OK so it sounds like an easy way to kill everyone at a major metropolitan hospital is to set off a smoke bomb in the main eletrical room because then they will unquestioningly shut down ALL ELECTRICITY including the backup generators that are keeping people on life support alive.
What, that's stupid, you say? Well so is your blanket assertion.
And you are only confirming what I said... firefighter != electrician which is why I used the term IGNORANT. Regardless of the facts and 20/20 hindsight in this particular scenario, the question remains...is it considered standard operating procedure at ANY hosting facility to shut down all power, INCLUDING backup power, regardless of the size or nature of the threat?
Or was this an accurate and analyzed response and not just a knee-jerk reactions. Because otherwise I hope the terrorists don't learn we are ten smoke bombs away from having our entire telecommunications infrastructure turned off to "avoid risking firefighters"
I'm not going to fellate you because you are a firefighter, sorry. There is no such thing as a sacred elephant and there are pros and cons to everything.
As a previous posted accuratly points out, we have been forbidden from taking our own actions when we consider the risks and costs to be worth it. I would have no problem if the choice to hire a firefighting service and understand that the more the risk, the more it will cost me. What I have a problem with is there being a monopoly of only ONE legally allowed provider, and then having that provider refuse service.
I can't stand the way if you criticize troops or firemen, you are considered flamebait. It's a volunteer service. I know plenty of macho asshats who sign up specifically because they know they are basically going to be beyond reproach if they make it in.
People risk their lives every day. I already pointed out that the average electrician (who makes a journeyman's wages of about $25K) faces more danger and risk in his daily job than a firefighter may face in a week. Hell, someone manning a counter at a convenience store in a bad neighborhood has a chance at getting shot.
You aren't special. You aren't magical. You aren't beyond reproach. You don't have a monopoly on heroism. I can point to countless tales of ordinary people who risked their lives or even died trying to pull someone from a canal or even a burning building.
In fact, I have more respect for the average joe who does it than the person who collects a paycheck to do it.
And if you don't like it, then I expect you to support the privitization of social services so that if some chief decides that the 0.000001% of death is an unacceptible risk for saving property, I can pick up the phone and call someone who will.
PS for SOG that are "very specific" about risk, you have some pretty vague and unspecific terms like "reasonable" and "minimal"
You forget that part of your job description is to protect property. It can't always be running in to save the cute blond kid who got left behind in the panic to evacuate the home.
And yes, that means that sometimes firefighters are expected to risk their life to save just a building and prevent that fire from spreading to other empty buildings. If there wasn't a point where we expected firefighters to take an acceptable risk, we would just evacuate a town when a fire started, wait for everything to burn down in absolute safety, then rebuild.
And yet, I personally have seen a fire break out at a self-storage facility and watched four firecrews sit there and watch the entire structure (with I remind you countless family's personal possessions and sentimental collectibles) burn to the ground. Why? Because the fire chief thought there might be one person there storing ammunition and he wasn't going to risk anyone to stop the fire.
To me that's complete cowardice. If that was the job some firefighters think they are supposed to do, I want my taxes back. I can hire a $8/hr security guard to cordone off an area and wait for a fire to burn itself out. We pay someone $98K plus benefits to actually try to stop the fire even if there is a eensy chance that something could hurt him.
You point out that anything can happen at any time. Ditto for firefighters. You could get into an accident on the way to the scene. So why not just stay there in the safety of the firehouse if there are no lives at stake?
Electricians have to work with LIVE power on a routine basis. Nobody apparently gives a shit if an electrician has to risk death because they don't want to have to power down their racks while he replaces a fuse or adds a new circuit. And I have electrician friends that have the scar tissue to prove that it doesn't always turn out well.
Risk management. Do I want to see a firefighter die so that my customer can get his email today instead of tomorrow? Of course not. But do I think it makes any sense to have 9000+ people and all the systems they may depend upon go down because the fire chief doesn't think his employees can resisted clutching every exposed wire they run across?
I obviously never expected that an entire facility with redundant power supplies would lose power. Whoops, yes, my bad but I assure you I can't be the only one who never thought this was a likely possibility. I've never seen "Fireman independant power systems" advertised as a selling feature when shopping for server hosting. Maybe someone will see a market opportunity, I don't know.
But I expect that people who are paid to minimize damage to property will MINIMIZE damage, and not throw the baby out with the bathwater. The problem was clearly with high voltage. So cut the feed from the power company, case closed. Shutting down the redundant power generators that are DOWNSTREAM from the problem? That's idiotic. It's right up there with the voodoo and witchcraft method of personal protection.
Neither of us are right, dude. But the point is that I've never heard of generators being ordered off when the whole point of having generators is to provide power when the main fails. So this completely bugs me and I'm skeptical it has anything to do with erring way too far on the side of caution. Otherwise, what's next:
"Say chief, I know we have all these people in this hospital on life support, but someone left a cigarette in a trash can and I'd sure as heckfire feel safer if we just shut the whole things down"
Everyone loves firemen, right? Not me. While the guys you see in the movies running into burning buildings might be heroes, the real world firemen (or more specifically fire chiefs) are capricious, arbitrarty, ignorant little rulers of their own personal fiefdom. Did you know that if you are getting an inspection from your local firechief and he commands something, there is no appeal? His word is law, no matter how STUPID or IGNORANT. I'll give you some examples later.
I'm one of the affected customers. I have about 100 domains down right now because both my nameservers were hosted at the facility, as is the control panel that I would use to change the nameserver IPs. Whoops. So I learned why I need to obviously have NS3 and ND4 and spread them around because even though the servers are spread everywhere, without my nameservers none of them currently resolve.
It sounds like the facility was ordered to cut ALL power because of some fire chief's misguided fear that power flows backwards from a low-voltage source to a high-voltage one. I admit I don't know much about the engineering of this data center, but I'm pretty sure the "Y" junction where AC and generator power come together is going to be as close to the rack power as possible to avoid lossy transformation. It makes no sense why they would have 220 or 400 VAC generators running through the same high-voltage transformer when it would be far more efficient to have 120 or even 12VCD (if only servers would accept that). But I admit I could be wrong, and if it is a legit safety issue...then it's apparently a single point of failure for every data center out there because ThePlanet charged enough that they don't need to cut corners.
Here's a couple of times that I've had my hackles raised by some fireman with no knowledge of technology. The first was when we switched alarm companies and required a fire inspector to come and sign off on the newly installed system. The inspector said we needed to shut down power for 24 hours to verify that the fire alarm would still work after that period of time (a code requirement). No problem, we said, reaching for the breaker for that circuit.
No no, he said. ALL POWER. That meant the entire office complex, some 20-30 businesses, would need to be without power for an entire day so that this fing idiot could be sure that we weren't cheating by sneaking supplimentary power from another source.
WHAT THE FRACK
We ended up having to rent generators and park them outside to keep our racks and critical systems running, and then renting a conference room to relocate employees. We went all the way to the country commmissioners pointing out how absolutely stupid this was (not to mention, who the HELL is still going to be in a burning building 24 hours after the alarm's gone off) but we told that there was no override possible.
The second time was at a different place when we installed a CO alarm as required for commercial property. Well, the inspector came and said we need to test it. OK, we said, pressing the test button. No no, he said, we need to spray it with carbon monoxide.
Where the HELL can you buy a toxic substance like carbon monoxide, we asked. Not his problem but he wouldn't sign off until we did. After finding out that it was illegal to ship the stuff, and that there was no local supplier, we finally called the manufacturer of the device who pointed out that the device was void the second it was exposed to CO because the sensor was not reusuable. In other words, when the sensor was tripped, it was time to buy a new monitor. You can see the recursive loop that would have devloped if we actually had tested the device and then promptly had to replace it and get the new one retested by this idiot.
So finally we got a letter from the manufacturer that pointed out the device was UL certified and that pressing the test button WAS the way you tested the device. It took four weeks of arguing before he finally found an excuse that let him safe face and
Well, what I mean is... most criminals don't seem too worried about video survelliance because they figure, what can they do with just a face? They are much more concerned about leaving prints and physical evidence. Besides, if they have never been booked, they may think there is no way anyone could find them flipping through a book of mug shots.
But if the general populous became aware that everything the Department of Motor Vehicles is collecting is going right into criminal databases, they would be a lot more careful about hiding from camera, which would lower the chance of successfully apprehending for the "important" crimes.
