Um, check around. The internation average in taxes collected (including fees, sales tax, item taxes, VAT, property, income, inheritence, and all the other forms of taxes combined) is over 40% for the modern industrialized world.
simple demographics. Old people mail order a lot more than yough people, especially those few who have invested in multiple lines of credit, as the older generations typicaly avoid credit. Finding someone who has a large amount of credit cards in these demographics who does not fill in the use tax field is a glowing target for at least a casual glance at their tax records. This doesn't mean an audit, but is a red flag. Get a red flag or two from other categroies as well, and then it's an audit.
And this is why in many states, grocery, clothing under $50, outerwear under $150, and common household goods and supplies do not have sales taxes applied. Only prepared foods, luxuries, and items in certain categories are taxed, greatly limiting the regressive bnature of the tax. Poor people who rarely eat out and buy cheap household goods at walmart almost never pay sales taxes, while upper class folks pay on almost everything they touch. Sales taxes are 8-9% instead of the 6.5 here, and it actually balances in favor of the state with a slight bump in income or property taxes as well.
Don;t get me wrong, I am in full favor of completely eliminating sales taxes (and the lottery while they're at it), but there are middle grounds that are easier for politicians (and the rich who get them elected) to support.
California maxes it;s money off operating taxes and taxes on the profits of amazon. The local states need the sales taxes on the purchases that would have occured in their own state but for Amazon's central low cost nature and lack of sales tax giving them a pricing edge. All equal, I'd rarely buy from Amazon with the exception of products not offered locally...
Though big box retailers don't often comply, I do regulary get deals with small retailers when I'm shopping for a product Amazon has a better deal on. Most small businesses are willing to haggle, you just have to try... (and be willing to walk out the door if they don't negotiate). Don't be rude, or confrontational, just ask plainly, "hey, I'd love to give you the local support, but my budget't a bit tight, can you come close to mathing this price?" and often, as long as noone else is in ear shot, they will, if they're 100% certain they get nothing if they say no. Often they'll couter offer, and often amazon actually has a price lower than they're cost and they simply can't match it, but about 50-50 i get a discount.
Actually, it IS leggaly due in this state, but Amazon is not IN this state, so this state has little resource to persue legally. A federal case must be filed as this is an interstate commerce issue.
In leiu uf federal support, there's a field on your taxes to itemize taxes-unpaid interstate purchases, and instead of going after Amazon, they go after their own citizens, which is tiring, expensive, and meets resistance.
Basically, Amazon is big, and an easy target people recognize. They can be hit for the kind of massive damages that make headlines, and make all the other non-compliant sites quivver in their boots and implement systems for colelcting sales taxes for fear of punishment. Also, since Amazon is NOT a local store in your community, ervy local store owner, and all their friends, and all the pople who work at BestBuy and other complaint retail stores will all support it, and thus there's no political backlash from doing so.
Actually, if you leave that field blank on my state's taxes, your odds of an audit go up by nearly an order of magnitude. More so if you are over 55 and have multiple credit cards. (as they know you likely use mail order, and likely there's money to collect).
Proving these violations is REALLY EASY for a state. They simply need your bank statements and credit card statements, and they look for checks and credit purchaseds from out-of-state companies they already know don;t colelct tax, and then bill you the tax, times three, plus interest and penalties (usually ending up somewhere around 7 times the taxes you should have paid). This process takes about 30-60 minutes for the agent, and you get screwed. I know SEVERAL families who have gone through this recently, having made numerous large purchases online.
The state is not only concerned about purchases made without paying tax, they're also looking for in-state companies you may have paid that to, so they can go after them as well... This is easy money for the state, and an easy argument to get past thhe public (the 90% who bought locally and paid taxes don;t like you assholes who not only fail to, but send your money out of state instead of buying locally and supporting the economy). It's a win-win for the politicians, and a huge negative credit mark and a big bill for you.
Most people understand this... you need to learn it. You can choose the easy way or the hard way. (if you;ve been cheating a while, I'll vote for the hard way for you).
TRUST ME. We have such a field on our state tax forms. I know 3 different people who were audited in recent years. One of the things the auditors did was rifle through their creidit card purchase history. Any transactions from entities know to not collect sales taxes for the state automatically were flagged, and any amounts the persons had failed to enter on their taxes, they got NAILED for, roughly 7 times the ammount they would have paid in sales tax. It seemed the sate was QUITE INTERESTED in getting that out of the way FIRST, right after validating the base income of the couples.
If Amazon is not collecting taxes for you, MAKE SURE YOU REPORT THE PURCHASES ON YOUR STATE FORMS.
In some cases, credit card and bank draft purchases may be automatically reported to your state as well. Wether you are audited normally or not, failure to report these taxes is still against your state law.
By NOT paying sales taxes online you are hurting your local businesses, which effects the local flow of money, and has rippling and compunding effects on your state's budget. (money that leaves the state is not getting paid to people who live in the state which is failed income tax collection as well, and more failed tax collection when thay would have spent those paychecks...) Of course, if you can buy a product locally, you should do that anyway, but even worse than buying it online, failing to pay the taxes on it takes money out of state budgets, and states employ people too, so that's a loss to your community (which results in higher property and other taxes to make up the shortfall).
2 things are certain, death and taxes. PAY TAXES. Audits are NOT fun, and cost more than being honest and paying.
Yes, and i am also aware that corrective lenses exist to overcome this equally as generic bad vision, as well as the best treatment for hyperopia which is laser corrective surgery of the cornea (various forms of Lasik).
