It's actually very common for states and cities to tax income earned in that jurisdiction by non-residents. The reason DC doesn't do this is because Congress won't let it. This is one of the prime reason for DC's high tax rates on residents, along with the fact that a huge amount of land in the city is non-taxable because it's owned by the feds or by various non-taxable institutions.
But rather than let DC solve its financial problems using the same tools as every other jurisdiction, Congress continues to deny DC residents their rights as citizens by overruling the DC council at every step.
By the way, DC license plates now have the logo, "Taxation without Representation" to protest the fact that DC residents have no representation in Congress (other than the "shadow" representatives who have no meaningful vote).
If you're specifically interested in donating to help tsunami victims, former Presidents Bush I and Clinton have been appearing in a commercial soliciting donations for that cause. They cite a web site that lists legitimate charities that are helping with this disaster. Check it out.
> With SD Cards reaching 1GB in size, why don't people just use PDA's for music? A mystery or just an impending trend?
Feh. When the Shuffle came out I thought, "Hey, I can use my PDA and save a hundred bucks." It's a Viewsonic PocketPC I got through MSDN, with Windows Media Player built-in. I stuck an SD memory card in it and loaded up a couple CDs worth of MP3s. Built a playlist and tried to listen.
What a joke! I can only play one song, then I have to pull out the stylus and go through the menus to start another. The repeat and shuffle settings do nothing. Try to skip to another song, and it hangs with an "Opening" message until I go to the playlist again and manually open another song. Having to stop what I'm doing every 4 minutes or so to start another song sort of breaks up my activity.
It's designed to work better than this, but it just plain doesn't work (well, it is Microsoft software, what do you expect?). I finally gave up - I'll eventually pick up a Shuffle and have a player that works.
I have an old Newton 110 sitting in a desk drawer somewhere. The only reason I stopped using it is because it's too big to easily carry with me.
I now have a PocketPC (wouldn't have bought it, got it free). Even though it has somthing like 100 times the memory and 50 times the processor power, and is 10 years newer, it doesn't work nearly as well as the Newton. The Newton's handwriting recognition is far better, the built-in apps work better, the UI is infinitely better, etc. It's even faster at most things (probably because it's not pushing a lot of color around).
The Newton was way ahead of the game. Its designers recognized that the new form factor also required a new user interface paradigm - the WIMP/desktop metaphor doesn't work in that form factor. They came up with something revolutionary that worked beautifully in a handheld, pen-driven device. Microsoft seems to think that everything has to look like Windows - they just don't get it.
I wish Jobs hadn't killed the Newton. Imagine a Newton with a fast StrongArm, lots of memory, color, etc., in a Palm form factor. It would put Palm and Microsoft PPC to shame.
I listen to a lot of classical at the moment. One annoyance I find is that some parts will either be very quiet or will be mainly bass. When I'm on the bus or train it just ends up as silence. Try listening to Beethoven's 7th with reduced base. You'll end up missing the begining of the 2nd movment.
Try using a pair of active noise reduction headphones. I took a pair on my last long plane flight and used them to listen to the classical music channel on the plane's audio system. At one point I was listening to a string quartet, and I discovered that with the ANR turned off, I couldn't hear the cello at all. With ANR turned on, it was clear as a bell. The ANR works best at filtering out the low, steady frequencies that drown out your bass.
I pretty much have to agree with you here. I still beleive that Windows 98 is probably the most used Windows out there. Every time I happen by someone's house that isn't very computer savvy, they're running Windows 98.
There are also many PCs out there that aren't capable of running NT-based OSs. My wife's 5-year-old Sony Viao won't run anything newer than Win98 SE (won't run Linux, either). There's no good reason to replace the machine because it does everything she needs it to do, so she'll be running Win98 SE for the forseeable future.
"In MD, our governor is libertarian, but is on the republical ballot."
Ehrlich as libertarian? It is to laugh! This is a man who, since taking office, has focused almost exclusively on bringing slot machines back into the state, regulated (or perhaps operated) by the gummint, and who has been raising taxes while calling them by the Orwellian term "user fees". He's also a big backer of the very non-libertarian President Bush. Pure Republican.
" Ever heard of cable modems? Who would want to pay the same monthly fee for service which is 10 times slower?"
Let's see. Cable goes out on a regular basis. Phone hasn't gone out since I moved into the house 18 years ago. Oh, and DSL costs 2/3 as much as cable internet around here. Plus there's the bandwidth-sharing issue with cable...
Maybe these are some reasons why some of us chose not to go with the cable modem.
I wish I could moderate Pudge's comment. It deserves a nice big Flamebait.
Yes, DRM sucks. But we wouldn't have the iTunes Music Store without it. Do you really think that the labels would have allowed Apple to provide downloads of their music without some form of DRM?