What you need to do is ensure that you capture a face shot as close to eye-level as possible, without having the camera obstructed by people walking by.
The police and FBI don't like to talk about it, but there is a program where if they input a digital photo of someone, even a poor quality one, the computer will compare it against the database of digital photos taken by the Department of Motor Vehicles and spit out the six closest matches.
These system rely on facial characteristics like eye-nose-mouth ratio, hairlines, etc so as long as the computer can accurately calculate the centers of these areas, it works.
But when cameras are mounted up on the roof or in a corner as is typical, they are worthless unless the suspect looks right at them.
Also, you want to think about having a camera just for vehicle traffic on your street or culdesac. A license plate is going to be your best method for apprehension. Sure, the car may be stolen, but if it is recovered then it can lead to your property. And if it happens to be a crime of impulse, you will have a suspect.
If you were really clever, you could find some way to rig a standard digital camera with a flash similar to a red-light camera. This would be your most inexpensive option but also a dead give-away and not recommended for busy roads. Instead, find the least expensive camera that offers changeable lenses, and then focus them on a spot on the street that you know vehicles must drive through. Add some inexpensive infrared lighting and you should be able to playback a log of all vehicles (suspects and potential witnesses) when there is an incident.
I think having more inexpensive cameras with decent quality will have a greater chance of success than a couple high-quality ones. Also, don't overlook physical security sensors. Infrared beams and even motion sensors are the best way to deter the crime, instead of relying on catching the criminal.
I have been on the victim side of countless incidents in my profession and, frankly, you won't get the time of day from law enforcement. If a light turns on, or a camera flashes as someone approaches your vehicle...they will move on. And don't forget if you are worried about your vehicle and not just what's in it...pick up a used Sprint/Nextel phone on eBay and split off power from your car's 12V plug. Hide the phone inside the dash somewhere on continuously. Get the least expensive plan, or just write down the IMEI so that you can later activate the phone by calling Sprint. If the car does get stolen, activate service and add-on the GPS tracking features.
Is it me or does this seems like a rather obvious question? A ventilated box with a key...hmmm...what do I know that fits that description? I know! Every server in every datacenter I've ever visited.
Just get yourself a server rack, one of those rolling ones that can tuck under the desk or even smaller ones that would fit on a desk or end table. Maybe something like XRackPro.
They all have either wire or solid panels options for front/side/back/top. Get wire panels for front and rear, maybe a fixed for the rear and a swinging front with key lock. Fish the right wires through and then, voila, a nice open airy box for your laptop and all its accessories. A simple cable lock attached to the cabinet will keep your monitor from walking away. Of course, you can even cable the server rack itself if you picked a small one (but honestly, even the tiny ones are a back-beaker and if you remove the casters a complete #%@#$% to move on carpet).
Or, you could even buy some OEM server case with bunches of fans built in and drop your laptop in like it's a motherboard. You could line up openings for cables and USB but still have the overall device inside something bulky that can itself be secured.
You are right not to trust cable locks. The alarm ones won't work any better if no one is around. I do think the webcam idea is perhaps the best insurance but only if you can trust yourself not to tell ANYONE or let anyone see the footage. Word like that makes it useless as a security step since it's only secure if no one knows to cover up.
And don't forget there are also plenty of dial-home service. You might try even having the laptop report in periodically and have something alert you if it fails to check in.
While I have no doubt that "qwerty" is well established as a common password, once you throw in the shift key then the number of possible combinations rises to a level where I highly doubt they would be found in password dictionaries.
And I have no idea why vertical columns of keys would have consecutive keycode values? I'm pretty rusty on my ASCII but "q" "a" and "z" are more like 65...uh...80...and 90? Something like that. Capitals are entirely different range, too.
Yes but adding shifts? "qweasdzxc" would be easy enough to brute force anyway since it's an all-lower-care nine-letter password.
I highly doubt "QWEasdZXC" would be found in any dictionary, and !@#qweASDzxc123QWEasdZXC would probably be a fantastic password with only a trivial amount of extra effort to remember. The great thing about passwords like this is that it only takes a few times to type them out and your fingers remember the pattern.
Could someone make a dictionary with every possible geometric and shift combination? Maybe, but at that point they might as well just brute force.
I would say the majority of non-computer users have trouble remembering really strong passwords (ones that make use of a mixture of letters and numbers and punctuation marks). I find the solution is to rely on muscle memory.
Pick a column on the keyboard and press every key along that line. For example 4rfv. Now hold down the shift key and repeat it. $RFV. So the password is 4rfv$RFV which is relatively strong for most uses but is a snap and simple to remember.
The only caveat is that it's not a password that you can type while someone is watching but then...really nobody should be watching when you type any password. Although, pressing the shift key can be pretty subtle.
Other patterns like squares or crosses work as well.
RAID 10 *has* redundancy so I don't really understand that example as a counterpoint. Yes, there are some high-end desktops that come configured with RAID-0 arrays for performance but nobody could possibly want to do that with a NAS. I'm pretty sure the network would be a chokepoint well before you reached the performance level of unstriped drives.
I think there's a decent-sized audience that wants a *practical* way to get a couple of terabytes. Who wants to spring for three or four brand new 1TB drives to populate a NAS? Most people I know are swimming in 300-500GB drives. If there was a NAS that could support more than four drives, you could get a couple terabytes out of them. Power isn't a problem either. If you string devices together, chaining them or using eSATA, then they can all have their own consumer-level power supplies.
eSATA and SAS were built to be expandable, so I think it's really just a "640K is enough" attitude that because the first NAS devices were probably IDE and limited to four devices, every come-along company to jump into the NAS market decides to copy what's out there instead of realizing that with the switch to SATA, the four-drive limit just doesn't make a lot of sense.
These things also cost a lot more than ~$500 because most come with drives and not bare-bones. So, if someone is going to plunk down $1000-$2000, I think they might like to pay a few bucks extra to get an external expansion port or extra drive bay.
Then 8 would fit in a 2U form factor, wouldn't it?
And most of these consumer/prosumer NAS devices are cubes meant to sit on a desk, not rack-mounted. You can fit five 3.5 drives vertically in three 5.25 drive bays, the same amount of space as most four-bay enclosures use. So five drives doesn't seem all that unreasonable.
Good grief, can someone please explain to me what the fetish is with four drives in every single freakin NAS system on the planet? And every vendor gets the same thrill annoucing it as a "4TB" solution when only a complete moron would run these things as a single JBOD volume without any fault tolerance.
Why not five drives, guys? It's not like we are back in the late 90s when every motherboard had two IDE controllers supporting two devices. I routinely see motherboards now with five or six SATA ports. There are even splitters and repeaters that can change one SATA port into two. So why not break out and distinguish yourselfs with five drives so I can actually get a 4TB (3.8 actual *sigh*) solution AND a spare drive for the RAID set or even hotspare (if i'm feeling nervous).
Why not an even eight? How about a eSATA port so you could connect two NAS units together for expansion or redundancy? How about something like iSCSI and then let me chain as many NAS units together on a gigabit switch as I want?
I finally had to stop buying NAS units and get my hands dirty and build my own so I could actually break the REAL 3TB ceiling. I went with a SAS RAID card and an enclosure that supports 8 SATA drives out of the box. Down the road, I can get a SAS repeater and add a second 8-drive enclosure, or a third, or a fourth. Online volume expansion folds new drives in like butter.
But it's ugly as sin. It's a cheap Dell server ($329 w 3yr warranty!) whose only purpose in life is to house the SAS card connected to this ugly black metal monolith with two very tacky plastic drive enclosure racks. I don't mind sticking it in the closet of my house but I really can't stand the idea of trying to sell something like this to anyone.
But until I can pop down to Best Buy and buy something that looks decent, or is modular or stackable, I guess I'm stuck with whatever FrankenRAID I can piece together.
You appear to be unaware that there are extensive aftermarket modifications possible on most American cell phones. Google RAZR mods or browse mobile enthusiast websites like Howard Forums. My prior cell phone was a SLVR that I heavily modified. I used software to add my own ringtones and to change the horrible Cingular-specific themes. I could do it because it was my phone. When Bluetooth failed, there were no questions about "did you run Motorola developer tools on that phone?"...the hardware was replaced and I reloaded my mods on the new one.