The only issues not correctible with both lenses and/or lasik would be cataracts, which require surgery to overcome, but once cataracts have gotten so bad as to require extremely large text to read, the eyes are so far gone you're already past the definition of legally blind. (and corrective lenses can slow and overcome early stage cataracts too).
If you have trouble reading, SEE AN EYE DOCTOR. Waiting costs MORE money, and WAY more than an alternate monitor to temporarily resolve the issue.
and if I myself could see better, I'd have not clicked "post" without some gramatical editing... Of course, that's not a condition of visual imparement, but of I didn't fucking proofread before i clicked post... sorry.
There are SO many assistance applications, magnifiers, and Os adjustments that asking for a lower resolution screen in a given size simply isn't required.
Also, telling someone to simply get a better pair of glasses is often a cheaper and simpler answer. Also, moving the screen closer to the user and using a smalle r screen also works (as the REASOn for a bigger screen is NOT making things bigger, it's to have more stuff on it!)
At the proper distance, a 17" LCS at 1024x768 is the same physical size as a 24" screen about 1.5 feet further away. Tell them to save $200, but a 19" screen, and see their eye doctor. They'll break even, and be able to read everything else better too!
If they're eyesight has fallen THAT far, then bigger print is not so much a concern, and it really is time to turn on the "assistance" features. (someone who's only 50 and can't read 1024x768 at arms length on a 19" screen wearing glasses or contacts also likely can't pass their state's eyesight requirements for DRIVING. I'm holding the daily paper up against my 22" screen (running 1200 vertical lines) and the text at arms length is BIGGER than the text in the newspaper as held at a standard reading distance (arms bent), and therefore even at the much higher resolution, should actually be EASIER to read than print... The text on my iPhone is less than half this size! If my parents could not read my screen sitting in my chair, I'd be asking for the keys to their car, permanantly, as they're no longer safe to have behind the wheel.
Self commenting code is what CoBOL was designed to do. Have you ever coded in CoBOL? it sucks... Too restrictive, and too long winded. I want my code clean, compressed, and simple. the comments can spell it out in a readable language...
Also, apparently you have also never written in Assembler, RPG, or any of the other obscure languages of old.
Further, just because i know the code calls libraries and variables and strings/lists, does NOT mean i want to go digging through other sections of code to know what that is or why. If I'm calling something, i state what it is there next to it for reference unless its so glaringly obvious it doesn't need it.
I'm not saying every line needs a comment (it doesn't hurt), but there should be zero ambiguity in what a code segment does, what the inputs, outputs, validation, debug lines, etc are.
I will say, in college, I had code marathons that lasted 30+ hours. At the end, i had code that not only compiled, but also error validated against any possible invalid input. After a night's sleep, and going back to recomment the code, sometimes it took days to comment what only took me hours to write, as i churned through logic loops that only a mind in a coder's trance could rightly produce and understand, and coders in a writing trance don;t pause to comment...
Granted, such code happens, but it shoudl NEVER be released!!!! If you can't figure out what you wrote to comment it, REWRITE IT AGAIN.
It's almost like having the code, and the pseudocode it came from side by side, and that you could remove the code, give someone the comments, and they would produce the same code back to you.
To carry the analogy, a mexican can build a house and need not understand WHY the boards get put where they do, that's the contractor's job. however, it is his job to understand the building code, and to ensure the board is placed and secured properly. he's told "put a door here" and he knows how to make the boards become a door, but he doesn't need to know anything about foundations, or roofing to do that. Same applies to a bridge builder vs a bridge architect. Someone CAN build a bridge without knowing physics (other than gravity else he ends up in the river under the bridge).
A programmer may or may not have an understanding of the mathematics of a function, he only needs to understand the function represents the math he was given, or that the output is as desirted. He needs to know how the code is placed in order to get the desired result, but not every programmer necessairily understands the nature of the program.
In large environments, codes are often told an input, and an output, and a function, and told to code it. They have no idea what's providing the input or accepting the output.
That said, not know HOW you wrote something should not be the case. Not understanding some massive calculus equation used in 3 spacial lighting and reflection is OK, as long as you understand that when someone gave you a math problem to input, you did. Your comment need not explain the math, but it does need to explain what each line is doing as it progresses, and if you wrote a line of code, and you can't write 1 line of comment to say what it does, then you can't know that it is...
I used to be the opposite. We had a professor who did nothing but try to throw BAD data at good code to see if he could break it. Extreme levels of code validation....
I wrote all kinds of software to TRACK such attemtps (including cross assignment/project), and would do crazy stuff to him and his computer when he kept failing to actually find holes in my test scenarios...
I had simple programs that could have been a few dozen pages of basic commented code otherwise, but they'de be nearly 100 pages of code by the time I tacked in all the other crap to mess with him:)
I had a seperate proffessor who graded code projects as much on good code commentiung and formatting as he did on code execution. If it compiled, and ran his test data set, you got a 50%... the other 50% was all in how it looked on paper!
Rule fo thumb: Every line needs both a coment and a debug line. Every function or code loopp/process needs a header description. every subprogram should have an inline manual. Any entry should be able to accept a null input (or a ? or something), and output to a user the correct input (ie, if you fail to give it the right format, it shoudl automatically prompt/repromt including help lines to get it from you).
Give me 100 lines of good readible raw code, and I'll give you back 300-400 lines of formatted, commented code that would get an A in his class.