Zeolite is a chalky substance that absorbs odors and chemicals from the air. A NASA engineer I know says they use it in some of their satellites to prevent contamination. My wife put several bags of it on her new monitor and, although it didn't completely get rid of the smell, it did help.
When she bought a new car, she aired it out a lot, rented an ozone machine and ran it in the car overnight, and put a lot of zeolite in the car, and the new car smell was vanquished in a couple of months.
I have to say that I'm disappointed with Slashdot today. MCS is a real problem. Just because some arrogant doctor doesn't understand the mechanism doesn't mean it doesn't exist. My wife met a lot of skepticism from doctors about her problems - one very highly regarded diagnostician told her it was all in her head and sent her to a psychiatrist who specializes in these cases. The shrink met with her a few times and told her it wasn't in her head, she really was sick. The doctors never did figure it out and she found help in alternative medicine.
Too many doctors think that they know it all. Sorry, guys, you don't know it all, and if you would stop being so arrogant and open your minds you might learn something new.
"iPods are popular but guess what? Most people over 50 don't own them and would never purchase one-the same folks that comprise 2/3rds of the GDP and don't want to be on the Internet."
You sure don't know many over-50's, do you? I'm over 50, and I don't know anybody over 50 who isn't on the internet.
Of the iPod owners I know, 1/3 are over 50. The only reason I don't have one is because my wife thinks we have better things to do with our money.
1. Hills on a recumbent. Yeah, on a BikeE the hills are gonna hurt. Some of the high-performance designs can climb just about as well as an upright (see Bacchetta, Barcroft, Lightning for a few examples).
2. Cost. Prices in the recumbent market are dropping. There are a number of excellent 'bents out there for less than $1000, and some good ones as low as $500. You'll pay only a slight premium for a recumbent over a similar-quality road or mountain bike these days (see RANS, Burley, Lightning, Sun for a few examples).
3. Rack. I have a standard Rhode Gear (sp?) trunk rack. I have carried long wheelbase recumbents (Linear, Rotator) and even a tandem (BikeE) on it on the back of a Honda Prelude. The bike sticks out a little on each side but not enough to be a problem. Remove the wheels to shorten it if you're paranoid. I mount the BikeE and the Rotator on the rack upside down.
This company sells a laser turntable that plays your LPs by reading the grooves with a laser, ala CD. No contact, no wear and tear on the record. Big bucks, of course.
The technique described in the article goes farther, though, as it apparently allows recovery of sound from records, wax cylinders, and the like, even if broken.
If you read my post, you'll see that I modified "popular fiction" with "hack". I would hardly put Twain, Dickens and Orwell in the "hack" category. There are plenty of insightful popular fiction writers out there. I was addressing the likes of Grisham, who write entertaining prose that doesn't really contribute to the intellectual content of society. Twain, Dickens, Orwell, Asimov, Clarke, etc. make us think and help to shape society and, in the case of some SF writers, to shape future tech.
"I don't understand. You don't see lawyers clamoring at the bit for Grisham's insights into their world, but you see IT dorks hanging on every word a sci-fi author drops like he just came down from teh mountain with the 10 tips to avoid being outsourced chiseled into two stone tablets."
You've got the answer right there. Insight. Great SF writers have insights that are way beyond a popular fiction hack. Asimov projected a few simple ideas into the future, explored their impacts on society, and imagined solutions that future scientists might come up with to solve the problems that arise from new technology. Many of the ideas that SF writers like Asimov and Clarke (geosyncronous satellites, anyone?) have come up with have had real impact on our world.
> the weakest link is the employees -- minimal computer knowledge
No, the weakest link is the software that requires more than minimal computer knowledge. My wife doesn't have to know how to do a brake job on her car in order to drive it safely. Why should users have to know all the intricacies of security (that even many slashdotters probably don't completely understand) in order to compute safely? Personal computers are just too damn complicated and insecure for their intended audience. What we need is a true appliance computer like Jef Raskin's original concept for the Macintosh, but everyone wants Windows/Office compatibility and the only way to get that is with an OS that is inexcusably complex and unsafe.
I went through a period last year when I was getting a lot of these. I have a Yahoo mail account and I use a Mac, so it had nothing to do with virii or trojans. The bounces were legit - a spammer had sent out a ton of spam using my address as the return address. Where did he get the address? Could have been from his target list, could have been from the compromised address book of one of my friends...
The episode really pissed me off. Nothing like having your name go out on the return address of a disgusting porn spam.
Slashdot Mirror
So these guys aren't exaggerating?
It's actually very common for states and cities to tax income earned in that jurisdiction by non-residents. The reason DC doesn't do this is because Congress won't let it. This is one of the prime reason for DC's high tax rates on residents, along with the fact that a huge amount of land in the city is non-taxable because it's owned by the feds or by various non-taxable institutions.