I have also extensively modified my iPhone. I'm totally fine with the idea that I have to choose between my mods and the latest stock version of software. That's how life works, and sooner or later the updates will get modded as they always do. What I'm NOT fine with is the threat that someday if my phone has a legitimate hardware failure, I might be denied warrantee coverage because they can somehow detected that I copied a couple extra M4A files to the ringtones folder on the phone. This the first time I've heard of a American cell phone manufacturer trying to treat the software on their phone as part of the hardware and say that changing the software is as bad as soldering tracer wires onto the board from a warrantee perspective.
You need to take a look at the history of Sony and Apple before you claim they have nothing to do with each other. Sony started out as a hardware maker. You've heard of the Betamax Supreme Court decision, haven't you? Sony made VCRs...those VCRs could copy movies either from the airwaves or other tapes. Sony didn't care because their business was selling VCRs and nobody would have bought them if they couldn't do that. Sony grew very rich from the sales of their hardware and purchased a content company (several, really). Makes sense, right? I mean, you have hardware...now you have something to show or bundle with the hardware.
Except, the problem is that the company is now schizophrenic because the content side of the company is deathly opposed to things like VCRs. In fact, the content side of the company is so afraid that when Sony goes to make a modern version of the original Walkman (you know, hardware that made them millions of dollars) they don't allow MP3s to play on it for fear they would be copied from the content side's CDs. And what happens? Nobody buys the digital walkmans...they buy iPods from another company Apple who is a hardware maker and does what the customer wants. This cycle repeats in just about every segment of Sony's product line until the stock price is pretty much in the toilet and then, surprised, ATRAC is canned and MP3 and AAC return.
That's Sony's rise and fall in a nutshell. Apple's iPods and MacBooks are to Sony's Walkman and VCRs. Apple's new iPhone is to Sony's cripped digital music player. I can't think of a single other product Apple has produced where you couldn't poke around at the insides. Even the Apple TV hacking, the previous poster child for enthusist modification, was treated fairly by Apple. So why have things suddenly changed? Why does Apple try to blame it on AT&T's fears about their network when the same restrictions exists now through the latest generation of iPods? These trouble me as someone who has been rooting for the underdog (Apple) for so long...I've suddenly found myself wondering if Apple isn't now possibly bullying some other underdog like...people who really love their iPhones...like me...
Ignorant of legal history. Book publishers in the 70s were adding agreements forbidding purchasers from reselling or otherwise reusing those books. The courts found those agreements unenforceable based on their violation of first sale doctrine. It's one thing for Apple to say, we won't support your device unless it is running approved software, but it's quite another thing to say, because you once ran non-approved software that caused no permanent damage and that we are capable of uninstalling, we are going to cancel the warantee on the undamaged hardware. That's like Apple trying to void the warantee on your monitor because you used it to display an unflattering Apple review. Ridiculous? Google the latest AT&T terms and conditions for their Internet Service.
See above reply to similar comment. Yes, it's possible but no, it shouldn't be. When talking about embedded devices, the lack of an user-accessible input path is just as good. At the same time, having a button on the front of an embedded device that when pushed twice in a row caused the device to fail would tend to be viewed as a flaw that should be corrected...or at least labeled with a sticker that says "Self Destruct"
In this world, perfect or not, software *should* never be able to cause irreversible damage, otherwise there is a failure or flaw in the design (aside, of course, from software intended to render stolen laptops useless, etc).
Back in the early 2000's I ran into a situation where running Ghost on a particular Maxtor 15-head hard drive using an image made on a 16-head hard drive would cause the 15-head drive to go into "click of death" permanent failure. The attitude from Compaq was that the software was defective, stop using it. My argument was no, the drives are defective because it doesn't matter how badly software is written, the drive should never obey a command to slam the drive heads into the side of the case.
My point is...if, by issuing certain commands, a $400 device can be permanently ruined, that is a flaw that *should* be corrected. Otherwise, an exploit may ruins a significant portion of the devices on the market and that would come right back to the manufacturer.
I'm frankly disappointed by Apple and Steve Jobs on this whole issue. I understand that when Apple was smaller, it would have been suicide for them to put a big legal bull's eye on their back. They paid to license Amazon's one-click "technology", which if I remember write drew howls of anger from us for the perception of giving the patent merit. They did it to avoid a lawsuit over having the best shopping experience for their customers. When they first introduced the iPod with the tabline "Rip. Mix. Burn." RIAA was outraged. Even though "ripping" a CD was perfectly legal and even protected by the Home Audio Recording Act, Apple backed off the message rather than risk a lawsuit preventing the iPod's introduction. Smart move on their part seeing how the iPod turned out.
But now Apple is not some little computer company struggling as a small fish in a pond of predators. Apple isn't even a computer company anymore. They are a consumer electronics company, and they are dangerously close to repeating Sony's mistake of letting fear of the content producers influence the design of their consumer electronics. That's a recipe for failure. Hardware sales directly benefit from the availability of content, and if you cut the flow of content, you strangle your hardware sales. No one would buy a MacBook or iMac no matter how great it was if it was as closed as the iPhone has become.
The reason Apple has to take such a hard line on the iPhone is because, for perhaps the first time, Apple is at the mercy of a "content" provider: Cingular/AT&T (the content in this case is access to the cellular spectrum). I would bet any amount of money that somewhere in the contract between Apple and AT&T is the stipulation that if a Voice-Over-IP application appears on the iPhone platform, Apple will forfeit a big chunk of change. That's why there's no Flash (microphone interaction has been possible with Flash for a while now). That's why there's no native development. It's not about protecting the network from faulty a application that might screw up the mission critical cellular network. Cell phones don't have that power, otherwise you could make the same attack with the cellular PCMCIA cards and adapters that the cell phone providers already sell. Until Apple can negotiate a price they are willing to pay or give up to allow full development, knowing full well that job number one for everyone will be a VoIP app that eliminates the need to even keep Cingular around for Pay-As-You-Go, Apple is going to keep the phone locked down tight.
So I'm understand Apple. I don't expect to ever see native iPhone development as long as AT&T is in the picture. But Apple has gone too far with the warrantee cancellations. It's against the law, at least in California. A manufacturer can't void a warrantee based on a 3rd-party modification unless you prove that it was the 3rd-party modification that caused the problem. Toyota can't tell you that your warantee on your new car is void because you had Audio Discounters install a stereo unless they prove Audio Discounters cut the main system bus or something. Apple is hiding behind the fact that as a software company, they are more familiar with licensing which seems to dictate that Apple can declare the moon made of cheese and anyone who clicks "I Agree" has to live with that. But courts don't let people waive rights that are guarantee regardless of what a contract says, and so I suspect that if this case goes to court, Apple will lose. For the courts to rule otherwise would shut down nearly every hardware aftermarket industry overnight.
And, Apple would also have to prove that hardware can be, in fact, damaged by just software. That's a very scary thing to admit about a product you engineered. If it were truly possible for software to damage the iPhone hardware in a way that it would be unreasonable for Apple to be require to fix it, that's a timebomb waiting to happen. Let's say there is an exploit in Safari (there are). Let's say someone writes some cod
"whether it's called a sale or an exchange doesn't matter at all for the purpose of this discussion"
Yes, it does because a sale is income and therefore taxable and an exchange is not. You conveniently avoided this point throughout your entire response.
"Yes, the law is complicated. Otherwise, there would be loopholes that would make the ones that exist look tiny by comparison. Deal with it: either figure it out yourself or hire more adept than yourself to do it for you."
Considering I've had two different tax professionals give me two opposite answers for the above question, it's more than complicated: it's contradictory. It should be plainly obvious that reimbursing someone for an expense is the same as my directly paying the expense yourself but...duh duh duh...it's not. Someone else pointed out the absurd example of giving $100 back and forth and paying taxes on "windfall" income until nothing remains of the original $100. Is there a single line anywhere in the tax code that says that isn't what actually the IRS thinks should actually happen?
"If the other player pays you $5 for your Monopoly money, that's income, and theoretically should be reported to the IRS. Of course, it's only $5, so no one cares. However, if you were paid $5,000 for that Monopoly money, you would unquestionably need to report it as income. Similarly, if you sell a WoW account on eBay for $5,000, that's income that you need to report."