Yup, and since there's a GREAT teacher shortage in SC, there IS no waiting list, so other than the teachers that get fired for blantant issues (which actually, SC was #1 in the country for it;s speeding removal of bad teachers, but it is a right-to-work state afterall, with no tenure, no unions, and no requirement for a board vote to remove a teacher), there are no "better" teachers waiting in line. Anyone who wants to teach in this stae, gets a job, including a current exception for high School teachers that allows ANYONE to teach for up to 3 years, at a starting pay up to that of a 10 year certified teacher (including sign on bonuses) for math and science because they simply don't HAVE enough teachers waiting to fill those positions.... yes the teachers we have can't even get that deal.
Provide evidence indicating they are LESS trustworthy than Microsoft, Dell, HP, or any other. Holding service certifications for Apple, Dell, HP, IBM, and a slew of others, and speaking on 15 years of IT experience managing consumers, SMBs, and 15,000 employee enterprises, I can say by FAR, Apple ha sprovided the single most stellar customer experience of any of the others, has been more open about product support, has reacted quicker to product recalls, and actually provides an appropriate value for the money (for that class of technology).
I've been using both Apple and IBM clone technologies since 1982. I've been on thousands of service calls and tested hundreds of products and applications. Apple has always been best-of-breed.
Yes, there are SOME questionable things about them, and far more FUD than they deserve, but when it comes to it, they replace systems even when out of waranty, they actually SUPPORT their OS instead of asking you to simply re-install it, and bend over backwards to make happy customers. The only people you hear about in the news are the people who sued first, asked second, and NO company works with people they can easily identify as out for money or press....
Each state is different. This stateor the district itself locally 1) eliminated teacher aids without reducing the workload forcing each group of 4-6 teachers that previously shared an iad to divide that work, 2) requires teachers to attend regular meetings (weekly) for lesson plan development as well as milestones and deadlines for handing in preformatted lesson plan material (about 4-5 hours per week effort outside of class), 3) mandates teacher group meetings (1.5 hours per week) for school development, 4) mandates teachers have open office hours for meeting with parents to as late as 7PM with as little as 1 day notice of a scheduled consultation (happens 2-3 times a week), and 5) a near elimination of multiple choice means almost all assignemtns, quizzes, and tests can only be graded by hand, yet no time is given during the teaching day to do this work.
In fact, we're currently forming a class action suit against the district as the teachers are not even given their by law 30 minute rest period as even during lunch they're required to sit with and monitor their students.
My wife teaches 2 classes each of 2 different sets of kids, producing 84 exams to grade each week, twice than many quizzes, and nightly homework from half the kids in 2 subjects each.
She's in the building from 6:30AM until 3:30PM daily, til 5PM 1 night, and 5:30 another. Without breaks, that alone is 48.5 hours a week. Parent conferences, orienations, after school assemblies, and more are all extra. Then she spends 1-2 hours a night grading or working on lesson plans, including at least that much time each saturday and sunday. On top of that, she's required to take additional college classes or loose her state teaching certificate.
You likely know some high school teachers who teach a single subject to a lot of kids, who can replicate material and repeat it, and take advantage of electronic grading systems, or use canned lessons in state's that provide them to teachers, and they likely have aids or interns to fork over work on. In SC, I can assure you that does not occur.
I know about 40 teachers personally, in several grade levels from 2 through 10. My wife has worked for 3 different districts and 4 different schools. They ALL work over 55 hours a week on average here, especially elementary school.
They're also on contract for 198 days, not 185 like most states.
ABSOLUTELY someone who goes to college for 4 years, or 7 years, deserves to be paid a higher wage than a non-technical; job that requires no education or extensive experience. Why in the hell would someone voluntairily blow 30K on school costs if they knew they could get a higher paying job by not doing it (and start earning that money 4-6 yeasr earlier on top)?
Teacher MINIMUM wage needs to be set at $40K, adjusted up for regional income. Salary increase with tenure should be expected to exceed cost of living increases. Additional degrees should also come with substantially higher pay, as should positions of authority (team leads are currently NOT paid extra!!!).
The national average salary, if you checked the links, does not include only teachers, but several types of administratiors, specialty teachers, coaches, and more. Including teachers alone, it's just barely 43K average annual salary, and that's inclusive that the mean teacher age is over 40 (meaning the average teacher making $43K has been doing it 10 years or more!!!! I know wiaters, bartenders, and people at BestBuy that make more than my wife who has 2 masters degrees. if not for the degrees, she'd be at only $34K... taking those classes was clearly a good financial decision. Though trying to continue and get her doctorite is meeting resistance as the school has threatened to TERMINATE HER if she attains that as they can not afford the state mandated $8K raise should she earn a doctoral degree unless they have a doctoral position open at that time (which they do not). To discourage additional teachers, they also canceled the $7500 national teacher certification bonus (which is paid over 10 years).
Oh, and the Average person only works 40 hours to get their pay, teachers work 55. An NO, they do NOT get summers off, that 55 hours per week I quoted was my wife's actual logged time divided by 52 weeks...
The same site claiming 51K anual salary average for teachers claimed SC got $46K average.
That would mean the AVERAGE teacher had over 10 years experience and at least a masters degree...