But rather than let DC solve its financial problems using the same tools as every other jurisdiction, Congress continues to deny DC residents their rights as citizens by overruling the DC council at every step.
By the way, DC license plates now have the logo, "Taxation without Representation" to protest the fact that DC residents have no representation in Congress (other than the "shadow" representatives who have no meaningful vote).
> it's "government", not goverment.
He's American. It's "gummint".
Harry S Truman blew his brains out? That's news to me.
If you're specifically interested in donating to help tsunami victims, former Presidents Bush I and Clinton have been appearing in a commercial soliciting donations for that cause. They cite a web site that lists legitimate charities that are helping with this disaster. Check it out.
Feh, given the number of morons on the boards these days, a web-based usenet service without filtering capability is worthless.
(If Google has added filters since last time I used it, go ahead and shoot me)
> With SD Cards reaching 1GB in size, why don't people just use PDA's for music? A mystery or just an impending trend?
Feh. When the Shuffle came out I thought, "Hey, I can use my PDA and save a hundred bucks." It's a Viewsonic PocketPC I got through MSDN, with Windows Media Player built-in. I stuck an SD memory card in it and loaded up a couple CDs worth of MP3s. Built a playlist and tried to listen.
What a joke! I can only play one song, then I have to pull out the stylus and go through the menus to start another. The repeat and shuffle settings do nothing. Try to skip to another song, and it hangs with an "Opening" message until I go to the playlist again and manually open another song. Having to stop what I'm doing every 4 minutes or so to start another song sort of breaks up my activity.
It's designed to work better than this, but it just plain doesn't work (well, it is Microsoft software, what do you expect?). I finally gave up - I'll eventually pick up a Shuffle and have a player that works.
I have an old Newton 110 sitting in a desk drawer somewhere. The only reason I stopped using it is because it's too big to easily carry with me.
I now have a PocketPC (wouldn't have bought it, got it free). Even though it has somthing like 100 times the memory and 50 times the processor power, and is 10 years newer, it doesn't work nearly as well as the Newton. The Newton's handwriting recognition is far better, the built-in apps work better, the UI is infinitely better, etc. It's even faster at most things (probably because it's not pushing a lot of color around).
The Newton was way ahead of the game. Its designers recognized that the new form factor also required a new user interface paradigm - the WIMP/desktop metaphor doesn't work in that form factor. They came up with something revolutionary that worked beautifully in a handheld, pen-driven device. Microsoft seems to think that everything has to look like Windows - they just don't get it.
I wish Jobs hadn't killed the Newton. Imagine a Newton with a fast StrongArm, lots of memory, color, etc., in a Palm form factor. It would put Palm and Microsoft PPC to shame.
I listen to a lot of classical at the moment. One annoyance I find is that some parts will either be very quiet or will be mainly bass. When I'm on the bus or train it just ends up as silence. Try listening to Beethoven's 7th with reduced base. You'll end up missing the begining of the 2nd movment.
Try using a pair of active noise reduction headphones. I took a pair on my last long plane flight and used them to listen to the classical music channel on the plane's audio system. At one point I was listening to a string quartet, and I discovered that with the ANR turned off, I couldn't hear the cello at all. With ANR turned on, it was clear as a bell. The ANR works best at filtering out the low, steady frequencies that drown out your bass.
If you R one of TFAs, you find that the dino was chopped up into chunks (ie chewed). I doubt if it crawled into the dead mammal in that condition.
I pretty much have to agree with you here. I still beleive that Windows 98 is probably the most used Windows out there. Every time I happen by someone's house that isn't very computer savvy, they're running Windows 98.
There are also many PCs out there that aren't capable of running NT-based OSs. My wife's 5-year-old Sony Viao won't run anything newer than Win98 SE (won't run Linux, either). There's no good reason to replace the machine because it does everything she needs it to do, so she'll be running Win98 SE for the forseeable future.
And I can prove it!
"In MD, our governor is libertarian, but is on the republical ballot."
Ehrlich as libertarian? It is to laugh! This is a man who, since taking office, has focused almost exclusively on bringing slot machines back into the state, regulated (or perhaps operated) by the gummint, and who has been raising taxes while calling them by the Orwellian term "user fees". He's also a big backer of the very non-libertarian President Bush. Pure Republican.
" Ever heard of cable modems? Who would want to pay the same monthly fee for service which is 10 times slower?"
Let's see. Cable goes out on a regular basis. Phone hasn't gone out since I moved into the house 18 years ago. Oh, and DSL costs 2/3 as much as cable internet around here. Plus there's the bandwidth-sharing issue with cable...
Maybe these are some reasons why some of us chose not to go with the cable modem.
I wish I could moderate Pudge's comment. It deserves a nice big Flamebait.
