 1% moniker, maybe I'm in the top 10) /. audience, the "algorithm" of following the instructions, including branches.. plugging & chugging when we fill in variables, and making an informed decision on deductibles - is all likely within our grasp.
Sure, for the
However, look around at the rest of the country.
Most Americans cannot balance a checkbook [1], [2].
The basic tax guide "Publication 17" is over 300 pages long. [3]
The instructions for the basic 1040 form is at 100 pages [4].
Just answering the questions "What's New?", "Do I have to file", and "Where do I file" ( [4] pages 6-7) incorporate 4 more pages of tables and worksheets referenced in the text ( pp 8-11), and suggest the taxpayer review 10 separate publications for clarifications, outside the 'core' paperwork of Pub 17 and 1040 instructions.
point: it is complex, even to "just follow the instructions". Not everyone is the sort who just jumps in, presses ON, and only looks for manuals after it doesn't work. ( I am.. but not everyone is.)
If you are lucky enough to have a job, and a mortgage, play in the stock market, and do contracting on the side.. you are a pretty smart and fairly motivated person. You can multitask. You can prioritize tasks, and see projects through to the finish. .. when it comes to the word "unemployed", the US Govt needs to take a lesson from Inigo Montoya, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means”
Only 58% of the US population is employed.. or 42% is not. [5] - BLS report " population/employment ratio"
Never mind making educated decisions about deductions like work expenses and medical costs. I don't think the average American could fill out the typical medical insurance claim form, never mind read one and extract information for tax purposes.
How many Americans - picked "at random" - would you trust to balance your checkbook, or to fill out your tax forms?
Heck, I don't even trust a "jury of my peers" to render a sensible verdict.
Most folks I have met can't follow a 2 -page recipe in a cookbook, or remember the plot to a 200-page novel unless the movie and/or starred Heath Ledger or Megan Fox.
If every citizen was encouraged to do their own taxes, imagine how much WE taxpayers would be paying to clean that mess up?
Don't give people more credit than they deserve. Look at our last few elections.
Edit: "this one works for filing up to $57K" : http://www.irs.gov/efile/index.html
sorry~!
@sjhillman .. "freedom edition" +1 informative ...can send you to jail" .. You do realize it is much more likely that you'll just get an interest-bearing permanent debt.
@AC "FUD" -1 NOT
@Loughlia "
The IRS and Student Loan providers will work backwards from your Social Security death benefit of $300-ish if they have to. Only in rare cases, where the headlines serve a purpose more than the recovery of the money, - or if there is malice or fraud, does someone actually get jailed on taxes.
and .. the IRS will help with your taxes, also for free. .. and the IRS offers links to other "free" filing services, this one works for income up to $57k.
http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=202121,00.html
"free" = at no additional costs to the taxes you already presumed to be paying
---
If OP just wanted to fill in forms on a PDF manually - there are dozens of products, including tediously creating a text box in Open Office for each line and item. In fact, the IRS already makes the PDF forms fillable: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040.pdf
Actually doing the calculations is where the liability and problems come in.
In my limited experience, making a calculation error or omission on a return set off a chain of events;
first, they re-calculate your taxes and settle up on their terms; then you are a whole lot more likely to be audited for the next 3-4 years.
Mod parent +1 Interesting, +1 Informative, +1 ironically Funny, +1 supporting open-source Radio