And it;s not the national average wage we're asking for, it;s the average nation wage for colleg egraduates we're asking for. My wife does not deserve to be paid an average only slightly higher than a walmart lower manager or some coffee shop attendant, or a waitress in a chain restauruant, she went to school 7 total years, at a cost of nearly $45K, and deserves to earn that much and more back in less than 10 years post graduation...
Well, given any other state, you could invade and kick over the government with a few BB guns and lound language, but given this is the DEEEEP south, and with the numnber of guns floating around and packs of large dogs trained to kill on comand, obama would have to recall half the trops stationed across the wold to even hold the line here...
That said, feel free to invade anytime. I'll not stand in your way. If we could afford to get her certified in another state, afford the move, and sell this house, we'd already be gone. With the wages and property values so low, it;s basically impossible to leave:(
Yea, the admins who make 150-250K anually (one local VICE principal, who is neither elected nor holds a teaching certification, nor has spend a single year in an actual classroom) makes $600,000.
Also, the slaries posted are not regionally adjusted, and include other non-teacher staff who are much higher paid than teachers including coaches, doctors/nurses, special educators (resource/mental imparement/deaf/blind/etc), and curriculum leads.
For reference, here;s one local district's salary schedule for 2008/2009. They're one of the few in the state that does not hide this information behind a log-in prompt (though by state law this mush be published, although getting a copy is an excersize in futility in many plamces). This particular district has the 2nd higest pay rates in the sate, given it's the state capitol's own district. http://www.richland2.org/lib/files/DistrictOffice/Departments/HumanResources/Teacher%200809.pdf
Note that it takes a teacher with a master's degree and 13 years teaching to exceed 50K in the state's 2nd highest paid district. A teacher without a masters can never cross this line. From year 22 - 27 there is NO ANUAL RAISE!
A nearby town, Florence, starts certified teachers in standard schools at $24K. (uncertified teachers at $16-19K depending on the subject). If teaching in a "depreciated" school (either starting a new job in an underperformaing school, or working in a "poverty" zone comes with an extra $3K anually). Starting teachers with up to $30K in college debt stand to take home less than $700 a month after classroom costs, continuing education requirements, and student loan payments. Could you afford to be 23 years old, working 55 hours a week, try to find a souse, buy a house, and start a family on $700 a month? to get to $50K taking another 13 years and 10-15K more in education expenses for a master's degree?
My wife is 10 yeas in, has 2 masters plus an additional 18 hours towards her doctorate, and she's not crossed the 45K line yet... I crossed that 4 years into the computer trade, WITHOUT a college degree, and I don't have to deal with a room of 20-25 pre-teens to do that... I've been averaging a $3-5K anual raise, without additional school or a degree, she gets $900-1100... Who exactly do you expect to WANT to be a teacher? That's why our schools suck!
Actually, the lesson plans my wife writes are not only compulsory, she has manditory levels of effort and content to produce, and she's required to share that material with a group inclusive of 8 teachers in her area (who each also produce and share material). They meet WEEKLY distributing tasks, and all the material is submitted to the school and is reused/reworked by later groups of teachers. They're living documents that have to be contantly adjusted over time to account for changes in curriculum requirements, new textbooks, new classroom tools, and new teaching methods. This material is MANDITORY, and failure to produce lesson material is met with disciplinary action. Teachers are expressly forbidden from working on this material during school hours except for a 30 minute time frame (which is actually the only 30 minutes each day they are not expressly watching or teaching children, so we're actually filing suit in the state to see how the labor board reacts to the fact they legally are not getting a "30 minute break" where no work is required).
My wife gets to school at 6:30AM daily. She leaves at 4PM 3 days a week, 5PM 1 day (teacher deperment meeting) and not until 6PM another (she was appointed, involkuntarily, to run a comitte, for which she is not paid extra). This is in addition to 4-6 "meet the teacher" nights, and the district requirement that she allways meet with parents on the PARENT'S schedule (often before 6:30AM or after 5PM). Then she;s doing 1-2 hours of gradework per night (inclouding saturday and sunday just to keep up), and another 4-5 hours of lesson planning weekly, and she works several hours per day through each vacation period playing catch up, and then 100-150 hours during the summer (9 weeks), and that does not include her MADITORY continued education (at her expense) of 9 semester hours every 5 years, and the 500-600 hours she put into national teacher certification, and all of the addirtional lectures and meetings she's required to attend.
Last year, we booked it out to 55 hours per week, averaged across the 52 weeks. (some weeks more, durring the summer less). She is completely incapable of working a summer or part tyime job outside of school due to district policies and mandates.
Since the district sees her material production as a clear component of her employment, with mandated deliverables, selling that work to other teachers is explressly forbidden in her teaching contract, and teachers can be penalized or terminated (including the publisahing of certain state mandated materials for which it is actually against the law for a non-educator to have access to for any reason, including defined fines and improsonment!)
ANYTHING you dor create "in the course of performing the duties of your job" is considered IP belonging to your employer, which in my wife's case is the local school district.
They strictly control what information is distributed. As it would make sense to distribute information to other teachers to make the work easier, it is equally or even more so in the district's interest (and the state's) to keep that information private, as a lesson plan can easily be interrogated to determine the quality of education a student is receiving. If the public could review lesson plans directly, they likely would not approve... or worse, government agencies and lobyists would get into the state's business (this happened with the PACT testing system, and is a key reason the state abandoned it).
Slashdot Mirror
Um, check around. The internation average in taxes collected (including fees, sales tax, item taxes, VAT, property, income, inheritence, and all the other forms of taxes combined) is over 40% for the modern industrialized world.