As I mentioned earlier, you are completely skipping over the difference between sale and exchange. If someone gives me $5000 for a piece of land, and I take that $5000 and buy another piece of land, then it's not income, it's an exchange (called a 1031 exchange I believe), therefore there's no tax. If the person I paid the $5000 to also buy land, then neither one of us owes any taxes at all.
So if I buy 500 WoW gold for $500, and then sell those 500 WoW gold for $500...isn't that an identical situation? Beause the dialog seems to be that the person who I bought the gold from would be paying taxes on the $500, and then I'd be paying taxes again on the same 500 Wow gold when I resold it. People wouldn't accept that kind of "double-dipping" taxation of real estate, so why should we accept it on virtual real estate?
"Ah, the whining of a tax protester."
There's no such thing as a tax protester, unless this mythical being doesn't pay for gas, own property, or buy anything really at all. I have no problem with the $5-6 extra I pay on a meal that covers the infrastructure to get me there. I pay some pretty outrageous property taxes, but I do enjoy having a fire department. And I think it's perfectly legitimate to ask what good or service has been provided for the government in exchange for income tax. Or how someone who can't afford his living expenses and ends the year with a net value less than $0 still has "income". It's absurd. And before you point out that maybe he spent all his money foolishly on things like jet skis, let me remind you that he's already paying taxes on that. It's double-dipping and it's taking advantage of the fact that most people don't have the resources to carve out a loophole for themselves. Businesses can sell the same widgit to each other 1000 times and not pay a dime in tax because they are only "resellers" or "wholesalers". But the customer pays a tax when he buys the widgit, and then gets taxed again when he resells it at his garage sale. That person also gets taxed when they resell it at their garage sale.
I realize that the thinks this is A-OK, because any interpretation or confusion that puts money in their pocket is great idea in their book. But that doesn't make it right, morally or ethically, and it completely fails the logic test. If you want to call me a "tax protester" because I think the rules for taxation should be directly tied to the benefits they fund or that the rules should be consistant with an eye towards avoiding any chance of double-dipping...then fine, I'm a "tax protester" and you
How the hell do you "sell" currency? The only entity that can do that is the Federal Reserve, selling notes that cost five or ten cents to make for face value. For everything else in the US, it's just an exchange.
Person A gives a $5 bill to Person B in exchange for five $1 bills. Who has profitted? Nobody...it's a "like kind exchange" and obvious to anyone older than five. And yet, the IRS wants to be the sole agent for determining what is a "like kind exchange". Trading a large swamp for a small forest of equal "value"? Exchange. Trading a male cow for a female cow? Taxable. I pay $250/mo for my own medical insurance and my employer pays me $250/mo to reimburse me. Is that taxable income or a tax-free exchange? In order to know, I would have to slog through something like this:
What about trading $5 for 2.5 British pounds? Income or like-kind exchange? And now finally...trading $5 for 500 virtual coins. You make the statement unlike Monopoly money, you can sell virtual currency for real money"...wrong. If I'm playing a hotly contested game and the other player offers me $5 for 500 Monopoly bucks, then I'm doing just that. I've personally never played such a competitive Monopoly but then I probably wouldn't be paying real money to advance in WoW either.
That's my point...trading "real world" value for "virtual world" value is still just an exchange. If anything, it should be handled like any other currency exchange. And that raises the completely legitimate question of how I can trade $5 for $5 but not a hour for $5. According to the IRS, that's not an exchange and that's why it should be taxed...but there are a lot of people who disagree. After all, my time is a lot more finite than virtual gold, so if I trade my time (labor) for its equivalent value, that's an exchange.
The problem is that in all exchanges, the IRS will recognize any gain, but will never recognise a loss. Which means that if I trade property worth $10000 for property worth $20000, then I've "gained" $10000 and am taxed on that amount but the poor unlucky sap who agreed to that trade doesn't get to deduct his $10000 "loss". And that's why it's completely bogus. Someone has invented a new form of currency, and the IRS wants to recognize that any time someone trades it for US bank notes they have "gained" income and owe tax...BUT they refuse to equally recognize that any time someone provides the new form of currency (or the labor behind creating it) they have "lost" an equal or equivalent income.
So unfortunately, your idea for a tax shelter fails for that reason. They will recognize any gains and refuse any losses. Even the five-year-old would realize that's a rigged system. And so that, to me, is further evidence that calls into question the basis of the current income tax system.
That was my point. How does changing one form of goods and service into another count as "income"? It's an exchange. I'm trading piece of paper worth X into bits worth Y. Neither of them has any inherient value beyond what is promised by the writing on the paper or the function of the bits. It's still not income.
I'm unaware of any taxes that apply to money changing. I'm sure there's service fees and what-not, but (I hope) that there's no tax that is collected just for changing dollars into pesos, pounds, or francs. If that is the case, there shouldn't be any tax that applies to changing them into WoW gold or "hippo bucks". We are talking about exchange rates and not income, that much seems painfully clear to me.
So, not only is the IRS adamant about taxing "all income"...they are now stretching it beyond the boundaries of absurdity.
Basically, what is happening here is that someone is saying "I have 1,000,000 hippo bucks" and the IRS is trying to establish some metric of determining how much a "hippo buck" is worth in US dollars so they can tax it. OK, Slashdot: I'm offering those 1,000,000 hippo bucks for sale...who's going to buy them from me and establish the official conversion rate?
Oh wait, nobody because even a billion "hippo bucks" aren't worth anything. So then if I give someone 10,000 of my hippo bucks, has a transaction occured? Choose your own adventure:
Answer YES: Then guess f'ing what...every game of Monopoly is income and so, in aggregate, the population of the US probably owes trillions in unreported income to the IRS for all the games of Monopoly that have been played since its creation.
Answer NO: Then you're instantly smarter than our entire Congress and IRS because you realize that ITS A FREAKIN GAME. As soon as the game is dissolve, said "income" evaporates into thin air. That's the point. Sure, MMORPGs may run a lot longer than your typical game of Monopoly but guess what...if Sony went out of business and Everquest turned off its servers, then what would be left? Nothing but memories and bragging rights...which is all that's really left after a game of Monopoly.
Virtual taxes should be paid in virtual dollars. All the servers and the space the occupy, you know...reality, are already taxed at every possible level. Otherwise, what's to stop the IRS from taxing your score in Pac-Man? Couldn't that spot on the Hi-Score list have value and be auctioned on eBay? (L@@K YOUR INITIALS ON TOP!!! NO RESERVE!) Or how about those packets currently flowing into my computer...don't those have value? If someone idiot buys a single packet from me for $1000, then we are all screwed....
As a closing note, I'm uncomfortable with how easily my analogy about fictional money and invented wealth matches a description of the current US currency system. Hrm. Maybe the entire US banking system is already an MMORPG.
Err...no, in this case the term "online backup" means hard drives. IE, the data is kept "online" and accessible. This would be the opposite of offline backup...tape or CD. Offline (or near online) means that the data is in statis somewhere and not easily accessible. I didn't actually mean an online service, although that's definitely an option.
Someone wrote a utility that lets you "mount" Gmail as a drive letter, and this can be combined with multiple Gmail accounts I believe for about 2-3GB each. That's free but, probably sketchy. Storage hosting is about $1/GB/month, which could be expensive for anything beyond your \DATA folder. If you get a dedicated server, it can be about $.50/GB/month for about 250GB or so of storage (I like calpop.com because their servers come with unmetered 10Mbps ethernet so you don't worry about transfer overages or anything else).
And, depending on how much you trust other people, or how good your encryption is, why not put a drive or cheapie NAS at a friend or relative's house? Bonus, if you share \MEDIA you both can crib each other's collections.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Because you probably wouldnt accept what I said, here is an article with some interesting stats:
http://money.cnn.com/2006/08/16/pf/2005_most_dangerous_jobs/index.htm
I don't see firefighters on that list. But I do see electrical workers.
Who's waving the flags for them?
-JoeShmoe
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OK so it sounds like an easy way to kill everyone at a major metropolitan hospital is to set off a smoke bomb in the main eletrical room because then they will unquestioningly shut down ALL ELECTRICITY including the backup generators that are keeping people on life support alive.
What, that's stupid, you say? Well so is your blanket assertion.
