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Comment Re:Yeah, class warfare. That's right. (Score 1) 2115

by WesternActor (#37444788) Attached to: White House Proposes "Wealthy Tax"

Two things. First: It's taxes. Call them taxes. Not revenues. TAXES.

Second: "Pay their fair share" isn't "a phrase meant to evoke a gut response"? Come on. As if anyone's share is somehow more fair if it's drastically out of proportion with what the majority of people pay. Soaking the rich isn't fair. Fair is, Everyone pays the same rate. That's not what the Democrats typically want, and anyone being intellectually honest knows that.

Comment Re:Tax planning and rich people (Score 1) 2115

by WesternActor (#37444740) Attached to: White House Proposes "Wealthy Tax"

Buffett may give as much of his excess earnings to the government as he likes. Nothing is stopping him, or anyone, from writing a check for as large an amount as possible and sending it to the treasury department. I'm sure they'd be happy to have it, since $4 billion or so would keep the government running for most of a day.

Comment Re:Tax planning and rich people (Score 1) 2115

by WesternActor (#37444666) Attached to: White House Proposes "Wealthy Tax"

Warren Buffett may write a check any time he likes to make up the difference. A check to the U.S. government for $4 billion, say, would keep the government running for almost a day. If all the billionaires in the U.S. did that of their own accord, we might be able to keep the government running within its means for, oh, a month or two. Good times!
Apple

Submission + - Will Apple Patent Crush the Smartphone Market? (pcmag.com)

Submitted by WesternActor
WesternActor writes: Apple has finally been awarded a patent on the iPhone, but according to this PCMag story, some experts think it could force all other smartphone makers out of the market. At issue: a vague, yet strongly worded, description of capacitive multitouch that could give Apple control of the technology. If so, what does this mean for smartphones, music players, and tablets? Can you imagine them without capacitive multitouch these days?
Twitter

Submission + - NY Times Asks Twitter to Shut Down Retweeting Feed (pcmag.com)

Submitted by WesternActor
WesternActor writes: According to PCMag.com, the New York Times has asked Twitter to shut down the FreeNYT Twitter feed that basically retweets all of the Times' articles. Is this really possible? After all, the feed just points to a list of Times Twitter accounts, all of which can also be found on the Times' website. If the Times succeeds in shutting this down, it could have a chilling effect for Twitter and online free speech in general.
Apple

Submission + - iPad 2 Reviewed (pcmag.com)

Submitted by WesternActor
WesternActor writes: PCMag.com just put up its review of Apple's iPad 2, and the verdict looks really good. We all knew it would be thinner and faster than the original, but apparently Apple's new additions and accessories only improve on what was already a solid product. (Well, solid for a tablet, anyway.) If you have a first-generation iPad, PCMag doesn't think this one is a must-have upgrade, but otherwise this could be not only the most popular tablet on the market, but also the best. Do the other tablet companies have a shot at unseating Apple? Or is it going to own tablets the way it owns music players?
AMD

Submission + - AMD Releases Three New Low-Cost CPUs

Submitted by WesternActor
WesternActor writes: With its new Fusion APUs coming out in about a month, you wouldn't think AMD would still be tweaking its processor lineup. But it released three new processors today—the Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition, the Phenom II X2 565 Black Edition, and the Athlon II X3 455—to balance out its price-performance offerings. The Black Edition CPUs with their unlocked multipliers are probably the most interesting, particularly the Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition which has six cores, runs at 3.3 GHz, and costs only $265. As the name implies, the 1100T represents only a minute increase in clock speed over the 1090T. It even has the same amount of L2 and L3 cache (3MB and 6MB, respectively), is based on the same 45nm production process, and is designed for the currently standard AM3 socket. Given that 1090T got the downward nudge in price to $235, however, the 1100T offers slightly better performance for less money.
Graphics

Submission + - Nvidia Releases GTX 580 with First Full Fermi GPU (pcmag.com)

Submitted by WesternActor
WesternActor writes: It's taken months longer than Nvidia probably would have liked, but the company has finally released its first video card using the full GF100 GPU. The GeForce GTX 580 builds upon the technologies used in the GTX 480 (which came out in March), but adds the 16th streaming multiprocessor for a total of 512 CUDA cores, 16 polymorph engines, and so on. This gives the card excellent video capabilities, especially in tessellation-heavy DirectX 11 games. It compares very favorably with AMD's highest-end offerings though this all could change in the next couple of months when AMD releases its new Cayman performance cards.
Media

Submission + - Build a $500 Linux Media Center PC (extremetech.com)

Submitted by WesternActor
WesternActor writes: Does anyone still build media center PCs anymore? People don't seem to talk about them much these days, but this ExtremeTech story makes it sound like there are still good reasons to have them around. It discusses how to build one for just $500, using Ubuntu and MythTV. Have you ever tried building one of these? Is it worth the time and trouble, even if it doesn't do HD?
Media

Submission + - Build a $500 Linux Media Center PC (extremetech.com) 1

Submitted by WesternActor
WesternActor writes: Media center PCs have been around for almost a decade, and you don't hear people talk about them much anymore--probably because the functionality has become so ubiquitous elsewhere. But ExtremeTech has a story on how to build a Linux media center PC for about $500 (using Ubuntu 10.04 and MythTV, of course) that suggests there may be reasons to still care about these systems.
Software

Submission + - Civilization V: A First Look (extremetech.com)

Submitted by WesternActor
WesternActor writes: Sid Meier released the original, dangerously addictive Civilization in 1991, and it and its sequels and spin-offs have been captivating PC gamers ever since. ExtremeTech has a hands-on look at Civilization V, which adds lots of new graphical elements, changes the map grid from diamonds to hexagons, and simplifies a lot of the elaborate game-play aspects of Civ IV. You already know it uses Steam, but some of the changes might also steam longtime Civ lovers. It'll be interesting to see how it's received by both regular Civ players and wargame aficionados (at whom many of the changes seem aimed).
Graphics

Submission + - OpenGL 4.1 Specification Announced (extremetech.com)

Submitted by WesternActor
WesternActor writes: The Khronos Group has announced full details for the OpenGL 4.1 specification. Among the new features of the spec, which comes just five months after the release of the 4.0 specification, is full support for OpenGL ES, which simplifies porting between mobile and desktop platforms. It'll be interesting to see what effect, if any, this new spec has on the graphics industry--more compatibility could change the way many embedded systems are designed. There are lots of other changes and additions in the spec, as well.
Hardware

Submission + - Build a $200 Linux PC (extremetech.com)

Submitted by WesternActor
WesternActor writes: Computers are getting cheaper to buy every year, but there are still sometimes advantages to building them yourself. ExtremeTech has a story about how they sought out the parts for a $200 computer that (of course) runs Linux as a way of breaking the budget barrier. They even test it against a commercially available eMachines nettop to see how it compares in terms of performance. This probably isn't something everyone will want to do, but it's an interesting example of something you can do on the cheap if you put your mind to it.
Data Storage

Submission + - The Best Way to Use SSDs (extremetech.com)

Submitted by WesternActor
WesternActor writes: Most people by now know that SSDs are a lot faster than traditional spinning hard drives. But it's harder to figure out the best way to use SSDs if you want to add one to the system you already have without going broke to do it. (The 1TB hard drive is immediately out, for example.) ExtremeTech has a story looking at the best way to choose which drives to buy and the best things to do with them once you have them, comparing startup and file load times across several different models as well as with hard drives and RAIDs.

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