The US total average taxes amount to about 30%, we're 21st on the list.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/tax_tot_tax_wed_sin_wor-total-tax-wedge-single-worker
simple demographics. Old people mail order a lot more than yough people, especially those few who have invested in multiple lines of credit, as the older generations typicaly avoid credit. Finding someone who has a large amount of credit cards in these demographics who does not fill in the use tax field is a glowing target for at least a casual glance at their tax records. This doesn't mean an audit, but is a red flag. Get a red flag or two from other categroies as well, and then it's an audit.
And this is why in many states, grocery, clothing under $50, outerwear under $150, and common household goods and supplies do not have sales taxes applied. Only prepared foods, luxuries, and items in certain categories are taxed, greatly limiting the regressive bnature of the tax. Poor people who rarely eat out and buy cheap household goods at walmart almost never pay sales taxes, while upper class folks pay on almost everything they touch. Sales taxes are 8-9% instead of the 6.5 here, and it actually balances in favor of the state with a slight bump in income or property taxes as well.
Don;t get me wrong, I am in full favor of completely eliminating sales taxes (and the lottery while they're at it), but there are middle grounds that are easier for politicians (and the rich who get them elected) to support.
California maxes it;s money off operating taxes and taxes on the profits of amazon. The local states need the sales taxes on the purchases that would have occured in their own state but for Amazon's central low cost nature and lack of sales tax giving them a pricing edge. All equal, I'd rarely buy from Amazon with the exception of products not offered locally...
Though big box retailers don't often comply, I do regulary get deals with small retailers when I'm shopping for a product Amazon has a better deal on. Most small businesses are willing to haggle, you just have to try... (and be willing to walk out the door if they don't negotiate). Don't be rude, or confrontational, just ask plainly, "hey, I'd love to give you the local support, but my budget't a bit tight, can you come close to mathing this price?" and often, as long as noone else is in ear shot, they will, if they're 100% certain they get nothing if they say no. Often they'll couter offer, and often amazon actually has a price lower than they're cost and they simply can't match it, but about 50-50 i get a discount.
Actually, it IS leggaly due in this state, but Amazon is not IN this state, so this state has little resource to persue legally. A federal case must be filed as this is an interstate commerce issue.
In leiu uf federal support, there's a field on your taxes to itemize taxes-unpaid interstate purchases, and instead of going after Amazon, they go after their own citizens, which is tiring, expensive, and meets resistance.
Basically, Amazon is big, and an easy target people recognize. They can be hit for the kind of massive damages that make headlines, and make all the other non-compliant sites quivver in their boots and implement systems for colelcting sales taxes for fear of punishment. Also, since Amazon is NOT a local store in your community, ervy local store owner, and all their friends, and all the pople who work at BestBuy and other complaint retail stores will all support it, and thus there's no political backlash from doing so.
Actually, if you leave that field blank on my state's taxes, your odds of an audit go up by nearly an order of magnitude. More so if you are over 55 and have multiple credit cards. (as they know you likely use mail order, and likely there's money to collect).
Proving these violations is REALLY EASY for a state. They simply need your bank statements and credit card statements, and they look for checks and credit purchaseds from out-of-state companies they already know don;t colelct tax, and then bill you the tax, times three, plus interest and penalties (usually ending up somewhere around 7 times the taxes you should have paid). This process takes about 30-60 minutes for the agent, and you get screwed. I know SEVERAL families who have gone through this recently, having made numerous large purchases online.
The state is not only concerned about purchases made without paying tax, they're also looking for in-state companies you may have paid that to, so they can go after them as well... This is easy money for the state, and an easy argument to get past thhe public (the 90% who bought locally and paid taxes don;t like you assholes who not only fail to, but send your money out of state instead of buying locally and supporting the economy). It's a win-win for the politicians, and a huge negative credit mark and a big bill for you.
Most people understand this... you need to learn it. You can choose the easy way or the hard way. (if you;ve been cheating a while, I'll vote for the hard way for you).
TRUST ME. We have such a field on our state tax forms. I know 3 different people who were audited in recent years. One of the things the auditors did was rifle through their creidit card purchase history. Any transactions from entities know to not collect sales taxes for the state automatically were flagged, and any amounts the persons had failed to enter on their taxes, they got NAILED for, roughly 7 times the ammount they would have paid in sales tax. It seemed the sate was QUITE INTERESTED in getting that out of the way FIRST, right after validating the base income of the couples.
If Amazon is not collecting taxes for you, MAKE SURE YOU REPORT THE PURCHASES ON YOUR STATE FORMS.
In some cases, credit card and bank draft purchases may be automatically reported to your state as well. Wether you are audited normally or not, failure to report these taxes is still against your state law.
By NOT paying sales taxes online you are hurting your local businesses, which effects the local flow of money, and has rippling and compunding effects on your state's budget. (money that leaves the state is not getting paid to people who live in the state which is failed income tax collection as well, and more failed tax collection when thay would have spent those paychecks...) Of course, if you can buy a product locally, you should do that anyway, but even worse than buying it online, failing to pay the taxes on it takes money out of state budgets, and states employ people too, so that's a loss to your community (which results in higher property and other taxes to make up the shortfall).
2 things are certain, death and taxes. PAY TAXES. Audits are NOT fun, and cost more than being honest and paying.
Yes, and i am also aware that corrective lenses exist to overcome this equally as generic bad vision, as well as the best treatment for hyperopia which is laser corrective surgery of the cornea (various forms of Lasik).