And you are only confirming what I said... firefighter != electrician which is why I used the term IGNORANT. Regardless of the facts and 20/20 hindsight in this particular scenario, the question remains...is it considered standard operating procedure at ANY hosting facility to shut down all power, INCLUDING backup power, regardless of the size or nature of the threat?
Or was this an accurate and analyzed response and not just a knee-jerk reactions. Because otherwise I hope the terrorists don't learn we are ten smoke bombs away from having our entire telecommunications infrastructure turned off to "avoid risking firefighters"
-JoeShmoe
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I'm not going to fellate you because you are a firefighter, sorry. There is no such thing as a sacred elephant and there are pros and cons to everything.
As a previous posted accuratly points out, we have been forbidden from taking our own actions when we consider the risks and costs to be worth it. I would have no problem if the choice to hire a firefighting service and understand that the more the risk, the more it will cost me. What I have a problem with is there being a monopoly of only ONE legally allowed provider, and then having that provider refuse service.
I can't stand the way if you criticize troops or firemen, you are considered flamebait. It's a volunteer service. I know plenty of macho asshats who sign up specifically because they know they are basically going to be beyond reproach if they make it in.
People risk their lives every day. I already pointed out that the average electrician (who makes a journeyman's wages of about $25K) faces more danger and risk in his daily job than a firefighter may face in a week. Hell, someone manning a counter at a convenience store in a bad neighborhood has a chance at getting shot.
You aren't special. You aren't magical. You aren't beyond reproach. You don't have a monopoly on heroism. I can point to countless tales of ordinary people who risked their lives or even died trying to pull someone from a canal or even a burning building.
In fact, I have more respect for the average joe who does it than the person who collects a paycheck to do it.
And if you don't like it, then I expect you to support the privitization of social services so that if some chief decides that the 0.000001% of death is an unacceptible risk for saving property, I can pick up the phone and call someone who will.
PS for SOG that are "very specific" about risk, you have some pretty vague and unspecific terms like "reasonable" and "minimal"
-JoeShmoe
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You forget that part of your job description is to protect property. It can't always be running in to save the cute blond kid who got left behind in the panic to evacuate the home.
And yes, that means that sometimes firefighters are expected to risk their life to save just a building and prevent that fire from spreading to other empty buildings. If there wasn't a point where we expected firefighters to take an acceptable risk, we would just evacuate a town when a fire started, wait for everything to burn down in absolute safety, then rebuild.
And yet, I personally have seen a fire break out at a self-storage facility and watched four firecrews sit there and watch the entire structure (with I remind you countless family's personal possessions and sentimental collectibles) burn to the ground. Why? Because the fire chief thought there might be one person there storing ammunition and he wasn't going to risk anyone to stop the fire.
To me that's complete cowardice. If that was the job some firefighters think they are supposed to do, I want my taxes back. I can hire a $8/hr security guard to cordone off an area and wait for a fire to burn itself out. We pay someone $98K plus benefits to actually try to stop the fire even if there is a eensy chance that something could hurt him.
You point out that anything can happen at any time. Ditto for firefighters. You could get into an accident on the way to the scene. So why not just stay there in the safety of the firehouse if there are no lives at stake?
Electricians have to work with LIVE power on a routine basis. Nobody apparently gives a shit if an electrician has to risk death because they don't want to have to power down their racks while he replaces a fuse or adds a new circuit. And I have electrician friends that have the scar tissue to prove that it doesn't always turn out well.
Risk management. Do I want to see a firefighter die so that my customer can get his email today instead of tomorrow? Of course not. But do I think it makes any sense to have 9000+ people and all the systems they may depend upon go down because the fire chief doesn't think his employees can resisted clutching every exposed wire they run across?
I obviously never expected that an entire facility with redundant power supplies would lose power. Whoops, yes, my bad but I assure you I can't be the only one who never thought this was a likely possibility. I've never seen "Fireman independant power systems" advertised as a selling feature when shopping for server hosting. Maybe someone will see a market opportunity, I don't know.
But I expect that people who are paid to minimize damage to property will MINIMIZE damage, and not throw the baby out with the bathwater. The problem was clearly with high voltage. So cut the feed from the power company, case closed. Shutting down the redundant power generators that are DOWNSTREAM from the problem? That's idiotic. It's right up there with the voodoo and witchcraft method of personal protection.
Neither of us are right, dude. But the point is that I've never heard of generators being ordered off when the whole point of having generators is to provide power when the main fails. So this completely bugs me and I'm skeptical it has anything to do with erring way too far on the side of caution. Otherwise, what's next:
"Say chief, I know we have all these people in this hospital on life support, but someone left a cigarette in a trash can and I'd sure as heckfire feel safer if we just shut the whole things down"
-JoeShmoe
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Everyone loves firemen, right? Not me. While the guys you see in the movies running into burning buildings might be heroes, the real world firemen (or more specifically fire chiefs) are capricious, arbitrarty, ignorant little rulers of their own personal fiefdom. Did you know that if you are getting an inspection from your local firechief and he commands something, there is no appeal? His word is law, no matter how STUPID or IGNORANT. I'll give you some examples later.
I'm one of the affected customers. I have about 100 domains down right now because both my nameservers were hosted at the facility, as is the control panel that I would use to change the nameserver IPs. Whoops. So I learned why I need to obviously have NS3 and ND4 and spread them around because even though the servers are spread everywhere, without my nameservers none of them currently resolve.
It sounds like the facility was ordered to cut ALL power because of some fire chief's misguided fear that power flows backwards from a low-voltage source to a high-voltage one. I admit I don't know much about the engineering of this data center, but I'm pretty sure the "Y" junction where AC and generator power come together is going to be as close to the rack power as possible to avoid lossy transformation. It makes no sense why they would have 220 or 400 VAC generators running through the same high-voltage transformer when it would be far more efficient to have 120 or even 12VCD (if only servers would accept that). But I admit I could be wrong, and if it is a legit safety issue...then it's apparently a single point of failure for every data center out there because ThePlanet charged enough that they don't need to cut corners.
Here's a couple of times that I've had my hackles raised by some fireman with no knowledge of technology. The first was when we switched alarm companies and required a fire inspector to come and sign off on the newly installed system. The inspector said we needed to shut down power for 24 hours to verify that the fire alarm would still work after that period of time (a code requirement). No problem, we said, reaching for the breaker for that circuit.
No no, he said. ALL POWER. That meant the entire office complex, some 20-30 businesses, would need to be without power for an entire day so that this fing idiot could be sure that we weren't cheating by sneaking supplimentary power from another source.
WHAT THE FRACK
We ended up having to rent generators and park them outside to keep our racks and critical systems running, and then renting a conference room to relocate employees. We went all the way to the country commmissioners pointing out how absolutely stupid this was (not to mention, who the HELL is still going to be in a burning building 24 hours after the alarm's gone off) but we told that there was no override possible.
The second time was at a different place when we installed a CO alarm as required for commercial property. Well, the inspector came and said we need to test it. OK, we said, pressing the test button. No no, he said, we need to spray it with carbon monoxide.
Where the HELL can you buy a toxic substance like carbon monoxide, we asked. Not his problem but he wouldn't sign off until we did. After finding out that it was illegal to ship the stuff, and that there was no local supplier, we finally called the manufacturer of the device who pointed out that the device was void the second it was exposed to CO because the sensor was not reusuable. In other words, when the sensor was tripped, it was time to buy a new monitor. You can see the recursive loop that would have devloped if we actually had tested the device and then promptly had to replace it and get the new one retested by this idiot.
So finally we got a letter from the manufacturer that pointed out the device was UL certified and that pressing the test button WAS the way you tested the device. It took four weeks of arguing before he finally found an excuse that let him safe face and
Well, what I mean is... most criminals don't seem too worried about video survelliance because they figure, what can they do with just a face? They are much more concerned about leaving prints and physical evidence. Besides, if they have never been booked, they may think there is no way anyone could find them flipping through a book of mug shots.
But if the general populous became aware that everything the Department of Motor Vehicles is collecting is going right into criminal databases, they would be a lot more careful about hiding from camera, which would lower the chance of successfully apprehending for the "important" crimes.
-JoeShmoe
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Actually, quality isn't the issue. Angle is.
What you need to do is ensure that you capture a face shot as close to eye-level as possible, without having the camera obstructed by people walking by.