Yes, DRM sucks. But we wouldn't have the iTunes Music Store without it. Do you really think that the labels would have allowed Apple to provide downloads of their music without some form of DRM?
Zeolite is a chalky substance that absorbs odors and chemicals from the air. A NASA engineer I know says they use it in some of their satellites to prevent contamination. My wife put several bags of it on her new monitor and, although it didn't completely get rid of the smell, it did help.
When she bought a new car, she aired it out a lot, rented an ozone machine and ran it in the car overnight, and put a lot of zeolite in the car, and the new car smell was vanquished in a couple of months.
I have to say that I'm disappointed with Slashdot today. MCS is a real problem. Just because some arrogant doctor doesn't understand the mechanism doesn't mean it doesn't exist. My wife met a lot of skepticism from doctors about her problems - one very highly regarded diagnostician told her it was all in her head and sent her to a psychiatrist who specializes in these cases. The shrink met with her a few times and told her it wasn't in her head, she really was sick. The doctors never did figure it out and she found help in alternative medicine.
Too many doctors think that they know it all. Sorry, guys, you don't know it all, and if you would stop being so arrogant and open your minds you might learn something new.
"iPods are popular but guess what? Most people over 50 don't own them and would never purchase one-the same folks that comprise 2/3rds of the GDP and don't want to be on the Internet."
You sure don't know many over-50's, do you? I'm over 50, and I don't know anybody over 50 who isn't on the internet.
Of the iPod owners I know, 1/3 are over 50. The only reason I don't have one is because my wife thinks we have better things to do with our money.
1. Hills on a recumbent. Yeah, on a BikeE the hills are gonna hurt. Some of the high-performance designs can climb just about as well as an upright (see Bacchetta, Barcroft, Lightning for a few examples).
2. Cost. Prices in the recumbent market are dropping. There are a number of excellent 'bents out there for less than $1000, and some good ones as low as $500. You'll pay only a slight premium for a recumbent over a similar-quality road or mountain bike these days (see RANS, Burley, Lightning, Sun for a few examples).
3. Rack. I have a standard Rhode Gear (sp?) trunk rack. I have carried long wheelbase recumbents (Linear, Rotator) and even a tandem (BikeE) on it on the back of a Honda Prelude. The bike sticks out a little on each side but not enough to be a problem. Remove the wheels to shorten it if you're paranoid. I mount the BikeE and the Rotator on the rack upside down.
This company sells a laser turntable that plays your LPs by reading the grooves with a laser, ala CD. No contact, no wear and tear on the record. Big bucks, of course.
The technique described in the article goes farther, though, as it apparently allows recovery of sound from records, wax cylinders, and the like, even if broken.
If you read my post, you'll see that I modified "popular fiction" with "hack". I would hardly put Twain, Dickens and Orwell in the "hack" category. There are plenty of insightful popular fiction writers out there. I was addressing the likes of Grisham, who write entertaining prose that doesn't really contribute to the intellectual content of society. Twain, Dickens, Orwell, Asimov, Clarke, etc. make us think and help to shape society and, in the case of some SF writers, to shape future tech.
"I don't understand. You don't see lawyers clamoring at the bit for Grisham's insights into their world, but you see IT dorks hanging on every word a sci-fi author drops like he just came down from teh mountain with the 10 tips to avoid being outsourced chiseled into two stone tablets."
You've got the answer right there. Insight. Great SF writers have insights that are way beyond a popular fiction hack. Asimov projected a few simple ideas into the future, explored their impacts on society, and imagined solutions that future scientists might come up with to solve the problems that arise from new technology. Many of the ideas that SF writers like Asimov and Clarke (geosyncronous satellites, anyone?) have come up with have had real impact on our world.
A local pizza delivery joint has the following printed on the bottom of their boxes:
"If you can read this your pizza is upside down"
Pick up an eMate on eBay - it's a Newton in a clamshell case with built-in keyboard. Compact, weighs about 4 pounds, reasonable screen size.
> the weakest link is the employees -- minimal computer knowledge
No, the weakest link is the software that requires more than minimal computer knowledge. My wife doesn't have to know how to do a brake job on her car in order to drive it safely. Why should users have to know all the intricacies of security (that even many slashdotters probably don't completely understand) in order to compute safely? Personal computers are just too damn complicated and insecure for their intended audience. What we need is a true appliance computer like Jef Raskin's original concept for the Macintosh, but everyone wants Windows/Office compatibility and the only way to get that is with an OS that is inexcusably complex and unsafe.
I went through a period last year when I was getting a lot of these. I have a Yahoo mail account and I use a Mac, so it had nothing to do with virii or trojans. The bounces were legit - a spammer had sent out a ton of spam using my address as the return address. Where did he get the address? Could have been from his target list, could have been from the compromised address book of one of my friends...
The episode really pissed me off. Nothing like having your name go out on the return address of a disgusting porn spam.