The only issues not correctible with both lenses and/or lasik would be cataracts, which require surgery to overcome, but once cataracts have gotten so bad as to require extremely large text to read, the eyes are so far gone you're already past the definition of legally blind. (and corrective lenses can slow and overcome early stage cataracts too).
If you have trouble reading, SEE AN EYE DOCTOR. Waiting costs MORE money, and WAY more than an alternate monitor to temporarily resolve the issue.
and if I myself could see better, I'd have not clicked "post" without some gramatical editing... Of course, that's not a condition of visual imparement, but of I didn't fucking proofread before i clicked post... sorry.
There are SO many assistance applications, magnifiers, and Os adjustments that asking for a lower resolution screen in a given size simply isn't required.
Also, telling someone to simply get a better pair of glasses is often a cheaper and simpler answer. Also, moving the screen closer to the user and using a smalle r screen also works (as the REASOn for a bigger screen is NOT making things bigger, it's to have more stuff on it!)
At the proper distance, a 17" LCS at 1024x768 is the same physical size as a 24" screen about 1.5 feet further away. Tell them to save $200, but a 19" screen, and see their eye doctor. They'll break even, and be able to read everything else better too!
If they're eyesight has fallen THAT far, then bigger print is not so much a concern, and it really is time to turn on the "assistance" features. (someone who's only 50 and can't read 1024x768 at arms length on a 19" screen wearing glasses or contacts also likely can't pass their state's eyesight requirements for DRIVING. I'm holding the daily paper up against my 22" screen (running 1200 vertical lines) and the text at arms length is BIGGER than the text in the newspaper as held at a standard reading distance (arms bent), and therefore even at the much higher resolution, should actually be EASIER to read than print... The text on my iPhone is less than half this size! If my parents could not read my screen sitting in my chair, I'd be asking for the keys to their car, permanantly, as they're no longer safe to have behind the wheel.
Yea, and then what do I do with LISP?!?!?!? lol.
Self commenting code is what CoBOL was designed to do. Have you ever coded in CoBOL? it sucks... Too restrictive, and too long winded. I want my code clean, compressed, and simple. the comments can spell it out in a readable language...
Also, apparently you have also never written in Assembler, RPG, or any of the other obscure languages of old.
Further, just because i know the code calls libraries and variables and strings/lists, does NOT mean i want to go digging through other sections of code to know what that is or why. If I'm calling something, i state what it is there next to it for reference unless its so glaringly obvious it doesn't need it.
I'm not saying every line needs a comment (it doesn't hurt), but there should be zero ambiguity in what a code segment does, what the inputs, outputs, validation, debug lines, etc are.
I will say, in college, I had code marathons that lasted 30+ hours. At the end, i had code that not only compiled, but also error validated against any possible invalid input. After a night's sleep, and going back to recomment the code, sometimes it took days to comment what only took me hours to write, as i churned through logic loops that only a mind in a coder's trance could rightly produce and understand, and coders in a writing trance don;t pause to comment...
Granted, such code happens, but it shoudl NEVER be released!!!! If you can't figure out what you wrote to comment it, REWRITE IT AGAIN.
It's almost like having the code, and the pseudocode it came from side by side, and that you could remove the code, give someone the comments, and they would produce the same code back to you.
To carry the analogy, a mexican can build a house and need not understand WHY the boards get put where they do, that's the contractor's job. however, it is his job to understand the building code, and to ensure the board is placed and secured properly. he's told "put a door here" and he knows how to make the boards become a door, but he doesn't need to know anything about foundations, or roofing to do that. Same applies to a bridge builder vs a bridge architect. Someone CAN build a bridge without knowing physics (other than gravity else he ends up in the river under the bridge).
A programmer may or may not have an understanding of the mathematics of a function, he only needs to understand the function represents the math he was given, or that the output is as desirted. He needs to know how the code is placed in order to get the desired result, but not every programmer necessairily understands the nature of the program.
In large environments, codes are often told an input, and an output, and a function, and told to code it. They have no idea what's providing the input or accepting the output.
That said, not know HOW you wrote something should not be the case. Not understanding some massive calculus equation used in 3 spacial lighting and reflection is OK, as long as you understand that when someone gave you a math problem to input, you did. Your comment need not explain the math, but it does need to explain what each line is doing as it progresses, and if you wrote a line of code, and you can't write 1 line of comment to say what it does, then you can't know that it is...
I used to be the opposite. We had a professor who did nothing but try to throw BAD data at good code to see if he could break it. Extreme levels of code validation....
I wrote all kinds of software to TRACK such attemtps (including cross assignment/project), and would do crazy stuff to him and his computer when he kept failing to actually find holes in my test scenarios...
I had simple programs that could have been a few dozen pages of basic commented code otherwise, but they'de be nearly 100 pages of code by the time I tacked in all the other crap to mess with him :)
I had a seperate proffessor who graded code projects as much on good code commentiung and formatting as he did on code execution. If it compiled, and ran his test data set, you got a 50%... the other 50% was all in how it looked on paper!
Rule fo thumb: Every line needs both a coment and a debug line. Every function or code loopp/process needs a header description. every subprogram should have an inline manual. Any entry should be able to accept a null input (or a ? or something), and output to a user the correct input (ie, if you fail to give it the right format, it shoudl automatically prompt/repromt including help lines to get it from you).