The police and FBI don't like to talk about it, but there is a program where if they input a digital photo of someone, even a poor quality one, the computer will compare it against the database of digital photos taken by the Department of Motor Vehicles and spit out the six closest matches.
These system rely on facial characteristics like eye-nose-mouth ratio, hairlines, etc so as long as the computer can accurately calculate the centers of these areas, it works.
But when cameras are mounted up on the roof or in a corner as is typical, they are worthless unless the suspect looks right at them.
Also, you want to think about having a camera just for vehicle traffic on your street or culdesac. A license plate is going to be your best method for apprehension. Sure, the car may be stolen, but if it is recovered then it can lead to your property. And if it happens to be a crime of impulse, you will have a suspect.
If you were really clever, you could find some way to rig a standard digital camera with a flash similar to a red-light camera. This would be your most inexpensive option but also a dead give-away and not recommended for busy roads. Instead, find the least expensive camera that offers changeable lenses, and then focus them on a spot on the street that you know vehicles must drive through. Add some inexpensive infrared lighting and you should be able to playback a log of all vehicles (suspects and potential witnesses) when there is an incident.
I think having more inexpensive cameras with decent quality will have a greater chance of success than a couple high-quality ones. Also, don't overlook physical security sensors. Infrared beams and even motion sensors are the best way to deter the crime, instead of relying on catching the criminal.
I have been on the victim side of countless incidents in my profession and, frankly, you won't get the time of day from law enforcement. If a light turns on, or a camera flashes as someone approaches your vehicle...they will move on. And don't forget if you are worried about your vehicle and not just what's in it...pick up a used Sprint/Nextel phone on eBay and split off power from your car's 12V plug. Hide the phone inside the dash somewhere on continuously. Get the least expensive plan, or just write down the IMEI so that you can later activate the phone by calling Sprint. If the car does get stolen, activate service and add-on the GPS tracking features.
Cheapest Lojack you will find.
Good luck.
-JoeShmoe
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Is it me or does this seems like a rather obvious question? A ventilated box with a key...hmmm...what do I know that fits that description? I know! Every server in every datacenter I've ever visited.
Just get yourself a server rack, one of those rolling ones that can tuck under the desk or even smaller ones that would fit on a desk or end table. Maybe something like XRackPro.
They all have either wire or solid panels options for front/side/back/top. Get wire panels for front and rear, maybe a fixed for the rear and a swinging front with key lock. Fish the right wires through and then, voila, a nice open airy box for your laptop and all its accessories. A simple cable lock attached to the cabinet will keep your monitor from walking away. Of course, you can even cable the server rack itself if you picked a small one (but honestly, even the tiny ones are a back-beaker and if you remove the casters a complete #%@#$% to move on carpet).
Or, you could even buy some OEM server case with bunches of fans built in and drop your laptop in like it's a motherboard. You could line up openings for cables and USB but still have the overall device inside something bulky that can itself be secured.
You are right not to trust cable locks. The alarm ones won't work any better if no one is around. I do think the webcam idea is perhaps the best insurance but only if you can trust yourself not to tell ANYONE or let anyone see the footage. Word like that makes it useless as a security step since it's only secure if no one knows to cover up.
And don't forget there are also plenty of dial-home service. You might try even having the laptop report in periodically and have something alert you if it fails to check in.
-JoeShmoe
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While I have no doubt that "qwerty" is well established as a common password, once you throw in the shift key then the number of possible combinations rises to a level where I highly doubt they would be found in password dictionaries.
And I have no idea why vertical columns of keys would have consecutive keycode values? I'm pretty rusty on my ASCII but "q" "a" and "z" are more like 65...uh...80...and 90? Something like that. Capitals are entirely different range, too.
-JoeShmoe
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Yes but adding shifts? "qweasdzxc" would be easy enough to brute force anyway since it's an all-lower-care nine-letter password.
I highly doubt "QWEasdZXC" would be found in any dictionary, and !@#qweASDzxc123QWEasdZXC would probably be a fantastic password with only a trivial amount of extra effort to remember. The great thing about passwords like this is that it only takes a few times to type them out and your fingers remember the pattern.
Could someone make a dictionary with every possible geometric and shift combination? Maybe, but at that point they might as well just brute force.
- JoeShmoe
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I would say the majority of non-computer users have trouble remembering really strong passwords (ones that make use of a mixture of letters and numbers and punctuation marks). I find the solution is to rely on muscle memory.
Pick a column on the keyboard and press every key along that line. For example 4rfv. Now hold down the shift key and repeat it. $RFV. So the password is 4rfv$RFV which is relatively strong for most uses but is a snap and simple to remember.
The only caveat is that it's not a password that you can type while someone is watching but then...really nobody should be watching when you type any password. Although, pressing the shift key can be pretty subtle.
Other patterns like squares or crosses work as well.
- JoeShmoe
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RAID 10 *has* redundancy so I don't really understand that example as a counterpoint. Yes, there are some high-end desktops that come configured with RAID-0 arrays for performance but nobody could possibly want to do that with a NAS. I'm pretty sure the network would be a chokepoint well before you reached the performance level of unstriped drives.
I think there's a decent-sized audience that wants a *practical* way to get a couple of terabytes. Who wants to spring for three or four brand new 1TB drives to populate a NAS? Most people I know are swimming in 300-500GB drives. If there was a NAS that could support more than four drives, you could get a couple terabytes out of them. Power isn't a problem either. If you string devices together, chaining them or using eSATA, then they can all have their own consumer-level power supplies.
eSATA and SAS were built to be expandable, so I think it's really just a "640K is enough" attitude that because the first NAS devices were probably IDE and limited to four devices, every come-along company to jump into the NAS market decides to copy what's out there instead of realizing that with the switch to SATA, the four-drive limit just doesn't make a lot of sense.
These things also cost a lot more than ~$500 because most come with drives and not bare-bones. So, if someone is going to plunk down $1000-$2000, I think they might like to pay a few bucks extra to get an external expansion port or extra drive bay.
-JoeShmoe
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Then 8 would fit in a 2U form factor, wouldn't it?
And most of these consumer/prosumer NAS devices are cubes meant to sit on a desk, not rack-mounted. You can fit five 3.5 drives vertically in three 5.25 drive bays, the same amount of space as most four-bay enclosures use. So five drives doesn't seem all that unreasonable.
-JoeShmoe
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Good grief, can someone please explain to me what the fetish is with four drives in every single freakin NAS system on the planet? And every vendor gets the same thrill annoucing it as a "4TB" solution when only a complete moron would run these things as a single JBOD volume without any fault tolerance.
Why not five drives, guys? It's not like we are back in the late 90s when every motherboard had two IDE controllers supporting two devices. I routinely see motherboards now with five or six SATA ports. There are even splitters and repeaters that can change one SATA port into two. So why not break out and distinguish yourselfs with five drives so I can actually get a 4TB (3.8 actual *sigh*) solution AND a spare drive for the RAID set or even hotspare (if i'm feeling nervous).
Why not an even eight? How about a eSATA port so you could connect two NAS units together for expansion or redundancy? How about something like iSCSI and then let me chain as many NAS units together on a gigabit switch as I want?
I finally had to stop buying NAS units and get my hands dirty and build my own so I could actually break the REAL 3TB ceiling. I went with a SAS RAID card and an enclosure that supports 8 SATA drives out of the box. Down the road, I can get a SAS repeater and add a second 8-drive enclosure, or a third, or a fourth. Online volume expansion folds new drives in like butter.
But it's ugly as sin. It's a cheap Dell server ($329 w 3yr warranty!) whose only purpose in life is to house the SAS card connected to this ugly black metal monolith with two very tacky plastic drive enclosure racks. I don't mind sticking it in the closet of my house but I really can't stand the idea of trying to sell something like this to anyone.
But until I can pop down to Best Buy and buy something that looks decent, or is modular or stackable, I guess I'm stuck with whatever FrankenRAID I can piece together.
Eight drives, guys, how 'bout it?