Give me 100 lines of good readible raw code, and I'll give you back 300-400 lines of formatted, commented code that would get an A in his class.
Yup, and since there's a GREAT teacher shortage in SC, there IS no waiting list, so other than the teachers that get fired for blantant issues (which actually, SC was #1 in the country for it;s speeding removal of bad teachers, but it is a right-to-work state afterall, with no tenure, no unions, and no requirement for a board vote to remove a teacher), there are no "better" teachers waiting in line. Anyone who wants to teach in this stae, gets a job, including a current exception for high School teachers that allows ANYONE to teach for up to 3 years, at a starting pay up to that of a 10 year certified teacher (including sign on bonuses) for math and science because they simply don't HAVE enough teachers waiting to fill those positions.... yes the teachers we have can't even get that deal.
Provide evidence indicating they are LESS trustworthy than Microsoft, Dell, HP, or any other. Holding service certifications for Apple, Dell, HP, IBM, and a slew of others, and speaking on 15 years of IT experience managing consumers, SMBs, and 15,000 employee enterprises, I can say by FAR, Apple ha sprovided the single most stellar customer experience of any of the others, has been more open about product support, has reacted quicker to product recalls, and actually provides an appropriate value for the money (for that class of technology).
I've been using both Apple and IBM clone technologies since 1982. I've been on thousands of service calls and tested hundreds of products and applications. Apple has always been best-of-breed.
Yes, there are SOME questionable things about them, and far more FUD than they deserve, but when it comes to it, they replace systems even when out of waranty, they actually SUPPORT their OS instead of asking you to simply re-install it, and bend over backwards to make happy customers. The only people you hear about in the news are the people who sued first, asked second, and NO company works with people they can easily identify as out for money or press....
Each state is different. This stateor the district itself locally 1) eliminated teacher aids without reducing the workload forcing each group of 4-6 teachers that previously shared an iad to divide that work, 2) requires teachers to attend regular meetings (weekly) for lesson plan development as well as milestones and deadlines for handing in preformatted lesson plan material (about 4-5 hours per week effort outside of class), 3) mandates teacher group meetings (1.5 hours per week) for school development, 4) mandates teachers have open office hours for meeting with parents to as late as 7PM with as little as 1 day notice of a scheduled consultation (happens 2-3 times a week), and 5) a near elimination of multiple choice means almost all assignemtns, quizzes, and tests can only be graded by hand, yet no time is given during the teaching day to do this work.
In fact, we're currently forming a class action suit against the district as the teachers are not even given their by law 30 minute rest period as even during lunch they're required to sit with and monitor their students.
My wife teaches 2 classes each of 2 different sets of kids, producing 84 exams to grade each week, twice than many quizzes, and nightly homework from half the kids in 2 subjects each.
She's in the building from 6:30AM until 3:30PM daily, til 5PM 1 night, and 5:30 another. Without breaks, that alone is 48.5 hours a week. Parent conferences, orienations, after school assemblies, and more are all extra. Then she spends 1-2 hours a night grading or working on lesson plans, including at least that much time each saturday and sunday. On top of that, she's required to take additional college classes or loose her state teaching certificate.
You likely know some high school teachers who teach a single subject to a lot of kids, who can replicate material and repeat it, and take advantage of electronic grading systems, or use canned lessons in state's that provide them to teachers, and they likely have aids or interns to fork over work on. In SC, I can assure you that does not occur.
I know about 40 teachers personally, in several grade levels from 2 through 10. My wife has worked for 3 different districts and 4 different schools. They ALL work over 55 hours a week on average here, especially elementary school.
They're also on contract for 198 days, not 185 like most states.
ABSOLUTELY someone who goes to college for 4 years, or 7 years, deserves to be paid a higher wage than a non-technical; job that requires no education or extensive experience. Why in the hell would someone voluntairily blow 30K on school costs if they knew they could get a higher paying job by not doing it (and start earning that money 4-6 yeasr earlier on top)?
Teacher MINIMUM wage needs to be set at $40K, adjusted up for regional income. Salary increase with tenure should be expected to exceed cost of living increases. Additional degrees should also come with substantially higher pay, as should positions of authority (team leads are currently NOT paid extra!!!).
The national average salary, if you checked the links, does not include only teachers, but several types of administratiors, specialty teachers, coaches, and more. Including teachers alone, it's just barely 43K average annual salary, and that's inclusive that the mean teacher age is over 40 (meaning the average teacher making $43K has been doing it 10 years or more!!!! I know wiaters, bartenders, and people at BestBuy that make more than my wife who has 2 masters degrees. if not for the degrees, she'd be at only $34K... taking those classes was clearly a good financial decision. Though trying to continue and get her doctorite is meeting resistance as the school has threatened to TERMINATE HER if she attains that as they can not afford the state mandated $8K raise should she earn a doctoral degree unless they have a doctoral position open at that time (which they do not). To discourage additional teachers, they also canceled the $7500 national teacher certification bonus (which is paid over 10 years).
That might actually work. ...though it might but a pretty big hit on the national beer reserves!
Call budweiser!
Oh, and the Average person only works 40 hours to get their pay, teachers work 55. An NO, they do NOT get summers off, that 55 hours per week I quoted was my wife's actual logged time divided by 52 weeks...
Did you LOOK at the pay scale?
The same site claiming 51K anual salary average for teachers claimed SC got $46K average.
That would mean the AVERAGE teacher had over 10 years experience and at least a masters degree...
And it;s not the national average wage we're asking for, it;s the average nation wage for colleg egraduates we're asking for. My wife does not deserve to be paid an average only slightly higher than a walmart lower manager or some coffee shop attendant, or a waitress in a chain restauruant, she went to school 7 total years, at a cost of nearly $45K, and deserves to earn that much and more back in less than 10 years post graduation...
Well, given any other state, you could invade and kick over the government with a few BB guns and lound language, but given this is the DEEEEP south, and with the numnber of guns floating around and packs of large dogs trained to kill on comand, obama would have to recall half the trops stationed across the wold to even hold the line here...
That said, feel free to invade anytime. I'll not stand in your way. If we could afford to get her certified in another state, afford the move, and sell this house, we'd already be gone. With the wages and property values so low, it;s basically impossible to leave :(
Yea, the admins who make 150-250K anually (one local VICE principal, who is neither elected nor holds a teaching certification, nor has spend a single year in an actual classroom) makes $600,000.
Also, the slaries posted are not regionally adjusted, and include other non-teacher staff who are much higher paid than teachers including coaches, doctors/nurses, special educators (resource/mental imparement/deaf/blind/etc), and curriculum leads.
For reference, here;s one local district's salary schedule for 2008/2009. They're one of the few in the state that does not hide this information behind a log-in prompt (though by state law this mush be published, although getting a copy is an excersize in futility in many plamces). This particular district has the 2nd higest pay rates in the sate, given it's the state capitol's own district. http://www.richland2.org/lib/files/DistrictOffice/Departments/HumanResources/Teacher%200809.pdf
Note that it takes a teacher with a master's degree and 13 years teaching to exceed 50K in the state's 2nd highest paid district. A teacher without a masters can never cross this line. From year 22 - 27 there is NO ANUAL RAISE!
A nearby town, Florence, starts certified teachers in standard schools at $24K. (uncertified teachers at $16-19K depending on the subject). If teaching in a "depreciated" school (either starting a new job in an underperformaing school, or working in a "poverty" zone comes with an extra $3K anually). Starting teachers with up to $30K in college debt stand to take home less than $700 a month after classroom costs, continuing education requirements, and student loan payments. Could you afford to be 23 years old, working 55 hours a week, try to find a souse, buy a house, and start a family on $700 a month? to get to $50K taking another 13 years and 10-15K more in education expenses for a master's degree?
My wife is 10 yeas in, has 2 masters plus an additional 18 hours towards her doctorate, and she's not crossed the 45K line yet... I crossed that 4 years into the computer trade, WITHOUT a college degree, and I don't have to deal with a room of 20-25 pre-teens to do that... I've been averaging a $3-5K anual raise, without additional school or a degree, she gets $900-1100... Who exactly do you expect to WANT to be a teacher? That's why our schools suck!
Actually, the lesson plans my wife writes are not only compulsory, she has manditory levels of effort and content to produce, and she's required to share that material with a group inclusive of 8 teachers in her area (who each also produce and share material). They meet WEEKLY distributing tasks, and all the material is submitted to the school and is reused/reworked by later groups of teachers. They're living documents that have to be contantly adjusted over time to account for changes in curriculum requirements, new textbooks, new classroom tools, and new teaching methods. This material is MANDITORY, and failure to produce lesson material is met with disciplinary action. Teachers are expressly forbidden from working on this material during school hours except for a 30 minute time frame (which is actually the only 30 minutes each day they are not expressly watching or teaching children, so we're actually filing suit in the state to see how the labor board reacts to the fact they legally are not getting a "30 minute break" where no work is required).
My wife gets to school at 6:30AM daily. She leaves at 4PM 3 days a week, 5PM 1 day (teacher deperment meeting) and not until 6PM another (she was appointed, involkuntarily, to run a comitte, for which she is not paid extra). This is in addition to 4-6 "meet the teacher" nights, and the district requirement that she allways meet with parents on the PARENT'S schedule (often before 6:30AM or after 5PM). Then she;s doing 1-2 hours of gradework per night (inclouding saturday and sunday just to keep up), and another 4-5 hours of lesson planning weekly, and she works several hours per day through each vacation period playing catch up, and then 100-150 hours during the summer (9 weeks), and that does not include her MADITORY continued education (at her expense) of 9 semester hours every 5 years, and the 500-600 hours she put into national teacher certification, and all of the addirtional lectures and meetings she's required to attend.
Last year, we booked it out to 55 hours per week, averaged across the 52 weeks. (some weeks more, durring the summer less). She is completely incapable of working a summer or part tyime job outside of school due to district policies and mandates.
Since the district sees her material production as a clear component of her employment, with mandated deliverables, selling that work to other teachers is explressly forbidden in her teaching contract, and teachers can be penalized or terminated (including the publisahing of certain state mandated materials for which it is actually against the law for a non-educator to have access to for any reason, including defined fines and improsonment!)
ANYTHING you dor create "in the course of performing the duties of your job" is considered IP belonging to your employer, which in my wife's case is the local school district.
They strictly control what information is distributed. As it would make sense to distribute information to other teachers to make the work easier, it is equally or even more so in the district's interest (and the state's) to keep that information private, as a lesson plan can easily be interrogated to determine the quality of education a student is receiving. If the public could review lesson plans directly, they likely would not approve... or worse, government agencies and lobyists would get into the state's business (this happened with the PACT testing system, and is a key reason the state abandoned it).