-JoeShmoe
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Assuming your iPhone is still 1.1.1 and can be jailbroken, your wish has been granted?
http://www.tuaw.com/2007/07/25/tether-your-iphone-to-get-online-with-edge/
-JoeShmoe
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You appear to be unaware that there are extensive aftermarket modifications possible on most American cell phones. Google RAZR mods or browse mobile enthusiast websites like Howard Forums. My prior cell phone was a SLVR that I heavily modified. I used software to add my own ringtones and to change the horrible Cingular-specific themes. I could do it because it was my phone. When Bluetooth failed, there were no questions about "did you run Motorola developer tools on that phone?" ...the hardware was replaced and I reloaded my mods on the new one.
...people who really love their iPhones...like me...
I have also extensively modified my iPhone. I'm totally fine with the idea that I have to choose between my mods and the latest stock version of software. That's how life works, and sooner or later the updates will get modded as they always do. What I'm NOT fine with is the threat that someday if my phone has a legitimate hardware failure, I might be denied warrantee coverage because they can somehow detected that I copied a couple extra M4A files to the ringtones folder on the phone. This the first time I've heard of a American cell phone manufacturer trying to treat the software on their phone as part of the hardware and say that changing the software is as bad as soldering tracer wires onto the board from a warrantee perspective.
You need to take a look at the history of Sony and Apple before you claim they have nothing to do with each other. Sony started out as a hardware maker. You've heard of the Betamax Supreme Court decision, haven't you? Sony made VCRs...those VCRs could copy movies either from the airwaves or other tapes. Sony didn't care because their business was selling VCRs and nobody would have bought them if they couldn't do that. Sony grew very rich from the sales of their hardware and purchased a content company (several, really). Makes sense, right? I mean, you have hardware...now you have something to show or bundle with the hardware.
Except, the problem is that the company is now schizophrenic because the content side of the company is deathly opposed to things like VCRs. In fact, the content side of the company is so afraid that when Sony goes to make a modern version of the original Walkman (you know, hardware that made them millions of dollars) they don't allow MP3s to play on it for fear they would be copied from the content side's CDs. And what happens? Nobody buys the digital walkmans...they buy iPods from another company Apple who is a hardware maker and does what the customer wants. This cycle repeats in just about every segment of Sony's product line until the stock price is pretty much in the toilet and then, surprised, ATRAC is canned and MP3 and AAC return.
That's Sony's rise and fall in a nutshell. Apple's iPods and MacBooks are to Sony's Walkman and VCRs. Apple's new iPhone is to Sony's cripped digital music player. I can't think of a single other product Apple has produced where you couldn't poke around at the insides. Even the Apple TV hacking, the previous poster child for enthusist modification, was treated fairly by Apple. So why have things suddenly changed? Why does Apple try to blame it on AT&T's fears about their network when the same restrictions exists now through the latest generation of iPods? These trouble me as someone who has been rooting for the underdog (Apple) for so long...I've suddenly found myself wondering if Apple isn't now possibly bullying some other underdog like
-JoeShmoe
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Ignorant of legal history. Book publishers in the 70s were adding agreements forbidding purchasers from reselling or otherwise reusing those books. The courts found those agreements unenforceable based on their violation of first sale doctrine. It's one thing for Apple to say, we won't support your device unless it is running approved software, but it's quite another thing to say, because you once ran non-approved software that caused no permanent damage and that we are capable of uninstalling, we are going to cancel the warantee on the undamaged hardware. That's like Apple trying to void the warantee on your monitor because you used it to display an unflattering Apple review. Ridiculous? Google the latest AT&T terms and conditions for their Internet Service.
-JoeShmoe
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See above reply to similar comment. Yes, it's possible but no, it shouldn't be. When talking about embedded devices, the lack of an user-accessible input path is just as good. At the same time, having a button on the front of an embedded device that when pushed twice in a row caused the device to fail would tend to be viewed as a flaw that should be corrected...or at least labeled with a sticker that says "Self Destruct"
-JoeShmoe
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Did you miss the word "should"?
In this world, perfect or not, software *should* never be able to cause irreversible damage, otherwise there is a failure or flaw in the design (aside, of course, from software intended to render stolen laptops useless, etc).
Back in the early 2000's I ran into a situation where running Ghost on a particular Maxtor 15-head hard drive using an image made on a 16-head hard drive would cause the 15-head drive to go into "click of death" permanent failure. The attitude from Compaq was that the software was defective, stop using it. My argument was no, the drives are defective because it doesn't matter how badly software is written, the drive should never obey a command to slam the drive heads into the side of the case.
My point is...if, by issuing certain commands, a $400 device can be permanently ruined, that is a flaw that *should* be corrected. Otherwise, an exploit may ruins a significant portion of the devices on the market and that would come right back to the manufacturer.
-JoeShmoe
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I'm frankly disappointed by Apple and Steve Jobs on this whole issue. I understand that when Apple was smaller, it would have been suicide for them to put a big legal bull's eye on their back. They paid to license Amazon's one-click "technology", which if I remember write drew howls of anger from us for the perception of giving the patent merit. They did it to avoid a lawsuit over having the best shopping experience for their customers. When they first introduced the iPod with the tabline "Rip. Mix. Burn." RIAA was outraged. Even though "ripping" a CD was perfectly legal and even protected by the Home Audio Recording Act, Apple backed off the message rather than risk a lawsuit preventing the iPod's introduction. Smart move on their part seeing how the iPod turned out.
But now Apple is not some little computer company struggling as a small fish in a pond of predators. Apple isn't even a computer company anymore. They are a consumer electronics company, and they are dangerously close to repeating Sony's mistake of letting fear of the content producers influence the design of their consumer electronics. That's a recipe for failure. Hardware sales directly benefit from the availability of content, and if you cut the flow of content, you strangle your hardware sales. No one would buy a MacBook or iMac no matter how great it was if it was as closed as the iPhone has become.
The reason Apple has to take such a hard line on the iPhone is because, for perhaps the first time, Apple is at the mercy of a "content" provider: Cingular/AT&T (the content in this case is access to the cellular spectrum). I would bet any amount of money that somewhere in the contract between Apple and AT&T is the stipulation that if a Voice-Over-IP application appears on the iPhone platform, Apple will forfeit a big chunk of change. That's why there's no Flash (microphone interaction has been possible with Flash for a while now). That's why there's no native development. It's not about protecting the network from faulty a application that might screw up the mission critical cellular network. Cell phones don't have that power, otherwise you could make the same attack with the cellular PCMCIA cards and adapters that the cell phone providers already sell. Until Apple can negotiate a price they are willing to pay or give up to allow full development, knowing full well that job number one for everyone will be a VoIP app that eliminates the need to even keep Cingular around for Pay-As-You-Go, Apple is going to keep the phone locked down tight.
So I'm understand Apple. I don't expect to ever see native iPhone development as long as AT&T is in the picture. But Apple has gone too far with the warrantee cancellations. It's against the law, at least in California. A manufacturer can't void a warrantee based on a 3rd-party modification unless you prove that it was the 3rd-party modification that caused the problem. Toyota can't tell you that your warantee on your new car is void because you had Audio Discounters install a stereo unless they prove Audio Discounters cut the main system bus or something. Apple is hiding behind the fact that as a software company, they are more familiar with licensing which seems to dictate that Apple can declare the moon made of cheese and anyone who clicks "I Agree" has to live with that. But courts don't let people waive rights that are guarantee regardless of what a contract says, and so I suspect that if this case goes to court, Apple will lose. For the courts to rule otherwise would shut down nearly every hardware aftermarket industry overnight.
And, Apple would also have to prove that hardware can be, in fact, damaged by just software. That's a very scary thing to admit about a product you engineered. If it were truly possible for software to damage the iPhone hardware in a way that it would be unreasonable for Apple to be require to fix it, that's a timebomb waiting to happen. Let's say there is an exploit in Safari (there are). Let's say someone writes some cod
"whether it's called a sale or an exchange doesn't matter at all for the purpose of this discussion"
Yes, it does because a sale is income and therefore taxable and an exchange is not. You conveniently avoided this point throughout your entire response.
"Yes, the law is complicated. Otherwise, there would be loopholes that would make the ones that exist look tiny by comparison. Deal with it: either figure it out yourself or hire more adept than yourself to do it for you."
Considering I've had two different tax professionals give me two opposite answers for the above question, it's more than complicated: it's contradictory. It should be plainly obvious that reimbursing someone for an expense is the same as my directly paying the expense yourself but...duh duh duh...it's not. Someone else pointed out the absurd example of giving $100 back and forth and paying taxes on "windfall" income until nothing remains of the original $100. Is there a single line anywhere in the tax code that says that isn't what actually the IRS thinks should actually happen?
"If the other player pays you $5 for your Monopoly money, that's income, and theoretically should be reported to the IRS. Of course, it's only $5, so no one cares. However, if you were paid $5,000 for that Monopoly money, you would unquestionably need to report it as income. Similarly, if you sell a WoW account on eBay for $5,000, that's income that you need to report."
As I mentioned earlier, you are completely skipping over the difference between sale and exchange. If someone gives me $5000 for a piece of land, and I take that $5000 and buy another piece of land, then it's not income, it's an exchange (called a 1031 exchange I believe), therefore there's no tax. If the person I paid the $5000 to also buy land, then neither one of us owes any taxes at all.
So if I buy 500 WoW gold for $500, and then sell those 500 WoW gold for $500...isn't that an identical situation? Beause the dialog seems to be that the person who I bought the gold from would be paying taxes on the $500, and then I'd be paying taxes again on the same 500 Wow gold when I resold it. People wouldn't accept that kind of "double-dipping" taxation of real estate, so why should we accept it on virtual real estate?
"Ah, the whining of a tax protester."
There's no such thing as a tax protester, unless this mythical being doesn't pay for gas, own property, or buy anything really at all. I have no problem with the $5-6 extra I pay on a meal that covers the infrastructure to get me there. I pay some pretty outrageous property taxes, but I do enjoy having a fire department. And I think it's perfectly legitimate to ask what good or service has been provided for the government in exchange for income tax. Or how someone who can't afford his living expenses and ends the year with a net value less than $0 still has "income". It's absurd. And before you point out that maybe he spent all his money foolishly on things like jet skis, let me remind you that he's already paying taxes on that. It's double-dipping and it's taking advantage of the fact that most people don't have the resources to carve out a loophole for themselves. Businesses can sell the same widgit to each other 1000 times and not pay a dime in tax because they are only "resellers" or "wholesalers". But the customer pays a tax when he buys the widgit, and then gets taxed again when he resells it at his garage sale. That person also gets taxed when they resell it at their garage sale.
I realize that the thinks this is A-OK, because any interpretation or confusion that puts money in their pocket is great idea in their book. But that doesn't make it right, morally or ethically, and it completely fails the logic test. If you want to call me a "tax protester" because I think the rules for taxation should be directly tied to the benefits they fund or that the rules should be consistant with an eye towards avoiding any chance of double-dipping...then fine, I'm a "tax protester" and you
How the hell do you "sell" currency? The only entity that can do that is the Federal Reserve, selling notes that cost five or ten cents to make for face value. For everything else in the US, it's just an exchange.
...wrong. If I'm playing a hotly contested game and the other player offers me $5 for 500 Monopoly bucks, then I'm doing just that. I've personally never played such a competitive Monopoly but then I probably wouldn't be paying real money to advance in WoW either.
Person A gives a $5 bill to Person B in exchange for five $1 bills. Who has profitted? Nobody...it's a "like kind exchange" and obvious to anyone older than five. And yet, the IRS wants to be the sole agent for determining what is a "like kind exchange". Trading a large swamp for a small forest of equal "value"? Exchange. Trading a male cow for a female cow? Taxable. I pay $250/mo for my own medical insurance and my employer pays me $250/mo to reimburse me. Is that taxable income or a tax-free exchange? In order to know, I would have to slog through something like this:
http://www.irs.gov/irb/2005-16_IRB/ar08.html
What about trading $5 for 2.5 British pounds? Income or like-kind exchange? And now finally...trading $5 for 500 virtual coins. You make the statement unlike Monopoly money, you can sell virtual currency for real money"
That's my point...trading "real world" value for "virtual world" value is still just an exchange. If anything, it should be handled like any other currency exchange. And that raises the completely legitimate question of how I can trade $5 for $5 but not a hour for $5. According to the IRS, that's not an exchange and that's why it should be taxed...but there are a lot of people who disagree. After all, my time is a lot more finite than virtual gold, so if I trade my time (labor) for its equivalent value, that's an exchange.
The problem is that in all exchanges, the IRS will recognize any gain, but will never recognise a loss. Which means that if I trade property worth $10000 for property worth $20000, then I've "gained" $10000 and am taxed on that amount but the poor unlucky sap who agreed to that trade doesn't get to deduct his $10000 "loss". And that's why it's completely bogus. Someone has invented a new form of currency, and the IRS wants to recognize that any time someone trades it for US bank notes they have "gained" income and owe tax...BUT they refuse to equally recognize that any time someone provides the new form of currency (or the labor behind creating it) they have "lost" an equal or equivalent income.
So unfortunately, your idea for a tax shelter fails for that reason. They will recognize any gains and refuse any losses. Even the five-year-old would realize that's a rigged system. And so that, to me, is further evidence that calls into question the basis of the current income tax system.
-JoeShmoe
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That was my point. How does changing one form of goods and service into another count as "income"? It's an exchange. I'm trading piece of paper worth X into bits worth Y. Neither of them has any inherient value beyond what is promised by the writing on the paper or the function of the bits. It's still not income.
I'm unaware of any taxes that apply to money changing. I'm sure there's service fees and what-not, but (I hope) that there's no tax that is collected just for changing dollars into pesos, pounds, or francs. If that is the case, there shouldn't be any tax that applies to changing them into WoW gold or "hippo bucks". We are talking about exchange rates and not income, that much seems painfully clear to me.
-JoeShmoe
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So, not only is the IRS adamant about taxing "all income"
Basically, what is happening here is that someone is saying "I have 1,000,000 hippo bucks" and the IRS is trying to establish some metric of determining how much a "hippo buck" is worth in US dollars so they can tax it. OK, Slashdot: I'm offering those 1,000,000 hippo bucks for sale...who's going to buy them from me and establish the official conversion rate?
Oh wait, nobody because even a billion "hippo bucks" aren't worth anything. So then if I give someone 10,000 of my hippo bucks, has a transaction occured? Choose your own adventure:
Answer YES: Then guess f'ing what...every game of Monopoly is income and so, in aggregate, the population of the US probably owes trillions in unreported income to the IRS for all the games of Monopoly that have been played since its creation.
Answer NO: Then you're instantly smarter than our entire Congress and IRS because you realize that ITS A FREAKIN GAME. As soon as the game is dissolve, said "income" evaporates into thin air. That's the point. Sure, MMORPGs may run a lot longer than your typical game of Monopoly but guess what...if Sony went out of business and Everquest turned off its servers, then what would be left? Nothing but memories and bragging rights...which is all that's really left after a game of Monopoly.
Virtual taxes should be paid in virtual dollars. All the servers and the space the occupy, you know...reality, are already taxed at every possible level. Otherwise, what's to stop the IRS from taxing your score in Pac-Man? Couldn't that spot on the Hi-Score list have value and be auctioned on eBay? (L@@K YOUR INITIALS ON TOP!!! NO RESERVE!) Or how about those packets currently flowing into my computer...don't those have value? If someone idiot buys a single packet from me for $1000, then we are all screwed.
As a closing note, I'm uncomfortable with how easily my analogy about fictional money and invented wealth matches a description of the current US currency system. Hrm. Maybe the entire US banking system is already an MMORPG.
-JoeShmoe
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Err...no, in this case the term "online backup" means hard drives. IE, the data is kept "online" and accessible. This would be the opposite of offline backup...tape or CD. Offline (or near online) means that the data is in statis somewhere and not easily accessible. I didn't actually mean an online service, although that's definitely an option.
Someone wrote a utility that lets you "mount" Gmail as a drive letter, and this can be combined with multiple Gmail accounts I believe for about 2-3GB each. That's free but, probably sketchy. Storage hosting is about $1/GB/month, which could be expensive for anything beyond your \DATA folder. If you get a dedicated server, it can be about $.50/GB/month for about 250GB or so of storage (I like calpop.com because their servers come with unmetered 10Mbps ethernet so you don't worry about transfer overages or anything else).
And, depending on how much you trust other people, or how good your encryption is, why not put a drive or cheapie NAS at a friend or relative's house? Bonus, if you share \MEDIA you both can crib each other's collections.
-JoeShmoe
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